the beauty of autumn days

The past two days have been beautiful and simple and also deeply inspiring.  Yesterday was a perfect sunny crisp day of hiking to Tiger Rocks and reliving memories of camp.  We read the Bible at the top of the mountain and talked about missions and our callings, and the wind swirled vigorously above us through the treetops.  We watched hawks glide serenely and powerfully below us, and I thought, God is alive.

And today I ate pancakes with apple-butter faces at the relief sale and watched my breath fog in the newly-October air, and reveled in the glory of food and people and handmade things and fall.  Then we drove to a church and dressed in our best clothes and sat in the front row for the wedding of April and Scott -- two people who make each other whole.  They wrote their vows with words and stories that made tears spill from my eyes, in wonder at the beauty of love and everything else.  Then they sat together on a piano bench and played a duet, mostly improvised, of lyrical and touching melodies that made my heart open wide.  In that moment their whole world was centered in each other, and the rest of us were breathless to witness it.

equality?

I wrote this for the Weather Vane this week because I care about it.  You should read it and think about it and then do something about it.

I am a woman.  And I am objectified.

This week I and several other EMU students attended a presentation at JMU about pornography and its impact on modern-day American culture, entitled “Pornography’s Perfect Storm of Inequality:  Patriarchy, White Supremacy, and Capitalism.”  The speaker was Dr. Robert Jensen, a visiting professor from the University of Texas at Austin.  Dr. Jensen’s arguments encompassed the growth of the porn industry, the reasons for its success, and its incredible capacity to dehumanize and objectify human beings.

Dr. Jensen challenged the audience with the truth.  He spoke to us about life in the “post-Playboy world,” and the need to form a life of integrity and meaning in a culture where sex is marketed and sold like any other commodity.  However, sex itself is not the problem; the problem is that we regularly “buy, sell, and rent objectified women’s bodies for sexual pleasure.”

“Pornography is not just sex on film,” said Dr. Jensen.  “It’s sex presented in the context of domination and subordination...and the sex in pornography is made sexy by that domination and subordination.”

This attitude of domination and subordination does not extend only to women who are directly involved in the production of porn.  The prevalence of pornography is large enough that its assumptions, stereotypes, and attitudes extend throughout our entire society.  Because of this, it is not just a few who are impacted.  We are all influenced by the effects of pornography, whether directly or indirectly.

Pornography has normalized an appalling level of violence and disrespect against women in the context of sexuality.  The voices who dare to speak out against pornography risk being written off as too uptight, judgmental, or sexually repressed.  The voices of women and children suffering from the sex trade industry are drowned out by the voices of profit and sexual liberation.  But in the words of Dr. Jensen, we must “recognize what we’ve done in the name of liberation.”

I am blessed with a privileged life and the freedom to make my own choices.  However, I cannot feel liberated or even fully respected when other women are suffering.  When I see any instance of objectification and degradation toward other women, the impact of this objectification extends to me.  I am not yet so distant from my fellow human beings that I do not feel any part of their suffering.  We must stand in solidarity with our sisters and mothers and daughters – even the ones we have never met.

In my mind, I have a vision of a world where everyone is equal and free.  I want to see people who are not afraid to stand up against sexism in the media, against objectification of women, and against valuing us for our bodies alone.  The issues of pornography and sexual violence are often still viewed as uncomfortable or forbidden topics, but I believe the longer we stay silent, the more we condone the oppression of ourselves and our fellow human beings.  

I challenge you, myself, and our broader community as a whole to speak up.  We must not allow fear or complacency to silence us any longer.

five

five phrases i aspire to live by, from my recent thoughts, reading, and life experiences

1.  become a storyteller.

2.  love wastefully.

3.  live life with your arms wide open.

4.  burst bubbles, yours and the world's, with the truth.

5.  ask your questions.

imperfection

Tonight is my first orchestra rehearsal as concertmaster.  It's also my first time playing first violin in college -- until now I've been principal second.  By now I know my own tendency to hold myself to perfectionism, especially when it comes to my music, and this type of situation is the worst.  Whether or not it's true, situations like this make it easy for me to convince myself that everyone else expects me to be perfect, too.
So I'm trying out a new philosophy called "confident mistakes".  Here's the truth:  I'm not perfect, and neither are you, and neither is anyone else.  So let's be imperfect together.

life in community

"Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family."
-Henri Nouwen

If everybody believed this, think of what life would be like.  If everybody lived this, think of what the church would be like.
This year, I am creating more of my own life than I ever have before.  Living in an apartment opens up so many more questions about community, food, balancing time, and how to navigate the little choices that make up our days.  I believe there are many things that are essential to a healthy community, and one of them is a personal awareness that "I am not perfect, and neither is anybody else".  There are many, many times when I love poorly, but there is something so beautiful and blessed about this fellowship of the weak.

I've been feeling increasingly convicted to spend my life living in intentional community.  I need other people to help me struggle with life decisions and conscious living.  It would be far too easy to close myself into a comfortable bubble of this-is-my-life-and-this-is-how-i-do-things.  So this year, I am beginning to share my life and choices with seven other people who also care deeply for the entirety of God's creation and about following in Jesus's footsteps.

I'm reading The Irresistible Revolution for the second time, and it is hard to live with.  It is good and encouraging and inspiring, but it leaves me with a growing sense that if I were to truly follow the call of the gospel, my life would look nothing like this.  It would look a whole lot more like giving up material possessions, living among the less privileged, and finding Jesus in the eyes of those who are "different" from me.

As I told one of my roommates recently, most days I don't know what to do or how to make my life everything it should be, but I'm committed to figuring it out.  And every time I am struck by my complete and utter inconsistency, I am reminded of God's immeasurable faithfulness.  He is everything I am not.

humanity

"Ubuntu speaks of the very essence of being human.  We say, 'Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.'  Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate.  You share what you have.  It is to say, 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.'  We belong in a bundle of life.  We say, 'A person is a person through other persons.'
...
A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are."
-Desmond Tutu

my loves

I emailed my English advisor yesterday to tell him I'm changing my major (to liberal arts with an English concentration, for those of you who didn't know), and he responded by saying, "Though I hate to see you go as an English major, I completely understand your reasoning here.  It makes sense, particularly since your "first love" seems to be music."

    Which caused me to make a face sort of like this:

Because, obviously (to me), music isn't my first love, nor is it my primary love, and certainly not my only love.  It made me ask myself, then -- what is my "first love"?

I don't think I can confine myself by choosing one thing (which, now that I think about it, is a pretty good example of why I'm changing my major to liberal arts).  I love so many things I can't even list them all, and I'm always finding new things to love.  That's why I've spent several hours recently researching (and falling in love with) the art of growing bonsai trees.  :)
My deepest, truest love stems from pursuing a genuine, Christ-like, loving, community-centered way of living. I know that's about as broad a category as it could possibly be, and I like it that way.  That means that there's enough room for my whole life to fit in that category.  And that, ultimately, is my goal.

here's to porches

These days I am struck by my readiness to throw myself into community.  I spent a summer learning exactly what that means and exactly how important it is to me, and I am beyond excited that this year will (hopefully) involve embracing a similar kind of community.  In imagining the apartment and intentional community I'll be living in, I can see so many possibilities for grace, depth, and being Christ to each other.  I can't wait to experience the simplicity of living together:  cooking and eating together, sharing joys and burdens, walking together in mutual accountability and love.

It's not just this kind of community that I want, though.  Today I told someone that I'm turning myself into a porch-sitter.  It might sound more or less negligible, but I think there's something profound in simply moving yourself out to your front porch.  Not only does it allow you to be closer to nature and creation, it makes you physically visible and also more emotionally present to your neighbors (both literal and figurative).  It opens up opportunities to interact with those who pass by around you.  And perhaps most of all, it forces you to expand beyond your comfort bubble of your house.  I always say the one thing I want to avoid most in life is complacency, and letting myself remain comfortably within my own four walls seems overly complacent.

Maybe it's overanalyzing to claim that the act of sitting on your porch encompasses all these things, but I need a metaphor for the things I'm striving for.  So here's to becoming a society of porch-sitters:  people who venture beyond what is merely comfortable and strive for openness, acceptance, and risk-taking vulnerability.

love, courage, wisdom

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member.  Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier.  Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual.  But the one who has love, courage, and wisdom moves the world.


~Ammon Hennacy

joy of the redeemed

Isaiah 35

The desert and the parched land will be glad;   
  the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.
Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom;
   it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy.
The glory of Lebanon will be given to it,
   the splendor of Carmel and Sharon;
they will see the glory of the LORD,
   the splendor of our God.
Strengthen the feeble hands,
   steady the knees that give way;
say to those with fearful hearts,
   “Be strong, do not fear;
your God will come,
   he will come with vengeance;
with divine retribution
   he will come to save you.”


Then will the eyes of the blind be opened
   and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 
Then will the lame leap like a deer,
   and the mute tongue shout for joy.
Water will gush forth in the wilderness
   and streams in the desert.
The burning sand will become a pool,
   the thirsty ground bubbling springs.
In the haunts where jackals once lay,
   grass and reeds and papyrus will grow.


And a highway will be there;
   it will be called the Way of Holiness;
   it will be for those who walk on that Way.
The unclean will not journey on it;
   wicked fools will not go about on it.
No lion will be there,
   nor any ravenous beast;
   they will not be found there.
But only the redeemed will walk there,
  and those the LORD has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
   everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
   and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

night revelations

Sometimes the world seems so much more manageable in the daylight.  Then at night my thoughts come undone and I can't remember which way is up.  This happened to me on Thursday night, when I realized I only have one more week at camp.  Which is one more week at the place that makes me happier than anywhere else in the world.  I know I will be happy after that too, but right now being in the real world sounds so awful to me.  So my thoughts kept spinning in circles in the middle of the night, forcing me to ask myself a lot of questions.

Like these:  Why am I happier here than in the "real world"?

What is it about life at camp that completes me?

How can I make it overlap more with my life at school?

And what do I do if it doesn't?

I don't have a lot of answers, but I do have a few revelations.  Like this one:

Life at camp is simple.  It's not easy; it's full of challenges, but it's simple.  All you have to do is love God, love the kids, and love the other staff.  And really, that's what I want to do in life:  love God and love the people around me, to the fullest extent I can. 

Here's another one:

I don't know exactly how the different parts of my life fit together, but I'm becoming oddly comforted by the phrase "It is what it is".  And I know that everything will be okay.  I believe in myself enough to follow what feels right to me, and being at camp teaches me a lot about what feels right.

reteaching beauty

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don't flower,

for everything that flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

began remembering all down her thick length,

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

-Galway Kinnell

honesty and animal products

I realized this week that I am becoming the kind of vegetarian that I used to look upon scornfully.  By this, I mean that I have eaten pizza with bacon on it and lasagna with meat in it just in this week alone.  Contrary to what you might think, this is not to say that I'm forgetting or ignoring or giving up on my beliefs.  It just means that I'm becoming more relaxed about things.  I've come to understand very deeply the reasons why I choose not to eat meat, and with that understanding comes the acceptance that there will be times when it is okay to make exceptions.  I think in life it's best to be adamantly sure about some things and easygoing about others -- otherwise you just end up with a bunch of halfway ideas.

Anne Lamott is amazing, and you know why?  It's because she writes so honestly and freely about her own struggles and shortcomings.  Unlike the other 99 percent of the human race, she doesn't pretend to have it all together.  And she's not like those people who acknowledge that we have problems but don't really like to go into detail, either.  Most of her writing revolves around the times when she has to work hard to be okay, and she tells her stories with humor and also with reverence for what is beautiful and true.
This is one of my favorite parts from Grace (eventually), which I finished this week, and it kind of sums up the way I feel about working with kids.

Children can connect you to the child inside you, who can still play and be silly and helpless and capable of wonder.  This child does not have to be yours, of course.  It can be a niece or nephew, or the child of a friend.  But living with a child makes the opportunity for this more likely.  Having a child, loving a child deeply in a daily way, forces you to connect with your mortality, forces you to dig into places within that you have rarely had to confront before, unless you have taken care of a dying parent or friend.  What I found way down deep by caring for my father during his illness and then by having a child is a kind of eternity, a capacity for -- and reserves of -- love and sacrifice that blew my mind.  But I also found the stuff inside me that is pretty miserable.  I was brought face-to-face with a fun-house mirror of all the grasping, cowardly, manipulative, greedy parts of me, too.  
I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.  Now when I watch him sleep, I know that he somehow came from life, only I cannot put it into words any better than that.

dependence

I've never had to enter a week of camp with questionable health before.  This week, by the time the kids came, I wasn't as sick as I was last week, but I still had a bad cough/cold...which I expected to get better quickly.  Except then it didn't.  And at night, I couldn't sleep because of coughing so much, which didn't do a whole lot to help my energy levels.  So I was concerned, because I wanted so much to do everything I could for my kids, and yet I knew for sure that my own strength was quickly fading.
Every morning, when I woke up feeling like I hadn't slept at all, after spending hours of the night coughing, I couldn't do anything but ask God to be my strength.  Psalm 55:22 says, "Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never allow the righteous to be shaken."  And this week taught me that this is true.  How else is it possible that I had more than enough energy to keep up with a cabin of seven- and eight-year-olds?

I also came to realize the way being around kids at camp energizes me.  Some would say it's exhausting to be responsible for a group of children (and spend most of your time surrounded by many more) for a week, and in a way, it is.  But I also know that their excitement and joy for life becomes my own.  Being surrounded by them, by their playfulness and hilarity and all-encompassing love, is more of a blessing than anyone who hasn't experienced it can understand.

So, all in all, I am thankful for the chance to believe in a strength that is greater -- and I'm ready for whatever challenge comes next.

a beginning

I decided a while ago that this summer I want to write something at the end of each week at camp, so that I have some real way of reflecting on what I've learned and treasured and experienced that week.  It's hard because there's so much.  So instead of trying to describe everything that happened during the past nine days of staff orientation at Highland, I think they can be summed up in these ways.

God is in our laughter.  I can't describe all the things that happened and the ways we made each other laugh this week.  But I know that the level of craziness, humor, and laughter at camp is something I haven't found anywhere else.  We truly love each other and love being together.

God is in the rain.  At the beginning of the week, it rained copious amounts every single day.  Everything was cool and wet and muddy, and even though I tend to love the sunshine, it was nice, in a way.  The earth lives on water, you know.

God is in the stars.  One night we had Fireside around the baby pool, dangling our feet and singing songs to the skies.  There's a kind of peace that comes over the world at Highland that can't be matched by a world with cars and lights and climate control and chaos.  Another time all the female staff walked back from the fire circle after dark and lay in a circle on the soccer field, watching the stars brighten and fade above us.

God is in our voices.  I love music.  Most people know that.  But even more than rehearsed music, I love the moments when it just happens and it is so beautiful.  We hiked to Tiger Rocks on Tuesday, which takes about three hours to get there.  And after eating lunch at the top, we spontaneously burst into our own rendition of "In The Jungle".  If you don't know, it's the song from The Lion King, with lots of harmony parts and creativity.  And that moment was so life-giving for me because of the way we all fit together without even trying.  It was symbolic of the way I feel about the staff this year:  cohesive, well-blended, exuberant, and loving.  I often wish my life was a musical, and that moment made me feel like it was.

And God is in the kids.  May we be prepared to accept them with outstretched arms this coming week.  May we be given enough grace, strength, and energy to give them everything they need.  And may God shine in us.