A Year-ish Worth of Work Finally Pays Off

Remember that one time when I started this blog and said it would include things like recipes and crafty things that I was working on? And then I only ended up writing about what was happening in my life, and eventually only writing about theology because that's 80% of what happens in my life now?

For that matter, remember that one time when I wrote things?

I won't make any promises about keeping things up-- that always seems to end in embarrassment as I utterly fail to do so-- but this seemed worth resurrecting my blog for at least a day.

I MADE THIS.

I have been making this, rather, over the course of the past year. And by that I mean I started at the end of last summer, stopped for the entirety of the school year and most of this summer, and finally finished it this week.

It's a jewelry tree, if you're unfamiliar with the idea. I had been wanting one for a long time but all of the ones in the stores seemed way too expensive and way too small, so I decided to just make one myself. Wanna see how?

Here it is, in 20 easy steps. With lots of pictures!

Step one: Fold a thick gauge wire into the shapes of branches, with little loops for leaves.

Congratulations! This was the easiest step.

Step two: Start wrapping the branches in thin wire for support and prettiness, but without wrapping the leaves.

Step three: Accidentally get the thin wire horribly, irrevocably tangled. Cry.

Step four: Have your husband or some other kind soul untangle the wire for you.

Step five: Finish wrapping the branches, but leave the bottom four or five inches (the bent part) unwrapped to make "roots" later.

Step six: Buy the fabric, thread, and needles to make the leaves where earrings will hang.

Step seven: Get scared at the prospect of sewing anything by hand, even something so simple as this.

Step eight: Give up for almost a year.

Step nine: House sit for a friend who is both wonderfully supportive and a fantastic seamstress. Decide that the residual skill and encouragement lingering in the house is enough that maybe you can actually do this, and finally sew the first leaf on.

Step ten: Finish all the leaves in a few days because they were actually really simple.

Step eleven: Starting with the tallest branches and working your way down in batches, start using the thin wire to wrap again, this time wrapping several branches together to build the branches into a trunk.

Step twelve: Because it's been a year since you used it last, forget how ornery the thin wire is. Make a huge tangle again, but decide that this time you're going to fix it yourself, dammit.

Step thirteen: Create a wire octopus on your living room floor as you try to untangle the stupid wire, using decks of cards to hold the wire down without bending it.

Step fourteen: Wonder why in the world you have so many decks of cards. Be grateful that you've collected them anyway.

Step fifteen: Get the wire untangled and slowly add more branches until they have all been included. Wrap as far down as you'd like your tree to stand up, still leaving a few inches of the "roots" on the ends of the thick wire to make your base. (see first picture)

Step sixteen: Mold a pack of air-drying modeling clay into a mound and "plant" your tree in it, pushing the roots down into the clay until they're covered. Leave little bits of the roots showing through the clay if your artistic heart desires it.

Step seventeen: Force yourself to wait the 24 hours while your clay dries. Try to resist the urge to continue poking at the clay.

Step eighteen: Finally put your jewelry on the jewelry tree you made all by yourself.

Step nineteen: Stick the whole thing on a lazy susan so you can actually get to all of your jewelry.

Step twenty: Admire!

Hungry

Today I am hungry.

We haven't run out of food; we're not that poor, and even if we were my congregation would never let us starve. I'm hungry because I've committed to fasting one day each week during lent, from sunset to sunset, and to give what I would have spent on food to those who go without on a daily basis.

Maybe it's because of that second commitment that when I fast my mind isn't necessarily on God the whole time.

For me being hungry is out of the norm, and being hungry makes me think about God, for sure. It makes me grateful for how incredibly blessed I am and it reminds me of God's desire that all might live. God wants me to have what I need.

But that always brings my thoughts around to the fact that there are 925 million other people in the world who are hungry today, and they didn't choose it as a lenten discipline.  God wants them to have what they need, too.

Meanwhile, I probably have way more than I need. I'm choosing to abstain from it today, but it's there, waiting for me.

Coincidentally, in my postcolonial voices class today we read and discussed 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, where Paul writes about the abuses of the Lord's Supper. Some people in Corinth were overindulging on food and drink while others were leaving the table hungry. This is also the passage that I've heard as a warning to never take Communion without confessing my sins first, because Paul says that whoever eats and drinks (takes Communion) without discerning the body eats and drinks to their own judgment. Today it was offered as possibility that Paul is actually referring to the Body of Christ, which he describes so famously in the next chapter. In some early copies of this text it actually says "without discerning the body of the Lord."

What if this warning is actually to the Church that lives in abundance while so much of the world goes without? What if, by our tacit acceptance of our own abundance in the face of so much need, we are opening ourselves to judgment? Isn't the continued suffering and want in the world the very indictment that so many lay against our claims to seek the good of all creation? We eat and drink to excess while one seventh of the world is hungry. My congregation would never let me starve, but we let 5,000,000 children starve every year.

Our Communion table, our place where all are made equal and made one in the Lord, judges us.

God wants everyone to have what they need, and God wants us to be a part of that. I don't know whether you decided to give something up or to take something on for this lenten season, or if you even observe lent at all. But as Christians, as human beings, I ask you to start to think for these next 38 days (and beyond) about what you can live without so that others might live.

Not Their Prophet

A couple of weeks ago I shared a little bit of my own struggles with a desire to serve the last and the least (I cannot say that phrase without Relient K in my head, by the way. They have a song for everything I'm thinking.) that is always balanced by my recognition that I come from a position of power and  don't want to just make things worse.

Then, last Wednesday and Thursday, I had an idea.

Which I promptly forgot to write about. To be fair, it was because I got to spend all weekend in Austin!

I was there for the MFSA board meeting but I also got to go to some of my favorite restaurants and see some of my favorite people.

I actually did write a blog post while I was there, it just wasn't for my blog. If you're interested, you can read it here.

But back to the point.

Wednesday night was the weekly chapel service that I help to plan and Thursday morning was my class called Postcolonial Voices, which is both difficult and amazing. Postcolonial studies is a bit much to explain here, but one of the main ideas is that you can't ignore any point of view or restrain any voice. That's part of what makes it hard to define.

Wednesday night I was one of the readers, and the passage was Deuteronomy 18:15-20.

"The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: ‘If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.’ Then the Lord replied to me: ‘They are right in what they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.’"

This has always been one of my favorite passages (yes, even before I admitted to myself that just maaaaaaybe I was feeling a call to ministry) because, in some small way, I do see myself as a prophet. There are times when I do feel like there's a message that I've been called to share, and I guess that's part of what this blog has become.

But did you catch the end, about speaking words that haven't been commanded to you? Harsh. I've gotta say that this is one part of the Bible that makes me uncomfortable, that makes me wonder about who wrote it and when and why, though that isn't what I've been thinking about this week.

This week I've been thinking about how the end of that passage actually brings me back to the beginning of the passage, which brings me to the "Aha!" moment I had in class Thursday morning as we talked about listening to each voice.

The passage starts with "God will raise up for you a prophet...from among your own people."

Well we've already established that, in most ways, the people I am afraid of doing harm to with my desire to help are not really my people. I can't claim that history. I am a white, Christian, educated American with more or less enough to get by, even if I am a poor grad student.

I am not the prophet called out from the wounded and oppressed people of the world. I cannot speak on their behalf. I cannot share their stories- the stories are theirs to share or not. Those words have not been commanded to me to speak.

What I can be is the prophet called out of my own privileged, powerful people, and call them to better lives.

I can call my own people to share their power, to use it wisely, to honor the value of those that we have made outsiders.

To borrow some of God's words from Micah's mouth, I can call us- because Lord knows there are days when I need reminding- to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. To love God and love neighbor.

That is a message I can share.

That, if nothing else, is what I can do to make the world a little bit better, a little bit brighter, a little bit more like the kin-dom of God.

"Why do Americans have such nice backpacks?"

The internet is pretty stinkin' awesome.

We have a finite amount of time and energy, which means that- whether consciously or not- every day we have to decide in what and, more importantly, in whom we are going to invest that time and energy. Realistically, statistically, we can only have so many friends. But with the magic of the internet, now we can actually keep tabs on all those people with whom we never had the time or inclination to invest in an actual relationship but that we really did like or find interesting. Or just attractive, whatever. No judgment here.

The point is, while my parents' generation would've had to work really hard to keep up with everyone they knew in college, I can find almost anyone I've ever known in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I read their blogs. That's what brought on this post.

See, there was this guy who was kind of peripheral to one of my two core groups of friends in college (the one I had in common with my husband); he'd hang out with us sometimes, but I hardly ever saw him, much less had deep conversations with him. He did, however, have a reputation for being a great writer, so I was all over it when I happened to notice several months ago that he was entering the Peace Corps in Cameroon and keeping a blog. I've loved reading it even though I hardly know him because he's a fantastic writer and is living something that I can only dream of doing. His most recent entry, though, left me a little disappointed.

Quick disclaimer: Barrett, I can't imagine you'll ever read this. If you do, no offense intended. You just made me think. Thanks!

K. Onward. I swear I'll make my point soon.

While he's there he's teaching a technology class. One day one of his students raised his hand to ask a question- a rare thing- but his question had nothing to do with the subject of the class. Instead of asking how to make his document double-spaced or how to spell a word in English, his student asked, "Why do Americans have such nice backpacks?"

Talk about a sucker punch.

Now, as I was reading this I thought, "Yes! I'd love to read what he has to say about a question like that." But no. One of the three Americans the student mentioned by name is a new girl in his town, and the post transitioned smoothly into talking about her and then into talking about teaching there in general. I felt like he'd put in this great hook for his post and then completely ignored it.

So I guess this is what I wish he'd talked about. Why do Americans have such nice backpacks?

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how we- we, anyone from the predominantly white, richer-than-most-of-the-world, colonial super power that is the United States- can ever hope to go anywhere or serve anyone without coming off as completely paternalistic. How do we name our own power and privilege and still express our honest and heartfelt desire to press our palms against the wounded places of the world, as Don Miller so beautifully puts it? How can we ever look someone in the eye without immediately hanging our heads in shame? How do we say, "I know that this is my fault, but I want to help you make it better?"

How do we try to share an education that could change the course of someone's life for the better when the backpack we carry to class probably cost us more than our students will see in a year?

When I posed these questions to my good friend at Wesley his response was simply, "We can't."

Ugh. I'm too optimistic for that. And maybe in this case that's unreasonable, but it still grates on me.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I do have to just suck it up, accept the awkwardness, apologize, and if they want to accept me, wonderful; if not, the thousands of years of colonialism that make up my ancestry don't give me the right to beat them over the head with my helping hand.

But something in me says no. There has to be more than that apology, critical as it is. There has to be a way for me to meet the people who are so distinctly "other" on ground that is level nevertheless. And I think that means two things- it means humbling myself and seeing the other with love and respect. Really, it means one thing. It means a relationship, one where each of us sees the other as nothing more or less than a human being, a child of God, a creature of unimaginable beauty and complexity.

And really, that's all I've got. I don't know what steps to take to make that happen. Maybe it's too much for me to ask after all. I'm hoping that it'll be something I'll learn when I go on my immersion through Wesley next winter break. But I suspect that, as it always seems to be, it's about respect and love. That's what keeps us human.



(As always, but especially today- please, share your thoughts!)

Exercise and Exercises

First, a quick rundown:

-I survived finals without a single meltdown. Progress!
-I've gotten four of my five grades back so far and am pretty happy with them. The fifth won't come in for another month at least because that's just how my professor works, and my perfectionist, OCD self is slowly coming to terms with that.
-We went to Texas for 10 days over Christmas and it was wonderful. We saw almost all of our family and our closest friends. We even saw Les Mis with my college roommates and saw one of Jeff's friends one last time before she leaves for Argentina for 3 months (buena suerte, Kendall!). Oh, and my nephew is adorable and quite possibly the happiest baby ever. Basically, good times all around.

Now, my actual thought for today:

New Years has come and gone, and resolutions have been made (and broken, I'm sure). One of the most popular resolutions is to get in shape, right? And, at least within the Church, another of the most popular is to be more dedicated with spiritual practices. We go out and buy our gym pass or that perfect new devotional, or we decide that this year we'll try yoga or lectio divina, and we go merrily on our way. For about a week.

Then we miss a day. But it's cool, it was just one day, and we rally.

Then we miss a couple more.

Then a few more.

Then the guilt sets in.

Then we think, ahhh, forget it. I'll try again next year.

And then I remember one of the best pieces of advice about spiritual exercises that I've gotten in 23 years: God doesn't care if you miss a day or if you miss a week. God just cares that you're trying.

Now, that's pretty simplified and (as most advice can) can be used to write off an awful lot of slacking, but the sentiment holds true. We're not perfect, and very few of us have the discipline to hold to a regimen of anything for the rest of our lives, whether it's physical or spiritual. But what matters is that we keep trying. We keep going back. The thing about strict workout plans or read-your-Bible-in-a-year plans is that while they can be really useful they can also make us feel so guilty when we miss a day that we quit entirely.

No, several weeks of inactivity followed by one day of exercise isn't a very good pattern for losing weight, but that doesn't mean that getting on the treadmill today without a clearly defined workout plan is a bad idea. You'll still get that benefit today, and having done it today will make it easier to do tomorrow. Reading your Bible or journaling or praying today won't make you an automatic saint, but it'll make you think about your faith a little more in your day-to-day life, and- who knows!- maybe you'll think about how your faith ought to affect your actions when you get put in a stressful situation tomorrow. 

In both our physical exercises and our spiritual exercises, we shouldn't let long periods of idleness prevent us from taking a small step today. That small, unguided step might be the beginning of a habit that we can keep up, one built on grace rather than guilt.

And maybe that applies to blogging, too.