Strong Refuge

The Blogging Continues!

2006-08-07T09:07:00.000-07:00

Joanna and I completed the 24-hour blogathon to raise money for Katrina victims in Pearlington, MS, but we aren't stopping there. We're going to keep going by adding at least one new thing a day to the Pearlington blog up until the Katrina anniversary on August 29. Please help us pass the word along, and if you weren't able to drop by to leave a comment during the blogathon, it's all still there. Come on over when you get a chance.

The Blogging Begins!

2006-08-05T05:17:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not have noticed, the planned blogathon for Pearlington had to be postponed because I had a funeral to go to last weekend. Joanna and I are blogging all day today and all night tonight, however, on behalf of the small town of Pearlington, MS that was just obliterated by Katrina.Come on over and contribute what you can, whether it's money, labor, or good old-fashioned good wishes.

Katrina Victims Still Need Our Help

2006-07-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

And I have an idea for how we can help them. Actually, Joanna has an idea, and we are running with it.

Please join us next Saturday, July 29, when we blog for Pearlington. We are participating in Blogathon 2006 to raise money for hurricane recovery efforts in Pearlington, MS.

It's just like the old walkathons with all the walking done at a keyboard. We blog. You sponsor--if you please.

We need all of the support we can get, and the people of Pearlington need all of the help they can get. Please help us spread the word, and don't forget to meet us at the blog next Saturday when we talk all day about Pearlington, the needs of the people there, what they've been through this year, what various churches and other volunteer organizations have been able to accomplish, and what we can all still do to help.

Donations will go to the Pearlington Recovery Fund at University Baptist Church. The money will be spent on building supplies for families who lost their homes in Katrina.

And So It Goes With God

2006-06-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading Life of Pi for the second time. I'm supposed to discuss it with a reading group Sunday afternoon, so I'm going to save blogging about the book as a whole until later. But there is one line I just had to comment on now.

At the end of the book, Pi is telling his story to some men who clearly do not believe him, so after giving up on convincing them he is telling the truth, he tells them an alternate version of the story that he suggests they might find more plausible. This seems to only confuse them even more. Then he asks which story makes the better story, the first one he's told about his experiences in surviving months in a lifeboat on the Pacific Ocean, the story that is full of animals, or the second story that has no tiger in it.

The men agree. The better story is the one with animals.

To which Pi replies, "And so it goes with God."

Wow. That line gives me shivers. I'm going to spend the next few days deciding what I think it means.

Mammaw's Family

2006-06-03T18:43:00.000-07:00

We had a family thing today, and though Mammaw has been gone for many years, it was basically about getting her family together. Mammaw's family has, over the years, gotten both bigger and smaller, spreading out more and more as it keeps growing so that it's not nearly as big a group as I imagine when we actually get ourselves together. But then it's still us. Except that it's not. It's some weird older version of us. People kept commenting today on how the kids are growing up faster than we can keep up, and I kept looking around thinking, "Who are these old people, and what have they done with my family?" And that's just when I looked at my brothers and sisters (Heh. Kidding. Sort of.).

Time is such an odd little critter. It drags on and on when there is something you really want to happen and slows to a creepy crawl when you just wish some terrible situation would be over already. I'm not one to really keep up with my own aging process, but I was born in 1967, which should make me about 25 by now I figure. I'm not sure where other people found the years in there to get older.

But the main thing is that this reminded me that we don't get together enough. Of course, everybody has responsibilities, and everybody has their own children and their own friends and their own jobs to worry about. But somehow we keep finding ourselves inexplicably catapulted out into the future with no real idea of where the time went. It's a shame when those moment of realizing the time has gone keep cropping up at funerals, as they all too often do.

There are a lot of things you can find time for later. Getting together with the people you love as they are right now is not one of them. You can use up everything you have in you running around willy nilly just trying to deal with the most immediate pressures first, but there are few situations in which your time and attention are more valuable than in simply sitting down to visit.

Ya'll come to see us. The roads work both ways. Ya hear?

One Shovel Full at a Time

2006-05-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

Monday afternoon I helped bag up insulation that had been torn out of a house in Pearlington. For a while there, the more we worked the bigger the pile looked. That feeling of working and working and working only to see the pile get bigger is pretty well representative of the overall situation on the Gulf Coast right now.

If you read the Pearlington Recover Center blog, you can see that there are several recent posts that allude to rising frustrations. I'm sure it's not hard to imagine the tension level felt by people who have been displaced all year, living in very diminished conditions on their own properties, and who still see no real end in sight. Add to that organizations facing a situation like nothing they've ever dealt with before, necessitating a kind of make-up-the-rules-as-we-go operating procedure in which nobody really knows what they've been promised or what they can expect. Add to that volunteers suffering from heat exhaustion and raw nerves. Add to that the fact that everyone's story is so traumatic and so heart-wrenching that even small groups of volunteers have trouble agreeing where their resources will best be put to use. Add to that the fact that the harder you work, the bigger the pile gets. I could go on, but I think the point is made.

Life is hard in Pearlington. I worked with some very wonderful people--Mack, Erin, and Caroline--who had driven down from North Carolina to help. Mack is a pastor, and when we started talking about mission trips to other countries and comparing them to Pearlington, he said, "I've been to a lot of places, and this is as rustic as any of them."

I made it two days for my first week of work as a volunteer in Pearlington. I may go back tomorrow, but unless I am called and asked to come to do a specific task, I'll probably wait until Monday. I have responsibilities at home, and I need to pace myself. I need to rest, regroup, soak it all in, and work up the energy to go again.

It's hard. Everything is hard. The living conditions are primitive. It's hot. The bugs are terrible. The work that needs to be done is physically demanding. And the job isn't finished without sitting down to talk to the family, and every family has a story to tell that will just use up every emotion you have to offer.

But I'm going back next week and the week after that and the week after that and as much as I can manage all summer without wearing myself out to the point that I can't take care of the rest of my life.

As hard as everything is in Pearlington, every day is a very unique and rich experience. The people are incredible. The volunteers, the locals, they are all worth getting to know. They are all very special to my heart. And every day in Pearlington there are things that I can do that I know are of real help to people in real need. Every day that we keep raising money and keep working on houses and keep listening to people's stories is another shovel full off the pile. It may take a very long time, but if we just keep going, we'll see that pile get smaller.

God bless the families who've lost their homes and their livelihoods and everything about the world as they knew it. God bless the volunteers who've given so much time and money and energy to help these good people of my home state. God bless Pearlington.

Sharon v. Pearlington

2006-05-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

Monday morning, I'm headed for Pearlington, MS where it looks like I will be running Baptist errands most of the summer as various groups come in from around the country to work on the recovery efforts. There is a tiny camper for me to use, putting me very high up on the comfort scale in Pearlington. I won't have to sleep in a tent or on the floor of a gym. I will even have my own tiny refrigerator in my tiny camper. Life will be good.

This is the part where I'm supposed to say something poignant about how enriching mission experiences are and how I'm thankful for the opportunity to be of service. In all honesty, though, I'm equally repulsed and delighted by the idea.

Only 70 miles down the road will be my pillow-top mattress, hot shower, air conditioning, and cable T.V. It will be awfully hard to stay there, given that I have a terrible aversion to port-a-potties. I'll have to really feel like I'm doing some good.

So far all of my trips to Pearlington have been day trips. Each time, I've been hesitant, thinking I wouldn't be able to do any good. Each time, I've left feeling very good about what I was able to accomplish. I imagine this will be the same, except that at some point I'm going to have to face my fear the less than perfect bathroom facilities.

All of this is just to say that if I'm at the blog very often this summer, it means I've either chickened out or I'm cheating and driving home at night. Distinctly possible either way.

I know there are wonderful people living and working in Pearlington, though, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them. I will try to check in from time to time just to tell their stories. They need telling.

Have a great summer, dear readers. Both of you. And if you can spare a day or two, come meet me at the Pearl-Mart. The bug spray is on me.

Things I Wish I'd Heard in Church

2006-05-26T06:45:00.000-07:00

You know the saying, "No good deed goes unpunished"? I have a friend who puts it this way, "Try to be Jesus, and they'll nail you to a cross every time."

A common problem among the do-gooders of the world is not knowing our own limitations. It's a nasty cycle. You take on too much. You get overwhelmed and stressed out. You feel guilty that you're overwhelmed and stressed out because you know that you should be happy to do all of the things you've offered to do. You keep feeling guilty and overwhelmed until you finally just reach crash point. You back off a little, tell people you have to get some rest, slowly begin to get a little relaxation and restoration, start feeling refreshed and revived, and then...yes, it starts all over. People have needs. They ask. You say yes because you don't really have it in you to say anything else, and in all honesty you wouldn't have it any other way.

Sound familiar?

Someone recently said something like, "If you try to do everything, you are depriving other people of the chance to take their turn at feeling blessed by helping others."

There you have it.

You're only one person. You have your limits. Do your best. Give what you can. Turn the rest over to God. It's not really your job to save the world.

The Da Vinci Debate

2006-05-24T11:42:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't seen the movie. I'm sure I will eventually, but I haven't rushed out to be among the first. I did read the book a couple of years ago, mainly because I heard that a Baptist preacher had spoken out against it from the pulpit. That was actually the first time I'd ever heard of the book, and like my colleague who told me about the sermon, my first reaction was to read the book to find out what he was talking about. :)

I'm not sure I have strong feelings one way or the other about this book. It's fiction. It's fiction for adults who presumably know that it's fiction and can take it for what it's worth.

Or can they?

The preface to the book does suggest that a good bit of background for the story is based on historical fact--which after hours and hours of watching History Channel documentaries on the matter, I am prepared to say are not so factual after all.

What interests me, though, is something I saw in the Clarion Ledger a few weeks ago and bookmarked for later blogging.

According to the Barna Group, a Christian research and polling agency, 53 percent of adults who read The Da Vinci Code report that the book has helped their "personal spiritual growth and understanding."

53%? Holy Book Mobile, Batman!

Could it be true that more than half the people who've read this book believe it has helped their "personal spiritual growth and understanding"?

And if it is true, is this good or bad? My first reaction is to cringe to think that so many people could take a fictional thriller so seriously.

Then I wonder...numbers can prove anything, and what is it exactly these numbers really say?

What if 53% don't really agree with the book, but have been prompted to get more closely in touch with what they do believe as a result of the controversy surrounding it? Can it be all bad to have that many people asking what the real truth of Jesus is?

I just wonder...

Porpoise Diving

2006-05-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting site: The Porpoise Diving Life.

It's of course a play on Rick Warren's Purpose Driven Life, but Bill Dahl says in the most respectful way. Dahl says he got a lot out of Warren's book, but that he is writing for people who most sincerely floudering with the whole purpose driven thing.

I like it.

From the site:

Are you confused, curious or perplexed about life, God or postmodern culture? Have you been wounded by Christians or the Church? Do you have a sneaking suspicion that there's more to God than what you've been led to believe? Have you or someone close to you ever been whacked by the inexplicable...something that utterly defies explanation? Do you have fears, uncertainties and doubts about what you've been sold in the name of Christianity? Do you desire a safe place to come and listen or participate in the dialogue that is ongoing about these sorts of issues?

I can relate. I can definitely relate.

Overheard

2006-05-18T20:06:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I overheard a preacher say, "I've been preaching so hard to them I've just about got them all run off." This was said in a bragging tone. I think he really was proud of the whole tough guy, crack the whip from the pulpit routine.

I've been trying to think how to respond to this without sounding bitter.

I give up.

I remember as a teenager telling a friend that I believed there was a special place in Hell for preachers who abused their power and influence over others. This was well before all the sex scandals hit the newspapers. I was talking about what I saw then (and now) as ego-driven mean-spiritedness.

I always understood that people who say and do things like that are sincere. The preacher I heard bragging about running people away from the church because they couldn't take the "hard truth" he was hurling at them really thought he was doing the right thing. He really thought he was delivering the Word.

I also remember that my grandmother once told me she thought it was a shame that kicking people out of church for wrong-doing had fallen out of fashion. She pointed to unwed mothers as an example of people who would have once been voted out of the church.

One of the things I like best about UBC it that it has no provision for how to get rid of members. One of the deacons told me that they consider kicking sinners out of church to be like evicting sick people from a hospital.

He has a good point.

Even as a child I understood that my biggest obstacle toward spiritual purity was my bitterness toward the church itself. Some habits die hard. This is still my biggest struggle, but I am thankful that I have found a church that is different and that I've learned that some Christians really do see the Bible as Good News.

So I haven't figured out yet how to not sound bitter, but I can say with sincerity, "Father forgive them. They know not what they do."

Be Still, and Know that I am God.

2006-05-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

Psalm 46:10

It's not easy, is it? To be still, to let go of worries, to take time to just be, to appreciate the wonders of life and of God...

This is a pretty tall order for a busy life, but it is a necessary one.

Last semester, I turned in my final grades one day and followed my mother to the hospital the next. Today, I'll go to graduation. Tomorrow, I'll go to a funeral.

If this were about me, I'd think it was awfully rude of anyone to die without giving me a chance to rest first. But instead I'm going to take some time to ponder and appreciate the real rest and peace that has now come to someone who gave his whole life to good work and service to others and to God.

He will be missed. He will be remembered. And I believe we have only to be still and know God to appreciate the beauty of both his life and his passing.

Et Tu, Mary Poppins?

2006-05-10T04:47:00.000-07:00

Just Googling around a little bit this morning, I found out that Mary Poppins is Satanic. After the whole scandal with Teletubbies and before them Smurfs, I suppose it should come as no surprise. No one ever knew what supercalifragilisticexpialidocious meant anyway. We can only guess what evil we were bringing into the world by running around singing it as children.

Then there was that whole thing with convincing us that anything could be good if we just put a little sugar in it.

It's so obvious now. Disney, Pamela Travers, and Julie Andrews were all in cahoots in an evil plot to turn a whole generation into overweight subversives who think there is nothing wrong with reading Harry Potter to their children.

What were our parents thinking? I'm sure they meant well, but really. They let us wash our hair with Protor and Gamble shampoo and run around singing Disney songs and believing that our own imaginations were full of true magic that could get us through any hard time that came our way.

Thank God.

Chim chiminey
Chim chiminey
Chim chim cher-ee!

Time is an Illusion

2006-05-09T03:51:00.000-07:00

The thing about time is that the feeling of being tortured by having too much to do drags out forever while the time in which to actually get stuff done whizzes by too fast to keep up.

It's a mystery.

Judas Revisited

2006-05-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

The first time I read the "Gospel of Judas" I really just skimmed over it to find the parts that were being touted in the media as so controversial and such a threat to Christianity. Now I’ve looked at it more carefully, and all I can say is, “Yikes.” This is not your Grandpa’s King James.

It’s pretty strange, but of course that just makes me all the more fascinated. Lots of people are going to be fascinated, and any Biblical scholar with a lick of sense ought to be hard at work getting a book written out as fast as humanly possible—before the sensation dies down.

I won’t pretend to actually “get it,” but I will say that after looking at Judas more carefully and listening to people who have studied these things far more than I discuss it, I have a better understanding of why some things that were called Christian gospels in their day were just never real contenders for what was to become The Bible As We Know It.

The big issue of the Gospel of Judas is not that Jesus asks Judas to betray him. It’s that Jesus is not the same person I was ever taught about in Sunday School. In the gospels of my childhood Bible drills, the character and teachings of Jesus are depicted in the tradition of Jewish prophets—as would be expected of the Messiah sent to fulfill the Jewish prophecy. In the Gospel of Judas, the character and teachings of Jesus aren’t Jewish at all. They aren’t monotheistic. This Jesus is a Greek mystic rather than a Jewish prophet. His teachings more closely resemble Greek and Egyptian mythology rather than what we know today as Christian traditions.

It’s all very intriguing, and I hope to keep learning more about it, but what I’m beginning to see about Gnosticism is that it is not so much an alternative sect of Christianity as an attempt to merge Christianity with other belief systems altogether. So instead of seeing it like I did before as being sort of like Baptists and Methodists perpetually unable to agree on Baptism therefore unable to worship together while still basically practicing the same religion, I see Gnostic Christians as being more like Baptist Hindus than Baptist Methodists.

For whatever that is worth…

If I had a secret...

2006-05-04T19:26:00.000-07:00

If I had a secret to post to PostSecret, it would be that I’m dreading summer vacation just as much as I’m looking forward to it. This was by far the most stressful year I’ve ever had as a teacher. What the hurricane didn’t disrupt, my mother’s accident did. Then there are the committee duties I’ve had and the conferences I’ve gone to. It all adds up to work, work, work, stress, stress, stress.

There’s got to be a psychological term for that fear of slowing down when you’ve been running as hard as you could for an extended period of time.

If not we should make one up. Suggestions?

Worn out with Motivation and Inspiration?

2006-05-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Try Demotivation.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Roaches.

2006-05-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

I sat in on a graduate seminar at USM last night and listened to the students give presentations on the immediate responses to Katrina by various churches and other organizations around town. It was interesting and informative, and I'm sure I'll have a lot to say about it by the time I'm finished thinking it through. One quote that sticks out in my mind at the moment, though, is "After the storm, people were either roaches or angels." In other words, they were either scurrying around to see what they could get, or they were scurrying around to see what they could do to help. I'd say that's true in the first two weeks. Anybody who wasn't working to clean up and to help others was seen as part of the problem. And we definitely saw people taking advantage of those who came in with supplies and money. Once the power came back on, and people started going back to work, I'd say life sort of normalized to the point that there were still roaches and angels, but there was also a middle ground in which some people were just trying to live their lives, neither helping nor hurting anyone else in the process. At first, there was no normalcy, and there was no middle ground.

It reminds me of the saying, "Disaster doesn't bring out the best in people; it brings out the real." I can't remember who said that, but I wholeheartedly agree. Whatever your core character is will be the thing to come to the surface during times of crisis. You may be able to cover it up at other times, but everyone will know who you really are as soon as the world around you starts to go belly up.

The story they tell is that the day the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship decided they had done all they could for Hattiesburg and would do more good by moving their relief efforts elsewhere was the day a woman came to the church asking for Jello. She said she needed it because her fingernails had just not been the same since the storm.

Mike from UBC says that he knew needs had been met, and he was working for to serve people's greed the day he gave a case of bottled water to someone who asked if he could please make that Dasani. In his best deacon voice, he answered, "You'll take what I give you."

I'm sure we'd all prefer to be remembered as angels rather than roaches in other people's disaster tales, but once disaster strikes, we don't have time to become anything other than what we are already. If we want to be angels when it really counts, we have to practice being angels when we think it doesn't matter. We have to be as a matter of course what we want to be at our best.

Survival Narratives

2006-05-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

I've heard a lot of very poignant stories this year of how people survived the hurricane and its aftermath. Tonight I heard one that may not be quite as chilling as those told by people who had to climb trees or pull their grandmothers onto rooftops when the floodwaters came in, but I doubt I'll forget it nonetheless.

In the days after the storm, when there were no city services and rumors of lootings and shootings were rampant, some brave souls ventured out in search of supplies for themselves and their neighbors. They went into a Baptist church where they took baths in the baptistery then hauled the water back to the neighborhood to flush toilets. By that time, no doubt those waters were truly blessed.

Hurricane season is fast approaching (only one month from today), and I'm sure no one around here will forget to fill bathtubs for flushing water if a storm starts heading our way. But this message is especially for pastors and church leaders. If you have any heart at all, you'll remember that the baptistery is also a valuable container for life-saving (or sanity-saving) liquids.

Feline Mutiny

2006-04-30T20:14:00.000-07:00

This may sound a little strange, but if you are reading it, you probably know me, and as such are used to me being strange. So here goes. I only ever feed my cats chicken or fish cat food. I’m a vegetarian, and they are not, but I still have a thing about not wanting to feed them mammals.

See, I told you it was strange.

Anyway, I accidentally bought beef cat food this week. I didn’t notice until I’d already opened the can. By that time, they were circling me with looks that said they were going to eat me if I didn’t hand over the contents of the can. So I set it out, apologizing to them for getting the wrong food.

And guess what? They ate it. Voraciously. They acted like they’d never known anything so good could exist. The little traitors.

Because I practice metablogging (my blog knows it is a blog), this is the part where I have to comment on the fact that I’ve gotten to the part where I need a point.

So here’s my point.

It’s very easy to forget where the boundaries between ourselves and others begin and end. It’s very easy to forget where we’ve imposed our own values, ideals, or preferences on others. It’s very easy to assume we know what those we love like or want or care about. Then when they don’t fall in line with what we expect, we feel betrayed. We aren’t betrayed. We just feel that way because that is human nature. We’re all little control freaks at heart, whether we mean to be or not.

I have four more cans of beef cat food. I’m thinking about donating them to the Humane Society so I can get right back to pretending my little traitors don’t really care to partake of mammal-feasting.

We Got Blogged!

2006-04-28T15:58:00.000-07:00

I must say I'm proud to have been a part of this.

Nietzsche is Dead

2006-04-27T18:53:00.000-07:00

I realize the old "Nietzsche is Dead" line is pretty used up, but hey...it's hard to resist.

I was thinking today about Nietzsche and the old Apollonian and Dionysian dichotamy he talked about regarding the Dead Greek Guys and Western Civilization and all that, and my understanding of this is that we tend to historically catagorize eras as being one or the other. Western history is a series of "enlightments" always followed by a kind of "romantic" rebellion against reason as the primary motivating force for behavior and culture and life as we know it.

The way I see our own age is that we are living through a societal identity crisis. To pay my little bit of homage to the Dead Greek Guys, we have very powerful impulses attempting to shape our cultural "ethos" through both "logos" and "pathos" at the same time. We are living through a time that is both an "age of reason" and an "age of romanticism" simultaneously with little sense of harmony between the two. Politically, due to wars and terrorism and rapid change, we lean more to being driven by emotion than logic. Yet, we are also in a time of "media minutiae" in which it's nearly impossible to hold anyone or anything up as heroic, and we have a great desire for ever increasing amounts of information in order to feed our desire for ever increasing claims to rational decision making. But what we are inundated with in the end is not real information. It's merely noise or often enough misinformation, shadows flickering on the walls of the cave. Thus, our loyalties are divided, not so much by what we believe in and what we hold dear, but by how much we feel cheated by the sea of hollow and unreliable factors through which we make both our rational and emotional choices.

Maybe people in every age have felt the same. Maybe we're just more aware of it due to mass communication and transportation. And Mr. Plato, what if the cave is a happy place? What if the shadows are so very entertaining?

This is the part where I should have a concluding thought, but I don't. I'm just taking up blog space to write this down before I forget that I got this far in my current line of thought (read "procrastination").

Embrace the chaos. It's alright. And it's already embraced you.

God Has Pity on the Kindergarten Children

2006-04-26T18:55:00.000-07:00

by Yehuda Amichai

God has pity on kindergarten children.
He has less pity on school children
And on grownups he has no pity at all,
he leaves them alone,
and sometimes they must crawl on all fours
in the burning sand
to reach the first–aid station
covered with blood.

But perhaps he will watch over true lovers
and have mercy on them and shelter them
like a tree over the old man
sleeping on a public bench.

Perhaps we too will give them
the last rare coins of charity
that Mother handed down to us
so that their happiness may protect us
now and on other days.

Guilty Pleasure

2006-04-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from work today. I had nothing in particular in mind. I just knew I needed food, and I knew I didn't have time to put any thought or effort into it. Really, I should have known better. I should have stopped at Wendy's for a salad. Instead, I went to the grocery store and bought a box of ice cream bars, a bag of frozen french fries, and a pack of cheese. Carbohydrates R us.

My ability to discipline myself seems to work in direct inverse proportion to the amount of stress I'm under. I'm using up all of my energy right now to make myself grade research papers. I have no inner resources left to devote to avoiding ice cream.

It's my firm belief that we're entirely too hard on ourselves when we think we have to always avoid junking up our bodies.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll exercise and eat right tomorrow. Today I'm indulging my need for mental fortitude with Snickers ice cream.

The Numbers

2006-04-24T14:54:00.000-07:00

April 15, 2006--As Christians around the world celebrate Easter, 83% of Americans believe that the person known to history as Jesus Christ actually walked the earth. A Rasmussen Reports holiday survey found that 6% disagree.

The survey also found that 78% believe Jesus "was the Son of God who came to earth to die for our sins."

Seventy-five percent (75%) believe the central claim of the Easter celebration, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Fourteen percent (14%) say the Resurrection did not happen.

African-Americans are somewhat more likely to believe these claims about Christ than other Americans. Those who earn more than $100,000 a year are a bit less likely to believe. There is very little difference on these questions by age.

Twenty percent (20%) of Americans say that they are Evangelical Christians. Another 47% claim some other Christian affiliation.

Thirty-six percent (36%) say they attend some form of religious services every week, a percentage that increases with age.

From RasmussenReports.com

I keep hearing that we live in a post-Christian society, but these numbers don't appear post-Christian to me. What they say is we live in a post-Church society. If 78% of Americans believe Jesus died for our sins, and only 36% regularly attend Christian services, what has lost currency is the institution of the church, not the faith.

Hmmm...

Predictable Disillusionment

2006-04-23T10:46:00.000-07:00

Phillip read this excerpt from an ESPN article by Chuck Klosterman today in church. It really did strike me as profound enough that I rushed right home and looked it up. I'm posting it now before I forget where I found it.

In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election, and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act like that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings, and everybody cried for two months. And then Enron went bankrupt, and the U.S. started acting like a rogue state, and "The Simple Life" premiered, and gasoline became unaffordable, and our Olympic basketball team lost to Puerto Rico, and we reelected the same president we never really elected in the first place. Later, there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and three Oscars for an especially bad movie called "Crash."

Things, as they say, have been better.

I'm only 33 years old, so I'll concede that my life experience is limited. But the past five years have been an especially depressing stretch to be an American, and I don't think many people of any age would disagree with that sentiment (except for maybe Kelly Clarkson ... things seem to be working out OK for her). If it's the era of anything, it's the Era of Predictable Disillusionment: a half-decade in which many long-standing fears about how America works (and what America has come to represent) were gradually -- and then suddenly -- hammered into the collective consciousness of just about everyone, including all the people who hadn't been paying attention to begin with.

The question then for a Sunday morning audience is how do we exist as people of faith in an "Era of Predictable Disillusionment"? How do we stand as witnesses to something we hold as truth with a big T in a world conditioned to disbelief and disillusionment? What do we do with our hope that others will get what we're getting out of belief?

Phillip, because he was doing the preaching and because we had all dragged ourselves out on a Sunday morning to hear him say something to make us feel better, would most predictably have to follow these questions up with something about Jesus and something about the Holy Spirit. He did that, of course, but I wasn't really paying attention by then being still preoccupied with "Predictable Disillusionment." And he's right, of course, in whatever it was he said about Jesus and the Holy Spirit while I wasn't listening. That has to be the answer to people of faith in this era, however we want to label it. We've got nothing else. The questions remain enormous. There's no logical evidence that in an us v. them scenario we even stand a chance. There's no logical evidence that in a humanity v. postmodern society scenario humanity even stands a chance.

It's just sad, and it's overwhelming, and I, along with (I suspect) most Christians, am just as vulnerable to disillusionment as anyone else.

At some point this year I saw a sign in front of a church that said, "Instead of telling your God how big your storm is, try telling your storm how big your God is." It's a rip off from one of those popular Christian motivation books, but since I can't remember which one I may have been better off not to even mention that part. :)

It's true that concentrating on your source of hope rather than on your problem is the first step to overcoming any obstacle. I believe that with everything in me.

And here's where I find hope--People untimately want something to believe in. They want something they can trust. They want faith, hope, and love to exist in large and real ways in their lives. They may not know that's what they want, and they may not immediately see how they can have something real in their lives that isn't itself just another illusion and therefore another risk of disillusionment, but in their hearts they want to believe in something. That's just how people are built.

People over 17 eat at McDonald's only because it's cheap and convenient, not because they like it. People feed on steady diets of negativity, despair, disdain and disbelief because they are easy and pervasive, not because they're enjoyable.

All of this is just to say that though I do not have answers I did hear enough of what I wasn't listening to this morning to agree and to hold out some hope that with the help of Jesus and the Holy Spirit there is a way to make a difference in this confused and skeptical world of ours.

And all God's people said Amen.

Praise

2006-04-23T07:02:00.000-07:00

“More than any other church I’ve known, this one collectively understands what the red words mean.”

This was said in the car yesterday on the way down to Pearlington, MS where a group from UBC was going to work on a house that had been destroyed by Katrina.

I don’t think praise comes any higher than that.

Later, Judy, a woman with our group, said to Cecil, the owner of the house, “I’m sorry for your loss.”

He replied, “I’ve had so many blessings in my life that if I never get another one I’ve had my share.”

I don’t think attitude comes any better than that.

If you’ve been wondering whether you should go down to the coast and help out, let me give you one more reason to do it. Go for the people you’ll have the privilege to get to know.

I am continually amazed by how things work out so that every time I go on a Katrina work day, there is something for me to do. Honestly, no one could have less know-how or less of an eye for what needs doing than me. A neighbor asked me just the other day if I needed help changing the bulbs in my flood lights because I’d left them burned out for so long. I’m really that bad.

At some point during the day yesterday, one of the women with the group said, “Isn’t this amazing? Anyone can build a house.”

That’s the way I feel every trip. If I can do this, anyone can. And it is amazing.

Yesterday, I learned to mud sheetrock. At least, I mudded a lot of sheetrock whether I’d learned to do it or not. I also mudded myself, the floor, and a couple of friends and loved every minute of it.

It was a good day. We all left feeling good about what we were able to accomplish despite the fact that most of us would not be anyone’s “first pick” for a construction team. That feeling of accomplishment leaves me wanting to say once again:

If you show up to work for Jesus with nothing more than a willing heart, there will be something you can do.
The other people who show up to work for Jesus are da bomb.

Reasons, Seasons

2006-04-20T19:30:00.000-07:00

I don't normally like to perpetuate those sappy things that go around in e-mails, probably because I have more than enough sap of my own to perpetuate without borrowing any. This one really meant something to me, though. It meant even more because it was sent to me by my brother who has had to learn about finding meaning in loss in the harshest way--through the death of his wife.

People come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime. When you
know which one it is, you will know what to do for that
person. When someone is in your life for a REASON, it is
usually to meet a need you have expressed. They have come to
assist you through a difficulty, to provide you with guidance
and support, to aid you physically, emotionally or
spiritually. They may seem like a God send, and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be. Then,
without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient
time, this person will say or do something to bring the
relationship to an end. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they
walk away. Sometimes they act up and force you to take a
stand. What we must realize is that our need has been met,
our desire fulfilled, their work is done. The prayer you sent
up has been answered and now it is time to move on. Some
people come into your life for a SEASON, because your turn
has come to share, grow or learn. They bring you an
experience of peace or make you laugh. They may teach you
something you have never done. They usually give you an
unbelievable amount of joy. Believe it, it is real. But only for
a season. LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons,
things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional
foundation. Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person
and put what you have learned to use in all other
relationships and areas of your life. It is said that love is
blind but friendship is CLAIRVOYANT! Thank you for being a
part of my life, whether you are a reason, a season, or a lifetime!

Exhaustion. Sets. In.

2006-04-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

I'm too tired to even procrastinate. I'm too burned out to care enough not to care. Like my friend said a few days ago, "I feel like a trapped bee." I just keep buzzing around in a frantic effort to merely keep up, but I can't seem to accomplish anything for all the buzzing around.

I look around me at work, and everyone seems tired. At church, even the pastor is tired. Who knew Easter was such a big drain?

Another friend pointed out that we always expect December and the Christmas holidays to be very tiring and very stressful, so we are somewhat prepared for it. But we forget every year that April is just as stressful, so we let it slip up on us, and then we go around acting all offended by it. I guess T.S. Eliot really knew what he was talking about when he called April the cruelest month.

Looks like we're all in need of a spiritual/emotional/physical/mental pick-me-up. No wonder this is when people used to go on prilgrimages. Everyone needs a sloughing off event at least once a year.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to quit buzzing around the piles of work and clear my head enough to do something about them. I'm going to turn down the volume on the stress and go down to the coast to help out for a day. For purely selfish reasons. I'm going to go help someone else because it will make me feel better to get my mind off myself and all of my responsibilities. And the physical activity will help me overcome my mental exhaustion.

So there you have it. I'm a terrible person, but I could be much worse. :)

Let's all join hands now and sing a round of "The Sun'll Come Out Tomorrow."

Or not.

There's a lesson in here somewhere. I promise. Some assembly may be required on your part, however.

Unholy Sonnet

2006-04-18T14:57:00.000-07:00

by Mark Jarman

Breath like a house fly batters the shut mouth.
The dream begins, turns over, and goes flat.
The virus cleans the attic and heads south.
Somebody asks, "What did you mean by that?"
But nobody says, "Nothing," in response.
The body turns a last cell into cancer.
The ghost abandons all of his old haunts.
Silence becomes the question and the answer.
And then--banal epiphany--and then,
Time kick starts and the deaf brain hears a voice.
The eyes like orphans find the world again.
Day washes down the city streets with noise.
And oxygen repaints the blood bright red.
How good it is to come back from the dead!

Click here to read more of Mark Jarman's Unholy Sonnets.

Postmodern Christianity?

2006-04-17T18:42:00.000-07:00

Clicking around here and there, I keep running across the term postmodern as applied to theology and church. I’m not quite sure what people mean by postmodern religion, and I suspect that the more I try to figure it out, the more at a loss I’ll be. I suspect its meaning is determined by who you ask and on what day.

When I think postmodern church, I picture high energy, performance based services, casual (very casual) dress, messages put forth in flashy sound bites, and an absence of any large demands on a person’s commitment in terms of time, service, or even lifestyle choices. In place of large demands would be a kind of playful hopefulness that church could provide “momentary stays against confusion” as Robert Frost once said of poetry.

For the more serious members, there’d be small group discussions in which people read Derrida and Ecclesiastes side by side making lots of notes in the margins about signifiers and grand narratives and ah, vanity of vanities.

I don’t know about you, but that’s not what I want from church. Honestly, if I wanted to go to Sunday School with Roland Barthes, I’d just head over to the coffee shop on Sunday mornings and have a latte with the other depressed poets. No matter what people might say, you know, nobody really wants the Author to be dead.

I don’t want a hip-hop church; neither do I want a Puritan throw-back. I just want a—dare I say it?—Jesus-centered church, one that really practices and preaches that old “love one another” routine.

Oh, well. Like it or not this is the information age, and the people who stay in the game are the people who know how to ride the new waves of knowledge, so I’ll probably try to actually find out what this postmodern Christian thing is all about and not just make it up as I go along. Maybe I’ll even give it a chance. Maybe. :)

Happy Easter!

2006-04-16T17:14:00.000-07:00

My hands are covered with stamps that say things like, "He lives," and "Christ is risen." I'm overstuffed, maybe a little bit sun-burned, and generally feeling pretty good. It was a very nice day with the family.

I missed getting to go to my normal church today, and I mean that. I really missed it. I went to church, but it wasn't like being at home.

However, I did hear an excellent sermon from my five-year-old great-nephew. He said to his cousin, "There is a real meaning to Easter. Some people killed Jesus, and he woke up from being dead, and went to be with his Daddy. That's what Easter is really about."

Thanks, D. We all need to remember that.

Philip Pullman, Part 2

2006-04-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

This article from the Chronicle of Higher Education probably tells as much about where Pullman is coming from as anything you might find. He attacked Narnia. How thick is his dragon skin?

Douglas Adams was an atheist who worked his atheism into his stories, and he remains one of my favorites. I'm not on any kind of campaign to warn people away from atheist writers.

I'm just saying...

Parental Supervision Advised

The Doctor Is In (The Tardis)

2006-04-15T08:58:00.000-07:00

Remember Doctor Who? Remember the Tardis? Remember Saturday afternoons of watching old BBC shows on PBS? Remember adoring the very cheap and corny special effects? Remember the celery?

Well, the Doctor is back. The Sci-Fi Channel is now running last year’s season of BBC’s latest incarnation of the longest running science fiction show ever. Much to my chagrin but not really to my surprise I’ve discovered the Brits are already seeing a different actor in the role of the Doctor. Just when I was starting to really like this one…

That’s Doctor Who.

Everything you want to know about life, the universe, and time-space continuums you can learn from the Doctor. He is a Time Lord. He is in fact the last of the Time Lords. His kind were all killed in last great time war against the Daleks. The Doctor knows everything. He’s traveled in his phone booth through the whole universe. He’s traveled as far back and as far forward in time as anyone can imagine. He is the wisdom of the ages.

But wisdom is never enough, is it? That’s what Rose is for. Rose is the Doctor’s traveling companion. She is really just a kid who tags along, but she always has lessons of her own to teach. The Doctor might know everything, but Rose is all about responding from the heart, and together the Doctor’s mind and Rose’s heart manage to conquer any adventure they encounter.

In the episode called “The Dalek,” that aired last night, the Doctor learns the importance of compassion and forgiveness when confronted with Rose’s reaction to his most serious enemy: the last remaining Dalek. The Daleks had obliterated the Time Lords in the great war that no one won. One Dalek survived. He is on Earth. He is capable of destroying all of civilization. He is genetically predisposed to mass destruction. And only the Doctor possesses any knowledge at all of how to stop him.

At first it looks as though Rose is going to aid in the destruction of her own planet by showing compassion to the Doctor’s most dreaded and deadly enemy. The Dalek tricks her into touching him, then uses her DNA to regenerate himself and grow stronger. Poor little fool, you might think. Her soft heart will get millions of her own people killed.

Ah, but there’s a glitch. Like Voldemort, who because he has no real soul, cannot tolerate being in contact with the things like love and compassion that make up Harry Potter’s soul, the Dalek ends up unable to tolerate his own existence when Rose’s DNA gives him an awareness of human emotions.

The Doctor rushes forth ready to destroy the enemy only to end up learning to pity the one creature left in the universe responsible for the worst thing that ever happened to him. Ultimately, it is Rose’s goodness that defeats the soulless violence of the Dalek. We’re reminded that compassion—the kind of real, tough compassion that means you have to have love in your heart for those who have truly damaged you and yours—is the most powerful force in the universe.

And with that, my fellow time-travelers, we are ready to climb back in the Tardis in search of another adventure.

Thought for the Day

2006-04-15T07:25:00.000-07:00

I like today's Think Exist quote:

When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.

~Catherine Ponder

That's a pretty appropriate thought for Good Saturday.

Philip Pullman

2006-04-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

Imagine this:

God is dead. He was killed by an archangel. No one mourns this loss, though, because when God was alive, he was a petty tyrant, the dictator of all dictators. The fallen angels were really the good guys. They subverted God’s reign of terror and gave consciousness to humans as an act of revenge.

Now imagine this as the premise for a children’s story.

Imagine that it is a children’s story coming very soon to a theater near you.

What are you waiting for, parents? Go read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series before your kids do.

I read the whole series last summer. They’re captivating. They’re as intriguing as anything you’ll ever come across. I was so engrossed I read them straight through barely stopping to eat or sleep. By the end of the series, I was more disturbed than I think I’ve ever been by a book. And I read Amityville Horror when I was only twelve.

I’m the last person to call for censorship of any book. Magic and mystery don’t offend me in the least. In fact, I am Harry Potter’s #1 fan. But I’m convinced the only reason the fundamentalists are bothering to pick on Harry Potter is because they don’t know about Pullman’s Lyra and Will. Yet. They will. Soon.

If this were just an obscure book somewhere sitting on a library shelf, I’d be prone to advise simply that it is not for young children, though it is marketed as children’s literature. Even for older children, I wouldn’t let a kid in my family read it without lots of adult discussion.

There is a motion picture in the works, however, and that means kids everywhere are going to want to read these books soon…if they haven’t already. In light of this, I feel like I should go a little bit farther out on my limb of warnings.

First, let me just say that The Golden Compass, the first book in the series, comes across as a whole lot more innocent than The Amber Spyglass, the last book. You don’t really understand the message of any of the books until you get to the end. And even I, with what I’d like to think is a very broad-minded view of literature, don’t know how to explain the message of the His Dark Materials series as anything other than anti-Christian. It is certainly anti-established-historical-institutionalized-Christian-church.

Second, let me say that before you know it, it’s going to be almost impossible to ignore these books. My advice then to parents would be to go ahead and read them now to give yourself time to decide what you think about them and how to approach them once the movie does come out. That’s really all I can say.

*Edit*

The first movie in the His Dark Materials trilogy has a 2007 release date.

Things You Want to Know But Don't Want to Ask

2006-04-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

I wish I'd kept a list of things I've wanted to know in my life but have not wanted to ask. It could be a real service to others to go around giving unsolicited answers to these things.

Today I got an answer to one without having to ask. The baptismal waters at UBC are heated. Whew! Since I did not know this before I stood up said I wanted to be baptised at my advanced age, I can say I was willing to get cold for Jesus if I really had to. But I sure didn't want to.

My relief is downright embarrassing.

Just Do It

2006-04-12T05:06:00.000-07:00

My body and I woke up this morning as mortal enemies. I forced it to go to Pilates last night for the first time in about six weeks. I am suffering for it today. A couple of Ibuprofen and a warm shower later, though, and I believe I may be getting the upper hand.

Not too long ago I was all excited about Pilates. I was working hard and getting in shape and feeling great and just spreading the joy around wherever I could. Come on, I said to all my friends. Follow me, and we’ll all be happy and limber together.

That was then.

Now I’m back to battling with myself just to show up and finding my stamina only in the loathing in my heart.

Every day is a new opportunity to learn, and if we didn’t have to be taught some things over and over, we’d be so egotistical as to be unbearable to one and all.

My lesson that I never seem to learn is that if I try to do too much, something always cracks apart.

Today it is literally cracking every time I move a muscle. But what’s life without a goal to work toward, hmmm?

Things You Might Not Know About Me

2006-04-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

--I’m a vegetarian.
--I’ve been a vegetarian for more than ten years.
--I did not, as my father suspected, become a Buddhist when I became a vegetarian.
--I’ve read some stuff about Buddhism and think it is interesting.
--I’m still not a Buddhist.
--My family calls me Shaddy.
--Shaddy is shortened from Shadrack, who is well-known for not eating meat (and that little thing of surviving a fiery furnace unscathed).
--I don’t really know why my family nick-named me after Shadrack; they’ve called me Shaddy as long as I can remember.
--I became a vegetarian briefly as a child when my father sent my friend, Dumplin’ the cow, to the slaughter house.
--About ten years after that, my brother told me that my good Christian mother got me to eat meat by rewrapping freezer packages in grocery store plastic so that I would think I was eating strangers.
--A few years after my brother told me this, I became a vegetarian for the long haul.
--I think I just did it for health reasons and not really because of Dumplin’.
--I don’t care if other people are not vegetarians.
--Despite my commitment to healthy eating, for supper tonight I had a bowl of ice cream.
--Last night, I had a peanut butter cookie and a brownie.
--I have no idea what the point of this list is.
--If you read this far, you probably know at least one thing you didn’t know about me before.
--Tag. You’re it.

The Gospel of Judas

2006-04-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

There’s been a pretty big splash this week over the Gospel of Judas. People everywhere are talking about it. And people everywhere are making no sense within my framework of The Gospel According to Sharon.

I watched the National Geographic special on T.V. last night. They kept saying things like, “This new revelation could rip apart 2000 years of church teachings on the crucifixion.” Before and after hearing the “revelation,” I thought “why?”

Then this morning I looked around online a little and saw people warning against reading the Gospel of Judas lest we be led astray by false doctrines. Too late. I had already read it, thinking “why not?”

I’m going to quote P.L. from my Bible study class as my official stance: “This doesn’t shatter me one way or the other.”

I have to admit to being ignorant on Gnosticism, and I have to admit that much of this newly recovered gospel was incomprehensible to me, but I got the gist of what everyone was making such a big deal about. The writer claims that Jesus basically conspired to bring about his own crucifixion and that Judas was the most trusted and beloved of all to have been the one to agree to sacrifice his own reputation in order to help Jesus fulfill his purpose of dying for the sins of the world.

Yeah? Okay. And?

I might not be the most accomplished New Testament scholar, and I may have day-dreamed through more sermons than I’ve heard in my life, but as luck would have it, I read John 10 pretty thoroughly just the other day. (Thanks to Randy and Kathy. Hi, Kathy!) I counted five times in that one chapter where Jesus said, “I lay down my life.”

Ergo, I’m just a little stumped on why a gospel that claims Jesus planned his own death is a threat to Bible believers. Maybe someone out there who is a New Testament scholar can explain this. In the meantime, it seems that any faith that would be torn asunder by something like this couldn’t be very strong in the first place. As for me, I’m sticking with the “I’m curious but not at all shattered” crowd.

Confession

2006-04-09T14:17:00.000-07:00

Something was mentioned today about little, white lies, so I am feeling compelled to confess. Every Sunday morning, in front of God and the congregation of UBC, I tell a lie. I move my lips with the music, but I don't actually sing. I can't carry a tune in a bucket, but I don't want to appear to be unwilling to participate, so I just sort of fake it. Believe me. Nobody wants to hear my joyful noises even if they are unto the Lord. I'd feel a whole lot worse about this too if I didn't suspect others of doing the same thing. :)

That is all. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

A First

2006-04-08T20:34:00.000-07:00

There was a wedding in town tonight, and I saw something that I have never even imagined happening in all my thirty-something years--a Baptist preacher dancing. Let me be the first to say it did my heart good, especially since I see no signs whatsoever that we have to take a vote or split up the church or anything over this. Thank God Almighty. We're free at last.

And the wedding was as beautiful as any I've ever seen, beautiful on many levels. I'll echo the officiating minister to sum it up: "This is the night the Lord hath made."

*Edit*

I posted this, and then I thought, "Oh, no. I can't say that." People might take it the wrong way, or they might think I'm spreading evil rumors, and then we really will have to take a vote and split the church up. I can't have that. So I have to add that I only saw him dance once with his wife and once with his daughter, and if you don't approve of dancing, maybe that wasn't even what it was at all... :)

Have I ever mentioned that I grew up in a church that considered Southern Baptists to be liberals? So some of us are free now, and some of us are still working on it. But thank God Almighty anyway.

*Late Edit*

The dancing preacher suggested that I say he's really bad at dancing, so any he might be seen doing doesn't really count. I take this to mean he hasn't had a whole lot of practice.

Jeanne and I talked about this today, and we both said that we cannot dance at all because we grew up in non-dancing homes, and we are overwhelmed with self-consciousness at the very thought of it. I can't play any kind of cards either for the same reason. (Okay, that's not really true. I can keep up with any four-year-old at Go Fish.)

Green-Eyed Calico

2006-04-08T13:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I did my absolute most favorite thing to do on a Friday night after a long, hard week of work. I stayed home and watched T.V. Maybe it’s a sign of getting older, but more and more I really treasure that crash time.

While I was propped up in the easy chair just enjoying the fact that I wasn’t trying to accomplish a single thing, my cat jumped in my lap. Then my other cat jumped in my lap. Soon the cats were edging closer and closer to my head, each trying to be sure that she was the getting most of the attention and affection, until finally Callie was actually sitting on my face. Simple jealousy, through and through.

There is this game people play with babies in which they torture the poor dears by hugging all over their mothers. You know what happens when you hug on a baby’s mother. He becomes very agitated and does everything he can to get to his mother himself. She is his, and he just can’t take the chance of anybody else taking away some of that love and attention that belongs only to him.

It amuses us to see this in babies and pets. It’s so basic to our nature that we really adore seeing it in its most innocent form.

Yet it is also something that all of the world’s religions warn against. We know that, but somehow we also know that jealousy is more complicated than anything a mere warning can address.

1 Corinthians says love is not jealous, but Exodus says that even God is jealous, and since 1 John says “God is love,” what are we to make of that?

Then there are those places where we are told to try to make people jealous of our relationship with God. Or at least that’s the way the Bible is often interpreted in the context of living life as a testimony. “This little light of mine,” they taught us to sing at VBS, harking back to Matthew 5:16, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, who is in heaven.”

We’re taught that if we shine for God others are going to see our lights and want some of that for themselves, and this is a good thing. It means we’re being good witnesses.

Oh, but if you’ve never been to a 75% off sale at Betty Ann’s and had the sweater you were about to try on snatched right out of your hands, you’ve never lived. For all of the good bonding and inspirational experiences jealously in its more innocent form can provide, it can show its dark underbelly quicker than almost any other human trait. It’s not called a deadly sin for nothing. Jealousy has great power to destroy relationships, jobs, families, nations, reputations, and on and on.

And it always starts out so innocently. We’re just born with it. Even animal babies are born with it.

Adorable in babies and atrocious in adults.

Those are always the toughest vices to avoid, aren’t they?

The Unredeemed

2006-04-07T04:39:00.000-07:00

I think the tendency on a blog like this is to post things you think you at least almost have figured out, even if you know you have a long way to go to really have them work out in your life. Here’s something I don’t have figured out, though.

Are there people in this life who are not redeemable?

Sociopaths, psychopaths and the like? They appear to have no hope of ever improving as human beings. Medical science cannot help them. I’ve never seen any amount of love and kindness do any good for them or make them better people.

I believe there is such a thing as fate, but ultimately I believe it is our own free will that determines our destiny. I don’t adhere to any doctrines of pre-destination. I think everyone is called to serve our Creator.

But within my own belief system I can’t answer the question of “what about the sociopath?”

We can pray for sociopaths, but the prayers seem to be more for our own benefit than for theirs.

I’m reminded of the old saying, “God takes care of babies and fools,” but somehow I can’t reconcile the idea that the sociopath, who has done the greatest evil in the world, is just “taken care of” because he/she is not capable of being any better.

I saw somewhere once, maybe on a T-shirt, the saying, “Perhaps the purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others of what not to be.” Some people really do seem to have no other purpose, yet sometimes that purpose can be pretty powerful. When we meet them we work extra hard to be better, more loving, more spiritual individuals out of pure fear that anything about us might be like them.

So this is my question that I don’t know the answer to. What about the sociopath? What about the people who appear to be unredeemable?

Alas, And Did My Savior Blog?

2006-04-06T19:13:00.000-07:00

This guy gets my prize for the best blog title.

He's also recently chosen to attend Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. I believe that's where my father went to seminary back in the day.

God speed.

I look forward to the day I find him again at "And Did My Sovereign Wiki?"

The End Times

2006-04-06T04:29:00.000-07:00

When I was a teenager, the little country churches hadn't quite caught on to the concept of "youth fellowship." Their idea of entertaining us was to herd us into the sanctuary and show us movies about the Rapture. Then, of course, we'd all sing "Just as I am" for about an hour while the adults in charge stared us down until we finally caved in and came to the altar. We were such sinners that we required frequent teary visits to the altar. Once, in a poem I wrote I compared it to the old ladies in the church going back to the beauty shop every week. They all got their hair done on Saturday morning, and on Sunday evening they took turns praying out loud for the youth to answer the Call and renounce their wicked ways.

After some of those Rapture movies, I remember thinking, "You can't scare me. I live in the parsonage. I haven't taken a single step in my whole life when I wasn't being watched."

It seemed like the theme of these movies was always "there will be nowhere to hide," and I often wondered why anybody thought there ever had been. Obviously, they'd never met my Granny. As I said, I'd never taken a step in my life without being watched.

Last night I learned that "my generation" is a subject of study at some sort of church growth workshop going on at my church. It seems there are whole books written on this subject that I could have told you about years ago. "My generation" is largely unchurched, and we don't respond well to traditional means of recruiting new members. The books call it a "deep seeded distrust of institutionalized religion." All it means is we're afraid if we come to your church you're going to make us watch Rapture movies and listen to the old ladies cry through an hour or two of "Just as I Am."

But here's the thing about "my generation." Here's the real story of why we left the church in droves. For all of our religious education, the church was not a place in which felt loved above all else. If you have anything at all to do with youth and church, remember that first. We left in droves, my generation and I, not because we didn't understand or believe the warnings about the states of our eternal souls, but because we simply did not feel the love. And there you have it. Selah.

For the Beauty of the Earth

2006-04-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Lord of all, to thee we raise

this our hymn of grateful praise.

What Saves Us

2006-04-05T04:45:00.000-07:00

by Bruce Weigl

We are wrapped around each other in
the back of my father's car parked
in the empty lot of the high school
of our failures, the sweat on her neck
like oil. The next morning I would leave
for the war and I thought I had something
coming for that, I thought to myself
that I would not die never having
been inside her long body. I pulled
her skirt above her waist like an umbrella
inside out by the storm. I pulled
her cotton panties up as high as
she could stand. I was on fire. Heaven
was in sight. We were drowning on our
tongues and I tried to tear my pants off
when she stopped so suddenly
we were surrounded only by my shuddering
and by the school bells grinding in the
empty halls. She reached to find something,
a silver crucifix on a silver
chain, the tiny savior's head hanging
and stakes through his hands and his feet.
She put it around my neck and held
me so long the black wings of my heart
were calmed. We are not always right
about what we think will save us.
I thought that dragging the angel down would
save me, but instead I carried the crucifix
in my pocket and rubbed it on my
face and lips nights the rockets roared in.

People die sometimes so near you
you feel them struggling to cross over,
the deep untangling, of one body from another.

.......

I've carried that line, "We are not always right about what we think will save us," around in my head for a long time, and it still gives me the shivers. I've also seen these guys who served in Vietnam, even thirty years later, still struggling to find the the thing that will save them from themselves, from their own memories. Even for believers, it isn't easy. Some things run so deep they never are untangled. Still, poems like this teach us that there is comfort in places we may not ever expect.

Read Ye Now!

2006-04-03T18:45:00.000-07:00

Gilead
Marilynne Robinson
Picador, 2006
ISBN 0-312-42440-x
Amazon Link

This is a wonderful book. Rush out and get your hands on a copy as soon as possible. You are welcome to borrow my copy, but I’ve already promised it to Jeanne, so you may have to get in line.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Gilead is well-deserving of its acclaim. It is the story of Congregationalist minister John Ames, who has been diagnosed with a terminal condition and is spending his last days writing letters to his young son.

Before I read Gilead, I read a review that described the book as a depiction of Ames’ lifelong struggle with faith and doubt. I wondered how respectfully a book characterized that way might deal with the matter of a Christian minister’s doubt. I found that I had misunderstood. The book is not at all about Ames’ doubt. He remains devout throughout his life and ministry. The struggle with doubt has to do with his deep, abiding and very spiritual reflections on how to minister to those who approach his faith through doubt. It is also about the larger-scale doubt that creeps into the society surrounding Ames through the latter part of the nineteenth century and the earlier half of the twentieth century.

And it is about his opportunity, at the end of his life, to learn new lessons in the kind of faith, forgiveness, and love he has preached for decades when his namesake and the “prodigal son” of his dearest friend comes home again.

I don’t want to spoil the ending, so I will say no more than read it, read it, read it. Gilead is profound and thought-provoking through a kind of steady, gentle lyricism that matches the character of Ames himself.

Some experts:

Well, I have had a certain amount of experience with skepticism and the
conversation it generates, and there is an inevitable futility in it. It
is even destructive. Young people from my own flock have come home with a
copy of La Nausee or L’Immoraliste, flummoxed by the possibility of unbelief,
when I must have told them a thousand times that unbelief is possible. And
they are attracted to it by the very books that tell them what misery it
is. And they want me to defend religion, and they want me to give them
“proofs.” I just won’t do it. It only confirms them in their
skepticism. Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of
defense. (177)

…..

Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number
of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is
beautiful and what is acceptable—which, I hasten to add, we generally do not
satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances
among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to
the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same
notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to
coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.
(197)

…..

There were two further points I felt I should have made in our earlier
conversations, one of them being that doctrine is not belief, it is only one way
of talking about belief, and the other being that the Greek word sozo, which is
usually translated “saved,” can also mean healed, restored, that sort of
thing. So the conventional translation narrows the meaning of the word in
a way that can create false expectations. I thought he should be aware
that grace is not so poor a thing that it cannot present itself in any number of
ways. (239)

The First Epistle of Sharon

2006-04-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

I wrote a letter that went out in the church newsletter this week. It is also posted on the church website. Originally, I wrote it to send to Phillip, the pastor of University Baptist, in an email. It was very difficult to write, and it took all the courage I could muster up just to send it to Phillip. I was really in a dither when he asked if it could go in the newsletter. I write every day, and I have had years of practice of exposing my writing to others, but this was different. This was very personal. It was tough.

I told him it would be okay, though, because it just seemed like that was the thing to say. Then when I told my friend how nervous it made me, she said, "You have the ability to express something people need to hear. You'd be a jerk if you didn't do it." That pretty well settled that.

It's a good thing that I didn't actually know it was going to be in the newsletter that went out this week. I didn't have time to second guess what people were going to think of it before they started calling me. And people have called and emailed, and I've been very touched that they took the time to respond. I've also been, well, astounded by how many people have said my letter spoke to their own experiences growing up in church.

Today also happened to be the day that I answered the "Call to Commitment" and asked to join the church. I'd been talking to Phillip and others about this for several weeks, and today just seemed like the right day. It was in fact incredibly emotional because it coincided with that letter.

People who came through to "welcome me to the fold" were near tears at times. I left thinking, "This is a family. I've become part of a family." It was a very special experience.

I guess my point is that we never really know what power words can have, and sometimes it is those words that are the most difficult to wrench out of ourselves that we are called upon the most to share. And maybe the point of that is these are the words that require real love to express. We have to truly care about what we are saying and who we are saying it to in order to dig deep enough down that it hurts. Something to think about...

It's a Small, Small World

2006-04-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

I barely stuck my head in the door of my Sunday School class this morning. In fact, I'm not sure I even got that far. I was hiding behind Lynn who thought it the polite thing to do to inform our class that we two were defecting to another class just for the day to hear a report on the church's work at Pearlington. At which point, the dear and remarkable Virginia Ann bolted out into the hall and said, "I need to talk to you." (Big grin on her face.)

I thought, "Oops. What have I done?"

As it turns out, the girl preacher that I was so taken with a few days ago that I went to the trouble of actually creating links on my sidebar just so I wouldn't forget to check in on her from time to time is the daughter-in-law of the woman I've been sitting next to in Sunday School for months.

I realize I've already used up my cliche quota for this post with the small world thing, but I'll risk pushing it to say, "The Lord works in mysterious ways."

Last week I went to the Conference on College Composition and Communications in Chicago. One of the sessions I attended was a meeting of the Christian SIG (special interest group). When asked if anyone was interested in researching Christians who blog or Christian rhetoric on blogs, I raised my hand. It was one of those "oh, HELLO" moments for me. For some reason it hadn't occurred to me yet to seek out other blogs that were talking about Christianity and spirituality and life in contemporary times...or whatever it is I'm doing here.

So I went on a fishing expedition, not really for research purposes yet. I was just looking for Christian bloggers who would personally appeal to me. And there you have it. My first find in my first search was the girl preacher who just happens to have personal connections to the church that has helped me find my way to my own Strong Refuge.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Pearlington

2006-04-01T05:31:00.000-08:00

University Baptist and CBF have been working hard all year in a little town called Pearlington. I've been down twice to work, and if there is a single person left in that town who did not lose everything during Katrina, I'd be amazed.

Click here to see an article about CBF's work in Pearlington. Be sure to watch the video as well.

The first home I went to belonged to an older woman. Her grandson was there that day, and he told us that that family "went swimming" as the flood waters came in. The floodline was over the rooftops of these little houses. It is a pure miracle than anyone survived.

Everything in that house was covered in mud. We had to shovel it out, carry the ruined contents of the house out to the street for debris crews to pick up later, clean out the maggot infested kitchen, and basically gut everything. The wet, heavy, stinky, moldy carpet had to come out. Everything had to be gutted. I've never seen a group of people work harder than the folks from UBC did that day. I've never seen people more willing to just jump in and get dirty and get the job done, even knowing that once they got covered with all that river muck, it would be a long day and a long ride back to Hattiesburg before they could get cleaned up again. I've also never seen a group of people get a bigger blessing out of helping others.

The second house I went to had already been gutted. We were there to start rebuilding. This house belonged to a family with several children. If I'm not mistaken, they said they were living in a FEMA trailer with two parents, three children, and two dogs. I don't know what model they had, but most of the FEMA trailers I've seen have just been tiny campers that would be a tight fit for two grown ups without the kids and dogs.

This second house also presented the biggest challenge for me. I have no skills. I have no skill saw. When I got to the church and realized that this was not a trip that many women were going on, I really wanted to back out. By that time, though, my Diet Cokes and granola bars were already in the pastor's jeep, and I was already loaded into a van with guys who did bring skill saws, and it just seemed like it was too late to speak up.

I'm very glad I did not back out. That's the day I learned what an important job a "gofer" has. They kept me busy. I even tried my hand at a few nails, but my skills were more need in the running and fetching department.

One day last fall in the children's sermon, Phillip brought out some little toy hard hats. He said, "Jesus always needs workers, and sometimes it's just our turn to put on a hard hat and get to work for Jesus."

One little girl answered, "I have a bow in my hair."

I've learned this year not to worry about bows. If you show up to work for Jesus, there will be something you can do.

I'm telling all of this to say that Pearlington and other towns along the coast still need our help.

If you have a church group or a student group or just a few friends willing and able to come to Mississippi to help, contact UBC or CBF. You'll be glad you did.

Prayer of St. Francis

2006-03-31T16:04:00.000-08:00

~St. Francis of Assisi

O Lord, make me an instrument of Thy Peace!
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is discord, harmony.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sorrow, joy.

Oh 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.

Jill Carroll

2006-03-30T18:43:00.000-08:00

American journalist Jill Carroll was safely released by her kidnappers today. I know I don't have to comment on what an answer to prayer this is or how nice it is to hear some good news finally.

But I was interested in this online prayer circle on Jill's behalf and thought it might make interesting reading.

In other news, this article is about my colleague's husband who will soon be headed for Iraq. God bless Caren and Tommy and their three children.

Just Because

2006-03-30T15:21:00.000-08:00

I've only just noticed that Blogger has added a nifty little "upload photo" button, so I decided to try it out by sharing pear blossoms o' Mississippi.

All this time I've thought my friends who were indiscriminately uploading photos were very clever and had learned whatever that other software was that you used to have to download in order to post photos to Blogger. You know, that one I never bothered to figure out because it just looked annoying.

Spring is here. Take time to smell the blossoms and learn a new trick or two along the way.

Defragging

2006-03-30T04:52:00.000-08:00

There is a process in Microsoft Windows (probably in other computer systems as well) called defragmentation in which extra space is freed up on a disk by moving all of the little pieces of files closer together. It's always seemed to me like people need defragging as well.

The condition of contemporary life is often fragmented. We put pieces of ourselves into our work, pieces into our families, pieces into our friends, pieces into our church, pieces into our interests, and pretty soon we feel like there's no room left on the disk. We're like Bilbo Baggins (to shift metaphors for a moment): "Thin, like butter spread over too much bread."

Sometimes the answer is to start deleting files. Sometimes we really are trying to stuff too much into one life. That's not always the case, however. Sometimes we just need to bring all those pieces of ourselves closer together. We need to be ourselves, our whole selves, no matter where we are or what we are doing.

My thought for the day.

A Prayer of Protection

2006-03-29T18:05:00.000-08:00

Great Spirit, Great Spirit, my Grandfather,
all over the Earth the faces of living things are all alike.
With tenderness have these come up out of the ground.
Look upon these faces of children without number
and with children in their arms
that they may face the winds
and walk the good road to the day of quiet.

- Black Elk (1863-1950)

Witness

2006-03-28T18:35:00.000-08:00

by Denise Levertov

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.

Earthly Treasures

2006-03-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

Matthew 6 (NIV)

19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

Remember this? Remember the old no earthly treasure mandate? It was in my Sunday School lesson for this week, but I didn’t read it because I was too busy working on earthly pursuits.

I have been thinking about it after the fact, however.

I went to an academic conference this past week, which I found very invigorating. It was great to meet new people and hear new ideas. It was also nice to have a chance to spout a few of my own opinions and watch the immediate feedback bouncing right back to me. I met some people who are like the rock stars of my profession, and I got some positive attention for my own little efforts at being academically active, and it was all pretty cool.

Earthly treasures.

I can’t think of who really benefited from me being there other than me. Maybe my students will benefit some down the road from what I’ve learned. Maybe I was able to say something another teacher found useful, and her students will somehow benefit from it. Maybe the people I met will gain untold blessings from having gotten the chance to get to know me. We can play the fantasy through several stages. It’s just a little writing pedagogy ministry I have going.

Earthly treasures.

Here’s what I think, though, and I thank David and Perrin and a few others in my little rogue Bible study group for helping me see it this way. It’s not about keeping count. We all have our earthly callings. We all have to put in our time of rendering unto Caesar. What matters is just what matters to us.

These passages like, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth," are meant as prompts for self-reflection. Priority check time. As long as we remember to question our priorities from time to time…as long as we have a clear sense of where our loyalties belong and where our hearts belong…as long as we are giving of our time, money, and talents in ways we know to be spiritually true…we’re probably okay.

Sometimes we can and should use our earthly treasure for heavenly good. What matters is that the treasure itself is not what matters to us.

Living Lent

2006-03-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this nice post on this interesting blog.

The blog is by Amy Butler, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in D.C.

It looks like a church I would visit if I ever happened to be in the area. I didn't see any denominational affiliations on the web site, but I don't think they are Southern Baptist, what with the girl preacher and all that. Maybe CBF or ABC.

Anyhow, the girl preacher has some good things to say. I'd put her on my blog roll if I'd ever bothered to make one. :)

Thought for the Day

2006-03-21T04:47:00.000-08:00

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

~Henry David Thoreau

Parable of Faith

2006-03-19T14:10:00.000-08:00

by Louise Gluck

Now, in twilight, on the palace steps
the king asks forgiveness of his lady.

He is not
duplicitous; he has tried to be
true to the moment; is there another way of being
true to the self?

The lady
hides her face, somewhat
assisted by the shadows. She weeps
for her past; when one has a secret life,

one's tears are never explained.

Yet gladly would the king bear
the grief of his lady: his
is the generous heart,
in pain as in joy.

Do you know
what forgiveness means? it means
the world has sinned, the world
must be pardoned --

Count Your Happy Circumstances

2006-03-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

Last week, I went to Austin, Texas for a conference. I drove out with a friend. We spent 20 hours in a car together, shared a room, and went to all of the conference events together without getting on each other’s nerves. That’s a pretty lucky event in itself, especially considering that we both tend to get a little wound up and a lot nervous before we have to do things like speak at academic conferences.

All along the way, though, we both kept pointing out how charmed we felt by how well everything was working out. We expected rain on the drive. It didn’t rain. We are both somewhat directionally challenged, yet we had no trouble getting there and back. Yes, okay, the drive was interstate the whole way, but we’re still taking credit. When we got there, we both ran into friends we hadn’t seen in years. Some of them we knew would be there; others we did not. We got to see lots of writers we admire. Several times when we thought we wouldn’t get to see someone we wanted to see because of schedule conflicts, that very same person would show up in another session unexpectedly. As it turned out our hotel was a just a nice walk away from the conference hotel, though we thought we’d have to drive or catch cabs in a strange city.

The whole trip was a series of happy circumstances, and we didn’t waste the chance to feel good about it in the least.

I believe there is a Divine Providence at work in our lives that takes care of us even when we do not know we need caring for. I believe there are times when we can just feel it happening even though we don’t exactly understand the whys or the hows.

I’ve spent a lot of time around cynical people. I’ve spent a lot of time in situations where taking pleasure in simple fortunes would be viewed as silly and/or not very bright.

But I’m here to tell you life is a whole lot better when we give ourselves permission to feel blessed, to be grateful for those simple fortunes and happy circumstances.

It’s been a hard year. My friend who rode with me to the conference lost her house, her car, and all of her belongings last August. Even if she chooses not to dwell on her problems, they are still looming right there, in plain sight, impossible for anyone to ignore. Still, she can give herself permission to feel blessed, to be appreciative of the simple gifts to be found in the middle of the struggles. If nothing else, that’s the lesson many of us here in Katrinaland have learned this year.

Give yourself permission to feel good about your happy circumstances. It won’t hurt you. Really. I promise.

The Enemy

2006-03-17T13:35:00.000-08:00

This morning I heard a terrible banging and clanging racket in my house. As people do when they hear terrible rackets in their own homes, I hopped up to investigate. My cat was throwing himself repeatedly at a window. He was attacking his own reflection, and boy was he mad. His hair was standing on end. His ears were pulled back. He was growling and hissing and huffing (probably from having nearly knocked himself out several times).

How many times have you thrown yourself with all your might into fighting a perceived threat only to discover in the end the problem was you all along?

We all experience times when we don’t like what we see as we catch a glimpse of our own reflections. If we can manage to be a little less stubborn than a puffed up cat, though, we’ll realize lashing out doesn’t accomplish a thing...except perhaps a monster headache.

Giving is Receiving; Receiving is Giving

2006-03-16T12:41:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when you won’t let people help you, you deprive them of a blessing.

~Larry Gerald

After my brother Keith’s wife was killed in a car accident, so many people offered to help that I think we all felt a little guilty about it. I have a large family, and we all wanted to keep busy. We didn’t feel like we should accept other people’s time and effort for things we could do for ourselves. That’s when my brother Larry reminded us that some of the people offering to bring food or to help out around the house probably needed to feel needed.

Self-sufficiency is a wonderful thing, and there’s just no substitute for a can-do attitude if we want to get ahead in life. Letting people help us isn’t always a bad thing, though. Life is about give and take, ebb and flow. Life without a giving spirit just isn’t worth much, but no one can hold up to being the giver all the time. And sometimes the best thing we can give is the opportunity for someone else to feel like he or she has something to offer.

Writing is Thinking; Thinking is Personal

2006-03-15T06:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve been flipping through a Donald Murray book this morning in preparation for a conference I go to next week. It is a book I’ve read before, but it is one I’m always happy to pick up again. It’s not necessarily meant for entertainment, but it is pleasurable to me because it is about things that are close to my heart: writing and teaching.

Murray reminds us that “writing is thinking” (3). He quotes Peter Taylor: “Writing is how you discover what you think” (7).

These are pretty simple concepts, but they are profound to me. They are how I have lived my life. They are why I am writing this now.

Not everyone loves writing, but we do all need a place to think, a place to discover what we believe, what we care about, what our most important choices will be.

Writing is my sanctuary. It doesn’t matter to me whether I write for others or only for myself. Either way, it’s where I go to lay claim to my own thoughts—whether they be emotional, spiritual, academic, political, or social. They all become a very personal and reverent process for me as they move from the cluttered, chaotic stacks of information inside my head onto the page.

Everyone needs this. My father works in his garden and goes for long walks in the woods. My niece listens to music. My sister rearranges the furniture in her house. Some friends cook. Others shop. A few run or bicycle or do yoga. However we go about it, we all crave a place inside our own heads we can rely on, a place we can go to for decompression, a place where we can discover what we think and feel.

Because I teach writing classes, it is so important to remember this. It isn’t just about an academic skill. It is always personal. It is always sacred. Murray says writing is “a product of the interaction of the global and the particular” (5). It is also a product of the interaction between the persona we are willing to present to the world and the person we see when we look within.

I am about to start writing down what I will say about personal writing and composition students at the conference next week. This is what I will most likely not say. This is my discovery draft, my pre-writing, my warm up. This is where I am practicing what I will later preach.

In order to accomplish something real with writing, or with any decision making process, we have to first spend quality time in that place inside our own selves where we remember what is most important to us, where we understand what it is we honestly think.

Post-Christianity

2006-03-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

I’ve heard a great deal lately about the post-Christian era. Everyone seems to be armed with statistics to prove that we either are or are not falling away from organized religion. Here in Mississippi I’ve witnessed both a falling away and a reemergence of the church. Some churches are dying. Others are thriving. Largely, however, we do live in a post-Christian society in which those actively practicing a personal faith are seen as misfits, artifacts of another age.

This begs the question, “What do we have to show for it?”

There is a country song with the line, “I don’t know why you are so angry all the time,” that almost seems to sum up society as a whole, not just one disgruntled wife. We have disallowed everything sacred other than self-esteem, and for that we are raising the Prozac Generation. People are angry and dissatisfied as a way of life. So many people have gotten themselves diagnosed with chemical imbalances and personality disorders as to almost render the terms meaningless. At what point are we allowed to say that people are suffering from character flaws rather than disorders beyond their own control?

People need something to believe in. They need something to work toward. This is human nature. Our psyches fall apart without a sense of where we belong, to whom we belong, and to what end.

Max Lucado’s latest book, Cure for the Common Life, says that people live in their “sweet spots” when they fulfill their own unique God-given purpose.

This kind of thinking in a post-Christian era usually results in people quoting Karl Marx: “Religion is the opium of the people.”

It is true, however, that there is a kind of satisfaction and fulfillment that can only come from living by what we believe in our hearts to be right.

Ask the volunteers who show up in disaster zones if they are happy. Ask a retired missionary who has lived her whole life in service to others if she is happy. Ask the father who coaches his daughter’s softball team despite the fact that he can ill-afford the time if he is happy.

No need to ask. We all know these people, and their faces are all the witness they require. We can see for ourselves that they are somehow exempt from the standard-issue angst of our time.

Perhaps religion is a drug. Perhaps we live in a world that has gotten too smart to fall for dogma. But as drugs go, dedication to a God-given purpose is far more effective than the army of anti-depressants now available at your local pharmacy.

Of course, there is a time and a place for everything, and I am not against seeking medical and/or psychological help as necessary. I’m just saying we can’t all be chemically maladapted. Some of us really do have character flaws. Some of us really are unhappy because we’ve made bad choices. Some of us really are dissatisfied because we have nothing to believe in. I’m just saying.

A Life Well Lived

2006-03-13T04:37:00.000-08:00

A friend once asked me, “What is the reward for a life well lived?”

She was grieving. She had just lost a baby. She was questioning why she would be punished like that. She was asking why she would be asked to suffer so when she had done nothing to deserve it.

I didn’t know what to tell her. This is always a tough question, even more so during times of great grief. I’m afraid I was no help at all.

I have often pondered the question, though. Once I asked someone I thought might know. His answer to “the reward for a life well lived” was “a bigger house in Heaven.”

That answer seemed absurd to me and not the kind that would be of any help at all to a grieving mother. Do some people have bigger houses in Heaven? I don’t know. I do know that the safety of my family is far more important than the size of a house. I also know that, in my mind, houses and material riches have very little to do with the rewards that await us in eternity.

I went to a youth service with my niece after Katrina. The question came up of “Why do bad things happen?”

The youth minister answered, “We can’t always know why bad things happen, but we can always know that God is there for us.”

That seemed as good an answer as any to me. If we start trying to find something to blame for tragedy, soon we’ll start sounding like Pat Robertson, and nobody wants that.

As for the question of “the reward for a life well lived,” after years of pondering this I’ve come to the conclusion that the reward is “a life well lived.”

Most theologies I’ve been taught say that people who did not live good lives can and sometimes do find redemption in the end and get the same rewards in eternity as people who lived like Mother Theresa. Maybe that doesn’t always seem fair, but if we really have love and compassion in our hearts for others, we wouldn’t ask that they get what they deserve. We’d ask that they get the same mercy we want for ourselves.

A life full of bad choices and bad behaviors is punishment in itself, though. It is a life full of turmoil and instability. It is a life full of distrust and disconnectedness. It is a life full of consequences.

A life well lived is a gift in and of itself. It won’t shield us from tragedy, but it will bring us the strength to get through the bad times, and it will bring us peace and stability and trusting relationships with others. Life doesn’t get much better than that.

Thought for the Day

2006-03-07T04:27:00.000-08:00

Honesty isn’t a policy at all; it’s a state of mind or it isn’t honesty.

~Eugene L’Hote

No One Gets Cheated

2006-03-06T05:08:00.000-08:00

No one gets cheated by God.
~Phillip Reynolds

This is what I heard in church yesterday. I’m sure there were lots of other things said, but this is what I heard and what I continued to hear all day.

There are many things about my childhood among the Pharisees that I forget for long periods of time. Then someone says something so simple and innocent, and the floods come rushing back.

I had a friend when I was a child who was Lutheran. The day I discovered that Lutherans don’t believe you have to be saved to go to Heaven was a dark day for me. Even today I don’t actually know what Lutherans do believe, but I know that my friend didn’t know anything about going down to the altar at revival meetings and getting saved.

I said, “Daddy, she’s not ever going to believe she has to be saved because her parents have taught her she doesn’t. Will she still go to Hell even though she never had a chance?”

Daddy said yes. He was afraid so. The Bible said you had to be saved, and that was that.

To my horror, I then remembered the “if you never heard about it you get out of Hell free” rule. But that was already shot. I was the one who had told her about having to get saved. She had heard it. She wasn’t going to ever believe it. She was going to go to Hell because she didn’t believe it, and it was all my fault.

I hadn’t even gotten to junior high yet, and I was already sending my friends to Hell.

It was a dark day indeed.

Now they tell me, thirty years later and way too late to apologize to anyone for my tears and my pleading, that there is a theology that says no one gets cheated.

I have to admit that I don’t understand. I am here to learn.

This I Believe

2006-03-05T06:47:00.000-08:00

My religion is kindness.

I first heard this from the poet Gwendolyn Brooks at a meeting I attended in Chicago some years ago. Later, I read that the Dalai Lama said it. He also said that "the best person to teach kindness is an enemy."

For years on end, while I was not going to church, I would repeat this as a kind of mantra when questioned about my beliefs—My religion is kindness.

It didn’t escape my notice that the lesson I learned via poets and Buddhist leaders had also been taught by Jesus.

“This is my commandment,” he said. “That you love one another as I have loved you. (John 15:12)

And, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.” (Matthew 5:44)

This I believe. We were put on this earth by our Creator to show as much kindness and love to others as is in our power, friends and enemies alike. Whether you are a Buddhist or a Baptist, if your religion is not kindness, you are doing it wrong. You have missed the whole point.

This I believe.

Dust Thou Art

2006-03-02T05:20:00.000-08:00

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

This is from the Ash Wednesday service at my church last night. I learned some things there.

1) Lent is not just for Catholics.
2) Lent is an observance of Christ’s sacrifices, and that is why people sacrifice things in their own lives during Lent. It is a preparation for the observance of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
3) Sundays don’t count during Lent. If I gave up Diet Cokes, I could drink them all day on Sundays if I wanted.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

This is obviously a lesson in humility. I’m not sure how I was supposed to take it, but this is how I did take it.

1) Instead of dwelling on yourself and your own life, take time to contemplate the vastness and greatness of all creation and be thankful for it.
2) This life on this earth is fleeting. There is nothing you can accomplish on your own to change that fact.
3) Whatever you have and whatever you are, it does not come from you but from your Creator.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Ash Wednesday

2006-03-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

If yesterday was Fat Tuesday, today must be the first day of Lent. I’m not Catholic, but every year I feel the urge to give up something around this time of year. Usually, I want to give up something silly like Pixie Sticks or hearts of palm or something I probably wouldn’t have run across anyway. When I’m really serious about it, I’ll pick something like chocolate or Diet Coke. Usually, I fall short of actually promising the Lord to give up Diet Coke, though. Maybe I’ll promise the cat or a friend or two, but that’s as far as it goes. Still, I believe that making big promises about how we will change our lives for the better and really meaning them is something we all ought to do. I also believe this is a lifelong process, not just something to be done once and feel satisfied with.

When was the last time you devoted yourself, really devoted yourself, to cleansing your life of something harmful in a true and deliberate spirit of prayer and meditation?

Something worth thinking about.

Surely/Surly

2006-02-28T05:22:00.000-08:00

For at least a week last summer I snickered at the sign in front of Oak Grove Baptist Church every day on my way home: “Surly Jesus will come.”

My friends and I had great fun imagining being fed of the loaves and fishes of Surly Jesus. One friend wrote a little skit about Surly Jesus being so surly after spending days on end just looking for a place to go to the bathroom in private without 5000 people right on his heels.

Unfortunately, Surly Jesus is the only Jesus some people know. Surly Jesus inspires churches to make a big deal out of what kind of music the youth group listens to and to believe that the whole place will come crumbling down if Great Aunt Edna’s overgrown azaleas are dug up in favor of more contemporary landscaping. Surly Jesus doesn’t like strangers and thinks that tradition is more important than kindness. Surly Jesus thinks the thermostat needs to be at set at least ten degrees higher or lower than whatever is comfortable for most people. Surly Jesus is a little shocked at women in pants. Surly Jesus thinks divorced people ought to find somewhere else to go to church. Surly Jesus thinks the children are unruly if they stay in the sanctuary for service and that they aren’t being taught proper discipline if they don’t. Surly Jesus has issues, lots of issues. He makes people tired and surly just trying to keep up.

Sometimes you just have to sit back and wonder, “Whatever happened to Surely Jesus will come”?

Surely Jesus…Surely Jesus.

He’s the nice one. He’s the one who remembers that it was always supposed to be about loving one another and that nothing else really matters at all. He’s the one I want to hang around with.

Read Ye Now

2006-02-26T19:07:00.000-08:00

End of the Spear
Steve Saint
Saltriver, 2005
ISBN 0-84-236439-0
Amazon Link

I picked up this book at random when my mother was in bed recovering from hip surgery. I didn’t think much beyond, “This looks like something she would like.” I was a little taken aback then by how thrilled she was and how she knew all about the story even though she’d never heard of this book and how she spoke about Elisabeth Elliott as if she were relating memories of a lifelong personal friend. Well, okay, I’d heard about Elisabeth Elliott, and I’d heard about a group of martyred missionaries somewhere in South America some years before I was born. But what I didn’t know was how absorbed my mother was in their story or how closely or personally affected by their story she felt.

After hearing my parents tell about what it was like to hear the news of the deaths of these missionaries, I was not at all surprised that they ate up End of the Spear like it was the last piece of chocolate cake before submitting to a long, harsh winter of low sugar, low fat dieting. They were enthused by this book. They recommended it to everyone who walked through the door. They read passages from it to each other and to anyone who would listen. I suspect my father even called at least one missionary in Central America to tell him about the book.

What surprised me was that I felt the same way about the book. My father is on two mission boards. He is supposed to be excited by missionary books. I don’t have to be. I loved this book purely because it is as engaging and absorbing as it is inspiring.

End of the Spear is a Christian memoir with a Christian message, but you don’t have to be of any particular faith to enjoy it. It’s just a good book, Christian or not. Steve Saint tells the story of taking his wife and children to the jungles of Ecuador to live with the very people who had murdered his father with such depth of descriptive detail and cultural insight that by the end of the story you too will love the Waodani people. If you are a person who believes in God, this book will make you remember why. If you are not, even you will be enthralled and awed by the sheer force of nature the love and faith in this story are.

Just Put it on the List

2006-02-25T07:44:00.000-08:00

I was out shopping with my niece yesterday when I asked her to remind me that we needed to get gas before we went anywhere else. She said, "You'd better just put that on the list in your brain."

The problem with the list in my brain is that I keep forgetting where I've put it. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find anyone willing to keep up with it for me. Some things you just have to be responsible for yourself. Now I know.

He Who Stands On Tiptoe is Not Steady

2006-02-24T04:41:00.000-08:00

He who stands on tiptoe is not steady.
He who strides cannot maintain the pace.
He who makes a show is not enlightened.
He who is self-righteous is not respected.
He who boasts achieves nothing.
He who brags will not endure.
According to followers of the Tao, "These are extra food and unnecessary luggage".
They do not bring happiness.
Therefore followers of the Tao avoid them.

From the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 24

As it turns out, there are various translations of the Tao Te Ching, some not really even resembling others. I don't know if this is from the King James Version or the New International Version or what, but the point seems to be the same regardless. "It's not about you, baby. If you try to make it about you, you and everyone around you will be miserable. Amen."

How Long is Your Journey?

2006-02-23T04:04:00.000-08:00

When I was trying to come up with a name for this blog, I typed in random Blogger addresses just to find out if they already existed. Give this a shot sometime. You’ll find things this way you’d just never read otherwise. I saw one blog that said, “This is where I will chronicle my spiritual journey. Please join me.” That was the only entry on the blog, and it was dated two years ago.

You have no idea how much that cheered me up. How many of us can’t look at that and see ourselves?

I was so going to get my act together, but that was so last Tuesday. Today I have pressures, man. I have stuff to do. You just don’t know.

Wasn’t it Woody Allen who said 80% of success is showing up? I have a feeling that counts for spiritual journeys too.

Thought for the Day

2006-02-22T04:34:00.000-08:00

You only have what you give. It's by spending yourself that you become rich.

Isabel Allende

Allende says this in an NPR "This I Believe" essay regarding the lessons she's learned from the death of her daughter.

Ready, Set, Reset

2006-02-21T04:24:00.000-08:00

When the computer starts running a little too slowly, I know it’s time for a reboot. It’s been on too long. It’s had too many operations running. It just isn’t working at full capacity. It needs to clean out its memory a little and start over.

I often feel the same way, and it’s no wonder. The human body isn’t designed to keep going and going without a break. We don’t come with Energizer batteries. Even the Lord on High took a day to rest after working all week, and so should we.

Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Far be it from me to disagree. The man did have a point, even if that other great philosopher, Woody Allen, rebutted, “Maybe the unexamined life is not worth living, but the examined life is no picnic either.”

The purpose of examining our lives is to set goals and priorities, to purge what’s not working and make way for something that will. As such, I’ve always been a big believer in “the unchallenged life is not worth living.” If I want to spend my time dwelling on something, I’ll take a future potential over a past mistake or accomplishment any day. Hope, after all, is the most interesting companion we could possibly have in this life.

Challenges are beautiful. Challenges are exciting. Challenges make the world go round. And challenges are only met by people who live to see another day.

When things start piling in on you, it’s okay to hit the reset button. Slowing down is not the same as giving up. Sometimes the best thing you can do to help catch up on everything that needs your attention is to take a nap. Clear your head. Read a book. Go for a walk. Empty your mind of its worries, and give your body a chance to relax. If you are really the only person who can get the job done, all that work will still be there when you get back to it. So will all of the possible rewards that go along with it.

Douglas Adams said, “I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.” Let them whoosh, I say. New ones will crop up in their place.

One evening, I realized I was getting sick. I suddenly got a bad headache and a sore throat. I took my temperature: 100.5. A friend called about that time and politely asked how I was doing. I said “Not so great, but I can’t let it get to me. I have to go to work tomorrow.” Everything that needed to be done kept running through my head. I did not want to miss because missing one day would mean everything was thrown off for the whole week. It just wasn’t a good time to get behind, so I kept insisting I was going to work—until the temperature hit 103. Somewhere between 100.5 and 103, my whole perspective changed, not to mention my field of vision.

Responsibility is important. Hard work is important. Meeting obligations is important. But so often we live in a state of 24 hour stress, thinking that’s what’s required to meet those obligations. Then something happens to change our perspective, and we realize we’ve been worrying too much about things that can be done differently if need be.

Know when it’s time to hit the reset button. Just like the computer, your mind and body will work more efficiently once you’ve cleaned out a little pent up stress. Besides, bad moods are contagious, and nobody likes a carrier. By all means, work as hard as you can—until you hit the point of diminishing returns. Then lighten up. Loosen up. Check back only when you’ve given yourself a recharge.

Tragedy

2006-02-20T06:25:00.000-08:00

I had not meant to use this blog to report on bad news, but God bless the people of the Phillipines. My thoughts and prayers are with you.

Food Fit for Angels

2006-02-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

My idea of Heaven is a place where I could eat all the cheesy tots and Girl Scout Cookies I want without gaining weight. I generally go by the rule that if I love it, it's probably bad for me, and I should stay away from it. Sometimes we get to experience a little Heaven on Earth, though, in foods that are both delicious and nutritious. Even fried cheese sticks with ranch dressing don't give me more pleasure than a meal of peas, corn, and tomatoes straight from the garden. And then there's ratatouille. Since it's February, and we can't get anything straight from the garden, allow me to recommend ratatouille as a most divine culinary experience. Delicious, nutritious, and not at all likely to produce unwanted pounds.

Click here for a good recipe.

Eat it cold. Eat it hot. Eat it as a soup. Eat it as a sauce. Eat it over rice. Eat it over pasta. Eat it plain and use a piece of crusty bread to sop up the juice. You can't go wrong any way you go about it.

I've even been known to add heavy whipping cream and curry spices to the leftovers. Yum, yum.

Fit for the angels, no less.

Read Ye Now

2006-02-18T17:03:00.000-08:00

The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
HarperSanFrancisco, 1993
ISBN 0-06-250218-2
Amazon Link

Since the front cover hails this as an "International Bestselling Phenomenon," chances are you've already read it. If not, what are you waiting for?

I believe this book got mixed reviews. Those who love it, adore it. They've formed a kind of cult following for the particular brand of spiritual quest depicted in what Coelho calls "A Fable About Following Your Dream."

The literary cynics don't particularly care for it. It's a little too easy to read and a little too uplifting for them. It isn't just a book about following dreams; it's also about finding God and spiritual purpose for life along the path.

The religious critics aren't likely to embrace it any more enthusiastically than the unbelievers, though. Young Santiago's quest is as mystical as it is religious. Hence, the subtitle "Fable."

However, for those looking to simply enjoy a good book with a positive message, this is a thoroughly enjoyable read full of genuinely uplifting home truths and other points to ponder.

I'll leave you with this passage as a little taste of the kind of truth you'll get from Coelho:

"My Heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky.

"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second's encounter with God and with eternity."

Thought for the Day

2006-02-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

Nothing truly valuable arises from ambition or from a mere sense of duty; it stems rather from love and devotion toward men and toward objective things.

Albert Einstein

Roll into the Fall

2006-02-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

You’ve heard of defensive driving? Well, I have to practice defensive walking. I’m such a klutz that just going to the mailbox is a hazard. Last night, as I was leaving a family dinner at Copeland’s, I tripped and fell in the parking lot. Since I had been drinking nothing but water, I have only my own clumsiness to blame. And like everyone with two left feet, I have no idea how it happened. My brother-in-law said I stepped on a rock, but all I felt was my shoe slipping and myself tripping. It’s not so remarkable that I could manage to trip walking across a flat, paved surface. It wasn’t the first time and won’t be the last. What I’m really proud of is the way I fell. Even my brother-in-law, who never misses an opportunity to tease, only said, “Hey, excellent roll. Now that’s the way to fall.”

I didn’t fall forward or try to break my fall with my hands. I didn’t land on my knees. I simply squatted, rolled onto my side, rolled right over to the other side and back up again in one fluid move. There was too much momentum from tripping to keep from falling. I had no choice but to go down. There was no time to think about it. Just by pure instinct, I caught myself with my muscles and rolled myself along with the fall in a way that protected me from injury. I don’t have a scratch, scrape or bruise on me today. I don’t even have a sore back.

Six months ago I couldn’t have controlled a fall like that. Six months ago I didn’t have the core muscle strength.

We can’t keep things from knocking us down. No matter how good we are or how smart we are or how hard-working we are, there are going to be stones all up in our pathways. Nothing can prevent that.

The only thing we can learn to control is how we handle bad things when they happen. The weaker we are physically, the more likely we are to break something when we fall. The weaker we are emotionally, mentally or spiritually, the more likely we are to break apart when tragedy strikes. Believe me. I’ve broken apart enough to know.

We all need to learn to roll into our falls instead of letting them break us. We need to practice getting stronger in mind, body and spirit each and every day so that we’re able to protect ourselves and those closest to us when the hard knocks hit.

People we love are going to die. Others are going to disappoint us or betray us. We’re going to experience illness and injury. We’re going to experience financial hardship and discouragement. Disasters, like Hurricane Katrina, are going come along and change our whole worlds when we least expect it.

That’s life, as they say.

There is nothing remarkable about suffering. Suffering is everywhere and in everyone. No one is charmed enough to escape for long.

How much you personally suffer has very little to do with how many bad things happen to you. It has much more to do with how you choose to react. Learn to roll into your falls. Learn to accept the bad, accept getting knocked off balance, without ever allowing yourself to lose control of where your falls take the person you are in your core.

An Otter Among Poodles

2006-02-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

I had a professor who often said, “Work against your strengths.” He taught poetry writing, and he meant by that to work on being more expansive if your strength was in very succinct expression or to work on being more lyrical if your strength was in narrative descriptiveness. His theory was that whatever you were naturally gifted in would not go away with neglect. It’s everything else that needs your effort.

He had a good point, and following that advice helps people keep from getting in ruts. It creates constant challenges and opens the eyes to a steady flow of new ways to learn and new ways to improve. Improvement is good. Improvement means we are never just sitting still. We are never stagnating or regressing. And lives in motion, after all, are always more beautiful than lumps of aching flesh molded into sofa cushions.

I’m not good at being organized, but I don’t really have to live my life in clutter and chaos. I can work with that weakness if I choose. Lord knows, there are whole industries of products available to help streamline my life, chief among them that old standby known as the waste basket. I can bring order to all these stacks and piles strewn about…if I choose. It’s in me, and despite all of my excuses, life would become more pleasant for the effort of pinpointing a weakness and going at it with all the zest of a Chihuahua nipping at the heels of an unwanted guest.

On the other hand, sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves and others is to accept our limitations. I could have saved my parents ten years worth of piano lesson bills if I’d ever just said, “Hey, I’m tone deaf. I’m not ever going to be a musician.”

The trick is in the discernment. There is a difference in being a realist and being a defeatist.

The first night I went to Pilates class, I sent an email to a friend saying, “I was an otter in a room full of poodles.”

She replied, “Just enjoy being an otter. One day you’ll look at yourself in the mirror and realize you’ve become a poodle.”

It’s so easy to give up. I’m not athletic. I’m not limber. I just can’t do it.

I’m not smart enough. I’m not talented enough. I’m not ambitious enough. I’ve always had a problem with that.

Excuses abound, but sometimes the best things in life are the abilities we had to work the hardest to achieve. Maybe a strength neglected will not go away (but I have heard a lesson before about buried talents). A weakness neglected is almost certain to become a handicap. The choice is yours.

Thought for the Day

2006-02-16T04:59:00.000-08:00

Good has two meanings: it means that which is good absolutely and that which is good for somebody.

Aristotle

Keep Your Eye on the Goal

2006-02-15T06:24:00.000-08:00

I have an exercise DVD called Tae Bo Believers Workout. It cracks me up. I bought it in the first place because I was so tickled over the idea of yelling “Praise Jesus” for my kicks and punches. It is a good workout, though, and I do recommend it, especially for people who are motivated by praising Jesus for their elevated heart rates and sweaty T-shirts.

In this program, Billy Blanks says at one point, “Keep your eye on the goal. Like Peter in the boat, you’ve got to keep your eye on the goal.”

This is sound advice no matter what your personal faith may be, though I do have to admit I giggled when I first heard it. Me finishing a workout hardly compares to a chosen disciple walking across the stormy sea to meet the Savior of all Mankind. Or does it?

When I was in my mid-twenties and a graduate student at Oklahoma State, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. I was devastated. I was frightened. I was on my own in the world with a big problem. My fear was increased tenfold by the fact that I knew exactly what rheumatoid arthritis could do to a person. I’d grown up in fear of what it had done to my grandfather. By the time I knew him, his hands and feet were knotted up beyond all recognition, and he needed help just to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

At first when people told me things like “Cheer up; Have faith” it didn’t mean anything to me. My grandfather was a preacher for crying out loud. If faith could heal anybody, it ought to have healed him. And if anybody had the odds stacked against her, it ought to have been me. I also had allergies and asthma and had suffered my whole life with an immune system that just didn’t quite work right. It always took me far longer to recover from sickness than “normal” people.

That diagnosis came well more than a decade ago, though, and today I am as healthy as I’ve ever been in my life. I can’t explain why. If I knew the solution to chronic illness, I’d bottle it up and give it away to the people still suffering. Call it luck. Call it the Grace of God. Call it determination or faith or whatever you like.

One doctor told me that my blood work indicated I had the most severe form of the disease. That would be consistent with my family history, but it apparently is not so. I simply don’t know why. I do know that I have kept my eye on the goal and that this has made a real difference in my life.

Once when I was first diagnosed, I remember telling a friend, “This is unbearable pain.” He said, “No it isn’t. If it were unbearable, you’d be dead or at least passed out. It can’t be as bad as that.”

Thank God for callous people. I’ve learned most of life’s lessons from them.

The truth is the body can bear most anything if the mind is somewhere else. The heart can bear most anything too if the mind is focused on meeting the goals of faith and higher purpose.

When Katrina hit, the world was a mess here in South Mississippi. I just wanted to sit down and cry. It seemed impossible that this mess would ever get cleaned up. Were it not for thousands upon thousands of people looking at the goal instead of the problem, we’d still be in just as big of a mess.

Keep your eye on the goal. As soon as you start looking at how big your storm is, you’re going to sink and drown in it. I can’t promise that every goal you set will be met, but I can guarantee that you’ll never get anywhere without first envisioning what you want to accomplish and believing in it.

Grow Toward the Light

2006-02-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

This is my thought for the day. Grow toward the light.

I noticed this morning that one of my plants is all gnarled up and pitiful looking because I've left it in a room where the blinds have been closed for too long. It is straining and struggling for light. It has twisted itself into a very unusual shape just trying to grow in the direction of what little light it has had available. On the side farthest from the window, it is brown and wilted and very near death.

In the other room, plants that have had plentiful light are thriving, though they are still bushier and prettier on the sides nearest the window.

Don't struggle for light in your life. Open up and let it flow through you in abundance.

I always think I don't have time for things that bring joy into my life. I'm a very busy person, and I tend to become very anxious as more and more responsibilities pile up on top of me. I don't have time to go to Pilates classes in the evenings. I don't have time to go to church. I don't have time to go to the birthday parties for all of the little children in my family. I don't have time to go out to eat with friends or to spend my lunch hour strolling around town gabbing and giggling with a best friend. It would be easier in many ways to just sit alone in my windowless office all day (and all evening) getting done what needs to be done.

But I've discovered something important. I can't afford not to do the things that help me grow toward the light. When I put all of my time into work, I have less energy, more health problems, and more difficulty concentrating. No matter how much time I devote to work, it takes all of it to get it all done. When I devote time to other things, it still takes all of the time I have left to work, but somehow it still all gets done.

Let a little light into your life. Cultivate the things that help you grow toward the light.

I believe that time spent each day remembering our creator brings light into our lives. Start there, and all these things will be added unto you.

Welcome to Strong Refuge!

2006-02-14T06:28:00.000-08:00

Even I think this is a strange name for a blog. I tried several names to no avail. Apparently I'm not nearly as creative as I think. Someone always thinks of the good stuff first. :)

I finally arrived at "Strong Refuge" by flipping open a little Gideon's New Testament that was sitting on my desk. It landed on Psalms 71:7: "I am as a wonder unto many; but thou art my strong refuge."

Good enough for me.

I'm not sure what this blog is about. I have several others, and I've experienced some real commitment issues with those blogs. I've found it especially difficult to stick with anything since Hurricane Katrina. I think that's what this is for. I'm not that interested in talking about professional matters these days. I want to talk about real life. I don't mean so much that I want to talk about my day-to-day doings so much as about lessons I've learned and things that have mattered to me, things I think have mattered to the people around me during this year of disaster and recovery.

So here I am, looking for my strong refuge. We'll just have to see where this leads.