(Part 2 in my series … Part 1 is here at Pushing My Own Envelope.  I don’t know yet whether or not there will be a part 3 or more, I’m waiting on the muse for that.)

One night a few weeks ago, we all snuggled down together as a family and watched National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation together. I had truly forgotten how obnoxiously hilarious that movie is. But there was one character who had completely fallen off my radar screen. Aunt Bethany. Remember her? She was the elderly aunt who showed up on Christmas Eve having wrapped up her cat as a gift. Yeah, I’d left her behind too. I looked her up a minute ago, the actress who played her was the same lady who played the voice of Olive Oyl in all the Popeye cartoons for 30 years.

In the movie no one quite knew what to do with her. The actress did a marvelous job with her part, prompting LightBoy to comment that it must have been fun to play that role. This was my favorite scene. Clark reveled in having the family together for Christmas Eve dinner. Everyone gathered round the beautifully set table, dressed, and primped. He did honor to his aunt by asking her to bless the meal:

Her response is priceless. She knows what to do … sort of. When told that she is the speaker, she then knows that something important should be spoken, so she gathered all of her wits and recited. She recited the first thing that came to mind. The Pledge of Allegiance.

Clark was devastated. My heart broke for him. He wanted a blessing. He wanted blessing on the food, on the day, on the family, and most of all on him. He wanted to know that he was loved. But Eddie, well, Eddie the hick … he knew how to respond. He stood up and clapped his hand right over his heart, his whole body ramrod straight at attention. Yep. Say the Pledge and Eddie knows what to do. No one else quite did though. They did not know where to put their eyes. There were some uncomfortable wiggles. Sideways glances. Then everyone settled in and accepted the Pledge of Allegiance as the blessing for Christmas dinner.

When she done, Aunt Bethany smiled shyly at a job well done and Clark began to cut the turkey. And that was yet another disaster neatly averted.

You have to feel sort of sorry for Clark. He’s clearly going insane straining against increasing odds to pull off some sort of Norman Rockwell Christmas for his family … capped by a swimming pool gift at the end. He’s giving himself a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder and most of it is caused by his own set of expectations.

As I watched and later reflected on the film, I wondered how the story would have changed if Clark had just gone with it. In some cases, he did. As he did with the blessing to hilarious results. But in real life (irl) we don’t. We call this planning. We plan for things so that there won’t be snafus or messes to clean up. We don’t want people to be exposed to the Aunt Bethany’s and the Eddie’s of real life, so we plan and give out scripts …

We explain our expectations to people so that they can meet them. We script life, worship, events, parties, etc. so that when the time comes for a blessing we don’t get the Pledge of Allegiance or something equally messy. Real people misunderstand what is expected and/or asked of them in critical moments and they make mistakes. But here’s the thing … our culture has zero tolerance for mistakes. We have a zero tolerance for reality; for the texture and nuance of human-ness.

This is why movies like Christmas Vacation remain at such icon status. We laugh and wonder why no one is like this anymore. Reality television is a huge hit because mistakes get you “voted off the island.” Err at work, and there are hundreds more like you to hire in your place. Mess up in a relationship? Your significant other will find someone new. There are other friends, other relationships out there. Make a mistake, and you’re gone, done, finished, finito. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Church. Why … it’s Biblical to vote people off the island, doncha know? Just cover your behind by making certain that they’re unrepentant.

No wonder so many people are taking pills to cope. I heard just the other day of yet another friend taking up the pill train of anti-depressants and another friend who is investigating the possibility. A sister-in-law is on them and another ought to be but isn’t. I do not have enough fingers to count the friends who take them. Maybe I need to use my toes too.

As I consider this intersection of culture, expectation and reality I begin to wonder how it effects our emotional state. (Or is that affect? I never get that right.) We are in many, many respects a culture devoid of grace. We talk about love, but we have none. We talk about tolerance, but there is none. The roots of so very many of our problems may be found in a lack of love, respect and honor for our fellow human beings as individuals. We talk about large groups, but we cannot get along as neighbors on a cul de sac or street corner.

The other day I wrote about hope being necessary to the process of peace in Kenya and many other “hot spots” world wide.  But I’m beginning to wonder … I think hope may also need to be restored here at home too.  I think hope may look different for us.  Hope looks like clean drinking water, food, education and liberation in Africa.  Here, hope looks like real tolerance, and unconditional love, and acceptance of a messy blessing on Christmas Eve.

I ended yesterday’s post wondering if it really matters and I quoted “Crumbs From Your Table” – a song by U2. If you click that link there, you can listen along as you read the lyrics below:

From the brightest star
Comes the blackest hole
You had so much to offer
Why did you offer your soul?
I was there for you baby
When you needed my help
Would you deny for others
What you demand for yourself?

Cool down mama, cool off
Cool down mama, cool off

You speak of signs and wonders
I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

You were pretty as a picture
It was all there to see
Then your face caught up with your psychology
With a mouth full of teeth
You ate all your friends
And you broke every heart thinking every heart mends

You speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die
Three to a bed
Sister Ann, she said
Dignity passes by

And you speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
I’m waiting on the crumbs from your table

So why should any of us care what happens in Kenya, or any of the African nations? Or the Middle East? Or Asia? Or anywhere but our little neighborhood for that matter? What does it matter to us? I can think of a million different answers to those questions. I think they’re different for different people. But I’m interested in answering them from the perspective of a Jesus follower. Why do I care? Why is it important for someone who follows Jesus to care what happens in the lives of people half-way around the world?

There are still numerous answers to that question. There is, of course, the idea of bringing aid to orphans and widows. Then there is the idea that we must succor the least of these brothers and sisters in the name of Jesus for in so doing we are aiding Him. Those are valid and indeed wonderful reasons for caring about people in the name of Jesus.

I think though, there is a larger reason we need to care. Jesus talked about bringing His Kingdom to pass. He talked about it being here all around us and being not yet. He said when it came to be the deaf would hear, the blind would see, prisoners would be free and the lame would leap for joy. He also said it was here … right now. He said that if we have faith that is the size of a mustard seed we could move a mountain into the sea. We could also bring sight to the blind and sound to the deaf and freedom to the captives … that in our presence the lame would leap for joy! Indeed, this is his Good News that we call the Gospel.

We also call it hope. It is hope for a better world, a better place and a better time. It is hope that my children and their children will play together and that the content of their character will count for more than the color of their skin (MLK, Jr.). It is hope that where you live will not determine the time of your death (Bono). Because in the now, those things are true and yet not true. In the not yet of God’s Kingdom towards which we strive, they will not be true at all … and that is the hope which we extend and push forward.

In caring we become ambassadors of hope. In hope there is reconciliation. Where there is not hope, there cannot be peace. When hope has died, neighbors war with neighbors and burn houses to the ground. When the truth of Love has been extinguished, fighting and war breaks out. No one can love their neighbor when hope has left the building.

We see this time and again throughout history. Marie Antoinette was famously misquoted as saying to the French peasants, “Let them eat cake.” It was a royal solution to a bread shortage. The shortage was not of bread, but of wheat. The royals did not feel the pinch or lack, but the poor did. Poor Antoinette had no clue. Her cloistered, pampered life ill-prepared her for the storms that came her way. She loved her country and her people, but could not give them any hope. The Jacobins and other forces at play in the French Revolution tore at the fabric of hope in the lives of the people.

In India the reverse happened. Gandhi was determined that independence from British rule could be gained without resorting to violence. Instead of tearing hope away from the poorest of the poor, he restored it. The more real hope he gave them that they could be honestly independent, the stronger and more united the Indians became. Yes, there was violence, but the Indians were not fighting amongst themselves … until later (but that’s another story).

Kenya (and Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and the list goes on) is important because we Jesus-followers are to be ambassadors of hope. We must restore hope to the little people. It is the poor who are fighting and dying. It is the little people, the poor, who are hurting and crying. The rich all around the world continue to eat cake; while the poor have no bread. If we are ambassadors of God’s Kingdom in the here and for the not yet, we must bring hope. We must restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, freedom to the captives and cause the lame to leap for joy. It is hope, and that hope alone which will restore peace to the country and allow her people to live in harmony with one another; neighbor helping neighbor to overcome the odds.

Restoring Hope:

Christian Mission Aid

OneWorld.net – Kenya … learn more about Kenya overall, follow links and become an expert!

Avaaz.org – send an e-mail that encourages your foreign minister (US Secretary of State) to put pressure on all parties in the conflict to continue mediation.

Global Partners – invest in Kenya’s future: women and children

WorkNets-Help Kenyans – direct connections with Kenyans on the ground during the crisis. I can’t vouch for any of these people or this site, but it looked interesting. Apparently Kenyans can trade phone credits for food?

Amani Ya Juu – a womens cooperative dedicated to peace and hope in Nairobi (here’s where you can donate to help the women in the current crisis)

Restoring Relationship:

The Walrus Blog (ht Achievable Ends)
Mentalacrobatics (ht Waving or Drowning)
KenyaUnlimited Blogs Aggregator

Yesterday, just as I thought I was getting my head around the mess of spaghetti that is politics in Kenya, I read this:

Kenya Leader Names New Ministers:

“Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki has named new ministers, just before Ghana’s leader arrived as part of mediation efforts following disputed elections.”

The wrinkle is that he filled all the important posts. He named Kalonzo Musyoka to the vice presidency (who got 9% of the vote). None of the posts were filled with members of the opposition party (Odinga’s party). This was done as a mediator was/is enroute to Kenya.

In the west we speak of this as a defrauded election and we go about our business. I’m not so certain though. More and more it is taking on the colors of a coup d’etat. A coup d’etat is much more serious than an illegal election.

A leader who has himself declared the winner in the face of an overwhelming parlimentary tidal change and then sets about establishing his ministry as mediation is enroute is not a leader who will be submitting to outside authority in any meaningful circumstances. Let’s just say that in our outloud voices and be done with it.

My guess (if I were to guess … okay, I will) is that he will in short order either do away with parliament altogether or gut its powers rather abruptly. This will happen in the next 12 to 15 months. I will be happily surprised if it does not. You can send me a cake. Remember this … and hopefully I will be the recipient of some cakes.

Herein though is the root (or roots) the deeper problem in Africa and, indeed, all of the developing world. The west went in with a somewhat (okay very little) altruistic nature and attempted to bring democracy to these places. We are now past the point where having a debate about whether or not this was the right thing to do is fruitful. It was probably not right, but it happened and now we must bear out the consequences of those thousands of large and small decisions. The problem is that in order for what we consider classic freedom and democracy to flourish in a state there must be an undergirding web of philosophy, education, economics, demographics and many other issues woven together to support that freedom and democracy. The soil must be nourished in order for those flowers to grow.

By that I mean this … our version of classic freedom (a very Western, Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman notion by the way) cannot be supported in an economic system where there are only two classes of people; the very poor and the very rich. Our notions of freedom and democracy (and capitalism) requires a fertile middle class to support it. Most developing nations have three classes: the rich, the poor and a military class. What tiny middle class there is, is struggling to survive, thrive and grow is not part of the picture at all. Education is also a requirement for democracy. This is why Thomas Jefferson, though an inveterate snob, was such an ardent supporter of public education in our country. He knew that classic democracy (even a republic) could not survive without an educated electorate.

So, I struggle with the lack of conversation that I’m hearing in the blogosphere on this subject. Life goes on here in the west. Poor people of color are struggling and dying against one another now, just as they have been struggling and dying against AIDS, parasites, drought, disease, etc. for decades and we have done nothing. Perhaps it would be disingenuous to begin to care now. Perhaps it is we do not know what to say, so we say nothing at all and pour our energies into discussions about books, and quitting time and ministries and the things we know and the things we don’t know, rendering unto Ceasar, etc. I’m torn between Bill’s disappointment, Maynard’s ennui and Mike’s sense of justice. I’ve given to Amani ya Juu and felt good for one day. Then felt horrible guilt that I have so much to feed my family. No, not guilt. I am overwhelmed with all I have and all I am not grateful for. After all, when I need food, I safely go to the grocery store. I am not limited to 4 tomatoes, 4 carrots, 4 bananas, 2 cabbages, and the few other things for a week as the list on Bill’s page suggests that the women in Nairobi are at this time. And then it all comes back to this:

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die

Crumbs From Your Table – by U2

When our beds are burning?

I’ve been reading the reports out of Kenya with increasing agony and sense of shame. I read the latest and wept inside. People were burned inside a church. They had fled for sanctuary to a church and it was burned. There is something about the idea of being trapped inside of a burning building with dozens of other people that scares me skinny. It seems like the worst form of torment.

Africa is crumbling. In the West we will be held to account for this in some form or another. It is on our shoulders that this mess lies. And it all brought this home to me. I’ve seen it before, but BlisteringSh33p gave it to me again yesterday:

We gave them our creeds. Then we tried re-writing those creeds for them:

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the bible, that he would save the world and all the nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He lay buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from the grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.

But … have we done the work of understanding the other? Of knowing who they are? Of truly becoming One with them as God asks us to? Or do we simply wrap our culture on top of theirs like a blanket and hope that it takes?

How can we sleep while our beds are burning?

Today is LightGirl’s 14th birthday. I write that in a much more understated manner than I feel. What the h e double hockeysticks happened? Where did the time go? How did thirteen whole years go by so fast? Why is she wearing so much makeup? So many, many questions with no answers. I feel all gulpy inside. Some days I want to hold her close and make certain that nothing bad ever happens. Most days I know that’s not possible; I have to know that she has a good head on her shoulders, a sprout of faith, and the best I can do as her mom is to prepare her to handle life with grace and aplomb. The rest is up to her. But I still feel all gulpy inside.

So … in order to deal with that feeling of gulpyness here is a list of my personal favorites from last year. These are not necessarily the posts that got the most hits (in fact some of them barely got any), or the most comments (again, most of them got zero), but they are my favorites because they are the posts that I still think about. I may revisit these ideas this year in other forms, you never know …

On The Ways of Geese – perspectives on leadership
Losing Ground – decision making
My Vision – for faith communities
Shavuot-The Feast of Pentecost the Megillah of Ruth
Slice It, Dice It, Anyway You Want It … social, cultural constructs for looking at the Bible
Book Review – Organic Community – surprise! A book review.
Christendom? Post-Christendom? – a look at labels.
Critique, Criticism and the Gong Show – what’s love got to do with it?
On Creating Space – what do hockey and church have in common?
Living Within The System and Non-Violence – a look at living in the world but not being of it.
Good Gifts – every parent desires to give good gifts, but what are they?

A while ago my friend, Mr. Bill, and I publicly revealed that we have an agreement. We’ve agreed to always agree. When we don’t agree, well, we’ll disagree to disagree. Then, being a double negative, we’ll actually agree and everything will be all right. So, our agreement to agree works for us. We like it. One of the best parts of this agreement to agree is that Bill has one of the best blogrolls ever and I’ve been exposed to some new and wonderful writers through this arrangement.

I think one of the best has to be Brant Hansen at Letters from Kamp Krusty. If he’s not the best writer, he definitely has the best hair. If it’s not the best hair, it’s definitely the most like Jesus. For the longest time, I went to Brant’s blog and refused to believe that the guy pictured in the corner was really him … nobody who was real, really looked like that. Only fake people on television and in magazines look like that. But if you go to his blog, that really is him. Most of his writing is laugh out loud funny, but the photos aren’t. They are real.

You may have noticed I said that *most* of his writing is funny. It is too. He makes many a sharply aimed point with boisterous humor. It’s amazingly well done. He’s really smart. All good comedians are. He knows how to use language really well too. But once in a while he drops the curtain a little and gives us a peek into himself. And that is equally if not more well done.

Shortly after Thanksgiving Brant took a brief hiatus from blogging; about a week or so. When he came back he had a few posts about his reasons … here (1) and here (2). In one of them he revealed a long battle with depression and anger. He also revealed that he’s been using anti-depressants for sometime as a weapon in this battle. He confessed how inadequate this made him feel as a Christian and as a man and on a whole bunch of other levels. I wept. I read and wanted to comment. But what could I say? “Dude! I’m right there with you.” But I’m not. I’m right here with me. Brant’s experience is his and mine is mine. On some level they are similar because depression has similarities. But then again …

So. Several people linked to his posts and I read them again. I was undone. Like I was being unsupportive or something because I knew I was in this same boat so to speak, but remaining silent. Yet I am not in the same boat. We both have similar leaky barges on the same stream; there is a mixture of anger and relief about that. It might be that we both spend a lot of time waving our arms and yelling, when we could be bailing. Yet my silence was not condemnation or fear. If anything I had too much to say and eventually I realized I needed to let it process and write later in my own space. So here it is … my own words about being here with me.

A little less than two years ago I fell off a cliff. Most people would not know that to look at me, because no bones were broken and I have no lacerations or bruises … outwardly. But inwardly … well, now, that’s a whole other story. I faced a Balroc and like Gandalf, just when I thought he was gone, the tip of his lash caught the hem of my robe and pulled me over the edge with him. The fall was long, endless and sheer torture to a person with so great a fear of falling that I could not even watch that scene in the Fellowship of the Ring.

I had endless panic attacks and stopped eating and stopped drinking coffee (for the first and only time since my 12th birthday). I couldn’t sleep for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time and naps were out of the question … unless I snoozed out sitting up on the sofa. The only time I truly felt at peace was during the daily broadcast of the curling competitions in the Winter Olympics and when we were out on our daily walks. Whatever metaphorical demons had been unleashed in my brain were quelled during those brief moments. I could barely leave the house and only with an escort … LightHusband or BlazingEwe and had to have someone in the house with me at all times. In short … it was a nightmare.

I have been walking through a sine wave of depression for most of my adult life. It ebbs and flows, sometimes greater and sometimes lesser, but it has been an ever present companion. A shadow, if you will, lengthening or drawing close depending upon the position of the sun. Always lurking and never overwhelming. It was enough to make me angry sometimes. Or make me wonder why I am so different. Or wonder why I see things that others don’t. Or how I could ever get through one more day and then another. And wonder what is real joy? What does happiness feel like? Is this it? How about now?

Here’s the thing about depression that goes on that long. After a while you begin to not trust happiness or joy. It’s not that you don’t enjoy them. You do. You love them. At first. But then you wonder how long they’re going to stick around; like a deadbeat dad, you wonder when they’re going to leave again. And you kick them out first so you won’t get hurt again when they leave too soon. You get conflicted about them after a while.

Depression was casting one of its longest shadows when I found Jesus sitting around in my neighborhood back in 1990. He came into my life in the form of my neighbor, a pastor’s wife. She saved my life from depression (caused in part by my personality and in part by some meds I was taking for a newly discovered seizure disorder) and from spiders that I have an inordinate fear of. She talked to me for hours about anything I wanted to talk about. Sometimes I even listened to her. That’s how I know she was Jesus. I was 29 at the time and then turned 30. And sometime in that time period I did it … I said the magical words and planted the magical beans … and got saved. Or whatever you want to call it. Got washed and then baptized. Gave my life to Christ. Etc. PW (pastor’s wife) was very good about reassuring me that nothing would likely change right away.

On the other hand, as time went on, I began to hear tales of people who had been saved and then SAVED from this or that. I heard especially about people being saved from depression and other mental illnesses. I heard that Jesus would be enough. Funny, Brant seems to have heard that too. I think a lot of people have heard that one. Jesus is enough. Well, I suspect He is. I’ll come back to that in a few minutes.

The shadow ebbed and flowed … sometimes longer and shorter. Like any roommate, I learned how to live with it’s eccentricities and quirks. What would happen if I left the toothpaste tube uncapped and how to handle the temper tantrums. I also began to give it due consideration. Was I just like this? After all, there were no clear indicators from childhood. Other than I come from a long line of phlegmatic personalities … my father, a grandfather, a great grandfather, a great grandmother. On my mother’s side of the family there is a documented history of depression and suicide for unknown causes. What if this just is … what if I am just wired this way? How does that figure into the equation?

Fast forward to my journey through the caverns of Moria and the fall off the cliff. I was very fortunate to have a sympathetic and proactive family doctor. She got me into a psychiatrist and a counselor very quickly. In turn they got me onto some good anti-depressants and mood stabilizers and got me talking, respectively. I’ve been with both of them for the rest of the journey since then and they are wonderful. My psychiatrist suggested that it was grounds for a celebration when I told him that I’d driven across the Bay Bridge not once, but four times in one week in early October. It was a mark of how far I’ve come from the days when not only could I not drive, I could barely leave my house. He has been conservative, yet sensitive to how I’ve reacted to the meds. Keeping me in just enough meds so that I can breath, but not so much that I am comatose.

That’s the thing about anti-depressants. When you have enough, you can breath and eat and grow. You become a living thing again … by Sesame Street standards. In all seriousness, I can … I can breath and eat and grow again. I have space in my head for all three, sometimes even at the same time. But if you have too much, you become a wooden stick. As someone else once told me, you can’t cry, even when you want to … or know you should. On the other hand, not enough medication and most times, just breathing is a chore, eating and growing are right out.

So now I have my blue and green happy pills. I call them my happy pills, not because they make me happy but because they allow me to live. They allow me space inside my head to consider different paths when the way before me is desperate and hard. They allow me to consider others. And, they allow me to be more me. Now we come right down to the fine hard grit. Who am I?

I still have my shadow-friend walking with me. I have come to accept that she is likely to be part of who I am. She is woven into my character from many threads in my life. I am not certain that she would or could be unwoven now. Here is where I begin to struggle with the question that haunted Brant and one which haunts many Christians in similar circumstances … if I am wired this way, then why is Jesus not enough? Why is who I am and how I was made so uncomfortable that I need to take pills in order to get along … for me, I need them to get along with myself some days. There are days when I am so crabby and unsettled that I cannot get along inside my own skin. We are told that Jesus should be enough for all of that … He will heal you. But He doesn’t … or something. So here are my several different answers to that conundrum of faith. I believe and use them all depending on my mood/attitude. On days when I have more grace, I am able to use the more gracious reasons. On days when I have less, I am more pugnacious. (You know? I’m not a robot … my mood and attitude does change from day to day. So deal with it. 😉 )

I’ve listed them as I think of them … not in any particular order:

One idea … God could heal my eyes too … but since I was seven I’ve worn glasses and no one bothers to tell me that Jesus is enough for my eyes. They just accept my glasses as part of me; the spectacles are not a character flaw, but the anti-depressants are? I wonder why that is. I also take acid reducers and multi-vitamins … Jesus should be enough for those too, I guess. But it’s a fallen world we live in, my body needs some help and no one sees that as a character flaw. But anti-depressants … well, that’s a horse of a different color. We’ve still got enough Puritan left in our cultural psyche to think that those who are depressed ought to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get over themselves. Okay … I’ll just do that.

Another idea … Jesus may be enough, but I am clearly not. Really. That’s the thought that runs through my mind when I hear that. I know for certain that Jesus is enough for all this and a bag of chips. He threw the stars into place and the sand into the sea. The oceans rise and fall at his breath, surely He is enough for me. Yep, He really is. But I am not. I am miserable. My bread doesn’t rise properly, I forget the physics of heat transfer and ask my son to pick up a scorching pan lid with no oven mitts on, I can’t keep all my friends straight and I can’t meet their expectations of me and I can’t meet my expectations of myself. No use telling me to lower my expectations because at 46 I’ve tried that over and over and over again. You think I haven’t? Like that’s a new idea? Yes, I’ve tried that … expectations are what they are. Try lowering your own sometime and see what happens. Nine times out ten that’s called … d i s a p p o i n t m e n t. Then you have doubled your fun. You don’t meet your expectations and now you’re miserable, because you also failed to lower them. YAY. So, by myself, I am not enough and I haven’t figured out how to do the partnering with Jesus thing.

Another idea … Grace is enough. Grace is enough, yet it is not enough either. Here is probably my most bitter commentary on the church and our greater culture in general. We do not accept others for who they are anymore. We have discovered that, “You know, there’s a pill for that …” instead of working at relationships and understanding that others are truly different from us, we all insist that others conform to us. Our culture has become a chaos of bubble Napoleonic little kingdoms each demanding that everyone else conform to them. We cannot accept one another as individuals anymore because we no longer have a vision for what that is. We want crazy Uncle Fred to take a pill so he’ll be like us, and overly affectionate Aunt Edna to keep her distance. I have to wonder, why is Uncle Fred crazy? Uncle Fred is a package … there’s crazy Uncle Fred PLUS genius Uncle Fred, but you can’t just have the genius. You have to have the crazy too. More than that, you must embrace the crazy … even if it hurts. That’s grace being enough. Telling Uncle Fred to “take a pill for that” is not grace, it’s legalism. Reducing Uncle Fred to the crazy guy in the corner is not grace, it’s contempt. Containing Uncle Fred out of fear is not grace … it’s fear.

Related similar idea … We have discovered the beast of legal mood altering drugs and released him on society. Now we can make everyone just alike. Don’t fit the cookie cutter? Let’s lop that awkward corner off with a pill. Smooth that rough edge with another one. Some days I wonder if we’ve entered that Brave New World that Aldous Huxley wrote about. Or the Big Brother of George Orwell. Too many of the outlandish mind control projects written about by the science fiction authors of the 30s and 40s seem to be morphing into existence today without government intervention, just a cultural demand for bland homogeneity of character. Stepford Wives and Redford Husbands; happy, smiling with nothing to mar their bland existence. Perfect teeth, beautiful hair, we must all conform to cultural norms. We’ve got a pill for that, ya know.

I am glad to be taking my lovely blue and green pills, don’t get me wrong. They help me understand my life and process my emotions in ways that I need right now. I guess I just wonder about the pace and tectonic forces of a culture which has pushed so many of us to this point. Why do so many people need mood-altering psychotropic drugs just to get through the day? Why do we need a pill for that?

P.S. Don’t answer more hard work, or less stuff … those are the easy answers and they do not account for the complexities of where our society and culture are right now. And anyone who comes by and says some version of, “you need God.” will be hung at sunrise – virtually … and in the kindest, most Christian way – by their toes.

Way back when … when was it now?

Oh yeah, back when I still had hope and faith in the political system of this country. That would be about 4 years ago. Maybe a little longer ago. It was back when Howard Dean’s campaign for president was gathering steam and before the powers that be in the Democratic party put their foolish heads together to decide that he was unfit. What a bunch of nincompoops. They chose John Kerry as the heir apparent. Because that was a good choice to run against George Bush. I said it then and I’ll say it now … idiots. So, it was late 2003 and I had some hope in our political system.

I joined a few of the grassroots political organizations that were popping up all over the place. I had hope that they might actually change some things around here. Iowa and then New Hampshire dashed my foolish hopes. And the election reminded me of harsh reality. But that’s another blog post.

In any case, I stuck with my memberships … but my activity was reduced to cynical and jaded readings of the e-mails that came through my in-box. One came through today from Move-on.org. I usually just skim it in preview and delete them. But this one caught my attention. They are raising money to send phone cards to the troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and elsewhere. Okay, you got me now. I’m a sucker for the troops. I may despise the war, but the troops are another story altogether. Being the wife of a disabled veteran and having been married to the Army for umpty-ump years … I know the drill.

So I clicked through to see where it would take me. It took me to their donations page which also had an introduction talking about phone cards for troops. To best of my knowledge they are rounding up donations which will then be used to purchase phone cards for our service men and women in foreign lands. It will also be used to bolster the rolls of Move-on.org. Eh … okay. Two birds, one stone. I get it. But I’d rather just get phone cards, so I did a little bit of searching … very little. I found two places that you can get phone cards for service men and women serving abroad in far away places. One is through the military’s post exchange system. You have to be military or retired military to purchase here, but this is by far the best buy. And it will get the cards into the hands of the troops the quickest and most efficient method possible. But … there is the caveat. Second is through the USO’s (United Service Organization) Operation Phone Home and they will get cards to the service men and women very quickly as well.

So, if you still have some money to do a good deed may I gently suggest that we have many military families in this country who would love to speak with their fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters … well … you get the point. They hardly ever get to phone home and this would be a blessed gift of grace.

I love the beach and the ocean. It’s always been a favored spot of mine. We haven’t been in a very, very long time. There was a time when we went, along with several other families, every October. It was an annual retreat to the Outer Banks. That has gone by the wayside now for a variety of different reasons, almost all of which point to a new season in our lives. I will have to find a new time and place to visit the ocean each year.

When I was a child one of my favorite things to do was to stand about knee deep or so and let the waves buffet me. I wanted to see how long I could stand before the outrushing tide swept the sand out from under my feet and I no longer had a foundation on which to plant myself. Could I curl my toes around enough sand to make a stand? Me against the elements! The horse she saith into the trumpets ha ha! And I played that game with myself for many long minutes, until the temptation of the waves and my brothers became too much and off we’d go to swim or build castles in the air or something equally delightful.

As an adult, I’ve tried this but it’s lost much of its charm. I’m stronger now and more adept. I can stand now in the face of all but the most outrageous waves. In fact, the waves that it takes to knock me down as an adult are really quite dangerous and I should not be standing out in them. The ocean holds other charms for me now.

I was reading through the blog-o-sphere this morning and came upon this at Bill Kinnon’s place:

One writer against Christmas went so far as to say that the shopkeepers for their own commercial purposes alone sustain Christmas Day. I am not sure whether he said that the shopkeepers invented Christmas Day. Perhaps he thought that the shopkeepers invented Christianity. It is a quaint picture, the secret conclave between the cheese-monger, the poulterer, and the toy-shop keeper, in order to draw up a theology that shall convert all Europe and sell some of their goods. Opponents of Christianity would believe anything except Christianity. That the shopkeepers make Christmas is about as conceivable as that the confectioners make children. It is about as sane as that milliners manufacture women.
— G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, January 13, 1906.

Bill, in dry spot, was quoting the inimitable Chesterton. Fancy that. It kinda got me thinking though. I had a conversation yesterday with BlazingEwe about the nature of stuff and why we have so much. And why we think we have to have more. Why we like to shop, etc. We have these sorts of conversations regularly. Because we both know we have too much stuff and we feel assaulted by the messages to get more all the time. I commented on Bill’s post that shopkeepers might not have invented Christmas, but they surely feast upon it. Yes, they do.

This quote got me thinking about the ways in which we attempt to stand against the tide as adults. Chesterton is both pithily correct and yet, wrong. We’ve long known that in the aftermath of the Depression and WWII, the shopkeepers did get together and consciously (or perhaps not) decide on the path of planned obsolescence in order to create markets and economies and desires for their products in the masses. It’s a very symbiotic relationship and this did not happen overnight, nor was it done in a vacuum without the consent and knowledge of said masses. We may like to pretend we didn’t know, but we know. We’ve bought into it on some level.

So what have we done? Over the years, the decades, the generations, we’ve allowed the powers and principalities to tell us and we’ve told each other that the way to express our love for each other is to buy bigger and better gifts for each other. We’ve done this. No one else has. We can point to the manufacturers, the advertisers, the shopkeepers, etc. But in the end, we have met the enemy and he is us. Gifts keep getting bigger. Credit card debt gets deeper. The advertising gets gnarlier. First it was radios. Then it was televisions. Now it’s big screen televisions complete with play stations. Or complete kitchen makeovers. The giving is enormous. There is jewelry, clothing, automobiles. Using one’s credit cards will allow one to compete for prizes such as the perfect gift (that will cause the special someone to swoon). ( Lest you think I’ve been watching too much television, a good friend has been working retail this year and many of my examples come from her.)

Now before you think I’m a grinch (though I am 😀 ), I don’t have anything against gifts to express our love. I just wonder if we haven’t derailed a bit. I wonder if there isn’t some other way that we can express how we feel about our loved ones. I remember reading Little House in the Big Woods with LightGirl. And in that series Laura Ingalls Wilder revealed an entirely different cultural expectation for love and how it was expressed. It was seen over and over again, not just during their several Christmas celebrations, but during the thick and thin of their lives. And … no, I’m not advocating a return to the prairie. I’m just thinking about how they expressed themselves to one another. The gifts they gave each other were rarely physical. When they were, the gift had a special significance that revealed something about the recipient’s character or the relationship between the giver and recipient. The gifts revealed a level of thought and care that are rarely seen these days.

As I reflected on Bill’s GKC quote, the things that have been disturbing me about Christmas giving were put to rest. I’m relatively unconcerned about whether or not a gift is handmade. I don’t care about how much or how little is spent. I want to know that the giver spent time and care thinking about me. Just as I spend time and care thinking about the people that I give gifts to. Giving is akin to a spiritual ritual for me and I don’t enter into it lightly. It is one of the places where I continue to curl my toes into the sand and attempt to stand against the tide. I still can’t keep my feet. I get knocked around fairly regularly by the waves. But I keep getting back up and trying again. It feels just about as useless as standing against the ocean, but she saith into the trumpets … ha ha!

8 And a highway will be there;
it will be called the Way of Holiness.
The unclean will not journey on it;
it will be for those who walk in that Way;
wicked fools will not go about on it.

9 No lion will be there,
nor will any ferocious beast get up on it;
they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,

10 and the ransomed of the LORD will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, we did lectio divina the other night with 7 children and 5 adults. There were varying reactions. LightBoy recognized elements of the Psalms in this reading which cheered his mother’s heart greatly.

It was very interesting to me that verse 8 rang out to me and LightHusband and LightGirl, but for different reasons and in different ways, but when we put all of our parts together the story became complete. LightGirl heard a command to holiness and was offended because no one can be completely holy in this life, so who could walk on this highway? I heard a promise that all will be kept safe from highway men and beasts. LightHusband heard a prophecy fulfilled in that we live after Jesus in a time and place when there are no unclean, and the lions and ferocious beasts are penned. We have been redeemed and walk in freedom.

Not all who live in the world are so blessed I reminded LightHusband. Those who live in the land where these words were originally spoken might disagree that they have been fulfilled. Then one of the other children wanted to know where they had been spoken, so we talked about that for a little.

This Highway … it made quite an impression on me. I’ve been pondering it. Isaiah’s prophecy is rich in description here. I went looking for his timeline and place. Isaiah is dated to sometime towards the trickly end of the Assyrian Empire, he did some of his prophesying during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah. This puts him close to 700 BCE and makes the capital of the Assyrian Empire, Nineveh. Ohhh … where have we heard about that city before? I wanted to know where Nineveh is/was. It’s about 2/3 of the way up the Tigris river in what is modern day Iraq. The ancient ruins were completely looted in 2003 and much of our common history was lost.

I found a map ..
… of the Assyrian Empire.

Now, if you look at that map, the red line indicates the path that the Hebrew exiles took out of Israel when the Assyrians overran them. Take a moment and ponder the idea of exile in 722 BCE. Let the stink and sweat of fear, loss, hunger and death permeate your bones for a few minutes as you consider a forced march and endless footsteps of dry, dusty desert to slavery.

Read Isaiah’s prophecy again. Read what he has to tell those Hebrew men and women about what God has in store for them. Wait, he says, wait. God’s road back will be filled with water, and safety and clean clothes, and good food to eat and there will be joy and singing at the end. You will come home. You will come home. And we will have a party. What faith. What hope.

Can we too hang on? Can we remember this? This road back to God … She promises it will be filled with good food and water and there is going to be a party at the end. We’ll be safe too. We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, with our eyes on Him.

He will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.
Isaiah 2:4

I still remember my first encounter with this verse. It was at this monument to peace outside the United Nations. Across the street from the General Assembly building. It is engraved on the foundation stone. I was with a group of students who were studying at the United Nations for a semester. This day was our introduction to the General Assembly and we were exploring on a break. I recall standing in front of this statue transfixed by the thought and the beauty of the man. I was 20 years old at the time. Fresh out of the country side of Vermont. I stood there for a long, long time … drinking it in. And I’ve never forgotten it.

I remember very, very little from that semester. There are moments that I’ve captured. The moment that I think I was very nearly arrested at the Romanian mission was one … they just did not believe I was merely seeking information about their country’s response to the Law of the Sea treaty! The day I spent at Central Park listening to the first Simon & Garfunkle reunion concert was another. The moment I first saw this statue was a third.

The fright at the Romanian mission and the Simon & Garfunkle concert have remained interesting and titillating memories. But the moment before the statue changed something deep in my soul. At the time, I had not had enough exposure to Biblical literature to understand that the “poem” came from scripture. It was quite simply breathtaking. It stayed with me for years and years. I remembered it and it whispered in the deep places of my mind for a decade until I read the Bible for the first time.

Ironically, the statue was a gift to the United Nations from the (then) Soviet Union in 1959. I say, ironically, because the Soviet Union is/was known for being atheist. So it is ironic to me that a statue dedicated to peace would have Judeo-Christian scripture engraved upon it.

I’ve been thinking about that scripture quite a bit this week. It was one of the scriptures we read during our advent candle lighting last Sunday. I found it interesting. Last Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, was the Sunday of Hope. I’ve been wondering why this reading from Isaiah 2 was included. It seems to be more synchronous with the second Sunday, the Sunday of Peace.

I’ve also been thinking about how to go about keeping the peace. About the nitty-gritty, if you will, of peaceful living. Living at at peace with my fellow men and women with whom I’m walking the earth. Ohhhh … there are days when beating swords into plowshares seems like the easy button.

As I have been going about my days this phrase, “swords into plowshares” has been fluttering around my head beating against the edges like a caged butterfly. They resound inside my head and there is, as Aslan might say, a deeper magic there. I think I might have found some of it finally as I was driving to (or was it fro) the rink the other day.

We think of war and think of killing, bombs, guns, destruction, death. We think of ugliness. Often in movies I’ve noticed that times of war and war scenes are subtly shot in greyed out colors, stark, brutal.

What is the opposite of war? Peace. How do we think of peace? What do we imagine a peaceful existence to look like? Have we, as a culture or community, ever imagined peace?

People joke about it. But we cannot truly envision it. Some of us Jesus-y types speak in erudite terms about the Kingdom of God and we think glow-y thoughts. We know the glimpses of it when we see it, but we don’t know how to define it. We want to bring it closer, but know that we cannot … not on our own. So what is the opposite of war? Peace. What does that look like? With its unique formulation, antabuse helps you stay committed to your sobriety by creating unpleasant side effects when you consume alcohol.

Plowshares. It looks like plowshares. It finally hit me. Peace looks like plowshares.

For those of you who are currently thinking, “Girlfrien’s done lost her pea-pickin’ mind,” give me a minute or two. First, you’re probably wondering what a plowshare is. A plowshare is the metal/iron part of the plow that actually digs up the dirt, breaks up the clods, and prepares the ground for planting. It generally has to be sort of sharp, not like a sword, but it has to be sharpened for each use as well. So turning swords into plowshares is not as unlikely as it seems. At the time that the words were spoken, both were made of the same material (iron) and forged by the same guy (blacksmith). This held true for many hundreds of years afterwards.

I started to think about what a plowshare could stand for, now that we are not an agrarian society any longer. Plowshares … they are the source. They allow creativity, development, beauty, art and ultimately, life. They could be an icon for fullness, life, food, community, family (a person cannot plow alone), health. We have talked about peace for so long that we no longer really know what it means. It is ephemeral, evanescent, fugitive and flitting. It dances around the edges of our consciousness and taunts us with it’s shadow.
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Looking for peace. Looking for signs of the plowshare. Places where swords have been consciously put down and redeemed into the icons of those things that can give humans back their gifts. Where people are redeemed and not sacrificed to Baal, er, the system. That’s what I’m looking for this season. Sometimes I see it peeking around the corner at me. I’m still working on my definition. But at least this year, I’m beginning to know what I’m looking for.
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Redeeming the Season is the Topic for this month’s SynchroBlog. Now there are a variety of seasons being celebrated at the end of each year from Christmas to Hannukah to Eid al-Adha and Muharram, from the Winter Solstice to Kwanzaa and Yule. Some people celebrate none of these seasonal holydays, and do so for good reason. Below is a variety of responses to the subject of redeeming the season. From the discipline of simplicity, to uninhibited celebration, to refraining from celebrating, to celebrating another’s holyday for the purpose of cultural identification the subject is explored. Follow the links below to “Redeeming the Season.” For more holidays to consider see here

Recapturing the Spirit of Christmas at Adam Gonnerman’s Igneous Quill
Swords into Plowshares at Sonja Andrew’s Calacirian
Fanning the Flickering Flame of Advent at Paul Walker’s Out of the Cocoon
Lainie Petersen at Headspace
Eager Longing at Elizaphanian
The Battle Rages at Bryan Riley’s Charis Shalom
Secularizing Christmas at JohnSmulo.com
There’s Something About Mary at Hello Said Jenelle
Geocentric Versus Anthropocentric Holydays at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Celebrating Christmas in a Pluralistic Society at Erin Word’s Decompressing Faith
Redeeming the season — season of redemption by Steve Hayes
Remembering the Incarnation at Alan Knox’ The Assembling of the Church
A Biblical Response to a Secular Christmas by Glenn Ansley’s Bad Theology
Happy Life Day at The Agent B Files
What’s So Bad About Christmas? at Julie Clawson’s One Hand Clapping