R is for Reverence

Tonight I’m watching a film called Winged Migration. I suppose it’s a documentary, though there’s very little narration. It essentially follows various species of birds along their migration paths in an effort to help us understand a bit better the survival struggle involved in this kind of journey. 

It’s really pretty amazing. For example, did you know that the cliff swallow sometimes flies up to 6,800 miles, one way?! Birds use the sun and stars to navigate, and often they’ll have to cross an ocean without stopping, unless they encounter a boat or someplace else to rest along the way. 

I can’t imagine doing anything but sitting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle for that kind of distance. As I sit here watching them flap continuously, I think about the energy it must take to travel that far, the dedication that has to be built into them in order for this to work. 

When was the last time you actually stopped to think about migration – or the miracle of flight, even? I’m sure I hadn’t since childhood. But tonight I’m in awe. 

 And have you ever seen the greater sage grouse in action? What a weird little creature. 

Few things inspire more reverence in me than nature. The beauty of the horizon, the interconnectedness of an ecosystem, the machinations of birds on migratory flight paths. 

I just nearly wrote that I wish I could live in this state of awe and reverence all the time, then dismissed the thought as silly. How could a person get anything done in that mindset? But, actually, why can’t we live in that state? It seems to me at least a worthy goal to deeply appreciate how cool is this very complex and lovely earth we find ourselves living on.  

Q is for QWERTY

My first introduction to the internet was sometime in the mid  ’90s via chat rooms (Do those even exist anymore?). I’d sit online for  hours at a time talking with strangers about who knows what.

I was a very slow typer. It wasn’t until college when I had instant messaging capabilities and constant internet that I was able to finally learn how to actually type, rather than using the old hunt and peck method. But, man, come college, a whole new world opened up to me. I had loads of music at my finger-tips (this was before Napster became officially illegal), and even a long distance boyfriend that, get this, I met via AIM.

If I were to write down everything I do on the internet these days, particularly the tasks I can no longer complete offline, I think I might be frightened by the length of the list. And yet, I love that I can carry the internet around in my pocket. It’s so easy to get from place to place when Google maps travels with you constantly.

Last week, on the long drives to and from South Bend for the holiday, my road trip buddy and I played hours worth of trivia, mad libs (mad limbs!), and brain teasers via my phone. We streamed music live from the internet. We double checked the maps to be sure we weren’t headed off course.

Today I searched for jobs, watched television, read the news, looked in on my friends, did research, and worked on school applications via the internet.

Last week I read a Washington Post about the “explosion” of apps released for young children recently. Scientists are concerned that relying so heavily upon a screen can hamper child development. I definitely understand these concerns, but the devil’s advocate in me wonders if the use of apps from such a young age might, rather, better wire children’s brains for a world in which computer screens are king. Maybe it’s of benefit to them to learn very early on. Or maybe not.

Either way, the internet is pretty amazing, y’all. It is not an overstatement to say it has changed the way the world works.

How’s that for a Cyber Monday post?

P is for Pad Thai

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

I am delighted to be spending mine in South Bend, Indiana (no, really!) with some good friends and our recently developed traditions. This morning, donuts and Black Friday ads, followed by Thanksgiving Parade watching.

I know, I know, way back on day H, I wrote about how holidays aren’t really that magical for me. Perhaps I wrote too soon. In fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about that post ever since I wrote it. I wonder now whether the absence of felt magic for me is due to the lack of children in my life. There’s no one to talk Santa with, for instance. Also, I don’t really have TV, so I don’t have a chance to get all caught up in the Burl Ives Christmas specials. In any case, today is Thanksgiving. I looked forward to it, and I’m enjoying it. Christmas will almost certainly be the same way. So, perhaps I wrote too soon.

Back to today, and my curious letter choice. This group of friends with whom I’ve spent the last four Thanksgivings has developed a tradition of cooking non-traditional foods for the holiday. This started in 2007 with a Chinese-themed meal. Our crab rangoon was AMAZING. Last year was Greek food, complete with homemade baklava. This year…Thai. We’re making pad thai, drunken noodles, and some kind of coconut cake, and on the road here, a friend and I made up #thairestaurants names on Twitter to keep ourselves entertained. My personal favorite was ThaiTanium.

It may not be turkey, but it’s always tasty, and we always have a good time. So today I’m thankful for an overwhelming number of great family and friends in my life. I am truly blessed.

O is for Ostertag

Greg Ostertag.

For the uninitiated, Greg Ostertag is a retired pro-basketball player. He played for the Utah Jazz, mostly, but to me he’ll always be a Kansas Jayhawk. Ostertag played for Kansas in the early ’90s, when I first developed an interest in college basketball. Since then, I’ve come to love so many Kansas players – Jacque Vaughn, Paul Pierce, Jeff Boschee, Drew Gooden, Kirk Hinrich.

I LOVE basketball season.

I love the squeaking of the players’ shoes on the floor, the fast pace of the game, the tension that builds in the crowd (or in my living room) when the score is close. I love the trash talking, wearing my KU gear, and “waving the wheat.” I love the March Madness brackets and staying up late to finish watching a double overtime game. I just plain love basketball.

And I love that I feel like I somehow have a relationship with these players, even though I’ve never met most of them. When the team wins, I say “we” won. I speak with great pride in the accomplishments of “my boys.” As though I have anything to do with whether the team wins or loses. I’ve never felt that way toward any other sport, or any other team.

It’s November. It’s basketball season.  Tonight KU destroyed UCLA on the court. I am elated.

N is for No Deal

“Stop talking about the recession. You’re scaring the kids.”

I read this on a billboard a couple of months ago. It was poignant enough to stick with me even though I saw it only once.

Today, this kid is a little bit scared.

I spent a little bit of time at Occupy DC today. Not enough time, but some. I picked up a copy of The Occupy Washington Post, listened to the “mic check,” wherein the protesters announced a march by repeating one another’s words loudly so the whole camp could hear, and wandered among the tents, reading sign after sign. Regardless of your feelings toward the movement, you’ve got to acknowledge that the pressure of the Great Recession has pushed many, many people towards desperate measures. And, recently, predictions show a greater than 50 percent chance that we’ll enter another recession next year.

Also today, the unsurprising, but deeply infuriating, announcement came that the “supercommittee” created to deal with the United States’ deficit problem has failed to reach a deal in time for its deadline, meaning that $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts will kick in. Not so super.

Perhaps it’s just that I grew up in relatively booming economic times. Perhaps it’s that I live in the national capital region, where there’s more talk about these things than elsewhere. Perhaps it’s that I’ve spent the last five years working on homelessness issues.

I’m a little bit scared of what happens next -
- when we slash budgets, sometimes removing support from people who’ll need assistance
- when we return to a recession when unemployment’s already at nine percent
- when we head into an election where candidates will be eager to impress us with their economic know-how (as I recall, that’s how the bank bailouts came about).

I saw way too many homeless people on the streets of one of the most powerful cities in the world today, and I wonder how many more I’ll see in a couple of years, when all of these things have come to pass. I pray we’ll come up with some solutions, and the will to implement them, quickly.

M is for Motivation

And I’m lacking it.

I think I’ve had too many days at home, mostly alone. I’ve got plans, things to do, but am really having a heck of a time accomplishing anything.

For example, I have a couple of articles I want to write, my grad school applications are due starting in two weeks, and I’ve got some Christmas gifts to make. But I am sooooo good at wasting time when the deadlines aren’t immediate.

I try playing tricks on myself. If I read for just an hour, setting a timer, then I will have had just enough break to get this next project done. If I just go to this coffeehouse instead of my living room table, then I’ll get more done. No dice.

I need a job, y’all. I need it because I need to be busier in order to get anything done, it seems. I am seriously lacking motivation. My cheerful readiness is rapidly turning to restlessness. Help!

L is for Long Distance

Anybody remember the 10-10-220 commercials? How about 10-10-321? You know, from back in the day when you had to pay separate charges for calls to someone who doesn’t live in the same town? Turns out these services still exist. It’s just that few people use them now that most everyone has a cell phone with nationwide minutes.

Because I’ve moved around so much in the last 10 years, I seem to have friends all over these United States. The world, even. To illustrate, I created one of those silly little friend maps on Facebook:

And that’s just the folks who have listed their locations.

This geographic diversity is glorious when I want to travel, and when I reflect on all the amazing things my friends are doing, I am sincerely blown away.

• One of my high school friends is a dancer on Broadway. He carried Neal Patrick Harris at the Tony Awards this year.
• Another high school friend went to Harvard Law and worked for Southern Poverty Law Center for nearly two years.
• A college friend is making things happen at Water.org in Kansas City, talking sh*t this week for World Toilet Day.
• My best friend has been taking some fab.u.lous photos lately. She already owns her own business.
• I’ve got church planting friends in Columbus, Ohio, life-changing campus ministers in Springfield, MO and Pittsburgh, PA, a brilliant pastor friend in Chicago, and a woman my age who runs a pretty stellar evening ministry at a D.C. church.
• I know oodles of people pursuing their Ph.Ds (or having already achieved that!) in various fields. They’ll all write books or do important research. I’ve got friends who’ve graduated from med school, and one that’s already a surgeon. I can’t even tell you how many lawyers I know, all over the place, and many of them are doing their part to try to end homelessness.
• Then there are my other non-profit friends, rocking it out at places like Make-A-Wish Foundation, Public Allies, the Alliance for American Education, and so many more.

The trouble with this kind of list is that I know way more cool people than I could possibly list for you here. I am one seriously blessed woman. And the best part of it all? They love me.

I don’t mean that they all think I’m cool. I mean that these people I’ve listed have all shown me love in various ways over the the past decade, some of them even before that. So, while I’d thought about writing “L is for Lonely” because I’ve been spending lots of time home alone this week, I’ve found myself in utter awe of the people I’ve been fortunate enough to get to know. And I’m really, really, really grateful for technologies like nationwide mobile phone coverage, the world wide web, and the miracle of modern aviation.

I know some really spectacular people, and even if you aren’t on the list above, you are one of them. Thank you for being you. And thank you for loving on me.

K is for Knowledge

I just finished watching the second episode of the BBC’s Sherlock. Oh, man. Oh, man oh man. I love me some Sherlock Holmes.

If you haven’t seen this modernized version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic stories, I advise you to haul it on over to Netflix, now, and make an evening of it. It is SO much better than the Robert Downey, Jr. flick that came out last year, and I’d loved that.

Y’all, I even have a t-shirt (thanks to the amazing Sarah Jenkins) that says “Sherlock is my Holmes Boy.”

Tonight, as I was watching this episode, I was struck by just how many things Holmes has to know about in order to solve his mysteries. Math, science, language, geography, and on and on. There’s an awful lot to understand about this world, and sometimes, to understand small things, we have to know a lot about a lot of things that are related.

This weekend, at the intensive cohort I wrote about a few days ago, I had the realization that we must seek to understand the world in order to understand the Bible, in order to understand the world. Augustine of Hippo wrote that in order to understand fully this sacred text, we must understand science, music, art, and more. There are signs and stories wrapped up in Biblical text that we’ll never “get” until we’ve pursued an understanding of these other things. And these signs and stories help convey an even bigger message about our world. I. Love. This. What a hugely important argument against anti-intellectualism in the church. What a tremendous argument for the pursuit of interdisciplinary scholarship.

Some people tend to fear that learning more about the world promotes an intellectualism that replaces faith. I just don’t think that’s true. Pursuit of knowledge for knowledge’s sake may have that effect, but pursuit of knowledge with humility, one that suggests that “I am not God, and there is more to know,”* is another thing entirely.

As a teenager, I loved a song lyric that said “When were we taught the lie that learning to think meant leaving our faith behind? Truth looks us in the eye, and watches us blink as we hope it passes by.”** I, for one, am grateful that faith and knowledge do not have to be incompatible. And that is “elementary, my dear Watson.”

*From one of my favorite quotes, on questions, in Rob Bell’s Velvet Elvis.
**From Grover Levy’s “World Gone Crazy.”

J is for Justice

“But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream.” Amos 5:24 (NIV)

In my master’s program, I often heard scholars refer to the creation of a more democratic society as the end goal of their scholarship. This idea appeals to me because it calls for a society in which even the most marginalized people have a voice to shape what’s going on around them. At least, in theory.

As nice as it sounds to call for a more democratic society, I think I want the end goal of my scholarship (and of my non-academic work) to be the creation of a more just society. But, wait a minute. What does that even mean?

Good question.

Justice is quite a loaded word. We have quite a lot of ideas about what is or isn’t just. Ask one person whether Affirmative Action is just, and you’ll hear an emphatic “yes!” Ask another, and you may inadvertently launch someone into a “reverse discrimination” diatribe.  Some people believe the death penalty is the ultimate justice. Others believe it to be anything but.

Then there’s this thing called social justice. Now, what does that mean? Often, it means that people who have blown it are given another chance. Some would say that’s not just.  It means that people who have grown up in nasty circumstances are given opportunities equal to their counterparts who may have struggled less. Some would say that’s not just.  Sometimes it means people have to give up something they think they’ve “earned.” Some would say that’s not just, either.

The more I roll around this idea of “justice” in my head, the more problematic it becomes. But also, the more beautiful it becomes.

I believe in a God for whom justice isn’t merely about payback, and in a world that’s being redeemed constantly, in small pockets, when people choose to live in ways that help one another out.

I have a particular, perhaps idealized, belief about what is just. But so does everyone else. That’s awfully tricky, isn’t it? Still somehow, there’s a good sized group of us longing for and working towards a “more just world.” And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I is for Intensive Cohort

A few months ago, I signed up for an “intensive cohort” that is reading through the texts of some of the early Christian church fathers. It meets in Pittsburgh, so I’m headed up there for the weekend.

Tonight I’ve been spending some time with Evagrios the Solitary. The cohort’s leader describes Evagrios as a “serious operator,” and it’s not hard to tell why. Evagrios was an ascetic who seems to have sought, above all else, stillness as a means to experience God. The relentlessness with which he pursued this is so impressive to me.

“Do you desire, then, to embrace this life of solitude, and to seek out the blessings of stillness?” he asked. “If so, abandon the cares of this world, and the principalities and powers that lie behind them; free yourself from attachment to material things, from domination by passions and desires, so that as a stranger to all this you may attain true stillness.”*

From there, Evagrious admonishes his readers to eat only bland foods, for nourishment alone, and to only wear clothing that is necessary, but not as adornment. He lives in a cell and advises others who seek stillness to never spend the night away from their own cells.

As one who is so greatly drawn to people and community, this life of solitude is mind-boggling. Particularly because I feel I experience God most fully in my conversations and interactions with other people, I don’t think the life of the ascetic is for me. Nevertheless, I admire Evagrios’s commitment to making his life so fully about absorbing God. If I had even a fraction of the discipline and commitment about which he writes, I wonder how much more of God, of this world, of people I would see and experience. I wonder how much better I could love.

*From “Outline Teaching on Asceticism and Stillness in the Solitary Life.”