I Hate My Voice

Here’s the thing: I hate my voice.

Sometimes at Christmas, we watch old home videos. There’s this one where I am six or seven years old, and I’m showing my sister Katie, who’s three or four, how to play piano. She’s just having a grand old time banging away on the keys, loving the drama and the noise. I smile sweetly and say, “No, no, Katie. That’s not the way. You put your fingers like this. Here is middle C.”

and this is how you hold a baby

 

The first time I saw this video as an adult, I cringed. And with good reason. Why was I trying to teach a three year old to play piano? Why was I such a stereotypical firstborn? Why was I such a damn goody-two-shoes? Why couldn’t I just dance to the chaos?

Recently I’ve started reading through my ten-year old journals. It was my first year out of college, and I was living in Southeast Asia, writing sometimes for myself and sometimes for my blog. Much of my writing has the same tone I had as a seven year old piano teacher: it’s sweetly didactic, and very sure of itself. I can’t stand it. 

 

From the distance of a decade, my naivete shines. The truisms I trumpeted (sweetly, (falsley) humbly) lacked depth or substance. They were sincere, yes, and usually true; but they were also awfully churchy and idealistic.Now, they just sound hokey, and ridiculous coming from someone my age, writing about things I really knew nothing about, railing against the materialism of the western church, coming up with bad metaphors about fireworks and stars and young nations and old nations.

 

Me, as writer and director of "A Cambodian Christmas Carol" at age 23

 

I don’t write much now, and in part that’s because I’m afraid of that voice coming out. I’m a teacher, after all; I often sound teacherly. Even if I tell stories, I can't get away from the lesson in them.

 

But who am I to speak? Who am I to say what’s right or wrong, with my youth and inexperience? Even if I’m right about what I say, isn’t it already obvious to everyone?

Won’t I be embarrassed, a decade from now, of anything I say with sincerity today?

“Not many of you should become teachers,” James warned. He was talking about Bible teachers. Sometimes I wish he had written that not many of us should be bloggers, or tweeters, or preachers with national platforms. (I really think not many of us should be teachers with national platforms.)

But sometimes I can’t tell if my silence is born more of humility (I don't want to be wrong, who am I to speak?), prudent caution (I don’t want to be wrong), perfectionism (I don’t want to be wrong), or fear (I don’t want to be wrong). Sometimes I want to add my voice to the cacophony, and sometimes I want to stay safe. Sometimes I think that of the making of many books (and blog posts), there is no end, so I’m just going to quietly fear God in my own little place.

 

When your heart burns within you, is that a time to speak, or a time to stay silent?

A question for you: How do you know when to speak, and when to stay silent?

a few things at the end of spring

Yesterday, I finished grading all the essays. The chickens are pecking at the remains of dandelions across the yard, and the grass needs to be mowed again every time I turn around.   Lilac branches spill out of a silver pitcher on the dining room table, and we cooked outside this week, sipping cold whiskey-gingers.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that summer is here.  The seniors graduated and we said goodbye to our Korean and Chinese friends - goodbye for the summer, to most of them, and goodbye indefinitely for a few favorites who are going back to finish university in Korea now.

Rosie and Owen dressed up for graduation, too.

 In just seventeen days we'll be moving into our new house. In the meantime, the chickens (whose story you can read at the Renew and Sustain blog) are free-ranging in the backyard, with a portion of the storage shed cordoned off as shelter for them.

We've been very into fairy princess ballerinas around here - but the kind who dig for worms, make mud pies, climb fences, and chase chickens. (I'm a sucker for old-fashioned fairies and bought this book for Rosie and me to share.)

We are journeying into Narnia, too - Rosie and I have read the first three books, and are currently in the middle of Prince Caspian. She can't follow the stories too well, but doesn't care at all, and refuses to let me switch to Betsy-Tacy.

At Christ and Pop Culture I've been reflecting on books and television and music and theology - you can click through if you want to read -

"The Office" Ends, but Love Never Fails  (my take on the "The Office" - which had a really surprisingly great run of episodes at the end!)
Denison Witmer- Songs to Grow Up To (a new album from one of my favorite songwriters - this is on repeat at my house)
A New Wave of Complementarianism (a round-up of other people's posts)
Where'd You Go, Bernadette (a review of a really fun novel - especially for anyone who has ever lived in Seattle)
The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Lesson in Community (a review of conservative columnist Rod Dreher's memoir)

Incidentally, Christ and Pop Culture has launched a new magazine for the iPad and iPhone - you can get a free trial subscription and check it out.  It's a well-designed, curated collection of perspectives on pop culture.


For a few months now, this essay's been bouncing around in my head about buying our first house and reading Alain de Botton's Architecture of Happiness.  Maybe now that it's summer I'll finally get to writing it. Or maybe I'll just go make some popsicles.

my (self-important) blogging manifesto

did i mention we spent thanksgiving in arkansas? we did.

So, here’s what I’ve decided about my blog: it’s personal, not professional (inasmuch as one can make that distinction in the digital age: what I mean is that I have no professional goals as a blogger, and that any professional goals I have as a writer are not, at the moment, directly connected to my blogging).  

my heart.

I’ll continue to share the journal of my life here: occasional photos, recipes, lists of books and movies and tv shows, and my (mostly unedited, spur of the moment) thoughts.  As my kids grow older, there will likely be less and less about them.  I can share my stories, but their stories should be their own.  

and christmas in georgia

I value the blog because it’s a place where I can write without having to conform to any editorial standard, without any assumed voice. It’s just me.  And I value the blog because it’s a place for connections - for my connections with my real-life friends and family, and with my online friends.  (Thank you.)

The blog is (thirdly) a place where I like to record some of my goals and the steps I take toward them, and to seek your help in that. I have one especial project to undertake in that regard, and I’ll write about it sometime next week.

A number of people have written eloquently at the start of this year about the whats and whys of blogging. Check out Andrew Sullivan, Megan at Sorta Crunchy, and perhaps especially David Sessions at Patrol:

To be a fresh and relevant writer means, I think, that you have to be something like a fresh and relevant person, one who reads slowly and widely, has idiosyncratic interests, goes new places, meets new people, and regularly changes their mind. Feeling my own perspective plundered and empty over the years has pushed me to appreciate the value of, if we use Nolan’s terms, “building up the principal.” I don’t know any universally applicable way to do this, especially if you work in the media. Graduate school has played that role for me: being forced to read difficult books I cared about but would never have worked through otherwise, pushed to make new connections and learn about worlds and historical events I barely knew existed. The more you can be forced past your current perspective, and not just by other bloggers and journalists, the better. The more you can participate in something besides consuming media and blogging, the better. The more you can really learn about something the better; good writing can’t survive all that long on nothing but voice and other people’s reporting.

I’m young, and not ready to be a prolific writer if it means plundering my own perspectives, leaving me emptied of ideas.  I want to be sure I’m busier “building up the principal” - reading challenging books, meeting new people, trying new things - than I am reading blogs and writing blog posts. I want to be a person of wide-ranging interests, one with the ability to follow a sustained, long-form argument, one with as many moments of quiet as moments of digital noise.

So there it is. My new (self-important, narcissistic) blogging manifesto. What do you think?

quiet

As we drove through Lexington today, two-thirds of the way through our 13 hour trip, snow swirled around the car.  My mild, gray&brown winter turned white and very cold.

I'm home now, snow still falling, and I feel myself quieting, a daffodil bulb tucked in for the long night, a bear in hibernation, thinking about what I will be.

Or more specifically, what I will be in 2013.

///

It's only been nine months or so since this space took a turn away from the personal {family photos, recipes, a journal of the life of a family} towards the more public {more thoughts, more sharing, more of you} - a change I processed here and here as it was happening.

I've loved the change, and through it I've met some people who truly inspire and encourage me. I've also grown addicted to response, feedback, and approval, though.  So as the new year approaches,  I want to quiet myself for a bit, think through my motives, intentions, and goals for this space.  As the new year approaches, I'm thinking through who I want to be as a writer, a mother, a wife, a teacher, a neighbor, and a friend, and whether those hopes require any change here, or any more purposeful direction.

Will you share your new year's resolutions with me, if you have them?

christmas (vol. 1)

Somehow, four years ago, Jack and I decided to record a Christmas album.

At the time, we were living in and managing a house for international students in Seattle, and I was very pregnant with Rosemary.  We had one upstairs bedroom to ourselves. So imagine, if you will, us in the grunge capital of the world, bedroom door locked, or sometimes hidden away in the basement, scratching words on paper and picking hushed guitar.  It's unpolished, it's unprofessional, it's full of cringeworthy moments, but this album is something I absolutely love (and my husband is a really, really good lyricist).  Working on this with him was the best kind of advent meditation 

Would you like to listen?  My favorites are track 3 (my protest song), track 5 (Jack's meditation on incarnation), and track 9 ( about the tradition of driving across country to get home for Christmas).

second languages

Today I have an essay at The Curator about how teaching English as a Second Language changed the way I speak the language of faith.  I hope you'll read it; it means a lot to me.

In the essay, I mostly talk about how my understanding of language and ownership changed while I was overseas.  Living overseas was the catalyst in pushing me toward ecumenicism, the understanding that each expression of faith weaves some unique color, some essential pattern,  in the tapestry of Christianity.  

Because of ecumenicism, I am forced to confess that my faith language is always under construction. I can never assume that I have the final say on what things mean.  

Take the word prayer, for example. Growing up, prayer was ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication.  It was individual, personal, disembodied, methodical and conversational.  It was good. 

But I also needed to learn about prayer from the Catholic church, where prayer was something communal and liturgical and sensual.  I needed to learn about prayer from the desert fathers and mothers, where it was constant, a way of life, and bound up with mundane tasks like weaving and gardening.  I needed charismatics to share their new languages with me, to help me become open to emotion and to the power of the Holy Spirit in my life. I needed to learn about meditation from Buddhists, and to learn from Muslims how posture and practice affect prayer.

And so my faith language shrinks and grows, by turns.  But read the essay, and let me know what you think.  

Have a jolly Thanksgiving!

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

why I don't want to be a "blogger"

I’ve been writing for a long time. You see, I was one of those girls who grew up idolizing Anne (and Emily!), Betsy, and Jo. They all wanted to be writers, and as for me, well, reading stories was my best escape. I couldn’t imagine anything better than being a writer, too.

And so a writer I was. I climbed into a mesquite tree, nailed an empty bandaid box to its limb (Betsy had used a cigar box, but I wasn’t sure what that was), and kept tiny notebooks inside, where I wrote stories about disobedient children who were struck by lightning or mauled by bears. My first novel was entitled, “The White Haired Twins and the Mysterious Light in the Woods”. In junior high and highschool I wrote down my prayers every single night, and I wrote a dreamy short story that won something somewhere.

In college, of course, poetry and I had a fling; but mostly I turned to creative nonfiction, the essay, and academics. I won some little awards, I was published in some Christian places. I moved to Asia at 22, and to keep in touch, I started a blog. In the early mornings, I also worked on my second book, a work of nonfiction critiquing syncretism in the American church (that American flag at the front of the sanctuary? Let’s start with that.)

In Asia, there was my spiritual tailspin, when God grew silent, and I got quieter too. Maybe I became a little less likely to think I had something to say that was worth saying, or that I was sure was true.

But when I came back to California, I kept blogging, at least enough to say, “Here’s what I’m reading, and listening to, and - oh yeah - the man I’m in love with.”

After we married, I created this blog, and it, like all my blogging, has been personal. I write as a personal record of my life for myself, primarily, and for my family, who are always too far away. I’m not trying to write for a public audience. It might be fair to say that any ambition for writing went down with my faith in that tailspin of 2004.

-----

A couple of years ago, my lovely sister and I were complaining about a certain someone who writes as a “voice of our generation,” a man whose opinions on pop culture and “hipster christianity” we often disagree with. Katie said, “Why can’t YOU be the voice of our generation?” and (though deeply touched) I thought, “May it never be!” I’m postmodern enough to know that I can’t speak for a whole generation. I wouldn't even want to, if I could.

There’s a loud cacophony of voices speaking for my generation on the internet right now. I tend to think there are too many, and I don’t want to add to the clamor. I want to make it my ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind my own business and to work with my hands. I want to exist in a physical world with bread dough sticking to my hands and dirt under my fingernails (though hopefully not at the same time), with my feet planted and roots spiraling down. I want to talk with the woman smoking on her front porch across the street and the artists down the block and the cashier at the Dollar$mart. I want to bring you a casserole when you have a baby, not just tweet some congratulations at your disembodied self.

Besides that, the relentless self-promotion that seems to be required of “bloggers” has always turned me off. Maybe I’m a part of this Millennial generation, but I can’t stomach the idea that being the entrepreneurial generation means “we’re always selling ourselves. We use social media to create a product — to create a brand — and the product is us. We treat ourselves like little businesses, something to be managed and promoted.” (If I was trying to create myself as a product, I would not have linked to my earlier blogs! This is my honest, messy, changing self, not a carefully polished product.)

And when people ask me about “my writing,” I tend to downplay it. “I’m more of a reader than a writer,” I say, honestly enough.

“I just wanted to be a writer because my favorite books were about writers when I was growing up.” I claim it was a childish ambition, like being a spy (another one of my childhood dreams).

“I’m really too young to know what I want to say, yet. Maybe I’ll have something to say when I’m older.”

But this spring I’ve done a little writing, and I feel something kicking inside of me. Maybe it's a love of recognition; but maybe it's a love of writing. I didn’t know how much I missed that feeling.

All my reservations and excuses still stand. But I think I'm going to be writing more.