Where I've Been: What I've Learned

I've been to Kozy's Pizza, where I learned how to swear creatively; sing along with P!nk; make seven different steak subs at once; work 12 hour shifts. I learned how to talk about Jesus; I learned how to NOT evangelize anyone EVER because it is SCARY.

I've been to New England Camp Cherith, where I learned how to shoot weapons; make 13 year olds believe I was cool; preach a sermon; light a campfire. I learned how to be a Christian; I learned that Christianity was sort of a big deal.

I've been to UNH where I learned that there were other people in the world who liked to argue until they were out of breath; that there were other people who really really wanted to know what made reality tick; that  I didn't have to take crap like "you think too much" from people; that Christianity maybe didn't make sense, philosophically and that that was complicated DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.

I've been to Montana where I learned that if you want peace, it's going to have to be inner; that if you want friends, you're going to have to know what makes a good friend; that if you want to be skinny, you can't eat Lucky Charms five or six or seven times a day; that if you want to look cool, you'll probably have to give up doing everything that you love and it definitely won't be worth it.

I've been to L'Abri where I learned that sitting with questions is more important than having answers; that reality is what happens when all the technology dies; that real friends are worth fighting for but sometimes not worth dying for; that Jesus is more solid than anything else in the world;  that until you stop trying to make something happen nothing real will ever happen.

I've been to a monastery and learned that you really only need toast and apples to survive; that music is better when it's rare; that really life is best with a book and tea and sunlight; that Europe is nice but America is home.

I've been to Kentucky and am still learning.

washer

here is what i used to send through the washer:

bobby pins, spare change, candy wrappers, receipts, tissues, pens

here is what gets sent through the washer now:

bobby pins, candy wrappers, pens, construction staples, thin slices of vinyl siding, pieces of door hinges, stub ends of construction pencils, drill bits, hay, bits of gravel, tiny screws, big screws, trim nails, roofing nails, decking nails, allen wrenches, and safety glasses.

god help the washing machine.

rambles, letters, boggarts

this started out as a little intro to another blog post that started out as a letter, but it's a thought on its own, so here it is.

i've found that i think and process much better when i'm writing letters than when i'm trying to blog. i think it's partly because i'm trying to communicate something important to me to someone important to me - i have something that i want them to know and to understand. i'm not "writing", i'm trying to share a little piece of me with them. i have them in my head while i write. blogging and writing personal essays has always been really challenging for me (more so than academic essays or letters), because i'm not always sure why i'm writing what i'm writing. i can't find a "tone" and end up being really flippant or really pompous. it never sounds or feels like me. it has the distinct, stale aftertaste of make-believe.

i guess that this all comes down to the "authentic self" and where exactly that self is located. i hope that it's at least "hidden with christ" but when you step out of your prayer closet into the world - does your authentic self stay hidden in the closet while you act whatever part the present audience seems to like the best?

this pulls around to my boggart analogy (because i'm never going to be too old or too self-righteous or too cool to use harry potter metaphors). a boggart is a magical being that assumes the shape that the person facing it will fear the most. but the problem is that when it's in a room with a lot of people, it gets confused and CRACK! changes from CRACK! thing to CRACK! thing to thing until it pretty much blows up from confusion.

does anyone here feel like a boggart some days? you walk in a room with a lot of people, and you aren't sure what person you're supposed to be for them all so CRACK! you start changing until you sort of blow up. but that's not a problem if you take your authentic self out of the closet when you leave.

there have been very, very few people in my life that i have breathed a sigh of relief around, because finally i am not a confused and lonely boggart but a real, robust, complete human that i recognize as the self christ sees. and when i write them letters, or walk with them, or drink coffee, or sit with them and listen to adele, there's nothing that i have to be except - me, with all my silliness and selfishness and funkiness.

but i don't write yet out of that centeredness. i'd like to.

affirmation baggies

our house has a line of paper bags stuck up on the wall, all in a row, with the name of a housemate on each one. they are our "affirmation baggies", and whenever anyone wants to say something nice or encouraging or comforting to someone else, you write it on a pretty notecard or a sticky note or the back of an envelope and stick it in the baggy. last week we had the first week of Workfest, which is when all the alternative spring break kids get down here and help us build houses and learn about appalachia and have a lot of fun. we gave them all affirmation baggies, too, so at the end of the week everyone on the crew had little notes of praise and encouragement and love bursting out of our bags. and it was, actually, really encouraging reading them after the kids had left, and knowing that what i did that week affected them in some way.

today in church we started singing, and i was thinking about affirmation baggies, and then i wondered if our praise and worship isn't sort of like index cards into god's affirmation baggy. he doesn't need affirmation, but he likes it, just like we do. and there's nothing wrong with us enjoying being praised - and nothing wrong with god loving our praise, too. it's a gift we can gift him (back to gifts!).

so today i got to stuff affirmations into god's baggy, and it just seemed so much more healthy than going into worship trying to feel good or be lifted up or inspired. i was there to give god a gift - i hope he was as happy with his bursting baggy as i was with mine last week.

gifts and obscenities

this was originally a letter i wrote to a friend, but it's pretty much what i want to say about this, so i'll keep it.


I'm reading a beautiful book right now called "Free of Charge: Giving and Receiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace." Essentially, it's about gifts. Giving gifts, receiving gifts, gifts from God. It's made me look at a lot of things differently - for instance, I've been thinking about my volunteer house. And of course, L'Abri, because everything kind of makes me think about L'Abri.

One of my favorite memories of L'Abri was when one of the workers told me that I could swear as much as I wanted while I was there. It sounds silly, but I was pretty angry, confused, and lost when I landed in Greatham, and when Esther passed the ketchup and told me that I didn't have to change my vocabulary to be welcome, it was, ridiculously, transformational.

Well, here at my volunteer house we are not allowed to swear. And it drove me crazy at first. I don't like institutions much (this is another story that I've been recently discovering and will share soon) and I don't like institutions that restrict my behavior. (The no-drinking thing is its own kettle of fish that I will also tell in another story).  But I've been thinking about it recently, and I've been particularly thinking about the concept of "being offended," since the official reason that we don't swear at the volunteer house is because it might offend someone. Now this is all well and good, because it's important to respect people and honor their boundaries however we can. But as I've been reading this book about gifts, I've been thinking more about "political correctness" and "offending" people, and I've been wondering if there is something that's missing.

Maybe "not being offended" isn't a right that we are all born with - it's a gift that one person, in love, gives to another. When I choose not to swear around someone more sensitive, I am giving him a gift. It's a love offering from me to him. But when he treats it as a right, then it's annoying as hell. When a parent treats your "best behavior" in the house as a right that  is owed to them, instead of a gift that is freely given out of love, then it's a commodification of what should be a free-will exchange. Similarly, when Esther gave me permission to curse my wee little heart out at L'Abri, she was giving me a gift. She said that it was all right to be me, in all my offensive crudity. Unfortunately, at the time, I took it as a right. But it was a love offering, too.

So how can both sides be a gift? Well, I think that maybe every time we show grace to someone we are giving them a free gift. And sometimes other people give us that gift and we receive it, and sometimes we give the gifts to other people. It's a perpetual momentum of gift giving and accepting.

The illness of our society, I think, is this demand for things. We demand political correctness and compassion and non-offensiveness - all good things! - but the demand itself negates the beauty of what love is. It's a gift, not a right. When we demand it, we're stripping away what makes it so beautiful. How many people doyathink walk around all day enraged at being offended, but never appreciating when someone doesn't offend them? I guess it's a perspective thing. Maybe we should go through the day expecting to give grace to other people (to be givers), and then when other people give grace to us (and we can become receivers) then we can be delighted and receive that love as a gift.

So this is what has been on my heart lately. I hate being so easily offended. I'm going to try and see love as more of a gift and less of an obligation.

twistah

Jackson House spent *ahemwaytoomuchtimeahem* (in my opinion) standing on the porch watching the dark cloud roll in - CNN playing on a loop of storm chaser footage - the weather radio blasting high pitched frequencies and beeps and automated voices saying things like "stay away from winDOWS" - everyone's laptops buzzing with radar maps and weather blogs - then our tornado watch changed to a tornado warning, and we went into survival mode.

Survival mode in Jackson House means filling the bathroom with Temperpedic mattresses; filling the bathroom closet with Milky Way Minis, fruit, and Cliff bars; everyone loading up bags with passports, Social Security cards, important pictures, and the most expensive things we own (me: contact lenses and GPS); and all nine of us snuggling down with our weather radio and The Bourne Identity. It got really hot in the bathroom, and we all ate too much candy.

It looks like damage in Kentucky wasn't as bad as it could have been, or as they were predicting. It was looking pretty sketchy there for awhile.

Also, New England doesn't do silly things like have tornadoes. Time to be heading back soon? We'll see.

How nice

Nothing as cozy as driving down the road and seeing a dead coyote hanging from its back leg from a tree in someone's yard.

Some days, Kentucky seems stranger than others.