Fixed Points in Time

"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's actually more like a big ball of wibbly, wobbly, time-y wimey stuff." - Dr. Who

I was talking to a friend last night who informed me that Dr. Who had resolved her angst about making big decisions in life. According to Dr. Who (according to her), there are fixed points in time that don't change. Instead of seeing time as a linear progression from one decision to the next, she understands that some things are just meant to be. She shared the story of how she came to her position as a linguistics professor in an obscure Mayan language. It all started when she picked a language class that happened to work with her schedule. When she heard the professor start speaking in Kaqchikel on that first day, she knew that her life had changed.

Because she picked a class that fit her schedule.

Another friend shared her story. As she was walking to the office to hand in her student teaching application, she passed a friend in the hallway and asked her what school she should request. Her friend suggested her own alma mater, so she wrote that on the form. She's now in her seventh year as a teacher at that school and can't imagine working at any other school.

Because she listened to a passing friend in the hallway.

I tried to think of a moment in my life like that, and all I could think of was the day I pulled into Kansas City and Mike was there to give me the keys to the house in which I would be staying. I was afraid my friends would think I was lame if my story of destiny was about a guy. But as the night went on, I realized it was bigger than that.

When I decided to go to seminary, I was going for an education with the expectation that I would only be in Kansas City for a few years before moving on to a more permanent assignment. I connected with a roommate through a mutual friend, and we chose a house at the suggestion of an admissions employee.

It was that house that changed my destiny.

First look at the house (and my future husband)

Turning thirty has made me reflective, and I realized last night that I could not ask for more. I am married to the man of my dreams. I have a beautiful baby boy. I graduated with honors from a masters program. I've gotten to know some really incredible people and get to spend the occasional evening talking about destiny with people who are old enough to actually have some perspective on what that means. I even still get to play ultimate frisbee every week.

These two guys are pretty awesome.

All of those things are in my life now because I happened to move into a house. A house where I met my husband when he gave me the keys. A house where I found a community that supported and encouraged me through grad school. A house where the IT guy invited me to a church that, though now closed, has been the source of some of my closest friends in Kansas City. A house filled with other students who made every gathering a party.

Five of the original eight--does this look like a party or what?

We were celebrating my friend's birthday last night, and she said that she doesn't always do something for her birthday, but she is in a really good place this year and wanted to celebrate that with some of the friends who have helped make that happen. Her gratitude reminded me of my gratitude for the friends who have come into my life over the past few years. I don't know how things would have been different had I not chosen to live in that house, but as Dr. Who so wisely suggested (via my friend), maybe we don't need to worry so much about making the exact right decision in every situation. Maybe some things are just meant to be.

All these babies are part of my life now too!

The Affair with the Water Department

"'That is sufficient, sir. I have heard of you. Go to the First Auditor of the Treasury.'

I did so. He sent me to the Second Auditor. The Second Auditor sent me to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. This began to look business. He examined his books and all his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract. I went to the Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division. He examined his books and his loose papers, but with no success. I was encouraged. During that week I got as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division; the next week I got through the Claims Department; the third week I began and completed the Mislaid Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the Dead Reckoning Department.

..." - Mark Twain, The Facts in the Great Beef Contract

On the evening of June 21, 2013, Mike and I observed the arrival of a Utilities Locating Services employee at our house. He parked in front and walked immediately to the backyard, where he began spray painting our grass, trees and flowers. He painted green arrows, blue boxes, and orange lines. After he departed, we went out to inspect his diagram.

"The sewer company is going to dig up our yard again" was all Mike had to say about that.

Last year the sewer department replaced ten feet of pipe that had collapsed and the employee overseeing the repair observed that the next segment of pipe would probably collapse soon. He hoped to stay long enough to replace the next segment too but was called to another job.

Apparently the predicted collapse had occurred.

On the morning of June 22, 2013 a crew from the sewer department parked their trucks in front of our house and walked around to the back yard to prepare their attack on the offending sewer pipe. They looked at the green arrows and the orange line. They stood around the blue rectangle.

Mike remembered that first attempts from last year's crew had yielded no pipe and that they had been forced to take down the fence in our back yard and dig there. He informed the sewer department crew of this history, but of course they had no authority to deviate from the green arrows, orange lines, and blue rectangle.

We left home to run some errands and returned to find the entire crew standing around a giant hole, looking somewhat discouraged. They had missed the pipe. The blue rectangle had led them astray.

That afternoon we left for St. Louis with promises from the head of the crew that their work would be finished by the end of the day and that our yard would be back to its previous state of healthy green grass by Monday morning.

When we got home Sunday evening, we found a large hole, covered with sheets of plywood, surrounded by cones and caution tape. Next to the hole was an equally large pile of dirt and a backhoe.

No one came on Monday, but some crews work Tuesday through Friday, so we waited.

No one came on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, June 26, 2013, Mike called the water department to ask about the plans for the hole in our back yard. They informed him that they were unaware of a hole and promised they would send an inspector to verify our complaint.

No one came on Thursday or Friday.

On Monday, July 1, 2013, Mike received a call from the water department asking if we live at 5200 Broadmoor Street. He informed them that we do not live at 5200 Broadmoor Street. The employee informed Mike that the aforementioned backhoe was at 5200 Broadmoor Street, and that since we did not live at 5200 Broadmoor Street, there could not possibly be a backhoe in our backyard. Mike informed him that there was, in fact, a backhoe in our back yard. The employee responded, sounding rather irritated, that he would have to send another inspector to our location to verify the presence of the backhoe.

On Wednesday, July 3, 2013, we left home again for a few weeks. The hole, pile of dirt, cones (labeled KCWW: Kansas City Water Works), and backhoe were still in our back yard. At 11:30am, Mike received an update to his open case with the city water department. It read, "Informed homeowner that there is no backhoe in his back yard. Case closed."

Mike promptly called the water department to reopen his case. The receptionist looked at his case and let him know that there was definitely not a backhoe in our back yard. Since this did not satisfy Mike, she informed him that if he would like to reopen his case, they would need to send an inspector to the site. She asked if he lived at 5200 Broadmoor Street. She said there was a note on his case that the backhoe he claimed was in our back yard was actually at 5200 Broadmoor Street. She suggested that it might be helpful to change our address.

Mike once again described the hole, pile of dirt, cones, and backhoe, including the id number and gave her our address. She promised to send an inspector.

"He took [my papers], and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends. Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it--he found the long-lost record of that beef contract--he found the rock upon which so many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it. I was deeply moved. And yet I rejoiced--for I had survived."

On July 10, 2013, one of our neighbors called to report the arrival of a crew from the sewer department in our back yard.

We returned home on July 14, 2013. Our grass was gone. Our tree was mangled. Our retaining wall was put back together in a way that resulted in an extra brick. But the hole, the cones, the pile of dirt, and the backhoe were all gone.

We don't know if they ever fixed or even found the collapsed sewer pipe, but at least we weren't forced to sell a city-owned backhoe on Craig's List. And we survived.

"We do things by routine here. You have followed the routine and found out what you wanted to know. It is the best way. It is the only way. It is very regular, and very slow, but it is very certain."

I think someone at the Kansas City Water Department has been reading Mark Twain.

A Long Obedience

"The essential thing 'in heaven and earth' is ... that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living." - Friedrich Nietzsche (quoted by Eugene Peterson)

The last couple days have been long run kinds of days.  The baby did not take his naps on Monday, which left me totally exhausted and frazzled. I went to bed at 8:15. It's not like he's all that demanding when he's awake, but I need those little breaks! Yesterday was better, just really busy.  I know that I'm supposed to be "enjoying every minute" while I have a baby, but some days seem less like a walk in the park and more like a hike up a mountain.

If you've ever done a tough hike, you know how you get to a point where you see nothing, you feel nothing, you think nothing--you just put one foot in front of the next, hoping that something will happen, whether it is reaching the peak or just falling over.

Some days are easy. Other days are a marathon. You just keep putting one foot in front of the next. It's nice to look at the bigger questions in life like purpose and meaning, but I suspect that not a few mountain climbers have thought at some point, "Why did I want to do this?" On the long, tedious journey, purpose and meaning often fade away in the face of sore feet, burning muscles, blisters, exhaustion, and hunger.

One of the best books on leadership I have read is called Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition, written by Dennis Perkins. The author's "leadership lessons" were pretty good, but the part that will never leave me was the story of Ernest Shackleton.

His attempt to cross Antarctica in 1914 met with disaster when his ship was crushed in the ice. I cannot imagine the feeling of sitting at the bottom of the world watching the only thing that could possibly get you home slowly crack and then sink into the water as the ice closed around it.

His crew camped out on ice floes for the next six months. Again, I cannot imagine spending six months camped on ice, seeing nothing but various shades of white, gray, and black.

You can read the whole story of Shackleton's voyage in Perkins' book or on Wikipedia. I don't want to spoil the ending because Shackleton met with impossible obstacles at every stage of the journey, and the way he moved forward is riveting.

Shackleton's leadership throughout the ordeal was incredible. He never lost focus of what he wanted to accomplish. He never resorted to self-preservation at the expense of his crew. In fact, at one point, he gave his gloves to a crew member, which resulted in the loss of some of his fingers to frostbite. He never gave up. He sat on that piece of ice in the middle of the most brutal part of the ocean in the world and kept planning and hoping and moving forward.

My day without a baby nap pales in comparison to the endless days Shackleton and his crew spent sitting on a frozen bit of the Atlantic Ocean. If they can survive with purpose and hope, so can I. After all, it is a long obedience in the same direction that makes life worth living, even though it might not seem very exciting or fun sometimes.

Contemplating the journey

Parenthood Is Complicated

"I lay in bed and looked at the painting on the hotel-room wall. It was a print of a detailed and lifelike painting of a smiling clown's head, made out of vegetables. It was a painting of the sort that you do not intend to look at and that, alas, you never forget. Some tasteless fate presses it upon you; it becomes part of the complex interior junk you carry with you wherever you go." - Annie Dillard, The Eclipse

According to Anne Lamott, when you sit down to write, all your neuroses pull up chairs and gather round. I like that idea. I like it because it implies that although your neuroses are you, they are also somehow not you. It also implies that your neuroses can be easily quantified and identified.

I don't think that is quite what Anne Lamott meant when she wrote it, but stay with me.

My husband and I watched all of the first four seasons of the television show Parenthood in a few months this past year. We loved the show. The characters are likeable and easy to relate to; the difficulties they face are complex but not impossible; the soundtrack is an eclectic blend of great music. Sounds like a great show, right?

But after we watched it for a while, I began to notice a disconnect between the show and my life.

Unlike Anne Lamott's neuroses and unlike the insightful characters on Parenthood, I cannot always identify the "complex interior junk" I carry with me. I can't always remember that the reason I don't like cabbage is because it was the skull of some creepy clown painting in a hotel room. (I really don't like cabbage, but I don't think that's why.)

And more importantly, I can't always figure out that my irrational response to my husband's actions is because of the traumatic break-up I experienced in junior high. Nor am I able to realize that my husband's irrational response to my actions is because of some traumatic event in his past. It could be because of any of the thousands of pieces of life that are stuck with us.

I read somewhere that people who watch shows like CSI expect cops to dust for fingerprints, put tape on the floor, and declare a crime scene on every call. They want to see crimes solved now! The huge number of detective shows on television draw us in by the lure of truth. We eagerly anticipate when the good guys will get to the bottom of things and nail the bad guys. But in real life, a lot of bad guys get away. Or even if they do get caught, the truth remains elusive, and the mystery of "what really happened on the night of ___" is never solved.

Likewise, shows like House appeal to the same desire for truth. We think that if we can only find that one doctor who can think outside the box and consider the most unlikely of possibilities, whatever disease we have will be cured once and for all. If one doctor can't figure it out, maybe the next can. We just need someone who can get to the bottom of this!

Shows like Parenthood do the same for our emotional lives. Why was Kristina so upset when her sixteen-year-old daughter was dating a 20-year-old recovering alcoholic? Maybe because, as her husband pointed out, her own mother got married young and suffered through a terrible marriage. See how nicely he wrapped that up!

Why can't my husband help me get to the bottom of my feelings? Why can't my brother listen to me talk for a few minutes and then remind me of that time when we were young when I did the same thing? Why can't I suddenly remember the exact time and place when my opinion on some subject was irrevocably changed?

Sometimes we do get to know. Sometimes we catch the criminal. Sometimes we cure the disease. Sometimes we understand what made us feel this way.

And sometimes even if we don't ever get to the bottom of things, everything turns out all right anyway.

But more often than not, we figure out a little bit of the truth and do what we can with that, hoping for the best.

I will probably keep watching Parenthood, but I do wonder how much discontentment is created by the disconnect between the world of television where everything is nicely wrapped up within thirty minutes to an hour and real life where some things only make sense after years and others remain a mystery forever.

Cousins (and other awesome people)

We have finally returned from our wonderful family vacation. We were able to see lots of friends and family, but it is good to be home again!

Here are some highlights from our trip.

We went to fireworks with the Odon Church of the Nazarene, where Amos reconnected with the little girl who is one day older than him. She wanted to touch him, but he wasn't too sure about that!

Amos and Everlee

Sondra took some time to do a photoshoot with her new background. She did such an amazing job, and we are so lucky to have such great pictures of little Amos. Here is one of my favorites:

Photo by Sondra Laughlin

We made the trip up to see Mike's parents and sister and her family. Amos LOVED his little cousins, and they loved him. They kept walking around saying, "Baby Amos! Baby Amos!" It was like a dream come true for little Amos. He loves other babies and he loves attention, so babies that pay attention to him are awesome. Here are a couple pictures of Amos and the little cousins.

Amos and Isaac

Amos and Maggie sitting on Grandma's lap

We also got to stop and see little Charity on the way home. She is ten months old. I think Amos went into withdrawal when we got back on Monday and there weren't any babies to play with!

It was really good to see our families, and the time away from Kansas City made a nice break from our routine, but I'm happy to be home again!

And now, let the blogging, recommence!

(And also the laundry and cooking and weeding the garden and other home-type activities.)

Chicken

"Why is it that carrots, a simple root that you can just pull from the ground, cost more than a box of Twinkies, this incredible combination of food science and technology that has forty ingredients?” – Michael Pollan

“What we eat and how we eat it reflect whether or not we think we need to abide with others at all. When we thoughtlessly eat commodities alone and on the run, there is no time or place for abiding. But when we eat with a commitment to the strengthening of the ecological and social memberships that make food possible, then it becomes possible for eating to be an act of abiding with another.” – Norman Wirzba

 

In his book, Food & Faith: A Theology of Eating, Norman Wirzba does an excellent job of relating our theology to our consumption of plants and animals as food. He makes a lot of great points, but at the heart is the idea that our decisions about eating matter.

Now that the baby has begun eating solids, I've been thinking a lot about how I want our family to view food and eating. I've come up with a few things that are important to me.

1. Good food takes time.

I don't know very much about the Slow Food movement, but based on thirty seconds of internet research, I see that it was started to oppose the opening of a McDonald's in Rome. It is described as an alternative to fast food (makes sense). 

What I do know is that the best meals start in the garden or at the butcher shop or farmer's market. They begin with real ingredients grown and harvested by real people, sold by real people, and prepared by real people (that last real person is usually me).

Side note: my best season of cooking happened when I lived in a house with three other people and a few regular visitors. We often had a team of four or five cooking dinner together. If I could find a way to make it happen, I would cook every meal with a team. Good food doesn't take as much time when more people are working together to prepare it.

Garden tomatoes about to become soup

Not only should food take time to prepare, it also takes time to eat. You don't scarf down food as quickly as possible if you spent hours tending a garden to grow it; you savor it, appreciating the sweet juiciness of fresh tomatoes and the crisp, earthy taste of lettuce. Someone invested a lot of time into all the food we eat, and all meals should be savored as though we grew the food ourselves.

2. Good food doesn't have to be expensive. 

Everyone wants organic food these days, but a lot of people are put off by the price. Some produce is almost double the price of conventionally grown produce. However, according to the Leopold Center for Agriculture (via this website), the average carrot travels 1,838 miles from farm to table. Growing up in rural Indiana, some of the produce I ate traveled approximately 100 feet from my mom's garden to the table. Or less than ten miles, from a produce stand to my house. 

Unfortunately, much of it also traveled as far as the average carrot. According to Barbara Kingsolver, in her excellent book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the United States exports as many potatoes as it imports every year. So the farms around me in Indiana were sending their food to Japan while the grocery stores were buying their food from Chile.

Rather than spending a lot of money on organic food that is produced halfway around the world, I think our money should be spent on local food that should be cheaper because of the much lower production costs. If this food is produced organically, all the better, although I have been disappointed to learn more about the strict criteria and expensive process used to classify food as organic that my own garden probably doesn't meet.

On the other hand...

3. Good food isn't cheap.

At the other end of the spectrum are the bargain hunters. If milk from a local dairy comes in a glass bottle that requires a two dollar deposit at the time of purchase, then they will buy the cheaply packaged milk from two states away. If locally grown strawberries are twice the price of strawberries from California, then they will choose to save a few dollars and accept a dramatic reduction in quality.

Multi-colored lettuce growing in the garden

Americans spend a smaller percentage of their income on food than any other country in the world. My husband and I have made the choice to eat less meat but to buy higher quality meat. We also try to buy local produce as often as we can. In general, I am trying to retrain my thinking on how to make good spending decisions when it comes to food. Living on a budget means we can't just buy the highest quality of everything we want. Rather than sacrificing quality, I am trying to learn to make other sacrifices like buying less food, not buying food out of season, and making more things myself.

We have also chosen to eat out only a few times a month so that when we do eat out, we can choose higher quality restaurants over deceptively cheap fast food.

4. Don't throw stuff away.

Americans throw away 40 percent of their food. I have to admit, I enjoy cleaning out the refrigerator. Unlike other parts of the house, I have never agonized over whether that moldy piece of meat has sentimental value, whether my grandchildren might want to reminisce over the time their grandparents had steak for dinner back in 2013, or whether my husband will come home to find that I have accidentally thrown away a family heirloom. 

When my husband and I were newlyweds, however, cleaning out the refrigerator became heartbreaking. I bought things thinking he would eat them. He bought things thinking I would eat them. For a few months, it seemed like we were throwing away more than we were eating! I realized how easy it is to make impulse purchases and then casually toss them in the garbage when they have exceeded their shelf life. We are a lot more conscientious now, and I want our son to grow up recognizing the value of food, the gift that it is, the great lengths it took for it to arrive in our kitchen, and our responsibility as stewards to care for what we have.

Chicken

In Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness, (an excellent book not at all about food), she wrote that her daughter attended a school focused on practical knowledge. One of her classes taught her how to prepare the cheaper cuts of meat. That caught me off guard. Dorothy Day was born in 1897. I assumed that it was only recently that people had to take classes to learn about things that it seems like all of our grandparents knew. I realized that if Dorothy Day had to intentionally educate her daughter on food preparation, there was no shame for me to acknowledge my ignorance and start learning too.

My proudest accomplishment so far is learning to cook a whole chicken. Here is my recipe from Jamie Oliver's website:

1 chicken

carrots

celery

1 onion

dried rosemary

1 bay leaf

a few peppercorns

salt

a few cloves of garlic

1. Put the chicken in a large pot and cover with water. Add the vegetables and spices.

2. Bring it to a boil and then simmer for an hour and twenty minutes.

3. Eat, add to recipes, let cool and shred to use later.

The broth can be poured through a strainer and frozen for later use.

Chicken and broth in the freezer, ready to go!

I want our son to see his parents making intentional, responsible choices about the food we eat everyday. I want him to avoid the epidemic that is leading to obese children with nutrient deficiencies because their diets contain so many sweets and so few nutrient-rich foods. I want mealtimes to be enjoyable for our family. I think we are off to a good start, but we can do a lot more!

Sweet potatoes are yummy!

Choose Life

"Now choose life so that you and your children may live." - Moses

"I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." - Jesus

Since we've been married, my husband and I have debated the issue of abortion a number of times. He can't understand why anyone would be in favor of abortion. I've tried to explain that people who are pro-choice don't just favor killing babies willy-nilly and that it's more complicated. His questions have helped me think more about my own views. This blog is more or less a summary of what I've been thinking.

Focus on the Family
When I was fresh out of college, I went to visit a friend who was attending the Focus on the Family Institute for the summer. The day I was visiting, students were able to choose a department to learn more about. My friend had chosen the political arm of the organization. I remember sitting around a table in a conference room with a few other students and the head of the organization. He talked about important issues facing our country, one of which was abortion. When our chance to ask questions came, I asked him what they were doing to support families who may be statistically more likely to have an abortion. He said that was not their concern. I remember thinking, "But you work for Focus on the Family. Shouldn't you be focusing on families?"

I don't need to bash Focus on the Family. They have published lots of good material over the years. (Shout out to Adventures in Odyssey!) But the man's response highlights what I see as one of the biggest problems in the debate about abortion. We separate the "issue" from actual people.

As my husband and I began comparing stories of women we actually knew who had abortions, the stories were heartbreaking. A fifteen-year-old high school freshman who didn't want to give up her future and a Christian teenager pressured by her pastor whose son was the father of the baby. Neither of these girls should have been pregnant (or having sex) in the first place, but they did and they were and found themselves facing the prospect of abortion in very difficult circumstances.

But what could pro-life organizations offer them? Neither girl could ever retrieve the life she had lost. I'm sure that for both of them, abortion seemed the closest thing to erasing the past and starting over.

Pikuach Nefesh
In Judaism, the concept of Pikuach Nefesh is the idea that most of Jewish law can be set aside if a life is at stake. In other words, if saving a life requires breaking a commandment, Jews are required to choose the life over the commandment.

As I think about the stance the church has taken on abortion, I can't help but think about the lives of the ones who live. I think about families whose sons have few job prospects and little hope for the future. The successful ones might join the army or find a low-paying blue collar job. The others end up in jail or dead.

I think about their daughters who don't have adequate health care now and if they get pregnant, no hope of adequate childcare after the baby is born. If the mother and the baby survive the pregnancy in good health, what's next for them? I recently read an article entitled "The Hell of American Day Care" about the inadequacies of daycare in our country. Under-regulated and overpriced, fewer and fewer parents can afford the kinds of day cares that you see on tv, where kids play in brightly-painted rooms with lots of foamy educational things.

Furthermore, as I lay in bed at night in our house just down the street from one of the busiest emergency rooms in the city, I listen to sirens all night long. Where are they going? To victims of domestic violence, to victims of shootings and stabbings in drug and gang-related violence, to children suffering from inadequate nutrition and preventable diseases, to elderly people in run-down housing for whom extreme heat or cold are life-threatening conditions.

Is this the life that so many people are "pro"? Girls who are way too young and way too scared to be pregnant; children whose hopes for the future go no further than surviving to adulthood; parents who are working long hours to make a better life for the children and to avoid the fate of their own parents, who are languishing in cheap apartments and poorly-run adult-care facilities. 

Choose Life
I think it is time for Christians to follow the example of Judaism and to choose life without exception. We are called to care for widows and orphans, not just unborn children. We are called to love our enemies, and it might be that the way we talk about our enemies indicates our thoughts about "sinners," whether they are terrorists or unwed mothers.

If a woman who found herself with an unplanned pregnancy knew that the church was a place where she could expect to find people who choose life, she might expect to find help with medical bills (choosing life for her), low-cost daycare options (choosing life for her child), job-training and education assistance (choosing life for her family), and community (not just life, but life to the full).

An obvious solution for people who don't want a child is to stop having sex. In a culture lacking in closeness and community, sexual intimacy is often a cheap substitute for the lifelong intimacy we are created for. Again, if the church was full of people living life to the full, people might find the intimacy they crave in the church without turning to sexual relationships.

Maybe my thoughts are too idealistic, simplistic, or overly-optimistic, but I am tired of listening to people decry the murder of unborn children and yet turn a blind eye to the mass murder of born children through abuse and domestic violence, human trafficking, malnutrition, preventable diseases, hopelessness, depression, and all the other things faced by so many children who do manage to make it into the world.

It's a lot easier to be against abortion than it is to be pro-life.

Choose life. Pikuach nefesh.

Habit

"Ethics is not about being clever in a crisis but about forming a character that does not realize it has been in a crisis until the ‘crisis’ is over." - Samuel Wells

"[Conventional ethics] is trying to make a better world without us needing to become better people. - Stanley Hauerwas

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle

Last summer, Michael and I listened to Malcolm Gladwell's excellent book, Outliers, over a couple of road trips. (It took us a long time to get through the book. We're very slow listeners.) Gladwell's book is about what makes some people outstanding in their fields. Among other factors was 10,000 hours practicing. The Beatles played crazy long hours in clubs in Germany. Bill Gates spent countless hours programming. Before they were ever successful or famous, they practiced for hours and hours and hours.

I like what Samuel Wells says about shaping character in people. He writes that traditional ethics focuses on the point of decision, the ethical quandary, the moral dilemma.  The character of the person making the decision doesn't matter; the "right" decision is defined independent of such a sketchy variable as a person's character.

Theological ethics, on the other hand, is all about shaping people first. People make lots of decisions every day, some big, some little. People shaped according to the pattern of the cross make those decisions according to the pattern of Scripture, often without even realizing they are doing so.

This is both challenging and reassuring. On the one hand, we're never off the hook, able to coast until we find ourselves in a crisis; rather, we must be faithful in the small things everyday. On the other hand, the crisis itself is not so daunting when we have already defined our values and ways of thinking about the world.

It is tempting in ethical discussions to focus on big questions like euthanasia, cloning, and war.  However, it is how we treat our families and friends that shapes how we treat our enemies.  It is how we spend our time that shapes how we view the gift of life. It is how we view our own and others' bodies that teaches us how to talk about cloning and abortion. It is how we eat our dinner that shapes our view of farming, sustainability, and good ecological practice. It is how we spend our money that defines our economy.

As Christians, we often focus on more traditional spiritual disciplines like Scripture reading and prayer. These practices instill the patterns of worship in our lives, but all of the decisions we make reflect our allegiance--to the kingdom of God or the kingdom of the world. Scripture reading and prayer help us to learn the values of the kingdom of God, but so does careful attention to the many other choices we make on a daily basis.

Michael Pollan talks about the benefits of eating local food, 

which is a great choice to make.

Too Much Glee

There was once a man who loved a beautiful woman but thought himself too ugly to win her.  The man went to a mask maker to ask for a mask to hide his ugliness.  After transforming his appearance, the man won the heart of the woman, and they were married and living happily when the man, not wanting to continue in his deception, decided to have the mask removed.  When he returned home, his wife did not react at all to the appearance of his face.  He looked in the mirror and discovered that he had become handsome.  He returned to the mask maker to ask what happened.  The mask maker explained, “You have changed.  You loved a beautiful person.  You have become beautiful too.  You have become beautiful through loving her.  You become like the face of the one whom you love.” - Paraphrased from Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics by Samuel Wells

My friend Clara wrote a lovely poem about her desire to share her joys with her little girl. The poem is here. I highly recommend reading it.  In fact, if you don't have very much time, just stop reading now and go read her poem.

Her words caused me to stop and think about the things I fell in love with as a kid and how I want to share them with little Amos.  However, as Samuel Wells' story illustrates, we become like the face of the one we love, and unfortunately all too often, I mostly focus on playing games on my iPhone and watching episodes of Glee on tv.  There is room in my life for games and Glee, but I want the way I spend my days to reflect the things I love and want to teach Amos to love too.

I'm finding this blog to be cathartic in a way.  In the last four years, I have taken in a lot of information in the form of theology, ethics, biblical studies, etc.  As I look at the books on my bookshelf, words and phrases spring to mind. These 4x6, half inch rectangles have changed my life. They have changed the way I understand the world. I especially fell in love with the rich history of the church.

I don't have any plans to start Amos in on a heavy dose of theology, but I do want to convey to him a passion for learning and doing something with what you learn.  Even if I'm only writing for my mom and my friend Tracy (Hey, Mom!  Hey, Tracy!), I spend a lot of time thinking about what I will be writing here, and I want that thought to be directed towards things that I love, towards the words and ideas that have shaped me in the past few years and that I want to continue to shape me in the years to come.

So expect a lot more theological writing here!  Because I want what I look like to be a lot more in that general direction and lot less in the direction of a certain musical teen drama on Fox.

Amos loves Squishy Turtle and Friends

Love and Marriage

"The chance of a first marriage ending in divorce over a forty-year period is 67 percent." - John Gottman

A few years ago, one of my co-workers and I agreed: people who get married are either wildly optimistic or just plain stupid.  I am, of course, married now, and my co-worker seems to be headed in that direction.  But we also agreed that if and when we got married, it would only be because we managed to set aside our cynicism for a few weeks or months (depending on how long the whole process took).  Falling in love helped, for sure, but now I find myself irrevocably, permanently married.  Or at least that's the hope!

The couples in the small group that my husband and I lead have all been married between two and seven years.  We all agree that we've managed to skate by relatively unscathed so far, but now it's time to really put some effort into figuring out how to be successful (and happy) in the long run.

At the suggestion of a few different counselor/friends, we have decided to lead the group through The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by John Gottman.  The book seems really good, and it is also encouraging because I think we are doing some things right.  The scariest part of the book is reading some of the conversations that play out between husbands and wives.  It is unbelievable how harsh some relationships are!

All that to say, even though I am very happily married to an amazing man, I can still understand the feelings behind the song below by Stephen Sondheim, and probably quite a few people could stand to acquire a little cynicism that might drive them to books like John Gottman's before they get to the point of some of the couples he cites who are on the brink of disaster!

This is one of the best performances ever on the television 

show, Glee, which although morally sketchy, 

has some of the best remakes.