Category: Personal

Matter Anthology

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matter1matter1The Matter Anthology v.01 is now available for preorder from Shechem Press. Assembled from the presentations at last fall’s Matter Conference this is a collection of essays, poetry, and images that explore ideas of creative theology. From Peter Rollins’ foreword to the anthology –

“When theology falls into the hands of the poet, something profound takes place. We can find that through the theological dis-course we come into contact with ourselves with all the difficulties and possibilities that entails.

Through ideas like Creation, Fall, Salvation, Eucharist, Heaven, and Hell we come face to face with what it means to be human.

This collection of essays, images, and poetry represents an attempt to put theology back into the hands of the dreamers. To give it back again to those who would speak lies in order to reveal the deepest, most transformative truths.”

The theme of the conference was “Christian Relationships”: our relationship with God (Hebrews 12), our relationship with the church (Hebrews 13), and our relationship with the world (Romans 12). There were many fascinating presentations and I look forward to having those ideas collected in this anthology. My essay, “This Is My Body – Nourishment, Sustainability, and Sacrifice as Response to Eucharist” is included as well.

So if you are interested in exploring the intersection of theology and art I encourage you to order a copy and explore the world of creative theology.

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Convergence and Direction

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Life’s been crazy around here recently, so I am just now getting the chance to sit down and reflect on what went on at Convergence. It was great to go be a part of a gathering of Christian women leaders and hear the stories of how they have all committed their lives to serving God and others. There was a lot of pain there as many of the women still face hatred and oppression just for being a woman faithfully serving God, but there was also a lot of hope and encouragement. In some ways I felt a bit out of place there since at the moment I feel rather directionless in my life, but the environment was a good one to help me start processing some of those questions about direction.

What really stood out to me was the theme of the weekend as represented on the objects placed on each of our tables. Each table had an old object on it (light fixture, shoe, cigar box…) that had been re-purposed to grow plants. So each of these old unexpected objects had new life emerging out of it, and we were asked to meditate on the objects at our table and share what they were saying to us. The thing is, is that when I looked at the objects at my table, I didn’t see life there. There were plants there, but my first thought was that this life isn’t sustainable – these plants could not survive for very long. Flowers clinging to life amidst rocks placed in an old potato ricer or felt hat will soon wither and die. The water will drain out too quickly and there are no nutrients to feed the plant. They looked pretty, even quirky and appealing, but there is no way life could survive in these objects. While others shared about their call to cultivate life in unexpected places or even to follow a call to somewhere they never thought they would go (and in truth the objects at other tables looked far more sustainable), all I could think of was that these representations of life could never survive.

Then in our time of worship, we sang these words – “Why do I stay where it feels safe when you keep calling me to come out?” I realize that I do this all the time. I like to stay where it feels safe – or at least where it feels known and I assume it is safe – but these places don’t always help me grow. They look like pretty places to be planted, but in truth they are not environments that nurture life. The death might be slow, but the environment is hostile nonetheless.

But of course I stay. I feel like I am running if I leave. Or that I am selfish to consider what is healthy for me. Or that I just need to strengthen myself through adversity. Or that relationships are more important than fighting for what I need to survive. The environments might be outright abusive – telling me that as a woman my only worth lies in my service to my husband and kids, telling me that I should not be writing (and therefore teaching men), or telling me that by being intelligent and serving God I must hate God and the Bible and am in need of discipline. Other environments are more subtle – like those who constantly debate around me if as a woman I am created in God’s image or if I am in sin for following God’s call in my life. The look of surprise on someone’s face when I tell them I have served as a pastor or that I’m considering going to seminary. The assumption that I will take care of food and hospitality and not the content at an event. Or even being in a church where the voice of women is never heard no matter how theoretically supportive it is of women in ministry. And I struggle wondering if I am called to be a light and voice into these places or if they are slowly sapping the life out of me?

So Convergence really made me take a step back and ask these hard questions. Am I in a healthy place to cultivate life? Can I grow good things where I am at, or am I just struggling to survive? What direction should I be heading in order to be faithful to the gifts and calling God has given me? I know it’s not really safe to stay somewhere just because it is known if it is not a life-sustaining environment, so I am seeking direction (which is far easier said than done). It’s hard, but I am grateful for the push at Convergence to really work through these questions and start trying to get to a more healthy place.

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Resting

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It’s been a crazy few weeks – between birthday celebrations, Mike’s intensive class, and sick kids. I’ve been away from the conversation here for the most part. And now Mike and I are leaving for a week for our tenth anniversary trip – just us, no kids. So I’m taking a brief rest – time to be away and just be.

I’ll see y’all when I get back.

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Justice in Real Life

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I’m a mom.  I have diapers to change, groceries to buy, and lunches to make.  Between keeping up with the kids and paying the bills, most days I’m happy if I can squeeze in the luxurious “me moment” of a shower.  But as a follower of Christ I also know that I am called to love my neighbor as Jesus did – by proclaiming good news to the poor, freedom for prisoners, sight for the blind, and to set the oppressed free (as mentioned in Luke 4).  Seeking justice for others in these ways is at the heart of what it means to follow Christ.  It’s not just a call for some Christians; it’s for all of us – including us busy moms.

But it can be hard to figure out how I can be seeking justice for others in the midst of my chaotic life.  I read books by guys like Shane Claiborne and am inspired by how they have fully committed their lives to serving others.  Yet even as I am inspired by them, I know that I can’t move into a commune in the inner-city in order to devote my life to others.  It’s a great idea, just not very doable at this stage in life.  It’s frustrating that doing justice in this world often seems to fall into these all or nothing extremes.  Either one devotes every aspect of who they are to seeking justice or they opt out because they just can’t see how they can fit it into their lives.

But seeking justice doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing.  Many of the most serious justice issues in our world today are actually intimately connected to our everyday lives and therefore can be addressed through simple everyday actions as well.  Those diapers I change and those lunches I make are justice issues connecting me to people all over the world – my neighbors who Jesus has asked me to love.  Even in my busy life as a mom, I can be choosing to serve others through these daily actions, seeking justice even in the everyday.

It took me awhile (and a decent amount of research) to realize these things, and even longer to start to implement them into my life.  The whole process started for me with a deliberate choice to only buy fair trade coffee.  I had read the stories that coffee farmers around the world were literally being cheated of their wages for the coffee they grew.  They could no longer send their children to school, and were struggling to even put food on the table.  Many of these farmers were being forced off their land simply because the price they were being paid for their work no longer allowed them to even survive.  Fair trade companies though choose to respect the dignity of the coffee farmers.  By purchasing fair trade coffee I know that the farmers were paid a decent wage for their work, allowed to have a say in how the coffee is grown, and were not abused or threatened as they worked.  Sure, it costs me a little more to buy this coffee, but I’m fine paying the full cost of my coffee instead of cheating the farmers of their wages so I can have cheap coffee.  My morning cup of coffee is a justice issue.

From there I learned how the clothes I wear often are made by children in abusive sweatshops, that the cell phone I use has connections to guerilla squads that terrorize and rape women, that the chocolate I eat was grown by children trafficked into slavery, and that the energy I use has destroyed communities in Appalachia and Nigeria.  My daily life connects me to people around the world, and often my choices inadvertently harm others.  If I wanted to seek justice for them, I needed to start by (slowly) changing habits in my everyday life.  As with coffee, I could buy things that had been fairly produced, seeking alternatives to oppressive systems.  But I could also use my power as a consumer to send letters to companies and the government telling them that I care about how those who produce the goods I consume are treated.   My everyday life would continue, but I wanted to make sure that even in the small things I choose to pursue the paths of justice and love

My life is crazy as a mom, and it would have been easy to think that seeking justice is one of those things I’d get around to one of these days.  But seeing the connections in my everyday life to worldwide justice issues changed me.  I realized that I had no choice but to start seeking justice for others since I was already so intimately connected with the injustices they experience.  It just took figuring out the small everyday ways that I could integrate justice into my life to start that journey.

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Playing Children’s Games as Spiritual Practice

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If I could choose how I would like to spend the perfect evening, it would be hanging out with friends with good food and drinks playing board games.  I love strategy games like Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and RISK, but I also enjoy fun group games like Apples to Apples and Balderdash.  For what it’s worth, a good round of Texas Hold’Em works for me too.  I enjoy the interaction, the intellectual engagement, and the general hilarity than ensues when friends simply have fun together.

 

That said, I sometimes have a hard time playing children’s games.  There is something tediously mind-numbing about painstakingly making one’s way to Candy Mountain in Candy Land or getting caught in the endless up and down circle of Chutes and Ladders.  Building up my Cootie bug, filling my Hi Ho Cherry-o basket, making pairs in Dora Memory, or matching all the pictures on my Zingo card just doesn’t capture my attention.  But my four year old loves it all.

 

Granted it comes as no big surprise that the child of a couple of board game lovers would like playing them herself (and I admit, I was the same way at her age).  It’s just that, from the mommy side of things, playing those games for hours on end can get a little old.  Now, I love spending time with my daughter, but after the fourth or fifth round of Candy Land as I’m sprawled out on the playroom floor, I sometimes have a hard time keeping my eyes open.

 

But for my daughter, it never grows old.  Each time she builds a Cootie bug, she gets excited about getting to make an entirely new creation.  Each card she turns over in Candy Land holds the possibility of adventures – to whisk her away at any moment to exotic locales like Gum Drop Mountain or the Candy Cane Forest.  Each spin in Chutes and Ladders holds the risk of plummeting her downward and losing all she has worked for or the reward of immediate ascension.  In short, in her life ruled by the power and whims of others (mom and dad), these games hold wonder and mystery.  With every spin of the wheel she enters into a magical world of unpredictability and excitement (not to mention repeated trips to every child’s dream land – the Candy Mountain).  These games are full of blessings she can delight in.

 

So even as I struggle to keep my eyes open as we play yet another round of her favorite games, I realize that I could learn a lot from my four year old about being spiritually present.  When looked at through the right eyes, life is mysterious and full of adventure.  I get to participate in acts of creation each day as I cook entirely new meals.  I am whisked away to exotic locations when I simply stop and notice the beauty of the world around me.  I don’t need the Candy Cane forest when I can lie under the trees with my kids watching the leaves flutter and the clouds float by.

 

I am so used to the ordinary being, well, ordinary, I forget to find the wonder in it.  But seeing my daughter find adventure in what I found tedious reminds me to shift my perspective.  The world is unpredictable and exciting and full of all sorts of blessings I can delight in – as long as I allow myself to be present in it and allow it to be those things.

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Father’s Day Thoughts

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At a recent wedding I attended, one of the groomsmen toasted the bride saying that she was going to make the perfect wife because she had already demonstrated her ability to be her fiancé’s full time maid and wait on him and his friends hand and foot.  My husband later told me that he sincerely hoped that no one would say something like that about our daughter at her wedding.  As a pastor he knows that any marriage based on such unbalanced submission is on shaky ground.  But more importantly, as a father, he would be heartbroken to see our daughter’s exuberance, inquisitive nature, and passionate love for life reduced to a toast like that.

Granted, our daughter is four, so even the vague thought of a wedding is years away, but now is the time when who she is as a person gets shaped.  When the values we want to impart as her parents compete with all sorts of other messages telling her what little girls should be like.  Now, we have no problem with her playing at princesses and fairies or having a wardrobe of all pink.  The real dangers come with those who want to limit who she is simply because she’s a girl.  Messages that tell her that girls cook and clean in the background while the boys explore and achieve.  That tell her that her worth stems from being physically appealing to boys.  Or that tell her that her voice is offensive or unwanted by God.  And as much as we’d like to believe that such messages are a quaint thing of the past, we continually see them popping up in the most unlikely of places.  From Cinderella’s maxim that to be beautiful is to be good (and to be ugly is to be evil), to Snow White sitting around waiting for her prince to come, to Sunday school lessons that focus exclusively on the male heroes of the Bible, she encounters values that will restrict her sense of self.

While I as a mother can encourage her to pursue her dreams and to not listen to those messages, in today’s world fathers must also play a major role in challenging those limitations.  Daughters need not be told by daddy that they can be whoever they want to be and then witness daddy go watch TV while mommy cooks dinner and does the dishes.  Or overhear daddy tell others that they play soccer well “for a girl.”  Fathers, now more than ever, need to be aware of how they help shape the way girls view themselves as people and in relation to men.

My daughter, like many young girls, is a total daddy’s girl, and constantly seeks his approval and mimics his actions.  This special relationship provides fathers with the chance to encourage their daughters to develop into whole people.  In our home, we do our best to show our daughter that both mommy and daddy work, and cook, and clean, and change diapers, and take time to relax.  My husband plays dress up fairies as well as lightsaber duals with my daughter.  He doesn’t want to push her into the preconceived box of “this is the way girls are”, but encourages her to be herself and use her active imagination.  We are, of course, making many mistakes along the way, but I am grateful my husband is being the type of father my daughter needs in order to grow up not into a set of stereotyped expectations, but into a healthy and whole version of herself.

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The Real Me?

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’ve been having a bit of an identity crisis recently. It’s kinda silly really. Since I spend so much time of Facebook and the like while I am nursing Aidan, I’ve ended up doing a ton of those quiz things. Now, while knowing what color or 1980’s movie I am is deeply important in the grand scheme of things, there are a few of the quizzes there that are actually somewhat insightful. They ask good questions and get people to think about themselves. But my problem that I have noticed as I’ve taken them recently is that I don’t know which “me” to answer them as. I find myself debating if I should answer as the person I act like in “real life” or as who I am online.

Now before I get jumped on for confusing the virtual world with reality or something, I have to admit that I feel like the person I am online is more “me” than what I act like around actual physical people. Yes, I’m weird and probably have serious issues or something, but that’s the way it is.  I can think of a number of reasons for why it is the case. In my day to day interactions with people, I don’t often (ever?) have the chance to be myself. I generally am trying to hide who I really am, or at least what I think about things, from family and acquaintances because I hate conflict. I’d rather have a semblance of a relationship than not pretend to be who they want me to be. Mike knows the difference, and gets to listen to my rants about what I wish I would have said at say, MOPS, but I let the facade continue.

Or I am not me because, I am simply trying to divide my attention between having a conversation with people and paying attention to my two very demanding kids. Since I am with the kids some 95% of the time, I feel like the “me” I most often portray to the world is the brainless, tired, too-stressed-to-form-complete-sentences mom. I think the other students at Mike’s seminary must think I am either completely stupid or utterly anti-social since I generally have to ignore them all to chase after the kids when I’m down there. It’s kinda hard to be a self-assured empowered women when you are covered in spit-up and have the “mommy, mommy, mommy” broken record playing at all times. I haven’t had time to make any friends here in Austin who I can just be myself with, so all of my public interactions are me being these strange parodies of myself and hating it.

So it is in the online world that I feel like I can be myself. On one hand, it’s nice to have that outlet.  I think I’d go insane otherwise.  But I have to ask myself if I don’t have the opportunity to be myself in “real life” is that really me? Hence my strange Facebook quiz dilemma. It’s who I think I am, it’s who I want to be, but it’s not what I act on a daily basis.

So what do you think (besides that I’m a messed up freak…)? Can your online persona be the “real you”? Or is that not real if it doesn’t surface in actual human interactions? Is this just me, or do others of you experience the same issue?

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At Year’s End

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So I’m spending the week at my parent’s place in Taos, NM. It’s gorgeous here, but kinda crazy keeping up with the kids in a new environment (not to mention the high altitude). So blogging is going to be slow.

But as the year ends, I thought I’d do one of those year end lists that seem so popular. I have a post up at the Emergent Village blog where I look forward to 2009, but here I want to look back at the books I read this past year. With the arrival of Aidan and the move to Texas, I didn’t read anywhere near as much as I normally do. And there’s a few books on this list that I read something like four times :). Of this list the ones I would most recommend would be Caputo’s What would Jesus Deconstruct and The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle.

So here’s my year in books 2008 –

Theology/Church
 The Blue Parakeet by Scot McKnight
 The Great Emergence by Phyllis Tickle
 The Fidelity of Betrayal by Peter Rollins
 Finding Our Way Again by Brian McLaren
 Jesus: Made in America by Stephen J. Nichols
 My Beautiful Idol by Peter Gall
 The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs
 Speaking of Faith by Krista Tippett
 Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright
 The New Christians by Tony Jones
 Saving Women from the Church by Susan McLeod-Harrison

 Looking for God by Nancy Ortberg
 What Would Jesus Deconstruct? by John Caputo
Rising from the Ashes by Becky Garrison

Justice
 Serve God, Save the Planet by Matthew Sleeth
 Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte
 A Cafecito Story by Julia Alvarez
Slow Food Nation by Carlo Petrini

Parenting
 Becoming the Parent You Want To Be by Laura Davis and Janis Keyser

History/Culture
 Porn Nation by Michael Leahy
 Books on Fire by Lucien X. Polastron

Fantasy/Mystery
 Chalice by Robin McKinley
 The Fire by Katherine Neville

 Twilight by Stephanie Meyer
 New Moon by Stephanie Meyer
 Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer
 Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer
 Kushiel’s Mercy by Jacqueline Carey
 Sepulchre by Kate Mosse
 Tangled Webs by Anne Bishop
 Dragonhaven by Robin McKinley
 Reader and Raelynx by Sharon Shinn

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Farmer’s Markets and Family

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I’m a busy mom.  And with two kids constantly clinging to me, getting out to do anything is difficult.  Grocery shopping is the worst.  Managing a high-energy three year old and an infant who insists on being carried all the time while pushing a shopping cart usually just isn’t worth the effort.  Add to that the dirty looks I get from strangers if my children make any noise whatsoever, and the choice is clear.  Children and grocery stores are a bad combination.   I’ll go to the store at midnight as long as I can go without the kids.  Finding food for the family at the supermarket is not a family affair.

 

So that is partly why I find trips to the local farmer’s market so fascinating.  Amidst booth after booth of fresh from the farm produce, artisan cheeses, and grass fed meats is an experience the whole family can participate in.  At one end of the market there are the puppies from the local animal shelter, eager for children to play with them (and convince mom and dad to take them home).  At the other end a live band plays and daring couples and uninhibited children take to the dance floor.  In between one can make a meal out of piping hot empanadas, gourmet pizzas, and fairly traded coffee.  Children are present and welcomed in this setting.  The market isn’t just a place to shop for food; it is a gathering of a community.  Relaxed and fun, it’s an experience not just an ordeal.

 

Naturally, it would be the farmer’s market where something as organic as family connections can thrive.  Although I do shop at supermarkets, there is little by way of connection there.  Packaged and processed food made to look perfect and convenient represents an economic transaction generally devoid of personality.  One doesn’t know where the food is coming from, how the earth was treated to obtain it, or why we should celebrate it at all.  But at the farmer’s market I can hear exactly how a jar of peach preserves was made and share a taste of it with my daughter.  I can be with others who care deeply for this earth and want to demonstrate that through the food they buy.  And I can model for my children that buying produce and meat produced in sustainable and ethical ways is part of what it means to me to love God – by taking care of his creation.

 

So as often as I can on Saturday mornings, I want to take the kids with me to the farmer’s market.  They are welcome there in a place where life is respected and cherished.  They are the future and I can encourage them towards environmental responsibility by joining them in celebrating the bounty of the earth today.

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