soul - ache - Filed under 'kingdom'

on eyes that see and ears that hear

For some strange reason yesterday morning I woke up thinking what it would be like to be a stand-up comedian. I have no intentions of doing such a thing. though I love to laugh, my efforts at making other people laugh are hit-and-miss enough that I would never presume to feed myself off of it. But for the morning at least, I was thinking about common material--how comics choose their angle/style/shtick and what they then choose to run with. I noticed a lot of comics seem to try various ideas and themes--traffic, weather, current events--to try and identify their audience. Then they normally move to the spouse/kid/family jokes. I laughed at those jokes some before, but I'm starting to understand them much more clearly now.

Fatherhood, it turns out, is a beautiful, heartwarming, frustrating, arduous task. There's many things we've learned in the four months since becoming "Insta-parent" to a 3-now-4 year old. He is in almost constant motion--how much of that is personality and how much is ADHD we're still trying to figure out. Still, on his worst days--even defiantly saying "NO!" when Mommy or Daddy tell him to do something--he's so darn cute it's hard to stay mad at him.

We're trying to be consistent and we've seen that payoff in some real ways. I think the most daunting thing isn't the energy level or the pushing of boundaries--it's the awareness of this other living, breathing, sponge-like being.

He catches everything we say and do--most often the things we wish he wouldn't. Jokingly saying "shoot-dang" as Jen and I did pre-4 year old was quickly identified as something that made Mommy and Daddy laugh. Dad trying to switch it up with a simple "Aww man" when something breaks/falls apart/goes crazy didn't do the trick--it's now a complete sentence "aww man! shoot-dang!"

But the hearing isn't all of it. I'm starting to hear myself. Everyone talks about hearing their parents voice int heir own once they have a child, though I can honestly say I haven't noticed much of that yet. What I do hear myself saying are the sentences that outside of parenting a four-year-old have simply no place in the English language, or any other one for that matter."

"You know you can't sit on the furniture without clothes on!"

"Take the bucket off your head!"

"The ottoman is not to be used as a slide."

"Stop forward-rolling around the room!"

"Shelby eats dog food, not oatmeal bars."

"Don't eat your soup with your hands--use your spoon!"

Just as bad as the things I hear myself saying are the time when I realized he has seen and heard the very things we've seen and heard.

So when you're driving home on a Sunday afternoon on a particularly desolate stretch of road and a squirrel runs out in front of you, you slow down to try and keep from hitting it. But when another car comes speeding from the other direction, the squirrel doesn't have much of a choice.

You hear the thud of the squirrel.

You look back to see it on it's back, legs extended, dead.

You hold your breath for a second to see if the child has noticed this.

You exhale when you think the moment has passed.

You turn to your spouse, say "Awww, sad." then continue with your conversation.

Then a voice comes from the back seat.

"Daddy? Daddy?"

"Yeah buddy?"

"I won...Daddy? Daddy hit squirrel?"

"What buddy?"

"Daddy hit squirrel? Daddy hit squirrel with car?"

Mommy starts laughing, Daddy fesses up.

"Yeah, Daddy hit the squirrel with the car."

"Daddy? That squirrel, on...on the road, that squirrel dead because of our car?"

"Yeah buddy...it's dead because of our car."

"Daddy? I wanna do that again!"

"No buddy, we're not doing that again."

It was sad and silly all at the same time, but it was a reminder that everything we do is being watched. Which means we're going to get it right sometimes and wrong sometimes. The terrifying thought is that it will become all he knows and sees.

We're still working through what that means.

I'm surprised at some of the things I hear myself saying, but I'm also glad I get to say them.

"We don't hit people. Ever. Even if they hit you."

"We take turns and we share. Even the things we have we have because someone Else gave them to us."

"We don't run the water. We don't waste the paper. God gave us those things."

"Thank you for giving your friend that toy because you had enough to play with."

It's not perfect, but there's nothing in the world like it. We get to raise a kid--a great kid, with all the hope and energy to keep the whole planet spinning. And we get to tell him stories about a Kingdom where people are treated fairly, just because they're made in God's image. Where wars and conflict don't happen. Where everyone has enough to eat and drink and people who are hurting are taken care of.

We get to tell him that this world's not like that, but he can do something about that.

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Filed under // fatherhood kingdom sanctity of squirrel life

Posted June 16, 2009

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on economics and faith

I am not an economist, nor am I the son of an economist. I am an outsider to the financial world who hears terms like "bail-out", "Ponzi scheme" and 'Keynesian economics" and runs to the internet like fifth-graders looking at the dioramas at a Natural History museum. I also confess a general disdain for operations that are inherently mathematical in nature. Algebraic functions work fine, but you go into calculus or geometrical charts and I'm screwed.

Inasmuch as I don't understand these things, I find my greatest intolerance is ignorance--first in others and secondarily (as I am made aware of it) within myself. So I am trying to make sense of some of this, and I'm fumbling through it. More specifically, I'm trying to figure out how faith plays into the whole thing--to say Jesus was a socialist or capitalist is to, in a very real sense, miss the point and risk a false dilemma. Jesus was, and is, infinitely more than either of these things, but it is much more difficult to make direct application to our current crisis.

Last Friday NPR ran a piece jointly produced with This American Life that introduced me to the ribald figure of John Maynard Keynes--a British economist from the earlier 20th century. It turns out that Keynes disliked Americans intensely and speculated that the illegitimate child of the British Empire wasn't smart enough to implement his economic system. Much could be said about Keynesianism and what I learned from that radio segment, but for all intents and purposes, the principle is relatively simple:

The simplest way to stimulate the economy is through investing government funds into the economy directly. This way jobs are created, infrastructure is strengthened/created and the financial system is stabilized.

In the 1980's most economists rejected Keynes and saw interest rates as a stabilizing force in the economy. The competing ideal was that consumer spending was the sign of economic confidence. As confidence went down, the interest rate could be rolled back by the Federal Reserve and people would/could borrow more with less interest--which works, at least until the rate is absolute 0--which it hit in mid-December of last year.

Keynes is suddenly once again en vogue as evidenced in the President's speech at the Democratic National Convention last August:

...give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. In Washington, they call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is - you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck. No health care? The market will fix it. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps - even if you don't have boots. You're on your own.

Many have (and will) dismiss the now-President-then-candidate Obama's words as pablum or political soapboxing to rally the Democratic base--but what if we dispelled our cynicism for a minute?

This morning one of the featured headlines on CNN.com read "What GOP Leaders Deem Wasteful in Senate Stimulus Bill:". I clicked the link with what I thought were pretty good expectations of what I would find--cuts to education, technology, infrastructure repair, new energy and health-care initiatives. I was shocked at the extent of the proposed "revisions." Lest I be accused of piece-mealing it, here's the list in it's entirety:

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.
• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.
• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).
• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.
• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.
• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.
• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.
• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.
• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.
• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."
• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.
• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.
• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.
• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.
• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.
• $500 million for state and local fire stations.
• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.
• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.
• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.
• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.
• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.
• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.
• $850 million for Amtrak.
• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.
• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.
• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

It's tempting to go line by line and discuss how legitimate or heinous each of these cuts are (even more so to think that many of these are actually viewed by someone as "pork"). I'll try to fight that temptation for now, but the alternative suggestion from the GOP are increased tax breaks for the American consumer. I think there are myriad flaws with this plan, but again, I'm no economist.

I am, however, a person of faith--more specifically, a minister--someone who is supposed to model faith, question faith, and be able to talk to others about issues related to faith. I've been at a bit of a loss in our current economic crisis--I don't know what to tell the worker who was just laid-off and what little I do know seems cheap and trite--like well-intentioned cliches at a funeral.

What I can say is that I know what we've been called to, and, by negation, what we've been called away from. Walter Brueggemann, a noted scholar of the Old Testament (or "Hebrew Bible" as it is more aptly known), has written brilliantly to this end. I stumbled upon the article from another blog that quoted him and as much as the writer inside me says "Don't quote the same section!", I cannot help myself.

Brueggemann says:

It is futile, from a biblical perspective, to engage in disputes about modern theoretical labels such as "socialism" or "capitalism." The Bible does not linger over such labels, but insists that every available instrument of well-being—government, charity, private sector—must be mobilized in order to mediate the resources of the community for the sake of the common good.

We have been called to mobilize forces for the building of the Kingdom.

A Kingdom does not consist of vigilante cowboys, furiously clamoring for bootstraps only to realize they were repossessed by Wall Street.

A Kingdom does not consist of "Me generation" yuppies (or later iterations) vituperatively arguing for individualism and autonomy.

A Kingdom cannot stand while it's citizens hoard material goods and reject the King's claim to limitless bounty.

A Kingdom cannot stand when it has exchanged promise for credit.

I recognize these are generalizations and I am not without sin here. What I feel in the crisis of this day--what I want to believe we all feel--is a sense of loss with every layoff. That we are grieving with those known and unknown who are struggling to see hope and purpose in the midst of pain. And it is in the middle of that community that we catch a glimpse of the eternity born in our hearts--that we are more than a nation or even a civilization--that we are citizens of yet another Kingdom that calls us to live out those principles within our current land.

Before God and in the example of Christ, we are to live out a faith that considers neighbor over kin, need above greed and everyone over self.

When we do so we cease to glamorize rugged individualism as we move in step with the Spirit as the Beloved Community.

When we care for one another more than we care for ourselves we find riches that cannot be measured in currency or in goods--where tides of love meet welcome shores of gratitude.

We appeal to our government to do the job that the Church has not--to care for one another as community--and though it's methods are imperfect, we welcome any who would help us strive toward caring for one another--to putting their needs above ours--to all those who would see in friend and stranger the very image of God.

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Filed under // autonomy community economics faith individualism keynesian kingdom NPR

Posted February 3, 2009

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on cotton, peanuts and renaissance (or "a tale of two [southern] cities")

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I was sitting in my car outside the grocery store last Monday listening to NPR when I heard a profile on the small town of Blakely, Georgia. Blakely has been at the center of concerns surrounding a salmonella outbreak from a factory in Blakely responsible for preparing peanut butter, paste, and other products. All Things Considered decided to interview the mayor of the small south Georgia town, Ric Hall. You can sense in the interview a palpable dissonance between rural America and Michele Norris' urban radio studio, particularly when she asks if the peanut features prominently in signs and public displays.

When Mayor Hall responds that there is, in fact, a peanut monument just outside of City Hall, it seems laughable--like something that would be noted in a travelogue of bizarre American landmarks. As I listened closer though, I realized that though I am every bit Georgian, I, too, was missing something in my dismissal of this lament from the rural South. Mayor Hall explains that the peanut was the crop that saved most of South Georgia. When the boll weevil was devastating cotton crops from Texas to South Carolina in the first half of the last century, the peanut became the saving grace of over half the agriculture of the South. So much so, that it merited a monument on the town square--a testament to the ingenuity of a people willing to diversify in the face of immense crisis.

The wonders of Wikipedia yield a comparable statue in Enterprise, Alabama. There, a statue stands large and Romanesque, as an everlasting witness to the boll weevil himself. Instead of building a monument to the cure, Enterprise celebrated the cause of the disease, because it forced farmers to diversify crops and, in so doing, brought tremendous agricultural prosperity to the city.

In Blakely the Peanut Corporation of America was shutting down, laying off the 50 or so workers who based their livelihood on the plant. Last week alone, over 100,000 men and women across America met similar fates. In the midst of recession, burgeoning unemployment and a shrinking GDP, the question might rightly be "What will our next monuments be built to?" Or, as the statue of Enterprise might suggest "Where will our ingenuity take us next?"

The sin of our times is believing that we've gone beyond repair--that things are so dire that they simply cannot be reconciled. The cotton crops in Alabama and South Georgia had weathered slavery, indentured servitude, sharecroppers, and finally industrialization. Still, a tiny non-native insect managed to destroy the livelihood of a few million Americans--but it didn't. Not only that, but the human spirit was such that it could recognize a plague of biblical proportions as a blessing--something to shake us out of our comfortability and force us to find ways to spur on creativity and innovation.

I don't know what the next monument in Blakely will be--it might be an automotive assembly robot, a wind turbine for renewable energy, or maybe a silicon chip to some aspect of technology. There is a great deal of attention being paid to the crisis of our time, and monuments remind us that this is neither the first nor the last time we have encountered such hardships.

What we have seen in the greed and excess of our times exposes the shadow side of our ingenuity. The creative capacity God has given to humanity for the building up of the Beloved Community has been relegated to pursuing our own vices and comforts with no regard for neighbor. There is an American tendency to perceive this as a quest for the common good but we know it as the basic commerce policy of the Kingdom of God.

As we lose jobs and look for answers, watch 401(k)s crash and markets tumble, may we continue to build the Kingdom in intangible ways.

May our innovation lead to actions of sacred peace.

May our drive be directed only toward that which is good for the many, and not just the one.

May we embrace this crisis and erect monuments to it.

May it remind us that we are more than what we produce

that million dollar office renovations yield nothing to the Kingdom of God,
that we follow a Savior who had no place to lay his head
that the Kingdom comes not in earthen structures but in earthen vessels committed to a new vision of what humanity can be
that, in the midst of all manner of strife and chaos, we cannot help but hope.

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Filed under // AL blakely boll weevil economy enterprise GA kingdom NPR peanuts

Posted February 2, 2009

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on dinner parties and guest lists (or "guess who's coming to dinner?")

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Thanks to the wonders of NPR's This I Believe series my commute to pick Jen up from work was spent hanging on every word from Jim Haynes Paris-by-way-of-Louisiana mouth.

If you have time, you should read the whole story, but I'll give a quick-read. Jim is an ex-pat who has, for the last thirty years, dared to feed anyone who so chose to join him for dinner. Conservative estimates place his total dinner guests at over 100,000 people. He says simply, yet profoundly:

"People from all corners of the world come to break bread together, to meet, to talk, connect and often become friends. All ages, nationalities, races, professions gather here, and since there is no organized seating, the opportunity for mingling couldn't be better. I love the randomness. I believe in introducing people to people."

My first thought was how bad I wish Jen and I could grab a ticket to Paris, just to see the variety and complexity--to count ourselves as part of a great tradition of cultivating love for neighbor. I know--there's nothing about love in the quote above--he gets to that a bit later.

"Tolerance can lead to respect and, finally, to love."

The image of the open table is so captivating--so inviting--it makes me covet a spot at that table, with the full intention of knowing no-one, but being absolutely certain that would not be the case when the meal was over.

Jesus sat around a lot of tables, and while Jim Haynes isn't Jesus, he's hit upon an image of the Gospel that the church and time forgot. The power of an open table--with no requirement of dress or class--merely the invitation to "come and dine."

When we took our second trip to Bulgaria last summer we were filling in for a team that had to cancel at the last minute. We threw back-to-school parties in orphanages, complete with pizza, junk food, soft drinks--all the stuff that causes obesity and tooth decay here, but is a rare treat there. We knew we needed to tell a bible story, but we couldn't decide. We eventually went with Jesus' story of the Great banquet in Luke's gospel. There's all sorts of hermeneutical layers to it, but it couldn't have been more simple.

The kids colored their die-cut construction paper selves, then, one-by-one, ran and glued them to a poster of an open table, with plenty of food and only Jesus and all the other dinner guests who had decided to sit at the table(see picture 2). You had to fight back tears as young and old, autistic and mentally ill, staff and residents, missionaries and suburbanites visioned themselves seated at God's great banquet. All had their fill, and each one enjoyed the company of the other.

I want to rediscover the art of the long meal.

I want the gospel to be as wide and ranging as an open invitation to Sunday dinner.

I want to sit at the table with anyone else who would join me.

I want every swallow of drink, every morsel savored to be a reminder of the communion God gave us in Christ and with one another.

I want every laugh uttered, every smile exchanged, every story told to breathe the silent blessing of God's abundant goodness.

God Is Good by Enter The Worship Circle

(download)

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Filed under // bulgaria kingdom NPR

Posted January 13, 2009

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bring on the wonder

won·der

Pronunciation:

\ˈwən-dər\

Function:

noun

Etymology:

Middle English, from Old English wundor; akin to Old High German wuntar wonder

Date:

before 12th century

1 a: a cause of astonishment or admiration : marvel <it's a wonder you weren't killed> <the pyramid is awonder to behold> b: miracle2: the quality of exciting amazed admiration3 a: rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one's experience
It seems like the last week or so there has been a bit of a recurring theme in my life. I've tried to sort out how to be aware of the holy-ness around me on a daily basis, and yet I still find myself having to will myself to do it. It seems ridiculous to have to tell yourself to focus on others, the world around you--basically, everything that's not oriented around me, or my own plans. Then I wake up this morning to read this in my Inbox--the daily lectionary, fresh from Luke's Gospel:

Luke 18:15-30
[15] People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they sternly ordered them not to
do it. [16] But Jesus called for them and said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these
that the kingdom of God belongs. [17] Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it."

And then I tried to think about how a child sees the world. I thought about the kids in an orphanage in Bulgaria, whose eyes lit up at the sight of a cheap plastic pinwheel, or the curiosity of my fifteen-month old nephew. Children have a limitless capacity for wonder. They never cease to be amazed, surprised, shocked or excited to learn something new. And somewhere between adolescence and adulthood we beat it out of them. Dreams and curiosity are exchanged for facts and mastery of information. Once we've mastered the information (or at least know how to consult the right sources, people, or the internet) there's no room left for wonder.
A few years ago I heard a quote from the great Jewish writer and teacher Abraham Joshua Heschel:"I did not ask for success. I asked for wonder and You gave it to me"

I need wonder. I need to be stirred from my slumber by something so out-of-the-blue, so beautiful, so unexpected, that it reminds me of the kingdom of child-like faith.

Click here to download:

bring_on_the_wonder.zip (1865 KB)

This morning there was an article on CNN about a piano that was mysteriously found, perfectly in tune, in the middle of a Massachusetts forest. The picture of the policeman inspecting this out-of-place piano was about as close as our rational "adults" come to wonder. But why not? Where better to play piano than in the middle of a forest in autumn?
I need to be more awake, more aware.I need to have my eyes open to the glory that's all around us.I need wonder--primarily because I've "pushed you down deep in my soul for too long."

Bring On The Wonder by Susan Enan

(download)

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder.

Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in every crevice of your universe.

Each day enrapture me with your marvelous things without number.

I do not ask to see the reason for it all: I ask only to share the wonder of it all.

Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel

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Filed under // abraham heschel kingdom piano wonder woods

Posted November 24, 2008

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on eyes that see and ears that hear

on economics and faith

on cotton, peanuts and renaissance (or "a tale of two [southern] cities")

on dinner parties and guest lists (or "guess who's coming to dinner?")

bring on the wonder

Trey Lyon

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