Resonance

Posted on January 16, 2014 by admin

The first time I celebrated Communion I wrote down everything I was supposed to do. “Arms lifted.” “Arms down.” “Lift bread.” Like stage directions, so I wouldn’t forget or have to think and talk and celebrate a sacrament all at the same time. I went over it all with my colleague Alex to make sure nothing was left out.

Communion chalices and bread on rock outcropping

When it came time, I was not too nervous and managed to stay out of my head and focus on my script. Until I got to “Pour out your Holy Spirit…” The stage directions said to hold my hands over the bread and wine as I asked God to send the Holy Spirit to make these simple elements be Christ’s body and blood for us. As I looked down and saw my own hands hovering there, I thought, That’s it? Just my hands are enough? Alex doesn’t have to come do something, too?

It was startling and real in a way I hadn’t expected. And, of course, I told Alex about it later.

We worked together for four years, during which I finally stopped running from or ignoring my call to ordained ministry and agreed to go to Nineveh like God had been asking me for some time (Jonah). I remember talking with other people in the ordination process, wondering together whether being an associate pastor or a solo pastor was more desirable. I heard uncomfortable stories about working “for” senior pastors. They were hard to reconcile with my own experience of stumbling into a friendship and collegial relationship with someone who was a peer in age and a mentor in ministry.

While Alex and I were still serving together, I spent a year going through CPE at the hospital. I wrote one of my reflections about the grace and humanness Alex demonstrated while celebrating Communion. On one occasion, as he lifted the bread, he said, “Then Jesus took the cup.” He stopped himself, smiled, and continued, “Jesus took the bread.” A minute later, as he lifted the cup, he continued, “Then Jesus took the cup.” At the time, I was writing papers and going through ordination interviews and worried more than I should have. I remember being worried for him when he first misspoke. But his acceptance of the flub made it ok for everyone and it offered me another vision of how ministry and ministers could look.

There are very few maxims or standard operating procedures Alex imparted and I memorized, though it seems this is what many people mean when they describe a mentoring relationship. There’s a strange focus on “the takeaway.” What I took away was something constructed over time, in small moments and flubbed lines: an incarnate example of living out a call to ordained ministry with authenticity and grace.

That’s what I needed to make it real. I needed to see how it was done and how it felt, to ask questions – especially when they seemed embarrassing or stupid. I needed someone to say, like Alex did once, “It took me about 10 years to feel like this was really my life, and not a role or persona I was adopting.”

We all need people who are willing to be real and to let that real-ness be visible to others. This is the gift of a mentor and it can be carried further and lived out more fully than any maxim. It’s the gift of resonance between lives.

Resolve

Posted on January 1, 2014 by admin

“Life surprises us every day, and some days more than others. One day, hour, or even minute can change everything. The unexpected can throw us for a whirlwind adventure – physically and emotionally. Whether it’s winning the million dollar lottery, the untimely death of a loved one, a traveling adventure, or meeting ‘the one,’ crazy things happen, and we want to hear about yours.” So came the invitation from former student Maggie and her grandmother Jouette, as they embarked on their fall project to compile a collection of personal stories into a book called When IT Happens. This was Jouette’s longtime dream and Maggie helped pull it off. They published the collection last month and are donating proceeds to Sprouting Hope Community Garden. Here’s a picture of the proud editors and here’s my IT story, a version of which is included in the book.

* * *

Jouette and Maggie Graham with their book

I stood at the payphone outside the ranger station in Glacier National Park, calling a hotel room in Vancouver, hoping he hadn’t left yet. It was maybe eight in the morning and I’d awoken by at least five that day with the unshakeable certainty that this was it and I was willing to drive all day through Canada to get to him.

I was in the middle of a two-week road trip, camping and visiting national parks with my good friend Anna. When we made the plans months before she suggested we consider driving into Canada. I was against it. Limited time, limited money, had to make tough choices. Blah, blah. We went over this several times and I never budged.

During the trip she spent a few days with other friends in Glacier while I detoured through Yellowstone. I made the long, remote, signal-less, dusty drive in to rendezvous with Anna at Glacier’s Bowman Lake Campground the night before the early morning call – the six miles from the ranger station took half an hour on the bumpy gravel road.

This at the end of a day driving through Montana saying “Good God!” at the beauty around every bend, the truth settling in my bones with the miles: I was in love. Deep.

Woody and I had been in almost daily contact during the trip. In the serendipitous way of things, he was embarking on his own travel adventure, to Canada. We thought about trying to meet somewhere but plans were set and distances were long. We weren’t kids anymore (I was 39 and he was 51); we could wait. It was sensible to do our own trips and see each other again at home. We had decided. Done. Resolved. Blah blah.

But when I woke up in the tent that morning at Bowman Lake, I immediately sat upright with an elaborate plan fully hatched, apparently in the incubator all night while I slept. I couldn’t wait another week to see Woody. I didn’t give a hoot what we had decided. I could barely wait for my friends to wake up so I could run this plan past them: We were going to abort our previous plans and drive to Nelson, British Columbia (where Anna’s friends lived and she had wanted to visit all along), and which was roughly half way between Glacier and Vancouver. Woody was going to meet us there – he just didn’t know it yet.

Once the other campers woke up and heard my outrageous plan (and wondered if I was just a little crazy), they agreed and I left them packing at the campground and drove as fast as I could those bumpy slow six miles to the first and only phone I could get to back at the ranger station. I had no idea if he would be gone for the day already but I stood in the chilled early morning air, phone clenched to my ear, hopeful with my whole being that the rest of the day would take me closer and closer to the love of my life. And the rest of my life.

When he picked up, I said the most simple direct true thing I could: “I’ve lost all resolve.” I married him ten months later.

Trying to Tell You Something about My Life

Posted on December 27, 2013 by admin

You know those songs that perfectly capture an era or a relationship? The ones that take you back to that moment in a flash and you can feel who you were back then? guitar headstocks

For me, one of those tunes is the Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine. Amy, Emily, and this song have traveled with me through many years, stages, and places. But I every time I hear it I can remember singing I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free, while still yearning for that paper. For a certain group of my friends and countless others from my generation, that song is emblematic, galvanizing, community-making. Name this song to one of us and we’ll tell you about the first Indigo Girls concert or where we were when that album came out. With its iconic first line – I’m trying to tell you something about my life – the confession and the invitation begin…

[Click here for the rest of the story at the National Campus Ministry Association blog.]

Room in the Inn

Posted on December 22, 2013 by admin

I met a priest once in Hazard, Kentucky, who declared himself an “Adventist.” He was annoyed with the way Christmas overshadowed its season of preparation and he wanted to make a point. I understand where he was coming from. Advent is my favorite liturgical season of the year, all purple and quiet patience, longing and increasing light in the darkest days of the year.

Now this is how to graciously invite people in while extending ourselves without judgment. (redmondumc.org)

What I don’t understand are people who get angry about it. Hostile, even. As in, This is about the baby Jesus, damn it! Really? That’s the reason for the season?

I am not prone to exuberant sentimentality but if “the season” encourages more people to extend kindness, practice generosity, go out of their way to include the lonely and the lost, soften the teeniest bit at the calcified edges, stop and enjoy the moment – lights, tree, tastes, textures, rare gatherings of friends and family – then what, exactly, is the problem?

I don’t know about you, but I can always use more generosity, kindness, and compassion in my life. I’m not so rich in these that I can fritter them away or turn my back when they’re offered.

The windup – and the problem – comes with expecting TV news or entertainment to proclaim the gospel, rather than looking to your faith and your church for that. The problem with being so uptight about how everyone else is spoiling it is that no one wants to hear the real message if it will come from those same angry lips. The problem comes with expecting purity out there in the general culture without asking the same of yourself and your actual church.

But the biggest problem I see and the biggest disconnect with the story of Jesus is how un-Christlike these You’re not in the clubhouse and you’re getting it wrong messages are. And how much we still resemble those clueless disciples who also had trouble hearing what Jesus was saying. Remember when the disciples stumbled upon someone casting out demons in the name of Christ (Mark 9: 38-41; Luke 9: 49-50)? The tattle-tales went straight to Jesus and reported on this distressing news, including the fact that they tried to stop him “because he was not following us.” Jesus rebukes them and says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

I’m not saying buying a Christmas stocking and hanging lights makes you a Christian. I’m saying – because I hear Jesus saying it – it doesn’t make those of us in the church any less Christian when someone outside does this, and it’s not cause for anger and ostracizing. Jesus, those people are giving Christmas presents and they don’t even understand what Christmas is! The reply: Whoever is not against us is for us.

So, swing wide the gates and rejoice! Enjoy the lights and the fudge and the holiday parties and accept the extra kindness whenever and wherever it’s offered. The gift of the incarnation is so huge it overflows our limited comprehension, established practices, and boundary lines. Anyone who is encouraged to be more kind, just, loving, or generous because of “the season” does, indeed, get it. It’s not up to the church or any God police to proclaim how much. It’s up to those of us called Christian to recognize it when God shows up – especially in the unlikely and least expected places (manger) or people (Saul).

None of us can completely understand – no matter our reverence or years of Sunday school – the totality of God incarnate in Jesus Christ. That’s why we keep reading and telling the story and trying to live more faithfully into it. This much is clear: We are sharing in a gift we all receive, not a treasure just a few of us jealously guard. Why would we want to fence it in?

Tip of the Iceberg

Posted on December 10, 2013 by admin

Sometimes I wish we still wore mourning armbands. The kind Jimmy Stewart wears in It’s a Wonderful Life at the board meeting after his father dies. That simple black band around the upper arm signaled to everyone else something was up. Maybe you wouldn’t have known who had died when you saw a teacher at the school wearing one, but that signal would have prompted you to say, at least, “I’m sorry for your loss.” iceberg

One of the strangest sensations for a mourner is the sense that the rest of the world can somehow keep turning and bustling while time stands still for her. Absorbed by grief, routine questions like “Would you like room for cream in that?” can suddenly seem out of place and too normal to fit the terrain of her new world. I wonder if having the stranger, the barista, say “I’m sorry for your loss…Would you like room for cream?” would help. I wonder if that outward signal to others to make some room for mourning made those interactions less bizarre.

Death has come near several times this fall. Not to my innermost circle but close enough – too close for comfort. Three people cut down well before we expected. I learned about two of the deaths online. Distance and screens didn’t make them easier. I’ve found it difficult to mourn, to know how to express feelings and connections not readily apparent to those in my daily, physical community.

Meanwhile the calendar turns. Advent arrives. Trees and decorations go up. Special playlists serve as the seasonal soundtrack. We cook dishes reserved for this time of year. All those physical, sensual triggers that this is a different time now.

Like the mourning armband, reminding others – and the wearer herself – to make room for grief. This is a different time now.

We rely on rituals to cue our behavior and mindset. Sleep experts advise establishing and maintaining certain rituals, signals to your mind and body that it’s time to slow down and sleep. Dark, quiet, cool room. No screens for an hour before bed. Same time every night… Eventually your mind and body recognize the signals sent by the rituals so that brushing your teeth and turning off the screens starts you yawning. Similar to the way listening to Christmas music while baking helps you get in the spirit of things.

What did we lose when we lost the mourning armbands? Grief – an iceberg whose puny tip showed up as an armband for a few months – became even more hidden, less able to be shared. More private, less communal.

Put yourself back in the coffee shop, in a hurry, preoccupied by your own agenda. When the man in front of you fumbles for his wallet, appears spacey, takes too much time, and doesn’t know how to answer the cream question, how exasperated are you? What if that man were wearing a simple black armband? Would that give you the signal to go easy, make room, and let it be? I suspect it would. I imagine the odd relief the band would give its wearer, not having to explain anything out of the ordinary but also wearing a sign of his emotional and spiritual journey – literally – on his sleeve. Exposed and protected by the same signal.

Advent and the incarnation it heralds proclaim the bold, unnerving story: God lives here, too. It’s not “out there” or “later” or “in spite of” this world and the bodies we inhabit. The place of God’s revelation is in the midst of our lives and there is no place to hide but every place to be holy. Exposed and protected by the same sign.

Most of the year bodies are just bodies and time is just time. Death reminds us that bodies are the only way we know one another, the only medium we have for encounter. Advent proclaims time is not “just” anything. It’s holy. Permeated with the presence of God. All those gingerbread-Baby-It’s Cold-Outside-fir-scented-purple-candles-lessons-and-carols-once-a-year signals to wait a minute. Take it in, sense by sense, ritual by ritual. Can’t you see? Feel? Taste? Hear? Real, sensual, physical signals – just the tip of the iceberg – reminding us to make room for the One who came into time, into a human body, and filled it with holiness.

photo credit: Sunset Iceberg 2, CC / Free Cultural Works

Words for a Rainy Writer Friday

Posted on December 6, 2013 by admin

“I’m a teacher at Syracuse University, I write short stories, and that’s pretty much it.”

It’s a refreshing statement from writer George Saunders, made to sound simple because of its brevity, but wider and deeper than it appears at first. Teaching and writing are more than enough for a full, deep, wide, soul-satisfying life. Regardless of the standing-in-front-of-a-class-of-students aspect of teaching, neither of these occupations is showy. But they are both lifelong practices that will take you where you need to go – all you have to give over is time, consistent effort, and a willingness to be taken somewhere.

What would your deceptively simple sentence be? What’s the practice carrying you through life, deeper into life?

The whole video is charming but here’s another winner of a quote: “But actually, the deeper goal is to be more loving, more courageous, more accepting, more patient. But also less full of shit. So, in other words, to be able to really step up to the beauties of life and the horrors of it, without any kind of flinching…If some of that could get into your work, that would be a plus.”

Here it is at The New Yorker.

Advent: Embodiment and Cultivation

Posted on December 5, 2013 by admin

old hand plow

There is no way to be a spiritual person without your body. There is no enlightened height you can reach where having a body is no longer necessary for your life. This is the package we come in: dust and breath, body and spirit.

It’s the package Jesus came in, born with all the human vulnerability and fragility we experience (naked, poor, manger) while still, mysteriously, being God. Fully human, fully divine.

Advent is an invitation to consider your body. As we anticipate the feast of Christmas, God’s incarnation (embodiment) in Jesus Christ, how is God calling our attention to our own embodiment?

I’m talking with college students tonight about de-stressing. Tomorrow’s the last day of classes so you can imagine their stress level. Like the rest of us, they tend to think in terms of “when this is over.” When this semester is over, I will read that novel. When I graduate, I will learn to cook. When I have a real job, I will make time every day to pray. When I land that promotion, then I’ll have enough money. When my kids are older, then I’ll be able to exercise….

The obvious problem with this thinking is there is never a perfect time to do the hard, counter-cultural work of cultivating our lives. It’s far easier to let life happen to us, gathering us in a huge rolling snowball of stress and hurry and other people’s agendas. There is no perfect time, thus, every time is perfect for this life’s work.

The other problem with this thinking is we are always training ourselves. What we practice is how we live. A life spent out of control and waiting for perfection is just that. A life spent choosing – even in very small ways – to get out of the way of that huge snowball, is a life of slow, steady cultivation. Of body and spirit.

Advent has already gotten off to a rocky start for me but I am trying to remember and practice exactly these things. I’m looking forward to the wisdom of my students as we talk together tonight. I know tomorrow will be just as imperfect and lovely as today. So, in this season of waiting, I am not waiting to practice what I preach, even as I wait on the mystery of Christmas.

Here are a few tips I’m sharing with students tonight, ways to help bring body and spirit together more intentionally. Blessings as you cultivate an embodied spirituality.

Practice resting in God for 3 minutes a day. Sit in a comfortable position and breathe deep belly breaths. Try to focus your attention on physical sensations and the sound/feel/movement of your breath. Let that be enough prayer for these three minutes. Do not try to be “holy.” Just be present. Pay attention without judgment. Don’t “say” anything to God; just know it’s enough to sit still in God’s presence without controlling or narrating the encounter. No matter how rushed you are, I guarantee you always have 3 minutes. Choose to use them this way.

Set aside a time each day or each week to be completely offline. Do it for at least an hour or two, but a whole day is wonderful. You don’t have to pray and meditate that whole day/time but as you go about time offline, notice how and where you are. Being connected isn’t “bad” but it can be disorienting (taking you to other places and people than those where and with whom you actually are) and a huge time suck (“just one minute” online turns into an hour) and the frenetic, hyperlinked nature of it contributes to a racing, non-resting mind and spirit. Choose to check out and live a human pace for discreet periods each day or week. It will put things in perspective.

Before you eat a meal, before you even offer a prayer before your meal, take three deep breaths.Notice the feel of the cool air entering your nostrils and the warmer air leaving. Three deep, slow breaths.

Do the same thing right before you open your email in the morning or start the mountain of laundry. Three deep, slow breaths.

Drink water. As much as you can possibly stand.

Sleep. Make this one of the choices you exercise. This is another way of expressing your confidence and trust that God can keep the world spinning without your help for a few hours.

Sleep without your electronic devices on your pillow or nightstand. If your phone is also your alarm clock, set your phone to airplane mode, then set the alarm. Then turn it off and leave it alone until it wakes you up at the appointed time.

Move. If you are too tired or busy to do an actual workout, at least try a few stretches or walk around the block. Get out of your head and into the rest of you for a few minutes.

Eat. Try to make it nourishing food. Try enjoying it instead of wolfing it down. If you know you’ll be busy, take a few minutes to stock up on easy, healthy snacks you can grab in a hurry (rather than ordering late night pizza because you don’t have any groceries).

Prepare. Don’t just get up and start running until you drop – choose what makes your list for today and how you will go about it all. Yes, the choices might not be ideal, but you do still have choices…What really has to get done today? (Exam at 2pm, call Mom on her birthday) What can wait? (Reorganizing my shoe or spice collection, researching best post-graduation trips to Europe) Remember that you need to eat, drink, sleep, and spend at least 3 minutes resting in God today, too. Write down those things and the things that really have to get done today. Then take a look at the list: is it reasonable (can a non-bionic human being actually accomplish these things in the waking hours of a day)? If it is, great – that’s your guide for the day and for saying “no” to other things that try to worm their way into your list. If it is not reasonable, take a second look. Can anything be taken off the list? Is there a way to move anything to another day? If all of those are “no’s” then decide how much time and effort you will give to each of your list items in order to get them done – this will likely mean that you won’t be doing all of them at 100% but that’s OK. Choose for that to be ok for these items on this day.

Remember God loves you exactly as you are, with all of your unfinished business and half-assed efforts. God loves you no matter what happens on the exam or the relative cleanliness of your house or your Christmas shopping list. This hard-to-love, beautiful you who God loves is the one you are also called to love. You cannot “love your neighbor as yourself” if you don’t love yourself. Start now. If you are good enough for God to love, you are good enough. Trust that.

Thanksgiving in 272 Words

Posted on November 24, 2013 by admin

(An introduction and a sermon preached at the Wesley Foundation at UVA during today’s Thanksgiving celebration. Our scripture was Psalm 100.)

Lincoln Memorial statue

Four score and seventy years ago President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address. It’s one of the most remembered and quoted speeches. Clocking in at a concise 272 words, it’s also one of the shortest. Lincoln was half wrong when he said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” We remember his powerful words at least as well as we do the event of the battlefield at which he spoke.

For the 150^th anniversary of his monumental and brief speech, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation issued a challenge to write something to remember Lincoln or merely in the spirit of his Address, by writing it in 272 words. Internet pastor circles picked this up and took it as a challenge to write sermons the same length. This is why tonight I bring you the 272-word sermon…

Giving thanks is the first prayer most of us learn. I’m so glad these are my parents…I love going to the park, thank you for this place…God is great, God is good, Let us thank God for our food. Giving thanks is a gateway prayer for all others.

Some days we forget, too busy for thank you. Some days our hearts are too broken to recognize what’s worth our gratitude.

That first prayer, so easily arrived on our lips, takes more work as we age.

So we gather at this table each week and pray together The Great Thanksgiving, reminding ourselves of the taste and texture of God’s good gifts. With open outstretched hands, we receive. We come as thankful guests, nourished by what we cannot provide for ourselves.

This is the context for all other gifts, tables, feasts. Jesus gathered with friends, took bread and wine, gave thanks to God, and fed them. Do this in remembrance of me, he said.

At this table and the one on Thursday. But also at O-Hill and even when there is no table. What we do here helps us to recognize where, when, and how to do it other places.

Until our thanksgiving is closer to those spontaneous childhood prayers – joyful, immediate, unedited.

I hope your feast is tasty and your family offers prayers and words of thanks together this week. I hope you recognize at that table, an image of this one. And I hope our feasting here helps you in every day to practice forming the words on your lips and in the deepest part of your heart: Thanks be to God!

In Which I Dream of George Bernard Shaw’s Rotating Garden Shed Writing Studio

Posted on November 18, 2013 by admin

George Bernard Shaw's writing hut in the garden

Shaw’s writing hut, at Shaw’s Corner near Welwyn, England

In seminary I showed my dad a sermon I wrote and he said, “If I could, I would buy you a little house where you could just write.” Besides the huge “amen” that was to the sermon in question, it was also welcome affirmation from my engineer dad. I don’t know if every writer wants a little writing studio/shack/loft/house/garden shed but I do. I can’t remember a time before wanting it. So to hear my dad buy into that dreamy scenario and wish he could help make it happen was a blessing.

My version of the writing studio fantasy also involves “doing nothing else but writing.” Or at least it used to. I’ve had that notion for so long I don’t actually know what I’d do if it were suddenly possible. Recently I’ve been making the shift from dreaming about how it could be to working it out like it is now. I started this blog earlier in the year as a place for regular writing. I’ve been pushing myself to submit more pieces elsewhere. I spent a week at the Collegeville Institute and made another writing retreat with a pastor-writer friend.

None of this has brought fortune or fame. I purposely don’t spend much time on Google Analytics checking my blog traffic because I already know how to waste time that could be writing time. What it has brought is another inch of confidence and the pleasure of practice. I’m not waiting it out until conditions are “perfect.” I’m not pitting my “day job” (to which I am also called and which overlaps and interweaves with my writing) against my writing, real or fantasized.

With unlimited time and money, maybe I would write novels. Who knows? But in the time and space I have and can set aside, I’m writing something. I’m spending less time concocting the seductive fantasy and much more time in the unsexy but solid routine of putting words together. I take it back. That is actually kind of sexy. As Annie Dillard says, you have to give yourself over to “your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you” (“Living Like Weasels” in Teaching a Stone to Talk). That’s about as sexy as it gets. And spiritual.

When I have a designated writing studio it may have another wing for my pottery studio. It will have a cozy chair and a clean desk. There will be natural light. Maybe it will be on a giant Lazy Susan like George Bernard Shaw’s, so it can rotate with the sun throughout the day. (I still fantasize a little.)

But mostly it will be what it already is now: me writing regularly, without fanfare, taking pleasure in long-term obedience to the practice, wherever it takes me.

5 Old-fashioned Things Everyone Should Know How to Do

Posted on November 12, 2013 by admin

I read Nick Offerman’s Paddle Your Own Canoe last week and when he got to the chapter on maps I knew I needed to say something about that. That lengthy chapter goes on about the horrors of navigating by GPS and I agree with much of what he writes, though I’m not here to chastise you for liking your GPS. Or to chastise you at all. grand lake, colorado

But it got me to thinking about the markers of progress that aren’t always what they seem and the things we leave behind in a hurry and then wish we knew how to do. I work with students, fledgling adults still trying a lot of things on for size, so I see first-hand how narrow and confining a technology-will-solve-it world view can be and also how empowering it is for a 20-year-old to learn to bake a loaf of bread from scratch.

I can be just as much of a nostalgia-waxer as the next person but this isn’t about looking back longingly for a bygone era. This is about handling your life like a grown up.

Without further ado, I bring you 5 old-fashioned things everyone should know how to do:

Use a map. Paper, hard to fold – yes, that one. This is about context. If all you do is plug in an address to your GPS you have no context for assessing its directions. Even when it is 100% right, if you make a mistake you don’t have the greater context to see what you’ve done and how to fix it. I have been on many spring break trips with students to remote areas where cell phones and GPS gadgets don’t receive their lifeblood signals. Then what? Even if you prefer to use the GPS (and it works and its signal is strong), if you take the time to review your plans on an actual map so that you can see more than just the step you are on – that you are going east and the river should be on your right until that last turn – then when the river shows up on your left you will know something is amiss. You don’t have to love maps or frame them as art in your house or purchase a sextant or be able to find north by the moss on a tree. But learn how to see the bigger picture.
Follow a recipe. “I don’t cook” is not acceptable. If, after following this step, you choose not to cook because your personal chef would be out a job or you like spending all your money at restaurants, fine. But make one thing from scratch with a recipe. See that it is not magic and that if you can read you can do it. Know that if you had to or started wanting to, you could make meals for yourself and others. Know you are not helpless and you have seen at least one thing become something edible and nourishing, assembled from raw ingredients and the work of your hands. (Get started.)
Place a phone call to someone you do not know. Though some would argue this is becoming less necessary, there are still occasions when you will need voice-to-voice interaction and help from someone you have never met. You will not be able to text it or just call and hang up and wait for them to notice the missed call and return it. It’s likely you will need to do this at the least optimal time for learning an uncomfortable new skill, like after the death of a grandparent when you are trying to call the insurance company or the funeral home. Practice before you need it. Role play it with a friend and some tin cans connected by string. Whatever it takes.
Make a budget. I know it’s not sexy. I know you may not follow it to the last cent. But know how to do it. There is no mystery to this at all. You don’t have to be a “math person” (I’m not). This is a skill enhanced by computer software like Quicken or websites like Mint – you don’t even have to do the math yourself, but you do have to sit down and think about it and get it all in one place. You write down your sources of income (How much do you get paid? Any other side gigs or family inheritance income?). Then make a list of your routine expenses for each month (rent/mortgage, utilities, cell phone, groceries, gas, loans, retirement and savings) and more occasional expenses (insurance, property tax on your car, Christmas gifts, clothes). The total of the things you listed for income should match or be greater than the total of all expenses. If it’s not, you need to make more money or spend less. It’s simple but hard. Not knowing how to make a budget while wondering every month why you don’t have enough money to cover your bills is silly.
Make something – anything – with your hands. You can run full-on into a new artistic endeavor like caning your own chairs or throwing pots or painting with watercolor. Those are fine pursuits bringing pleasure and relief and the inspiration of creation to your life. But you can also create a centerpiece for your Thanksgiving table out of construction paper and fall leaves. Make a card for someone who’s been ill or grieving. We spend more and more of our life – like me typing this and you reading it – on screens with only our brains and fingertips doing the work of creating and receiving. Keep the rest of you alive with tangible projects that beautify your life and the lives of those you love. You don’t have to think of it as “art” if that makes you squirm. Think of it as the gift of your time and attention – a gift to you and to those who will share it. Watch what happens to you as you pour yourself into it. Appreciate how it’s still there when the power goes out.

Halloween. Boo.

Posted on October 30, 2013 by admin

smiling jack o lantern with lit candle

I considered doing something anti-community this week. Rather, I considered not doing something. I was seriously thinking about keeping the lights off and not buying any candy and stopping by a bar for a while on the way home tomorrow night. I was going to skip the whole trick-or-treating thing.

I have my reasons. Our house is up a steep hill and I have actually stood at the door on previous Halloween evenings while filling little buckets with candy and heard other children down at the bottom of the driveway say It’s not worth it when they see the climb. We also don’t want the temptation of the candy in the house, even for one night. I don’t believe in giving crappy candy so we get the good stuff – Reese’s, Snickers, York Peppermints, Twix – things I will eat when they are just sitting there and I have to keep expending all that energy to get up and walk to the door with the huge bowl of them. Also, I work on Thursday nights and won’t get home until it’s almost over, so why bother?

Aren’t they good reasons?

We don’t have small children and we don’t know many of those in our neighborhood. It would be so easy to just opt out. It’s not up to us. We’ve done our time on that circuit. Even though I’ll spend time Facebook-liking the many pictures of my friends’ kids in their costumes in faraway cities, who wants to keep interrupting the World Series or Parks and Recreation for all these unknown neighborhood kids? Some of the older ones seem to think they’re doing me a favor as they jut out their pillowcase-bags while checking their phones and avoiding eye contact.

That’s the temptation. It’s not the candy’s siren call. It’s the allure of proclaiming ourselves done, moved on, past all that. It’s the easy answer thinking: But I don’t even know them or It’s not like when we were kids. The thing is, it probably isn’t like it was when we were kids. I really did know many more of my neighbors then than I do now – I even knew the ones who were old and retired or who didn’t have kids. It was a different time. But I suspect this wasn’t different: Those families I knew then didn’t want to keep getting up to answer the door either. They had also worked long days. They were tired and didn’t really care if I was dressed as a Gypsy – again. But they stocked up on candy and turned the lights on and answered the door and were appropriately impressed with my scarves.

Community requires participation. Not knowing the neighbors is not an excuse to keep not knowing them, especially while lamenting the way it used to be. It’s a call to try harder – or just plain try. I may be far from my Goddaughter and the other cute children whose pictures I’ll peruse, but these are the kids right in front of me and they want some candy and attention. Maybe that’s all it will be but they deserve at least this modicum of engagement by the adults in their neighborhood.

The lights will be on at our house Thursday. The good candy will be in the bowl by the door and I may even holler down the hill to encourage the kids to make the trek up. It is, quite honestly, the least I can do. It’s better than nothing and it’s better than being the dark house with the old people who don’t like kids. Boo to that.

Study Abroad, “Before Sunrise,” and the Beauty of Snow Days

Posted on October 21, 2013 by admin

snowday flavor beer

It’s not even time to “fall back” but I’m already dreaming of our first snow day in Virginia. I revel in the permission a snow day grants. Permission to stop adhering to the schedule, to take a pass, to stay home and off the roads, to make cookies in the middle of the day and nap just because I feel like it and I can. I could give myself this kind of permission more often, but it’s harder when there’s nothing external forcing my hand. This is the beauty of a snow day, when permission to be takes precedence over the obligation to do.

These days I sometimes go online during a snow day, if we still have power. It’s fun to see what other people are doing with the unexpected time and space. But in some respects, staying offline (imposed or by choice) is better. It helps me stay present in the day itself, with however I am filling it or emptying it. I have to rely on my own resources.

Back when I did it, studying abroad was like this, too. It was 1989 and I had barely heard of a fax machine. I was only able to call my parents three or four times the whole semester. My main mode of communication with friends and family back home was through letters squeezed onto every inch of the blue, striped aerogram paper which folded up into its own envelope. I was homesick and spent copious amounts of time in coffee shops writing home while gazing out the window and sipping a café crème. I’m sure if we’d had email or cell phones or Facebook I would have checked in incessantly and in real time, as today’s study abroad students do. I often have trouble remembering these students are gone when they’re away for the semester, since I spend just as much time liking status updates from Zurich as I do from across the campus.

Before Sunrise came out six years after my semester in France and, like a band you stick with over the decades, I’ve been growing up with this story, told now over three movies and decades. When I re-watched Before Sunrise a few years back, I was struck by the certainty this movie couldn’t be made now. Both of the young and footloose characters would have cell phones now, through which they would stay tethered to conversations and posts and people time zones away, no matter what ancient city they were in. When the characters in that first movie meet on a train there’s a long, quiet shot of Ethan Hawke looking out the window at Europe blurring past. I remember doing that through France, Italy, Sweden, Ireland. The movement of the train lulling me deeper in thought. Fabulous plans for the future were hatched on the train and in journals when I was alone and out of touch in Europe. The whole adventure of that film began out of un-tethered solo travel and that slim, delicious bubble of time before sunrise. Today, the characters might be so immersed in updating their Twitter accounts they’d never meet – and, if they did somehow strike up a conversation, surely the cell phones would ring and interrupt that lovely lingering night in Vienna. What was out-of-time but deeply grounded in one place and another person would surely be dissolved, jerked back into splintered time and attention with the ring of a far-off call or the beep of a text.

I know today’s parents and students would never consider a semester abroad without the availability of constant contact. But some of what was hard and strange and scary and wonderful about the time I studied abroad was precisely how out of touch it felt. The connections were largely distant and time-lagged. Letters I wrote took time to make their way into the hands of my friends and family. My observations were considered and honed before they were shared – or they were forgotten. The night my train hit and killed someone in Sweden and I missed the next train and had to rely on the kindness of a Danish woman who helped me find a hotel in Copenhagen for the night – that night was experienced without Google Maps or Trip Advisor or Facebook. I had to be where I was and trust a stranger and try to get a good night’s sleep anyway.

A lot of my time in Europe I felt small and inexperienced. Sometimes I felt scared. And, though I relied on my parents (and asked them to wire money – more than once), I also spent a lot of time relying on my own resources. By the time I came home I felt changed.

If I’m honest, I wouldn’t recommend students plan study abroad trips without cell phones. But I do recommend taking technology breaks on purpose – here and abroad. There are times and places better absorbed without the rest of the world watching. Like an all-night stroll through Vienna, standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon, the birth of a baby, a walk through the woods, or a snow day. And when one’s not forthcoming, you can always declare one for yourself. You might even call it Sabbath.

Snow Day

Space to play, rest, create, feast.

Category Archives: Spiritual Journey