why we stayed

(Previously: Do We Stay or Do We Go? and Do We Stay or Do We Stay?)

We made the decision to buy a house last summer (though it took us a year to actually buy).  What that really means, I suppose, is that we decided to stay in Upland at least long enough to justify buying a house - the staying in Upland part was the big decision.

We moved to Upland, IN from Seattle three years ago, and told ourselves, “We’ll probably just stay for three years, and then move on.”  At new faculty orientation, someone told us that ALL the incoming faculty say that...and then they end up staying forever.  I smiled nervously and excused myself to cry in the bathroom.

Here’s how we got to Upland in the first place: Jack was applying for jobs after finishing his MA at the University of Washington.  The TESOL market was saturated in Seattle, and the cost of living there was high, so we knew we’d probably have to leave the city that felt like home in so many ways. He was applying (or, more often, I was the one actually sending inquiries and filling out applications) everywhere, and by the end of April, he had two job offers: first, a fairly prestigious one-year contract with the State Department to teach in Laos; second, a ten-month contract to be the Curriculum Coordinator and Assistant Professor of ESL at Taylor University, the small midwestern Christian college that his parents and younger sister had attended.

We wanted to go to Laos. But we really didn’t want to have to job-hunt again after a year, and we also wanted to have a second child, which would be more complicated in Laos.  The job at Taylor would almost definitely extend beyond a year, maybe even becoming tenure-track. We took it.

Only a few weeks later Jack was offered jobs we would have accepted in a heartbeat - at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville (in the gorgeous Ozark mountains and only a few hours from my family) and at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa (halfway between Jack’s family and mine). But it was too late - we had just moved into our rental house in this “map dot/ stop sign on a blacktop” (as Tim McGraw would say). Upland, IN (pop. 3845) had a total area of 3.15 square miles, no stoplights, and (needless to say) no Thai food.  The main thing we noticed when we moved into town was the high number of overweight people on riding lawn mowers wearing bikinis.

For two people with family in the South, the midwest was not ideal.  For two people who had met in Southeast Asia and dated while living just outside LA, a small town white as homogenized milk was not ideal. For two people who loved food, music, and film, a town with no restaurants, little chance of live music, and no movie theater felt not only not ideal but downright ascetic. In Seattle we’d been within walking distance of Vietnamese, Mexican, Brazilian, and Thai restaurants, at least three historic movie theaters, and a number of venues for live performances; in Upland, we were within walking distance of cornfields.

The ESL program Jack began working with was small and fraught with problems.  He put his heart into it, working with diligence and a strong sense of loyalty (as he usually does).  He started going gray.  Three years later, he is the Program Director, and the university has brought in Charlie Brainerd (who spent many, many years in China with ELIC, the organization we went to Vietnam with) to help expand and oversee the program. When Jack began, the program had a handful of Korean students.  Next year, we’ll have Korean, Chinese, Congolese, and Saudi Arabian students enrolled.

We struggled to find a church and to figure out where we fit in this small community.  For six months we visited churches within a 40 minute driving distance, but most of them managed to offend us in one way or another.  We had finally decided to just bite the bullet and attend one small church not too far from our house, and on our third Sunday in a row there, someone preaching from Revelations said something like, “I really have no idea what Revelations is about - let’s leave that to the scholars,” and I died a little bit inside.  We got in the car, looked at each other, and said, “Let’s go to the Episcopal church.”

When we’d first visited the Episcopal church, there had been hardly any kids there, and the congregation didn’t sing any songs we had ever heard before. Now, six months later, there were more families in attendance (though we still didn’t know any of the songs they sang).  Deciding to attend Gethsemane may have been one of the biggest factors in our eventual house-buying decision, and I suppose that’s how it should be: rootedness in a church ought to be that integral to life.  At Gethsemane we found friends and community, and for people like Jack and me, who are introverted and somewhat slow to connect with people -- it would be hard to leave these people and to start over again.

So, three years later, we’ve invested in the university and grown rooted in a church community.  We’ve also started to embrace small town life.  I love that we can walk to library story book hour every Friday, and on the way bump into other friends who are walking there. I love that I can walk my kid to preschool, and that I already know half the kids in attendance.  I love the sense of community at the farm four miles down the road. I love that Labor Day is garage sale day, and that I know which houses to go to for clothes to outfit my daughter for the upcoming year. I love that so many people garden and hang their clothes out on the line to dry.

Don’t get me wrong - I haven’t bought into this American mythology about the purity of small towns or farmers.  It’s true that I still probably disagree with my neighbors about all kinds of political issues. You can certainly find narrow-mindedness and divisions among the people here.  

But when it came time to decide if we should stay or go, it didn’t seem right to leave. We have good jobs (thanks to the nearness of the university, the plethora of dependable babysitters, and the support of the university, it’s easy for me to teach one or two classes a semester), the cost of living is low, and we have friends and church.  If another job came calling, we might leave, but it didn’t seem right to go looking for one.  It seemed more right to practise the Benedictine way of stability, learning humility through the discipline of place and community.

We’d like to be closer to family, and we’d like to be adventuring across the wide world, and we’d like to have a Thai restaurant in the neighborhood.  But in the end it seemed right to us, for now, to make it our ambition to lead a little life, to mind our own business and to work with our hands.  In the end, it seemed right to stay, and to live (as Tim McGraw puts it) where the green grass grows. 

Pretty soon I’ll be cutting that green grass on a riding lawn mower, just working on my tan.

for my son

I am a feminist for the sake of my son.

Owen is not yet two years old, but so much of his personality is already clear.  He has a great sense of humor, and he loves music. Before I even start the car, he's asking for the music to be turned on, and he already has preferred CDs and preferred tracks on those CDs.  He'll cry if I don't skip past the songs he dislikes, and he sings along with his favorites.  

Owen is sensitive, much more emotional than my firstborn is, more likely to dissolve into tears at a disappointment or a perceived slight.  He's cuddly.  He likes to play in our toy kitchen, pretending to cook and clean. He has a little bear he calls "baby," and he sometimes pretends that baby is hurt and needs kisses and cuddles. Like my husband, my son is deeply compassionate, quick to notice others' pain and to bring comfort to them.

Our culture is harsh toward sensitive boys.  In her national bestseller Stiffed, feminist Susan Faludi reports on what happened to men and "manhood" in post WWII America, and it isn't pretty.  Betty Friedan in the sixties wrote about how media had pushed a "commericalized, ornamentalized" femininity that objectified women, boxing us into narrowly prescribed gender roles.  Faludi finds that the same thing has happened to men, arguing that now "men and women both feel pushed into roles that are about little more than displaying prettiness or prowess in the marketplace."  The end goal for men, in a world of "superathletes, action heroes, and Viagra studs -- is seen as a new horizon of amped-up virility, a technologically enhanced supermanhood."  I worry about these kinds of pressures dampening the sweet, strong compassion I see in my son.

I'd like to say that the church rejects such damaging culturally-constructed definitions of manhood, but that is often not the case.  In fact, sometimes church culture seems more attached to cultural constructions of manhood than pop culture is!  In the church we see Mark Driscoll mocking "effeminate" male worship leaders and praising cage fighters. In the church (indeed, from Owen Strachan, the head of the Council for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood), we hear that to tell a little boy that it's ok to play with a doll is an "unbiblical and socially disastrous teaching on sexuality and gender." Strachan goes on to say that "boys playing with dolls is foolish" and a sign of Satan's influence in our world.  Strachan can take my son's baby when he pries it from my cold, dead, mama-bear claws.

Feminism is about interrogating and dismantling the oppressive power structures that rule our world, structures that hurt men as well as women. It's about honoring and protecting the essential humanity of each individual, rather than ceding to media-driven role expectations -- roles created in large part by companies hoping to turn us into greater consumers.

I'm a feminist because I want my son to see all people as valuable human beings, created in God's image. I want him to reject culturally constructed ideas about what it means to be "masculine" or "feminine" and to embrace biblical truth about what it means to be human, male and female, created in the image of a loving God. So I'll teach him to love, respect, nurture, and protect; to dance, weep, subvert, and sing.  I'll teach him how to turn swords into plowshares, and I'll warn him that power and domination are not the ultimate ends of manhood.  I'll tell him that the Bible does have a few things to say about what it means to be a man; and that it has a lot more to say about what it means to be loved, transformed, and made holy. I'll tell him the Kingdom is coming, and that it's here.

I want the church to be about these same tasks, dismantling evil power structures and critiquing the consumer-image our culture tries to bind us into, and I pray we as a church learn to do that better.  

In the meantime, I'm a feminist for the sake of my son.

sufjan plays christmas songs, but my church doesn't

By the time the three-hour Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant on Ice finished last night, my desire for Christmas music had been more than sated. Sufjan, Rosie, and the band covered it all: holy hymns in hushed four-part harmony, spectacular costumed performances critiquing American culture and "christmas," and jolly sing-a-longs of tunes chosen by the "wheel! of! Christmas!" I wore my handmade "christmas unicorn" shirt and ate fish-n-chips beforehand and tried not to think about children being gunned down in kindgergarten classrooms, but when in encore Suf sang To Be Alone with You, and then John Wayne Gacy, Jr., what could I do?

But back to what I wanted to say, about Christmas music.  Did I tell you that last year, we didn't sing a single Christmas song at my church?  I didn't understand it, because for my whole church life, the first Sunday of Advent has been the first Sunday for Christmas carols, and sure, maybe we'd just start with "O Come, O Come Emmanuel," but each Sunday we'd add a few more, until Christmas Day and then All Christmas Music All the Time.

You probably already know this, but I didn't: that in Catholic and Episcopal church traditions, at least, there is a distinct difference between the music of Advent and the music of Christmas.  My episcopal church didn't play any Christmas music last year because it was playing the songs of Advent - I had just never heard them before, and didn't recognize them.

And, actually, recognizing this difference in music has helped me understand better how to celebrate the season of Advent.  I told you that in the past, I've always felt like observance of Advent meant achieving some deep meditative state contemplating the image of baby Jesus, and that it never worked for me.  Writing through this season of Advent, and listening to Advent music, is helping me understand that the joyful focus on baby Jesus is for Christmas, and that the focus of Advent is wholly different.

I like it, now, that my church doesn't play Christmas songs until Christmas day. I've long been infatuated with the idea of following the church calendar, but I think my infatuation is maturing into a deeper appreciation of its value, maybe especially as a way to disconnect our holy day from the materialistic, commercialized holiday season that reigns in America throughout December.  

Maybe next year I'll remember that the day after Thanksgiving isn't the day for "Joy to the World," just yet. Maybe I'll put up Advent decorations that weekend, but not Christmas decorations.  Maybe we'll celebrate St Nicholas and St Lucia, and wait to play Sufjan's Silver and Gold album until Christmas Day, and the twelve days of Christmas following. (There's a nice post along these lines at The Other Journal, if you want to click over and read it.)

Sufjan seemed utterly exhausted last night, really even before the show began. He admitted at one point that he hates Christmas.  Being the Christmas unicorn is exhausting, after all - chasing that mythical Christmas of your personal nostalgia, wearing a credit card on your wrist, attempting to be this thing which is pagan and magical and American and hysterical and Christian, all at once.  Maybe the long wait of Advent is part of the answer.

{PS: I have a little work-in-progress spotify list of Advent songs, calm and quiet for your Sunday rest. (If you're in a Reader/email, click through to see it.)}

A few things in October

1. This boy, 18 months old, curly tendrils round his ears, sweet tooth from his mama, talking all the time: this, sister, go out, cheese, shoes, cheers, and aha! there it is! He's obsessed with clothes and children's' vitamins and still loves to be held.

2. This girl, "drawing" letters everywhere she goes (most recently on the bathroom floor in colored pencil), newly interested in the game of Memory, Duplo creations, and complicated jigsaw puzzles. She says, " Let's watch a show on Parmesan," and means the Amazon Prime app, because

3. No TV. We canceled our tv service! Lest you think we've actually given up shows, never fear: Hulu, amazon, netflix and PBS.com supply all our "needs".

And actually, Martin Clunes has been meeting most of those needs as Kipper (best, least annoying kids' show ever.) and as Doc Martin (new season on Netflix now- highly recommend).

4. Christmas music. When the first grey frost strikes- and it has- I find the hot cocoa and the holiday tunes hard to resist. So I'm still mostly abstaining, except for a quick Rosie Thomas binge. But there is this: remember four years ago, when Jack and I wrote and recorded a Christmas album? No, you don't remember? (Well, only blood relatives were allowed to listen, I believe.) Get excited: volume two is underway. That's all I have to say, for now.

Except. The Surfjohn [sic] Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long: Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Pageant On Ice is coming to Indianapolis, so my Christmas season will be complete.

5. Call the Midwife. A new PBS drama about London's East End in the 1950s. Really, need I say more?

6. Third parties. . Would you ever consider voting for a third party candidate for President? You know I don't like to get political (except when I do, and I'll leave you to go sifting through the four year old archives for that). I never feel educated enough to really debate things well, but I'm thinking about voting for a third party candidate this year. I don't trust Romney, and I'm disheartened by the way Obama has continued Bush's moves to expand the power of the office of the president - not to mention his drone wars....frankly, I'm leaning Green. How about you?

(P.S. - Relevant magazine did a good series on Christians who vote different ways.

And, is your church participating in Election Day Communion?)

church beyond starbucks

{When I was 22, I started writing a book.  Today when I plugged in my old external hard drive to look for a file with some Greek translations, I found the folder with all the work I had done on the book.  I was gratified to find that re-reading it, after almost ten years, wasn't too embarrassing.  Do you want to read the first chapter? I know.... no one reads posts this long on the internet.  But, because it makes me happy to listen to my younger, more sincere and serious heart, here it is.)

Church Beyond Starbucks: Searching for the Soul of the American Church (OR – Recovering authentic love and radical holiness in the American church)


By Amy Lepine

Chapter One: Introduction

When I was thirteen, my best friend Bekah drifted away from the church. Despite the fact that our youth group brought in rock bands and professional skaters and half-pipes to be relevant, she remained unconvinced. “I feel like it’s so much emotional manipulation,” she told me. The church was just another group trying to control us, to buy us; it was just another social game to master.

When I was sixteen, Leigh and Jeremiah had had enough of the social game. Most adults would tell them they were in an adolescent phase and just needed to mature, and so the only older Christians they would even talk to about religion were the few who would take them seriously. In the church, they found no place to admit doubt. They were considered in need of salvation if they had doubts – not to mention tattoos or bare feet. They liked music and literature and film and philosophy, and the church wasn’t speaking those languages. Instead, the church had practically banned those languages.

When I was eighteen, my friends and I dropped out of the college class at church, where we felt looked down upon for not becoming more and more involved in the certain “approved” venues of growth and leadership. We were less spiritual because we played lacrosse or joined sororities rather than leading the college class Bible studies.

When I was twenty, I spoke with European and American college and highschool students in Taize, a Catholic monastic retreat center in France. They had not been shepherded in their faith by their churches; to them, Christianity seemed like hollow tradition, a business or a set of rules. But in the simplicity of the communal life at Taize, in the silence and the prayers, they sensed something genuine. They were desperately seeking, but, as one said, “The Christians I know hate each other – and every Buddhist monk I’ve met seems to genuinely care for the people around him.”

When I was twenty-one, my friend Shawna left the church. She was a three-year old Christian, and I had known her for almost all of those three years. Initially she was so excited with her newfound faith, and her life changed instantly – she effortlessly gave up her old habits, and she loved learning about Jesus. The more involved in the church she became, though, the more disillusioned she became. First, she dropped out of the college class, and worked with the youth group like I did. Then she quit working with the youth group, under the pretense of being too busy job-hunting with only three months left till graduation. And finally she quit coming to church all together. She would still come to lunch once a week for prayer with Caroline and me, but that was the extent of her involvement with Christians.

“At the beginning, everything looked so good,” she said. “The deeper I got though, I found that no one was willing to really be intimate with me. They wanted to keep their lives together and looking good and under control, and they didn’t have room for me in that. They just wanted me to climb the same ladder they were climbing…but there was nothing genuine underneath their happy smiles and controlled lives.”

This week (I’m now a whopping 22 years old), I celebrated Thanksgiving with a group of fellow English teachers in southeast Asia. During a car ride, our conversation turned to church. We discussed the forms our worship and community had taken in the different cities where we taught, and how that differed from our practices in the States. Becky’s parents had offered to send her sermon tapes weekly from their church, but she didn’t want them – “How applicable would that be to me here? –‘And remember, folks, share your Mercedes this week’ – right.”

She told me a story about her home church in the Chicago area. Last year, living in Chicago and working two jobs, she was regularly attending church as well as a weekly women’s Bible study. But she kept getting pressure from a woman in the Bible study to join a second study. “I didn’t have time for another study, and honestly, I didn’t need it. I was growing a lot,” Becky said, “but she was making me feel guilty for not being involved enough. She said she had time for a different Bible study every night of the week.”

Sally had a question along the same lines. “You know how books often recommend prayer journaling? I’ve really been trying to keep a prayer journal this year, but I just can’t do it. I’m not a journaling kind of person, and I keep failing at this. But I’ve read some books that say that if you don’t keep a prayer journal, you won’t see God work at all…they practically suggest that if you don’t keep a prayer journal, you might not be a Christian. I know that’s not true, but I’m feeling really guilty…”

And this year I also met M. – a twenty-year-old southeast Asian student, and a new Christian. Her faith is unhindered by legalism. She is open about her sin, her failures and her repentance. She’s not trying to be successful according to some “Christian” ladder of success. Her joy in the Lord in evident, and she’s trying hard to love those around her in a sacrificial way. Her friends can see the difference in her life.

Why don’t these things that characterize her spiritual life characterize the lives of so many church members I know in America? Why is Christianity so appealing and full of life for her, but so full of hypocrisy, legalistic ambition, and apathy for so many of my friends in the American church?

I’m twenty-two years old, and I love the church. I love the American church in all of its failures and inconsistencies, its off-key voices, its silly and grand traditions, its Sunday schools, its coffee and donuts, its youth retreats and acoustic guitars. But the church is losing my friends, and a huge chunk of my generation, for many reasons that boil down to one: praxis. Not one of my friends has left the church after doubting the propositional truth of the Bible. Not one has had a philosophical problem with the gospel. But friend after friend has turned away from the church because they don’t see people living out their faith. Put simply, they don’t see genuine love. They may find superficiality, legalism, hypocrisy, materialism, or commercialization, but they don’t see love.

In many cases, the church in America has yet to realize the fact that my postmodern generation is not going to be convinced by arguments against evolution, by historical proofs of the resurrection, or by the number of authentic ancient manuscripts that we have of the book of Isaiah. My postmodern friends want to hear the Story, and they want to see the Story coming true in specific lives and in communities living and loving authentically. They will believe in the Resurrection when they see lives characterized by spiritual Resurrection.

Rather than living out authentic love and radical holiness, the church has tried to reach my generation by being relevant. In some ways, it wasn’t a bad idea. It began when someone said, “If we could get a Starbucks-like café in our church, I bet we could really draw in the coffee shop crowd. We could have an event on Saturday nights, with live music and coffee, and maybe people who aren’t usually comfortable at church would come and learn to be comfortable at church. We could have the café open on Sunday mornings in between services too.” It was a good idea, and it met my friends where they were, putting the gospel into words that were familiar to them.

But at some point people began to get church and Starbucks confused. What, exactly, is the difference between a sermon and a decaf latte? What, exactly, is the difference between watching a talented band of musicians and singing praises to God? Does being conformed into the image of Christ mean wearing Abercrombie vintage t’s and a sterling silver cross ring? Does having a quiet time require owning a real leather journal?

Suddenly, what had been a creative way to reach a group of people was doing just the opposite - turning them off. My friends already had a Starbucks - they didn’t need another one. They didn’t need or want a church that conducted market research and surveys in order to offer a list of spiritual services and goods according to the felt needs of their target audience. They needed a church; they needed intimate relationships with set-apart people who love God. They needed a challenge to radical holiness. But all they found when they went to church was a watered down version of the culture they already had, another marketed product desperately claiming to be what will make you happy. This church was popular, and so some of them went, but it didn‘t mean much. And those who went didn’t usually stay long – after a while, the hypocrisy and superficiality became too much, and they left, still looking for something real.

The American church has often done a fabulous job of contextualizing - framing the gospel in meaningful and relevant terms and forms for American Christians. The problem is that now sometimes “Christianity” has become more associated with its contextualized trappings than with the actual gospel; Christianity has become a popular coffee shop, fitting too neatly into American life, rather than a message of authentic love that turns the world (and the believers themselves) upside down (Acts 17:6). American Christianity has pursued relevance at the expense of meaning; it has become a set of habits, values, and practices that aren’t necessarily essential to Biblical faith and that can obscure the gospel. Christianity has become comfortable; the church, seeking acceptance and marketability, has watered down the powerful gospel.

What I want to do in this book is ask what would happen if we took the “American” off of “American church”. If we stripped off the contextualized trappings of our faith, what would we have? Would we find the roots of an ancient and life-changing faith? Would we find something real for my generation to cling to? Drawing upon my experiences and those of my friends in the American church, and comparing and contrasting that with my experiences in the church in Europe and Asia, I want to look at the negative ways in which our church has become a culture - that is, ways in which the church has become a marketed product or an ingrained habit instead of a dynamic group of people working out their salvation with fear and trembling. And then I want to look at some positive ways we can recover authentic love and radical holiness in our spiritual communities.

My hope for this book is that my own reflections will spark conversations among my peers and among those who are discipling my generation. What should our church look like? What trappings need to be peeled away? There is nothing wrong with seeking to be culturally relevant, but we must guard against letting that become our most important goal. How can we build a church that is characterized by authentic, biblical love put into action? Ultimately, I want to see the church in America characterized by authentic love and radical holiness, not by a set of popular marketed catchphrases and products.

I have seen this kind of love and holiness, in both individuals and communities.

{...}



Though authentic love and radical holiness manifest themselves in every aspect of the life of the Body, in this book I will only look at a few aspects. Specifically, I will look at those aspects in which I see that the church has taken on America’s values instead of embracing counter-cultural biblical values. First, we’ll survey the landscape of the church in my generation, looking briefly at the history of evangelicalism in this century and where it has left us. Before delving into specific aspects of Body life, I’ll begin with a general look at syncretism (the blending of several religions) in the church, showing broadly how Christianity in America has blended sycretistically with American values.

Then, more specifically, we’ll study what I see as the key obstacles that need to be transformed in the American church in order for us to move toward authentic love and radical holiness: materialism, commercialism and commodification, superficial community, and the balance of truth and praxis. Finally, we’ll take a look at the first church in Acts in order to establish some principles to guide the church in the 21st century.

In this book, I may say some offensive things about the church. I may make some generalizations that aren’t true in every case. And I will certainly call the church to a high standard that I myself fail to reach. As I examine my church, I must necessarily examine myself as well, and often we both need serious adjustments. May God grant us wisdom to

i (want to want to) surrender all

I’m alone in my room, sitting in the center of the double bed, thinking about how I should be ready to give anything to God.


I’m about four years old, and I’m thinking about Abraham offering Isaac on the altar to God.

I feel compelled to offer God what is most precious to me, too, and so there are two options: brown bunny or strawberry girl. It’s hard to decide which I value more, or at least I pretend to myself that it is; in my heart I know strawberry girl is the one I love. I just can’t bear the thought of losing her. So I tell myself I love them pretty equally, and pick up brown bunny.

“Here, God, you can have it,” I say out loud, but nothing happens. I stand on the bed and lift both arms, raising brown bunny as high as I can toward the ceiling, feeling like a prophet from the pictures in my Bible. “Here, God, you can have it!” I say again.

He doesn’t zap brown bunny out of my hands, though, and I sit back on the bed, disappointed not in God, but in myself.

God knew that I hadn’t offered my best to him. That’s why he didn’t take it.

-------

I surrender all, I surrender all. All to thee, my precious savior, I surrender all.

These days, I barely sing those kinds of words. My goal in worship now is not so much to offer my best, most-beloved possessions to God as it is to try to be more honest with God.

If the words were, “I want to surrender all,” or, better, “I want to want to surrender all,” then I could sing them, but no one writes songs that way, or if they do, we don’t play them at church.

All I really pray, these days, is “Help us to know how much you love us,” because it’s only when I know that, when I believe that God saved Isaac and provided a ram in the thicket, that God saved us and provided his son in our place, it’s only if I really believe that he loves me that much, that I might be willing to trust him with my all, with my everything, with my strawberry girl and my brown bunny, both.

Easter

music and liturgy

The first music I loved was on tape. It was Rich Mullins, "Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth," and I was probably about twelve years old. I graduated to CD soon enough, and my little collection consisted mostly of the free discs dad brought home from the radio station - Amy Grant's "Heart in Motion" (and my signed picture), Steven Curtis Chapman's great adventure.

Then in high school I regressed back to tapes, because tapes were what played in my '88 camry. The Hootie and the Blowfish tape I made of the cd I found when I was babysitting at the Whitlock's house. The recordings Caedmon's Call made before they were signed to a label.

Technology changed again. We had napster, and I was sampling new things, mp3 files burned to disc: Rosie Thomas, Dar Williams, Ani Difranco, Toad the Wet Sprocket.

But through all those changes, my listening was always limited to the collection that I owned, and as I result I really treasured albums, and I listened to almost all of them until I knew all the words by heart. The music was important to me.

Then in my twenties there was isohunt, and peer to peer sharing, and then pandora, and then rdio and spotify, and now I can listen to (or even "own") almost anything I want, at any time, and in practically any place.

The abundant availability of music made it harder to value, enjoy, and be moved by. It wasn't worth as much. So it didn't mean as much. It was digital, taking up no space in my life at all. It was overconsumption of something that was as light as air.

This is why, three or four years ago, Jack and I decided to quit peer to peer sharing. We deleted all (ok, not all, but most) of our illegally gained mp3 files. It's also why we bought a record player and started actually purchasing music again, this time on vinyl.

Now, when we get new music, it means something. It's an investment, and it takes up space in our house, so we also invest our time listening to it and letting it grow space in our hearts.

Recently I've felt that listening to music on a record player is something like the liturgy and eucharist at our Episcopal church. Listening to a record is a very physical process. I don't type a name in a search box; I kneel and flip through record sleeves. I stand, and lift the lid, and place the needle just right. The music requires attention, and after a few songs, I move to turn the record over. The records, and the player, take up physical space in my life, a rooted kind of space. They require a physical response. They require attention. They are repeated. Place, roots, physical response, attention, repetition: these not only signal that what I'm doing means something, but they create meaning as well.

Meatless Monday: squash and lettuce and tomato

Tonight we had a southern squash casserole, Caesar salad, sliced toms, and focaccia bread.

And then we had cheesecake with eighteen or twenty episcopalians, which was great fun.

also

Rosie asked me to take a video of her this morning. (We were hanging out in the church foyer for part of the sermon.) She's wearing her new dress, and, in case you can't tell, singing "ho ho ho save me, i joy lord," her own version of a classic.

this week

Rosie got new giraffe mittens and a hat from Aunt Birdie

which was good, because it was a cold week.


This weekend has warmed up, and so we're still getting out and about.

with an apology

Every time we ask people here where they go to church, we get an answer with qualifications. That is, they say where, they explain why, and they almost apologize for their choice. They say, "It's good for what it is."

Nobody loves their church. At least nobody we've asked yet. Everybody has settled into a church that they don't really love! And I find that depressing.

I'm trying not to be a "consumer" when it comes to finding a church. But I really don't want to go to a church that I feel I have to apologize for.

another thought worth sharing

From our Easter Sunday bulletin:

“To see Christ as God and man is probably no more difficult today than it has been, even if today there seem to be more reasons to doubt. For you it may be a matter of not being able to accept what you call a suspension of the law of the flesh and the physical, but for my part I think that when I know what the laws of the flesh and physical reality really are, then I will know what God is. We know them as we see them, not as God sees them. For me it is the virgin birth, the Incarnation, the resurrection which are the true laws of the flesh and the physical. Death, decay, destruction are the suspension of these laws. I am always astonished at the emphasis the Church places on the body. It is not the soul she says that will rise but the body, glorified. I have always thought that purity was the most mysterious of the virtues, but it occurs to me that it would never have entered human consciousness if we were not to look forward to a resurrection of the body, which will be flesh and spirit united in peace, in the way they were in Christ. The resurrection of Christ seems the high point in the law of nature.”

Flannery O'Connor, Letters, 1955

Faint We Were

Faint were we and fears possessed us,
Bruised were we from many falls;
Hope was gone and shame distressed us,
But his love would pardon all.

We were lost when Jesus found us,
Found the sheep that went astray.
Raised us up, broke and bound us,
Taught our hearts to know his way.


Chorus:
We will sing, bathed in his riches;
We will sing of the love he spoke in blood.
We will sing, held by his promise;
We are carried by the faithfulness of our God.


Days of darkness still may meet us,
Sorrow’s path we will oft tread;
But his presence still is with us,
By his guiding hand we’re led.

He will keep us till the river
Rolls its waters at our feet:
Then he’ll bear us safely over,
There his beauty we will meet.

words Francis H. Rawley, 1886; chorus and music Nathan Partain, 2002

1855

Abide in me, O Lord, and I in Thee,
From this good hour, oh, leave me nevermore;
Then shall the discord cease, the wound be healed,
The lifelong bleeding of the soul be o’er.

Abide in me; o’ershadow by Thy love
Each half formed purpose and dark thought of sin;
Quench ere it rise each selfish, low desire,
And keep my soul as Thine, calm and divine.

As some rare perfume in a vase of clay,
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own,
So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul,
All Heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.

Abide in me; there have been moments blest
When I have heard Thy voice and felt Thy power;
Then evil lost its grasp; and passion, hushed,
Owned the divine enchantment of the hour.

These were but seasons beautiful and rare;
Abide in me, and they shall ever be;
Fulfill at once Thy precept and my prayer,
Come, and abide in me, and I in Thee.

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

winter thoughts

The prayer of confession at church this morning was modern yet convicting:

Father, we confess that we are satiated and bored;
Creation has bored us.
Work has bored us.
Family has bored us.
Friends have bored us.
Out homes bore us.
Television bores us.
Redemption has bored us.
Truth has bored us.
You have bored us.
No generation in history has ever had so much to entertain it.
We are jaded and cynical.

We think the world is our servant, so we are not thankful when things go well for us, and we are not patient when they do not.

We believe every desire should be satisfied, so we are not delighted when they are, and we are not humbled when they are not.

We laugh, but we do not know joy.
We are captivated, but are never really awed.
We celebrate, but we do not worship.
Have mercy on us, and forgive us.

Amaze us with grace - blood stained, incarnate, Messianic grace - the glory of God in Christ.

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Last week we saw Rosie Thomas at the Triple Door. Hands down the best music venue I've ever experienced, and Rosie's stand-up comedy was as stellar as her songs were.

Juno is a great movie for adults. Written and acted flawlessly, it portrays the most sentimental moments without becoming sentimental. The soundtrack is a bit too precious, but apart from that I have no complaints. We were left with plenty to discuss about its portray of teens, sex, men, women, commitment, life, abortion, and adulthood.

Tonight we accompanied our housemate Eriko to her boyfriend's church Christmas service. Her boyfriend, Dien, is Vietnamese, and tonight five Vietnamese churches from Seattle gathered together to celebrate Christmas and share the Christmas story with their friends and relatives. The whole experience was beautiful, and felt more truly Vietnamese than most of our summer activities in Hanoi felt!

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I'm reading "River Town" by Peter Hessler, a Princeton and Oxford grad who spent 1996-1997 teaching English in China with the PeaceCorps. It's a book that's been recommended to me since 2003, when I went to Vietnam, but in those days I was studiously avoiding "China" tales in favor of books like "Catfish and Mandala" - Vietnamese stories.

What has amazed me about the first few chapters of River Town is how exactly his accounts mirror my experience in Vietnam. Reading it is emotional - remembering the honor and humiliation of being a foreigner, the delights of introducing literature to students unfamiliar with it, the loneliness, the absolute cultural lostness. Check it out and just read chapters one and two, about school officials and banquets and student essays and shakespeare performances. All of it is absolutely true.

I'm reading it now, in part, because there's a chance we will be going to China this summer. A friend of ours here, Peng, a Fulbright Scholar from Wuhan, wants us to lead a team of 4-5 teachers in putting on a two week English Language and American Culture program for a highschool in Wuhan. We are investigating the options.