The Simple Way

I just found out through Arloa's blog that Shane Claiborne's home and the homes of eight families in his neighborhood burned down last night. Their website has a summary of this disaster and some pretty disturbing and beautiful photographs of the conflagration.

Most of you know that I consider Shane my nemesis ever since I read his book, Irresistible Revolution. With his life, he has been able to do what I know would be best for me, but have not yet had the courage to do. Because of my jealousy for that, he is my nemesis. I credit him with being the catalyst in the chemical equation of events that is now sending me to Africa tomorrow (no new blog posts until after July 5, sorry). Shane has been great about his nemesis status, laughing about it when my dad sends him links to my blog about it and sending home a great note with him from a board meeting they both attended.

He is also a great public speaker, displaying humor, charm and love. The seminar of his that I attended at last year's CCDA conference was so full of the Holy Spirit that I sang with other Christians and loved it. Rare, I know. He actually served communion after his presentation, providing bread and juice. You could choose from bread from the store and "redeemed bread" that came from a dumpster. He started singing songs I knew like, "I love you Lord and I lift my voice to worship you, oh my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my king, in what you hear. May it be a sweet sweet sound in your ear." I haven't sung that since high school. When it died out, random people started other songs spontaneously to fill the quiet that could be sung without a worship band while each of us went to take communion when we were ready.

He turned a conference seminar in the middle of a boring hotel room with those moveable panels for walls into worship.

A worthy adversary.

So, there is an empty pit in my stomach that he has lost everything he owned, even if he believes it was important not to own much. I also feel an emptiness for his neighbors, under-resourced people who didn't have much more than a social network to begin with. I am assuming there is very little fire insurance involved for these eight families that might now have to move away from their greatest resource: their community. Thankfully, no one was hurt, even of the 170 fire fighters who fought the blaze.

Please pray for The Simple Way, Shane and his neighbors. If (like me) you are moved to make a donation, that information is available on The Simple Way's website.

A productive member of society

I have the exact same cold that I had three weeks ago. Really. The exact same symptoms that morph into the exact same new symptoms along the exact same timeline. The only good news is that although I know that Wednesday and Thursday I will be in excruciating pain and discomfort, by Friday life will return to normal.

Which is good because I start my new job on Monday!

Wha wha wha what?

That's right folks. I am finally going to be able to dig my fingers and toes into a project and grow with it.

And it came about in the best possible way.

Last week, at an event where I was networking fairly hard, I met my future boss. I had actually attended the gala for his organization three years ago and receive his monthly emails so I started the conversation there. We shifted very quickly to what type of work I was looking for because, honestly, my dad had earlier stood up in front of the 110 attendees of the event and begged them to give me a job.

It was pretty funny.

And full of love.

So, my future boss is asking me about my experience and I tell him about my master's degree. He says, "Oh, I started that program but dropped out."

Probably my humor was unwise at this moment but I said, "Was it the math?" in a mock-empathic tone with raised eyebrows and a knowing grin.

"Yeah but I figured that I already had a doctorate so I didn't need to do all that work figuring out something I wouldn't use."

While we were talking, my dad walked up, put his forehead on the guy's shoulder and said, "Please, please, please. Please give my daughter a job." And I was worried about my professionalism.

The future boss and I continued talking after my dad walked away and then he asked for my card. I gave it to him and moved on to talk to someone else.

Well, he followed up with me that night, sent 2 pdfs describing the program he is working with and asked if I could come in later in the week to talk. After we set up the meeting, he forwards me a working document that he just received from a mutual friend who is helping him with the vision for where the program is going.

I feel pretty attended to by the time I get to his office. I read all the stuff, print out some of it so I can reference it during the conversation and put on my suit for the meeting.

He spends, no kidding, an hour and a half alternately courting me and questioning me on my ideal job. He has an understated personality, which is always hard for me to read since it is so foreign to me. It wasn't until later that I realized that when he said, "It's not very often that you get the chance to actually change the world; it's kind of neat," he might have been persuading me and not just describing his own experience. I don't think he set up the phone call from Katie Couric's producer to come right in the middle of our meeting, but I'll admit, it worked.

I love the work he is doing. I love that it is being recognized as actually creating systemic change that measurably benefits under-resourced kids. I love that he has a secondary goal of revitalizing the Church by entangling people's lives with the lives of the poor. As Shane Claiborne says, "The problem is not that wealthy Christians won't help the poor; it's that they don't know the poor." Jesus knew the poor.

I also love that when he finally offered me the job, he said it like this: "When I met you on Tuesday, I thought, this is someone special. Then I got your resume and thought, here is someone with experience thinking about different forms of organizational design, someone who cares about marginalized folks, and someone with a lot of unique experiences. Also, you're really smart."

I have to admit that I misted up when he said. Professional, I know. It's just that I have spent this entire unemployment feeling like I was uniquely unqualified for every single job that was posted. If the job needed a master's degree, it also needed five years of experience in that particular field. Or they wanted an MSW instead of an MPP. Or it needed supervisory experience. Also, almost half of the reason I went to grad school was to prove that I had the chops and that I wasn't just getting jobs because my dad begged his friends on my behalf.

And here is this guy saying, "I wasn't going to hire staff to expand this program into a nationwide network in a decentralized way because I don't know how to do it, so I don't know how to tell someone else to do it. But I think you could run with this." And it's because of me and the work I've done, not because I'm my father's daughter (although in every other scenario, I am proud to wear that title). And he knows how hard I've worked because he took the same classes I did and struggled with them as much as I did.

After I said I'd go home to my husband and talk about it and pray about it, we bantered a little bit now that the climax of the meeting had been survived. He said that he thought my resume was playing with him since I describe myself as a social entrepreneur and he just won a fancy award for being a social entrepreneur even though he had never heard the phrase before he won the award. I said, "What should really freak you out is that when I reached into my purse to write something down, I pulled out from the linty depths the pen I got at your gala three years ago."

I can really make a difference for kids in this job. I believe deeply because it's been proven to me by all sorts of dry and boring research that the answer to society's problem can mostly be solved if we make sure that all kids are nurtured during their first 5 years. During that time, they learn non-cognitive skills that are crucial for learning cognitive skills later. Skills like delaying gratification to achieve a task, a desire to learn, the ability to sit quietly and listen, the rudiments of language acquisition. This job is preventing trauma in the lives of young children on a measurable scale, which allows them the chance to fulfill the potential that God gave them when they were born.

How could I say no?

So, I have been frantically finishing the Christmas presents that I thought I had another two weeks of unemployment to finish and trying to squeeze in some of the volunteer work I have been doing on my church's behalf.

I have been coughing at night, which keeps Jacob and I awake, so tonight I took the medicine my doctor prescribed which was a cough syrup with codeine.

Apparently, codeine keeps me awake so you all are the beneficiaries of the crash I'll feel tomorrow.

I hope things are going as well for you as they are for Jacob and me. Chag Sameach!

The School by the Side of the Road

I am listening to a sermon by Rob Bell that I downloaded from his church’s website. After I read his book and started listening to his music again, I wanted to hear his oratory. It turns out that the sermon I chose somewhat at random, entitled “The School by the Side of the Road” was actually an interview with one of his parishioners named Rachel Pater. She caught my attention when she started her story by saying that she had been thinking about a question he asked almost a year earlier. “Do you hear the cry of the oppressed? If you don’t, could it be that you are a part of a system that is oppressing someone else?” She said that she was a little offended by this question. I’ve come to a point in my journey that I look at the innocence and ignorance of that response with nostalgia. The bliss of being 21 years old. But then, she made me laugh. She said, “I considered myself a very just person and had always thought that I had a sense of justice and that I would never be part of a system that oppressed someone.” Here’s the good part. “I grew up with 2 older brothers. I felt from a very young age that I knew what justice was and I was pretty sure I wasn’t getting it most of the time.”

Rachel made me sit up and listen further when she quoted Shane Claiborne, my current nemesis, when he said, “The great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor, it is that they do not know the poor.” She talked about how she worked as a copywriter for a non-profit, humanizing the statistics of refugees, but never really felt shocked or personally offended by what those statistics meant, by what she was writing. She didn’t know any poor people.

She was telling my story.

She went on to talk about her choice to teach at an alternative high school and told stories about how hard it was but how joyful it was, too. Those are my stories. I have told them. I still tell them. I loved my urban kids. They had a vibrancy that I have not experienced anywhere else, except when I get to hang around the edges of community here on the west side of Chicago.

Rachel is not the only experience that I’ve had lately that tells me I need to go back and teach those kids again.

I wonder how this will play out.

Relevance

Last week, Esther and I went to California for a professional development retreat.  We got through security at the airport, traveled beautifully through both the take-off and landing, and then drove 5 hours north, stopping a few times so Esther could eat.  

Whew!

We stayed at an old hippie commune with 25 other people who are also passionate about community development, getting to know one another, doing a little training and eating good meals together.

As part of the events, we wrote reflection papers on In the Name of Jesus by Henri Nouwen.

Despite my seeming pulled-together-ness last week, I'm still struggling to get much done during the day, so I am sharing it with you so that this space won't become a total desert.

This is the second time in my life that Henri Nouwen has incensed me.  Such powerful emotions.  This happens to me sometimes when people write well and are clearly writing truth out of their authentic experiences with God.  I am a reader.  Bookish, even.  I want to relate to the protagonists of the books I read.  I want to see myself in them and I want to become more like them.  I just named my daughter for two protagonists in books that I want her to be like.

So, when a writer like Nouwen speaks of experiences that seem utterly inaccessible to me, I become incensed.  I have developed tools for feeling this way.  First, I write a lot of angry annotations in the margins of the book.  Second, I try to clearly articulate arguments about why the author’s lessons don’t apply to me and finally, I remember that I’m not in charge (thank goodness) and ask God to show me how the lessons apply to me.

So, the margin-writing is done and it’s time to articulate the differences between Nouwen’s experience and my own. 

First, Nouwen seems to equate Christian leadership with priests and ministers.  Are only those who are called to professional ministry the only people who are Christian leaders?  If this is the definition that Nouwen is working with, at what angle should lay-leaders and worker bees view his lessons?   It’s possible that there are options for non-pastoral Christian leaders outside of what he outlines here.  So, although Nouwen exhorts pastors to move toward irrelevance and reconciliation on a micro scale, maybe others of us are called to work towards impact.

Which leads me to my major disagreement with Nouwen.  I am 33 years old – Jesus’s age – and have spent a lot of time in prayer and in community, learning what my spiritual gifts are.  I try not to become complacent, but value working toward constantly honing and refining those gifts, as well as taking myself out of my own comfort zone to discover whether or not any latent gifts are waiting to emerge.

Caring for others is not one of my gifts.  I am abrasive, I problem-solve better than I listen, I get peopled out very quickly and I need to recharge in true introvert form by spending literally plural hours a day in quiet alone-time. 

I have found my servant niche as an administrator.  Frederick Buechner says, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  I am deeply glad when I am puzzling out obstacles to an organization’s success and developing strategic plans to further the Kingdom of God through organizational efficiency.

Since most folks in ministry and non-profits would agree that there is a deep need for this kind of work, I became comfortable years ago that my path was a different one from Shane Claiborne or Bart Campolo.  I have been called by God to macro-level reconciliation.

Because I believe that we are to be more Christ-like, I do push myself to do some incarnational ministry.  My church attracts quite a few social misfits and I practice a spirituality of hospitality to all, including those who annoy me.  I make myself vulnerable to them, remembering my own misfit status and accepting their ministrations for my brokenness as well as being available to their needs.

  

In fact, I agree heartily with Nouwen that part of our spiraling spiritual walk involves rediscovering and exposing our vulnerable selves that bring nothing to God’s table but our brokenness.  I am engaged in a life-long process of truly acknowledging my real relationship with God (i.e. that I am not, in fact, God). 

However, I cannot believe that God intended for my parts that are not totally broken to be overwhelmed by the cracks and be in a constant state of uselessness.  Jesus was effective both because he taught and because he sacrificed himself to be resurrected.  In fact, each role was necessary to give the other divine meaning.  In other words, if Jesus has not taught, his sacrifice would not have meant much (or possibly even have occurred) and if he had not been resurrected, his teachings would not have drawn the attention of people that needed to hear them for the last 2000 years.  Similarly, my weaknesses and my strengths are interdependent to my participation in the Kingdom of God here on Earth.  It is not time yet for me to retire to an intentional community and focus my energy on individuals rather than systemic change.

Frankly, it seems a little unfair for Nouwen to say, “Be irrelevant” now that he has had the privilege of being relevant for the last 20 years.

Of course, whenever I spend this much energy rebutting someone, I need to look inside myself to figure out what I’m insecure about that’s causing me to put my own views forward so vehemently.  I think the most obvious answer is that motherhood is forcing me into a less impactful stage of life.  I use the word “impact” in it’s most technical sense meaning measurable achievement of goals.  In becoming – ugh – a stay-at-home mom, I actually am retiring to an intentional community to focus my energy on individuals rather than systemic change.  I do not have a set plan to go back to work, meaning I am setting aside my training, my degree, and my network.  I have heard women describe this as dying for our children in obedience to Christ’s teaching that we die in order to live in him.  While that resonates as truth when I hear it, I’m still struggling to know if it is the right path for me.  There are lots of different truths out there.

I know that I am called to use the privilege that I was born with to leverage the work of street-level practitioners in order to help change the world so that more people can reach the potential God intends for them rather than being stunted by oppression and lack of resources.  I have not yet figured out how to do that while also creating a healthy environment for my nascent family.

That lack of resolution causes me to rail at Henri Nouwen and motivates me to ask this cohort for help in discerning my path.

By the time we shared these essays at the end of the week, I almost felt like it no longer applied.  Many of my cohorts also feel a calling toward impact: God's justice in addition to God's mercy.  There were several other mothers there who were clearly figuring out a balance.  We're going to meet several times more over the next two years and I'm looking forward to becoming friends and figuring out some of these things.

Because my old one is woefully out of date. Because my ability to pee in the woods is no longer quite so important in my life.

100 Things About Me

1. I live in the Humboldt Park neighborhood in Chicago, IL.
2. My church and my new best friend are only a few blocks away. My job is only 5 miles away and I can get there on the El.
3. I haven’t lived in this kind of geographic community since I was in college 8 years ago.
4. I’m 29 years old.
5. I have recently had lunch with a couple of daughters of men that I work with. It feels like not too very long ago that friends and colleagues of my father were having lunch with me as a favor to him.
6. I’m worried this means that I’m grown up now.
7. I’m worried that being grown up means that I need to know what I’m going to do with my life now. Is being a fireman still an option?
8. I’m going to grad school in the fall because I want to know more about urban community development and education. I’m going to the University of Chicago because I want to know really complex things that I can’t figure out just by reading books on my own.
9. I’ll have a Master’s Degree in Public Policy when I’m done after two years.
10. I get asked a lot, “What kind of job will you get with that degree?”
11. I don’t know.
12. I keep being drawn to the stories of people that live radical lives of simplicity and loving their neighbors. Their stories just resonate as right, like the sweet harmonies of the O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.
13. However, my skill sets don’t seem suited to living that life successfully. I’m afraid I won’t be very good at it and so my story would not ultimately sound like I want it to. I might end up dissonant.
14. This is why Shane Claiborne is my nemesis.
15. I’ve been reading a lot of Christian books lately. Blue Like Jazz. Plan B. Renewing the City. Walking With The Poor. Irresistible Revolution. Let Justice Roll Down. Velvet Elvis. Reconciliation Blues. Geez Magazine. Sex God.
16. This is unusual for me.
17. I think I’m starting to forgive other Christians for being such assholes.
18. I have read a book called The Spirituality of Imperfection and I won’t claim that it changed my life with a shaft of heavenly light and angel choruses. However, in combination with conversations with people who truly believe that they are broken and need help from God and other people, I’ve found a new peace with my broken self and my place in the world.
19. I have spent a lot of time with people in Alcoholics Anonymous since moving to Chicago. They're pretty cool. I think Christians should behave more like recovering alcoholics.
20. I moved to Chicago a year and a half ago from Orcas Island.
21. I had a tough time with the transition from a world of trees, mountains, ocean, dolphins, eagles, hippies, artists, and organic farmers to a world of dirty snow, garbage, traffic, skyscrapers, panhandlers, and catcallers.
22. I'm mostly OK with it now.
23. I moved back to Chicago because I didn't like only seeing my family twice a year. They would call me on Sunday afternoons and they'd all be at my parents' house having fun without me. Now that I think about it, once I moved back, they stopped getting together on Sunday afternoons.
24. If just one brother had moved to Seattle, I could have stayed on the island.
25. I have three brothers: Paul, David and Daniel.
26. I fit in between David and Daniel.
27. I'm the only girl.
28. That's right. I'm the princess.
29. I live with my brother Daniel.
30. We're partners against the world. We always have been. It makes it very easy to be roommates.
31. We watch a lot of wrestling at our apartment. Daniel pays the extra money to get the WWE 24/7 On Demand channel so he feels like he needs to get his money's worth.
32. My favorite wrestlers are C.M. Punk (His only addiction is competition) and Matt Striker, a former New York public school teacher who wears sweater vests and tiny little matching panties. Sometimes, he wears pleated khaki pants, just like every social studies teacher/coach you ever had. He's an excellent heel.
33. My mother thinks we're losing brain cells quickly over here.
34. In the rest of my spare time, I am a dilettante of crafts, a jill of all trades, as it were. I do a lot of different things to a very shallow degree. So, I knit, but only hats. I make jewelry, but nothing complicated. I quilt, but only using squares of fabric. I also have some other, more eclectic crafts that I make when the mood strikes me like little wire-wrapped dolls with handmade clothing and snow-globes. I've found that life is a little better if I'm making odd and whimsical things in my spare time.
35. On my best days, I consider myself a compilation artist.
36. But what I really like to do is read books.
37. I would prefer to read books rather than just about anything.
38. This includes cooking. I have four bachelor meals that I make on a regular basis: eggs on mayonnaise toast, frozen pizza, macaroni and cheese with peas please and tuna fish salad on toast. Everything else is either take-out or leftovers. That gives me time to read more books.
39. For a long time, I read mostly science fiction and fantasy books.
40. I intend to name my first-born son Isaac in honor of my favorite author, Isaac Asimov.
41. I wrote my undergrad senior thesis on science fiction and post-modernism, using The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy as my main illustrative text.
42. I got an A- from Dr. O'Gorman, the toughest grader on campus. She told me science fiction wasn't real literature at the beginning of the semester.
43. I still enjoy a good near-future, post-apocalyptic speculative fiction novel, but my fervor seems to have tapered off in the last several years.
44. I read a lot more literature lately (I just read The Invisible Man for the first time), as well as the aforementioned Christian books.
45. I attend River City Community Church. It is the last place on Earth I expected to be going to church. It's full of The Beautiful People. Everyone is young and we sing Contemporary Christian Music a lot of the time. But God says I'm supposed to be there (it's a long story) and I'm actually pretty excited to be a part of something very different. The church is only three years old and still very small. It has three pillars that are important: worship, reconciliation and community development. The reconciliation part is really difficult but makes my life experience feel a little more authentic. The community development aspect is completely in line with my intellectual interests (see #8). Plus, the sermons are phenomenal. I've also met some people that aren't assholes.
46. What I want out of life is to be surrounded by people that are willing to look me in the eyes and trust me enough with their feelings to speak the truth to me, even if they think I'm not going to like it.
47. I'm starting to find some of those people here in Chicago in this season of my life.
48. I'm starting to worry about moving to Hyde Park in the fall because it will be a whole new season in my life and I'm only just beginning to like this one.
49. My best friend from college might move to Hyde Park with me. She lives in the Quad Cities now but once she has her teaching certificate, she might want to teach urban kids. She'll be good at that.
50. I used to teach urban kids.
51. I loved it but the school administration burned me out and I had to go teach suburban kids for a while. Their parents burned me out and so I went to go live on an island for a little while.
52. I can't shake the feeling that I'm supposed to teach urban kids again sometime. Luckily, once you free yourself from the idea that tenure is a good goal and that you'll live off a civil servant's pension in your old age, you can go back and teach whenever you want.
53. Currently, I work for one of the largest para-church organizations in the country.
54. I had to sign a statement saying that I believed that Jesus Christ was my Lord and Savior in order to work there. That made me a little itchy but since it's true, I sucked it up and signed.
55. I run a teacher resource center that gets companies to donate office supplies to me so that I can give them to Chicago schoolteachers for free.
56. I also run a program that helps churches, rehab centers, neighborhood organizations and after school programs with personal care products that have been donated.
57. I was hired to build capacity in both of these programs and although some days I don't feel very productive, overall I feel like I'm doing a good job. Sometimes, I feel like I do a great job.
58. That's a good thing because basically, I work for Jesus. He can see when I'm surfing the internet instead of writing proposals.
59. I'm usually surfing urban community development blogs, which could legitimately be considered research.
60. I've had this blog for about 2 and a half years.
61. I think I've got about 12 readers.
62. My dad is my biggest fan. Hi Dad!
63. My dad also works in urban community development. I get to talk to him almost every day and Jesus doesn't even mind because it's about business. I think that's pretty cool.
64. I believe that Jesus died to forgive everyone's sin. I don't believe that he died just to save the people that acknowledge what he did. I think everyone's sin is forgiven and that everyone is going to heaven eventually.
65. I think that the reason we should try to do what God tells us to do now shouldn't be because we fear hell but because heaven is something we can experience sooner if we align ourselves with God's idea of what a good life is.
66. I get a lot of flak for these beliefs.
67. I can take it.
68. The tricky part for me is loving everyone. I want to do it because Jesus is a pretty good role model. It's hard because I don't actually like most people. They're often boring or annoying. Usually, I think that's because they remind me of parts of myself that I don't like.
69. I'm working on it, though.
70. I wish I prayed more. I think loving people would be easier if I prayed more.
71. I don't beat myself up over it, though. I accept my broken nature for what it is and just keep putting one foot in front of the other whenever I can.
72. Usually, that's what I do. Sometimes, I beat myself up over it. But then, the cycle of self-forgiveness begins again. It's a weird touchy-feeling oubouros.
73. Baking cookies is one of my top five skills.
74. Reading, interacting with teenagers, and analyzing communication for effectiveness are three of the others.
75. You'll have to know me a lot better before I tell you the last of my top five skills. Trust me, it's a good one.
76. I tend to like pop culture that gets cult followings without actually becoming part of that cult following. For instance, you won't find many people who appreciate Joss Whedon's TV work more than I do. However, you will find people that have memorized more dialogue and been to more conventions than I have. Other examples include the Star Wars universe, the movie Labyrinth, Neal Stephenson and the Muppets.
77. Pepe the King Prawn is my favorite Muppet. My favorite old-school Muppet is Rolf the Dog.
78. I'm not currently dating anyone.
79. I'm relationship-bored but I'm being very deliberate not to chase anyone down just because life has a little more verve when it's got a romance in it. I'm waiting until it's something worth my time and energy.
80. I'm not friends with any of my ex-boyfriends.
81. I'm really uncomfortable with that but it is out of my control. So, I try to accept the situation for what it is and just keep putting one foot in front of the other whenever I can.
82. The only piece of wisdom that I have actually earned for myself is that friendships are ephemeral. In different seasons of our lives, we have different friends. All of the other wisdom that I have has been learned from books. Universal truths! Woohoo!
83. I remember coming home from pre-school and saying to my mother, "Yesterday Carrie said she wanted to play with me but today she said she didn't want to be my friend anymore. Why?" I was three years old. I remember that my mother explained how some girls were just like that and I shouldn't take it personally.
84. I am still friends with Carrie. I'm having dinner with her, her husband and her toddler in a couple of weeks. She can claim most of the credit for our continuing relationship. How's that for irony?
85. Recently, I began spending time with my best friend from high school after living separate lives for the last 10 years or so. She lives in the city and we meet downtown to go to museums and free concerts in Millennium Park. She brings her toddler and we have a good time.
86. I have a best friend for this season, too. We met at a church party a year ago when I heard her say, "I have come to the decision that my personality does not mix well in large groups." It was just the kind of slightly awkward, totally wordy thing that I would say and when she began asking me a lot of slightly intrusive questions with an utterly charming sincerity later in the evening, I let down my defenses a little to talk to her. We communicate in some way every day.
87. That brings the total to four once you include my friend Erika, who cannot be linked to any particular season. I feel fairly flabbergasted to have four best friends in my life all at the same time. I used to believe that I would not ever have one. When I was in the 6th grade, I gave one of those charms that were hearts that you can break in half to say "be fri" and "st end" to a girl and she said she probably wouldn't wear.
88. I absolutely refuse to rank these friends in any sort of a hierarchical way. I simply enjoy them.
89. I like living in the city because of my ability to participate in all sorts of culture, like museums and free concerts in Millennium Park.
90. Sometimes, I usher at theaters so that I can see the shows for free. It's the best racket in town.
91. I also lucky enough to have a friend that works for the Lyric Opera, so sometimes I can get free tickets there, too. The last one I went to see was a stinker, though. If someone offers you tickets to the Dialogues of the Carmelites (except the title is in French), spend the evening washing your hair. You'll thank me later.
92. The most recent cultural event that I have discovered is fiction readings, which I like much better than poetry readings. It's basically just story-telling. Who doesn't like to be told a story? Plus, they are often in bars and bars have gin and tonics. What could be bad about that?
93. I wear a black hood that my brother David gave me almost every day of the week.
94. I try to acquire my clothing at thrift stores because the idea of sweatshops gives me the willies. It's not very loving to make people work 16 hour days in hellish conditions just so I can have cheap clothes.
95. I totally recognize that this is my personal issue and never want to push it on anyone else. God gave us all the gift of intelligence and it is disrespectful of me not to let other people go through their own discovery process regarding what is important to them because I had the freedom to go through my own discovery process.
96. I can hear both the El and the bus from my apartment windows. Both talk. They're not very good conversationalists, though.
97. Sometimes, I practice yoga. I prefer Iyengar. Lately, though, I haven't made any time for it.
98. I'm taking Calculus as a pre-req for my grad program and it takes up a lot of my time. It's also a lot like running alongside a horse with the intention of jumping on at some point. Right now, I'm just trying to keep a hand on the reins so that it doesn't get away from me.
99. I haven't sat in a math class in 12 years. The calculus isn't the problem; the algebra is.
100. I am glad that it is finally getting warmer. Now I don't have to walk around all day saying, "hatehatehate" in my head.

Big Boots

I have been walking around with a spiritual “Kick Me” sign pinned to my back for months now. God put it there when I read a book by Shane Claiborne called Irresistible Revolution. In addition to everything else he writes that blew my mind, he quotes Soren Kierkegaard, who writes:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How will I ever get on in the world?

My name is Rebecca and I am a scheming swindler.

Luckily, God stood next to me when I stood up and admitted that I had a problem. However, while He was there with His arm around me, loving me and supporting me, He stuck a “Kick Me” sign on my back. Apparently, He thinks that unless I feel spiritually afflicted for a while, I will continue to be a scheming swindler because I’m so comfortable this way. And too much comfort is not good for the soul. It gets flabby and has to stop and catch its breath a lot. So, to encourage me to start exercising for a healthier soul, I have been the target of a variety of folks who have written books and preached sermons and lived lives that kick me. And the motivation is starting to work. By their examples, I am coming to believe that I must stop hiding behind privilege and actually spend time forming relationships with the types of people that Jesus formed relationships with: the poor.

The only problem is that I’m not quite ready yet. My very human sense of self-preservation is keeping me from being able to trust that God will take care of me if I stop trying to control my life and start loving people full-time. So, according to His infinite wisdom, the “Kick Me” sign is still there. And now I’m both nervous and excited that something huge is headed toward me wearing big boots.

I am going to Africa.

I am going on a vision trip with World Vision, an international Christian humanitarian organization. We will be in Zambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Botswana, meeting the under-resourced people who allow World Vision to partner with them. It is my hope that spending two weeks being confronted with the immediacy of poverty in Africa will finally help me make the decisions that God has been wanting me to make about my own life. Maybe then, I won’t need the “Kick Me” sign to help me act accordingly on my understanding of the Bible. This terrifies me.

To distract myself from this sense of terror that I may soon be obliged to act accordingly, I am also going on this trip to gain professional perspective on the work I do with poverty here in the US. It is my hope that seeing development work stripped down to its essentials will help me focus on those essentials back home, where poverty is so complex. Seeing first-hand the difference made by providing a well to people who used to have to walk 3 miles daily for clean water must clarify for me the difference made by providing school supplies to inner-city kids.

Please pray for me. I hate traveling but rarely admit that to people because I want to cling so desperately to an image of myself as worldly and sophisticated. However, the reality is that I have experienced significant culture shock the few times I’ve left the country in the past, attempting to shut out the overwhelming experience by staying in my room, acting shy with people I encounter and reading my books whenever possible. I haven’t been anywhere but Canada in the last 9 years. Even Canada was hard. No joke. But I want to gather everything from this trip that I can and I’ll need the support of people that love me to find the courage to look up from my book and actually talk to and learn from people that are so different from me. I’ll also need to trust God that I will be OK when I do so. Trust. Always tricky for me. I’m a scheming swindler.

In addition to your contributions of prayer and love, I also need to ask you to consider contributing financially to my journey. It feels expensive but this is another area in which I am trying to trust that God will take care of me. I am committed to the trip and will spend grad school money if I cannot raise the money to cover my expenses. Please think about whether this trip and the insights I am hoping to gain are something that you can support. You can write a check out to me or go to www.firstgiving.org/rsmurphy and make a contribution with your credit card that will be deposited directly into World Vision’s account.

Thank you for caring about me and my attempts to align myself with God’ plan for me. I will welcome any type of contribution to this scary and important journey, including cards and notes of encouragement to take with me. I will be leaving on June 21 and returning July 3. Your prayers during that time will be especially appreciated.

More excerpts from my Africa journal

6/23/07 - My first day in Africa

On the plane 1 hour out from Lusaka, Zambia, the first country we visited:

Debi, a staff person from World Vision, tells my seat partner and I to open our windows. The colors in the sunrise are like something out of a movie. Or the cover of a William Gibson novel. The horizon is totally flat, the land brown tinged with orange from the top. From the horizon and working up, the sky starts deep tangerine, almost pumpkin and fades into lighter tangerines and the to the color of navel oranges then to a buttery yellow. The color of the fancy butter at Mom’s house, in fact. It transitions to a cornflower blue the a mom-jean blue then a navy, brilliant rather than dull and dark. The lights I saw on the ground were reddish and warm, like campfires although I’m sure we’re too high up for that and I’m just romanticizing.

In a very small plane on the way to Solwezi from the Lusaka airport

Looking down, I see lots of small garden with irregular hand-tilled rows. Many are circular with spokes of path splitting them. They look like hand-appliquéd quilts from this height, with rich browns and various green with hand-stitching serving as the rows between beds.

We pass a section of very large, very solidly green circles, as well. The look mechanically maintained.

Some classic round, thatched huts.

A dried riverbed, black with silt, I assume.

Interestingly, the land seems to be delineated between areas of dense trees and areas that look evenly polka-dotted with trees. I wonder if the roots of these trees give off a proximity toxin, like mesquite.

4 reasons why I feel like a dummy international traveler:

1. Didn’t get any cash before going through security in Chicago. Since I was told I’d only need $50 for two different visas, felt safe when there were no ATMs in the gate area. Figured I’d get spending money from local ATMs. Customs in Zambia (first country of entry): $100. Cash in wallet: $60. Local ATMs: non-existent.

2. Did not have watch at Heathrow. Nearly missed plan to Zambia. "Paging Passenger Murphy. We are about to close the flight." Ran so far, so fast that the words on the signs on the gangway after I had given them my ticket were blurry, even though I was just walking. Mantel was waiting at the door. Said my father would be mad at him if I got left behind. Told him I would be mad at me if I got left behind. Felt like I might die for the first half hour of the flight because I'm so out of shape.

3. Almost forgot to put my address on my luggage. Had sinking feeling as I handed it to TSA. Called it back and tagged it. Watched luggage carousel anxiously in Lusaka. Could see the man unloading the luggage onto the carousel through the plastic flaps. No Rube-Goldberg conveyor belts here. It doesn't show up. Local charter flight lady expedites filing a claim. Only consolation is that 20 other people were also luggage-less. I'm the only one in my group. Mantel tells me that it happens to him about every other trip. After that, it's all OK. Shane Claiborne lost everything he owned in a fire on Wednesday. It could be worse.

4. There is no boarding pass for me on our charter flight. However, once the manifest was checked, I was on it and could get on the flight. Again, I'm the only one in the group that happened to. Well, at least I didn't have to worry that I was 3 pounds over the 26 pound limit.

Turbulence in small plane. Stop writing. Start paying attention to slow, deep breaths. Eyes flit quickly in front and a little up for something to focus on. Find red switch over the pilot's shoulder. His movement makes this a bad choice. Roam around visually, somewhat urgently, bypassing a rivet in the seat in front of me, the bar of the sun visor, and the speakers as some instinctual not-quite-right. My animal brain doesn't even consider thing not shiny or not in deep contrast to the mostly white interior. Finally settle on the ring of the overhead light. Not conscious choice. My eyes simply felt like they could relax. Hear descending guitar chords in my head from some Allman Brothers Band song. Duhn-duh-Duhn-duh-Duhn-dadada. Duhn-duh-Duhn-duh-Duhn-dadada. Finally my body becomes less likely to rid itself of toxins at any loss of focus or rigidity and get to close my eyes and rest my face in one hand, pushing up my sunglasses with still-rigid fingers. As it eases, I remember my iPod. First song: Fire and Rain. Perfect. Second song: Boy in the Bubble. Also perfect. Can see smoke on the ground as James Taylor sing about Jesus seeing him through. Although close to the source it billows, in the air above, it look motionless, in stasis, like a picture.

On the road in Solwezi:

fences of long grasses instead of pickets
children younger than four standing in clumps, looking at our bus
children in hats - where are my knitting needles? in the luggage
much staring and waving - I wave back after Jim waves first
mud brick factories - bricks drying on small end in the sun
Chuck points out the anthills - What do I care about anthills? Show me the people
roadside stand with rice(?) bags for exterior walls
a mini-market with 30 stands on either side of the road - all of them selling clothes - physical necessity? or dignity in the face of poverty? where is the food?
the thought, "This is more than I can process" I cannot simply take notes on the little uniquities. It is all different and new. I will have to let it sink in before I can encompass it with words. Some concern, though, that this first experience of Africa should not be absorbed later into a generic description
three babies - 2 years old, maybe 3 - stand in a loose triangle on the crest above the ditch. T-shirts, short pants - the one in front has a bulky white knit hat with a slightly pointy top. All stare with two-year old intensity, like Leoni, a boy I knew on Orcas.

On the hotel veranda, 5:00 P.M.:

I am having a dress made! We were at a shop that had received micro-loans from the Harmos initiative. He had traditional Zambian fabric for sale and I asked Jenny (who works for WVI in Lusaka) to help me. She spoke with a World Vision employee named Victor who is here in Solwezi to bring a tailor to the shop to take my measurements. His name is Joseph and he has plump cheeks. When our plane landed this morning, we were greeted by 6 little girls in matching dresses. Jenny and I asked Joseph to make a dress like that. He could do it with 4 meters of fabric, so I got to choose my favorite, which has fish batiked on it.

Big day, no?

Big month

Seriously? It's been a month since I last posted? But I had notes in my journal and everything! I had a lineup of things I wanted to tell you! I was going to get to it! Really, I swear.

All protestations aside, I really am surprised that it has been so long.

Still, it feels like it has been a big month. To start with, we had four weddings to attend in May, two of which required travel, one I was in, and a fourth that I could attend blissfully without responsibility. It was such a sense of almost levitation getting ready for Amy and Chris's wedding because there would only be 6 people that I knew there and all were from church, so I didn't need to have any sort of agenda with my outfit (you know, boobs out for ex-boyfriends, professional for events where some attendee, somewhere might hire me). So, I could just try on dresses for Jacob and let him pick the one he liked best rather than asking his opinion and then telling him why it wasn't the right opinion. Here we are, dancing. I particularly love the dress he chose because I paid $3 for it at the thrift store and it looks classic, even though I know (with my freakish mind for costume analysis) that it is straight out of the early 90s. Seriously, can't you see Andie McDowell with this neckline? Or Elaine from Seinfeld? That photo was taken by the wedding photographer, Gavin Gould. There are more pictures on my Jake and Jess's blog.

Speaking of Jake and Jess, they have asked me to be their birth plan advocate. I went to tour their Alternative Birthing Center with them last week and when we were standing in the room in which they will become parents, I started to cry a little at the profundity of it all.

They want me to be there with them. While they become parents. I will be part of that intimate moment, even if I'm sitting in the corner knitting a hat as it happens. I was the girl that couldn't find friends to go to the Fun Fair with me in elementary school. I was the girl who knew the shapes of the headlights of the people in her youth group because I stared out into the dark wondering if they were going to stop by and see if I could join them while they cruised (life before cell phones = perpetual waiting). I was the girl who almost transferred out of college my first semester because I had missed the window to pair up with my new BFF and it seemed like none of the established groups were looking for new members. Now, I'm the girl that this family wants to be in the room to witness the new life of their child. When my brother's baby was born, he said, "Hold her now, she'll never be this new again." To get to do that again? For dear friends? It's too much of a blessing. I can't handle it when I think too deeply on it.

So, what else? Except for a short fall off the wagon on Saturday, I have felt very calm and with a stable sense of well-being that is so far from my cookie debacle awhile back. I just haven't felt the need to shout. I consider that only a little bit less than miraculous. As Katherine said in a comment to that last post, I have been less hard on myself. My therapist and I believe in a spirituality of imperfection, which teaches that we will not fix ourselves: no human can. All we can do is gently readjust our position so that we're more likely to receive God's grace that will help do less damage than we did before.

Saturday's fall off the wagon involved an impressive upwelling of anxiety regarding my absolute certainty that I am supposed to change the world in a measurable way, in a big way. I believe this more strongly than I believe that my feet will always be stuck to the planet by gravity. It's an internal motivation and therefore impossible to shrug off by saying that it doesn't matter what other people expect, which is how people try to comfort me. This is a huge weight and responsibility and most days I don't notice it. But I think that as I have been slowing down and examining myself, I can't help but notice it finally and respond to this inviolable expectation that I have of myself. It's difficult because as I slow down and quilt a little more often (Josh & Sara, Dan & Mary get ready!), I want this life for myself. I want a life where I'm only responsible for improving the lives of my immediate circle through love, caring and kindness. Systemic change is so all-consuming. It's a little scary.

Having lunch with Shane Claiborne, my nemesis, didn't help much. Nor did going to hear Anne Lamott speak on the same themes of focusing on our small communities and what we contribute. The one-day retreat in a beach house in Michigan, studying Henri Nouwen's, In the Name of Jesus, about his transition from hifalutin Harvard professor to companion of handicapped adults and Bart Campolo's talk at last year's CCDA about how impact might just be impossible to achieve in urban ministry certainly intensified this internal struggle. Sitting on the beach feeling almost too hot in the sun, with my feet shocked occasionally by the cold Lake Michigan water was so perfect, so restful, so uncomplicated. I lived in the now of physical sensations and felt a little transcendent. The daunting challenge of finding that same transcendence in the rest of my life is currently haunting me.

Still, I am happier than I have been in a long time. I am more in love with Jacob than I have ever been and my family is brilliant. My job continues to feel useful and the tasks I am set are mostly interesting. It's hard to complain about that and I don't think I am. But when given the opportunity to write a little bit tonight before I head out to my bi-weekly Dungeons & Dragons game, these are the things that were worth sharing with you.

Where things stand

Today was a busy day. I got to talk about Emergent Christianity and Race with some reporters from a pretty major magazine. Want to hear some of my answers?

I'm unwilling to make broad statements about what Emergents do and don't do when it comes to race. My pastor said once that our church would attract more non-white people when we became people with non-white friends. I use this example to say that the Emrgent movement is a decentralized movement. Different communities do different things. In the core group of 40 people at my own church, I was able to identify 14 non-white people, 4 of whom were immigrants. That's 35%. And yet the idea persists that the Emergent movement is predominantly white.

Some of that perception comes from the fact that it seems like the old guard is handing over the keys to the (material) kingdom to the Emergent darlings. This may or may not be true. Sure, a dying Presbyterian church in San Francisco gave their building to an Mission Bay, an emergent church in the area. But Mission Bay is pastored by Bruce Reyes-Chow. Yup. Sounds like a WASP. Did I mention that this Filipino/Chinese-American pastor later became the leader of the entire Presbyterian denomination?

But even if we accept that premise that Emergents are getting preferential treatment and it's proven because they get all the book deals, it's hard to blame them for that. Would turning down the book deals change the system or just let the status quo be the only voice heard? I think many of us are at least mindful of our privilege and are trying to leverage it even if we don't always succeed. When the journalists approached me, I asked them to speak also to the African-American emergent community in the south suburbs.

The problem is that Emergence is not a new denomination in the old model. It's a paradigm shift away from hierarchical church organizations that emphasize common beliefs in order to be consider a member of the community to flat organic networks that try to break down the walls between insider and outsider by respecting all experiences and their resultant beliefs. When a hierarchical system tries to pass on material goods to a decentralized system, the confusion that results can easily make folks resort to tribal instincts. When studying for my degree, I found that there are plenty of studies that show that at our deepest level, tribalism affects economic decisions. We do the best we can to receive it in good faith and to try to spread the wealth around but walking away from the chance to change the world is disrespectful to the people who still need the world changed (i.e. people without privilege). It simply allows the old systems to reproduce a new generation of oppression.

Like my pastor said, racial reconciliation is done by transforming individuals. I think folks in the Emergent movement are all at different points on the path to enlightenment about white privilege (remember, many members of the Emergent movement are non-white). We don't have an equivalent to the evangelical CCDA movement. I'm lucky enough to be involved in both but many Emergent folks aren't ready to be surrounded by a belief-based system in order to get the tools they need to do racial reconciliation (of course, no one in CCDA really knows for sure how to do it, either). Think how long Evangelicalism had to be around before those resources coalesced. We're only 15 years old and yet there is an expectation that we should be perfect in how we engage the world. We won't be. But we want to improve. So, I suppose if folks want to help the Emergent movement be better citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven when it comes to race, they will help create tools for how Emergent communities can help their people become the kind of people who have non-white friends. Not a lot of people want to help. Most want to feel threatened and so lash out. That's OK. They are on their own path, too.

On another note, I spend a lot of my time reminding people within the Emergent movement that we are not a small band of rebel fighters. This is not Star Wars lived large. Lots of people espouse similar ideas to lots of different demographic communities. I cited some examples when I spoke to the reporters today. I think very few people inside the movement would claim that we have any monopoly on the truth. That would be a new denomination in the old model. Instead, we are part of a societal shift and a few of us just happened to find each other and cluster together in the tumult.

Emergence is a label that some people need to help them on their spiritual journey. It allowed me to have a powerful sense of belonging, finally, in a spiritual community. It allows lots of people to signal who they are without going into long explanations: a shorthand almost. It functions like a handful of balloons on ribbons in a crowd and helps folks who have just read Brian McLaren or Shane Claiborne and felt a great sense of liberation look around and connected with like-minded folks.

There is some talk about how the Emergent movement is dying. It may be. All movements have life cycles and over centuries these life cycles seem to be getting shorter. If Catholicism begat Protestantism which begat Evangelicalism which begat Emergence, it makes sense that our life cycle might already be over. And that's OK. The ideas will live on. You can't go back to the cell once you have tasted liberation. I will continue calling myself Emergent for as long as it means something to the people to whom I am identifying myself. I said something like the following to the reporters today (although less thought-out and coherent) and later wrote this email:

It seems like if there were a seismic shift in the movement that people were responding to, I would have felt it. So, if the movement has not changed, then people [who are declaring their abandonment of the movement] must be responding to their own internal transformations and that's OK. But as it stands, the part of the movement that I resonate with is the part that puts the words "heresy" and "wrong thinking" up on the shelf since they are often tools a hegemony uses to force people to conform to subservient social positions. God gave us all the ability to engage with her and to reflect on that experience. Emergence acknowledges that all of those experiences are valid, even if they are different and lead to different theologies. I believe that God will transform heresy and wrong thinking through the grace of Jesus and the active presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. This relieves me of the burden of saving other people from themselves, or even of judging them.

I like when I can write something like that.

It's been a big thinking day and I like that, too. I got a lot done at work and a lot done in my soul and that's a good place to be in life.

Seeping in through the cracks

I have run back into the arms of fiction and it has wrapped me up with forgiveness and comfort.

Those of you that have been reading know that I have recently been immersed in books that illustrate the lives and philosophies of folks that have forsaken the world’s idea of what success is (house in the suburbs, fancy car, self-sufficiency) to become inter-dependent with people that are forced to live in under-resourced communities.

They live such joy and authenticity. It is hard work but it is work that has been stripped to its essentials and is, therefore, more satisfying. Studies are starting to show that all of our wealth is making us unhappier, using phrases like “choice anxiety” and citing the loneliness of the car-based suburbs. So, the alternative to constant worry about possessions is to let them go and begin loving people.

I want this.

So far, I have not yet been able to trust God enough with my life to actually do it.

This past week, a guest teacher at Mars Hill church ended his sermon by what seemed to be a standard inspirational story about how he was diagnosed with a disease seven years ago that should have killed him after it seriously debilitated him in five years. Two years past that deadline, he was still alive and walking without a cane. I was only half-listening at this point while I did my filing and paper work. Yadda, yadda. Isn’t God great? Miracles, yeah, yeah.

But it turns out that this was all background for him to talk about he and his wife’s tight financials in their retirement because his disease is so expensive. He went into great detail about how they have stretched everything so that they would be able to support themselves, if spartanly, for their rest of their lives.

He reminded us that Zaccheus resolved to give half of what he owned to the poor when faced with love and acceptance from Jesus. He asked, “Would I be willing to give half of what we have to the poor like God wants us to?”

This type of rhetorical question is usually a set-up for the pastor to be an example for the rest of the congregation and he then goes on to explain how he’s chosen to follow God more closely.

But this pastor said, “Would I be willing to give half of what we have to the poor like God wants us to?” With grief in his voice, he answered, “The answer is somewhere between ‘I don’t know’ and, ‘Probably not.’”

His honesty stopped my filing. He voiced what has been making me so uncomfortable as I read these books. He, too, can’t trust God enough to let go, and he’s been a pastor for 50 years! He didn’t even resolve it by protesting that he was trying to mend his ways.

His grief echoed my own for my inability to let go.

Sober alcoholics have hit bottom and, while they were down there, they realized that they are not ever going to be perfect because only God is perfect. This means that they cannot actually control their lives. Only God can, even if God is that doorknob over there. I believe that when we can truly let go of the idea that we can control our own lives, we can be truly happy. The lilies of the field, you know? I am sometimes irrationally envious of sober alcoholics because they have a clear and focused reason to keep them on the path of humility and dependence on the divine. If they don’t, they will begin drinking again.

If I fall off the path of acting like I believe that I’m just as broken as the next guy, there are no dire consequences that I can see, so there is only abstract motivation to stay on the path. I have to remind myself that the cumulative consequences are just as bad as falling off the wagon is for drunks.

So, I have been reading a steady stream of books that have made me extremely uncomfortable because I accept the high standards that they set forth AND know that I don’t measure up to them. I’m not used to not measuring up. So, I’ve done what any imperfect would have done.

I ran away.

I ran back into the arms of fiction and it was SO good. It feels like what I think it felt like for my friend Jess to heedlessly begin smoking again because her new boyfriend does. We know it’s going to be bad for us in the long run, but after having abstained for so long, it tastes SO good.

I’ve read about 6 or 7 books of fiction in the last 3 weeks and just started the next one at lunch today: Ursula K. LeGuin’s Four Ways to Forgiveness. She writes fantastic speculative fiction (that’s a sub-category of science fiction) prolifically and I keep finding titles that I never knew existed at used bookstore to read and enjoy.

Melissa Etheridge’s song, “Lover Please” sets up a story in which the singer has just put together all the clues and realizes that her partner is about to leave her. She sings, “Oh this one's gonna hurt like hell.” The phrase sticks in my head because it perfectly captures that experience of dread because it doesn’t hurt YET, but that lack of pain just gives her more clarity of mind to imagine just how badly it WILL hurt. We’ve all torn off that band-aid.

So, I’m only on page 4 and I read this passage:

All the holy abstinence she had intended when she came here two years ago, the single bowl of unflavored grain, the draft of pure water, she’d given that up in no time. She got diarrhea from a cereal diet, and the water of the marshes was undrinkable. She ate every fresh vegetable she could buy or grow, drank wine or bottled water or fruit juice from the city, and kept a large supply of sweets – dried fruits, raisins, sugar-brittle, even the cakes Eyid’s mother and aunts made, fat disks with a nutmeat squashed onto the top, dry, greasy, tasteless, but curiously satisfying. She bought a bagful of them and a brown wheel of sugar-brittle, and gossiped with the dark-eyed little women who had been at old Uad’s wake last night and wanted to talk about it . . . She did not merely hear; she asked for details, she drew the gossip out; she loved it.

What a fool, she thought, starting slowly home on the causeway path, what a fool I was to think I could ever drink water and be silent! I’ll never, never be able to let anything go, anything at all. I’ll never be free, never be worthy of freedom. Even old age can’t make me let go. Even losing Safnan can’t make me let go.

Before the Five Armies they stood. Holding up his sword, Enar said to Kamye: My hands hold your death, my Lord! Kamye answered: Brother, it is your death they hold.

She know those lines, anyway. Everybody knew those lines. And so then Enar dropped his sword, because he was a hero and a holy man, the Lord’s younger brother. But I can’t drop my death. I’ll hold it to the end, I’ll cherish it, hate it, eat it, drink it, listen to it, give it my bed, mourn it, everything but let it go.

Oh this one’s gonna hurt like hell.

Fiction is a life passion of mine because it can tell the truth about life so clearly because it people as the medium with which it communicates. It is the ultimate in communication through identification because we all have stories. Like Tim O’Brien says in The Things They Carried, “Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

This book is about the same things that those books by Shane Claiborne and Bob Lupton and Rob Bell are about.

I’m in trouble.

Recently, my friend Mark told me that he had been reading about vertigo. It turns out that vertigo is not just simple dizziness induced by looking down from high places. It turns out that many of us have an instinct left in us from when we were primates in the tree-tops, swinging and jumping tree-branch to tree-branch.

It turns out that many of us still want to jump when faced with an open space in front of us.

Something inside of us thinks that the next thing on the to-do list is to leap out into free-fall because there is bound to be another branch to grab on the way down. For primates, that not a problem because there always is another branch. And who knows what might be on that other branch. More food? A mate? Fewer snakes? Vertigo, then, is the dissonance created when the primal urge to jump fights with our modern understanding of our new physical limitations. It is indecision manifested in our Eustachian tubes.

Interestingly, vertigo isn’t a problem when we aren’t looking out over a ledge. We don’t get that lurch of the stomach coupled with a flare of exhilaration behind our eyes while mowing the lawn, making dinner or riding the train. Only when presented with an immediate alternative to life on solid ground does our instinct flare up and try to take over our bodies.

I haven’t had a consistent history with heights. I vividly remember climbing to the top of the high dive when I was 7 or 8, then standing completely paralyzed, knowing the kids were lining up on the ladder behind me but being completely unable to make myself jump. Ultimately, I made them all – peers and older kids alike - climb down from their positions so that I could return to solid ground in a controlled manner. However, I also remember walking right up to the edge of a canyon and letting my toes curl over on a family vacation only a couple of years later and scaring the begeezus out of my mother. I couldn’t understand why she was so freaked out.

But for most of my adult life, though, I have claimed that I was afraid of heights. That claim comes in particularly handy when I’m trying to get someone to like me and I feel like I’ve come across as too fierce and independent. A dash of vulnerability humanizes my image. However, saying that I was afraid of heights never felt entirely true, but I did not have any other words to explain why I preferred to stay away from any situation where I could lean out over an abyss. Glass elevators don’t bother me, nor do observation towers. But when my room is on a top floor of an o-shaped hotel where the interior hallways can look down onto the lobby, I experience what I now know to be vertigo. I call it fear of heights but it is really fear of following my primal instinct to jump. So, the more accurate claim is that heights make me uncomfortable.

I have been reading some books that are the equivalent of a deep crevasse just beyond the railing. A very primal urge within me wants to climb over and jump right in because these books put forth a solution that resonates like truth in my stomach. These books tell me that I have to sell everything that I own and give it to the poor. These books tell me that until I am an actual physical and social neighbor of the marginalized, I cannot change the world. These books tell me that it doesn’t matter how many people I reach or how well I reach them; what’s important is how I reached them. These books repeat Gandhi when he said that the world has enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed. These books remind me that my middle-class lifestyle is part of the problem and in direct opposition to Christ’s commands to his disciples.

And I believe these books.

Curse you, Shane Claiborne, and your book, The Irresistible Revolution! Curse you, Bryant Myers, and your book, Walking with the Poor! Curse you, John Perkins, and your book, Let Justice Roll Down!

Actually, I haven’t started reading Let Justice Roll Down, yet. I only just received it as a Christmas present but, frankly, I’m a little afraid to start it because I know what it will tell me. It will tell me to sell everything and give it to the poor. It will tell me to go to the broken people and live among them. It will tell me to ignore the fact that I’m awkward in interacting with people because I fear that they will hurt my feelings by rejecting me and to just do it. It will tell me that benefiting from the privileges that society gives me simply because of the situation that I was born into is the same as actively taking those privileges away from someone who wasn’t lucky enough to be born into my life.

And it will be right.

Because the other thing that these books tell me is that when I do these things, the loneliness will be eased. When I do these things, the sense of aimlessness will go away. When I do these things, the layers of hurt that are the result of taking risks will not seem so overwhelming. I will not feel guilty anymore for not trying to fix all the problems of the world because I will be actually fixing one of the problems: me. And I will really believe that it is enough if I try to fix myself by giving my life to others. I will still get hurt and frustrated but by plunging into a life dedicated to building community and easing the suffering of others, that hurt and frustration will be balanced by a sense of purpose, a sense that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. Finally.

These books give me vertigo.

In Bryant Myers' book, he quotes a man named Kwame Bediako, who says, "Part of every genuinely pure motivation in Christian service is also the Christian workers' own sense of need for the same gospel he or she seeks to incarnate and impart to others." That gospel, that good news, is that God loves us. God loves all of us so much that made his son suffer terrible things in order to teach us how to be happier in this life while we're here on earth. We long to tell other people about that love and way of life because we want to believe it ourselves. We want to rest in the knowledge that we are known and loved despite of ourselves.

So why won't I use the knowledge that Jesus shared with us? Why can't I be confident that my needs are already met and so I should devote my time to meeting the needs of others? And it's not just Jesus who says this. All sorts of divine and mortal folk have the same message. Love others, even to the point of sacrificing your own comfort. Why won't I believe that a life lived completely for others is the only life that will provide any real contentment? Why won't I believe it enough to actually do it? I don't want to be the type of person whose habits cause the exploitation of people I can't see. But, for some reason, even though I know the effects of my middle-class lifestyle, I still cling to it.

I want so desperately the peace, the sense of rightness that the people that write these books offer. They feel it and tell me that I can feel it, too. They admit that their lives haven’t become beds of roses overnight but they believe that the journey rather than the destination is what’s so important to get right. They mix candor and hope in equal doses. Their faith in this vision has transformed them and I, too, want to be transformed. I want to know what is on that branch over there. But in between the branch I am standing on and the branch they tell me exists just outside of my peripheral vision is a free-fall. So, I hold myself back. And the vertiginous battle ensues. I suppose that my state of mind right now is often called an existential crisis. Why am I here? What is my purpose? and all that rot. I guess it’s time. I didn’t really do it in college, when you’re supposed to. I had a purpose then. I was going to be a teacher. Once I met Dennis, I knew I was going to be a teacher and have a family. There was no agonizing. Since I knew the destination, taking the steps forward was easy. But now, I don’t have that certainty. Without a destination in mind, I can only guess which direction to travel.

So, I have resorted to incrementalism. The unknown destination produces timidity and I take baby steps. I do community development work but I do it only 40 hours a week for a giant corporation with a salary and benefits. Then, I go home to my safe block of bohemian apartments in an only somewhat marginalized neighborhood to craft, watch DVDs and worry about my social relationships with people that are almost identical to me demographically. I attend a church that is traditional in its trappings, progressive in its vision and so young that it can’t actually find its ass with both hands yet, thus saving me from actually having to commit to any of its three pillars of Reconciliation, Worship or Community Development. Each year, I increase my offerings by 1%. As of January 1st, I’ll be at 6%. Only 4 more years to go until I’m in alignment with Biblical teachings! Woo. Hoo.

But is incrementalism really that bad? You can't run a marathon your first time off the couch. Should I see this time in my life as training so that I can maintain a radical lifestyle in the face of a world that tells me that creature comforts aren't really so bad? Kids in sweatshops actually have a better life than they would have if I didn't buy that beautiful decorative item for my shelf, right? Don't I need to maintain this lifestyle at least for the next two years so that I can effectively study public policy in order to really make a difference? Or is that just rationalization?

What is muddying the waters here actually seems to be two different philosophies about how to follow God's recommendation for a good life. One says that actually helping the poor is what is most important. The other says that my own spiritual health is what is most important.

I am preparing to start school at the University of Chicago's Harris School for Public Policy. I was born white, in an upper-middle class family to parents who created a stable love-filled childhood, which resulted in relatively healthy self-esteem and world-view. I have almost no demons to get in the way of being successful. By sheer luck, I'm not burdened by children to care for. I'm pretty smart and find the theories of community development to be extremely interesting. My father is fairly well-known and even more well-liked in a variety of prominent circles and since I am currently following his path, I am a little bit of a darling to those folks, which grants me access to them that I would not normally have gotten. My mother is an excellent hostess and has instilled in me a good instinct for complex social dynamics. Aside from being a woman, I am perfectly poised to be influential in Western society. If actually helping the largest amount of marginalized people improve their lives so that they can reach the potential they were born with is the goal, then systemic change is required and I am going to be good at shaping systemic change in a few years. But I think that for me to be good at changing the world by changing its structures, I will need some creature comforts. I will need to come home from a day of work and not work. People who relocate to under-resourced communities never get a break from that relational work. I will need to maintain a professional image so I can make good first impressions with people I want to win over. Professional images require a fair amount of upkeep, both financial and with the amount of attention necessary. I will need to stay up-to-date on the worldly interests of people that I want to persuade because good persuasion starts where the opposite side stands. To be influential, I must appear relevant and I can only accomplish this by staying in the world.

But if embodying Christ's humility and following his example of surrounding himself with the marginalized folks of society is the goal, then I need to drop out of the world. This viewpoint says that it doesn't matter how many people I help out of poverty or that I help them out at all. The poor will be with you always. What matters is that I treated the poor like they were my equals. Their transformation isn't the point. Mine is. And I won't be transformed unless I stop relying on my own strengths and begin relying upon God's. It is harder for a rich man to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. This is because the camel relies on God utterly and the rich man hardly at all. I believe heaven is a state of being during this mortal life that is completely content because it is completely in line with what God wants for us. And God is very clear that he wants for us to treat others as if they have just as much right to my stuff as I do. If he takes your shirt, give him your coat also. It is very clear about who is blessed: the poor, the meek, those who mourn.

I keep trying to find a way to end this post that will end my equivacation and come to a logical conclusion that will make it absolutely clear to me whether I should jump into a life like Shane's, which is not unlike my life on the island incidentally, or whether I should keep on the path that I'm on. However, I don't think I'm going to find it today. Probably, if this kind of thing could be wrapped up in one blog post, I wouldn't feel so much vertigo right now. My fear is that if I'm supposed to jump off my present tree limb, I don't want to replace it with another limb that offers no improvement. Without a sense of calling or rightness from an actual destination, I don't think I would actually experience much of a change spiritually. The journey is more important than the destination, but leaping from empty branch to empty branch, no matter how well you do it, is bound to get discouraging.

Does this mean I just have to wait? I suppose that, in itself, is relying on God. I can't manufacture my own right time. Like Esther, it will come for me whether I'm ready or not. I just wish this roaring in my ears would quiet down so I could get my balance again.