Good Works and Confusing Packaging (About Church)

A few weeks ago, much of the evangelical world watched as World Vision, an organization that describes itself as a “Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice,” released a statement saying it had changed its hiring policy to be inclusive of Christians in same-sex marriage. What happened next was that many evangelicals canceled their sponsorships of WV children in protest of the new hiring policy.

I was hardly an expert on World Vision. The day before this debacle, I couldn’t have told you what WV’s hiring policies were, but I was so dismayed at the idea of so many children waking up one morning to the news that they no longer had access to their school, food, education and health care, that I put my stake in the ground (on Facebook, no less), announcing that I would be sponsoring a child through World Vision to make up the losses. 

Wouldn’t you know it, by the end of the week, World Vision had reversed it’s hiring policy change, declaring that they “stand firmly on the biblical view of marriage, [yet] strongly affirm that all people, regardless of sexual orientation, are created by God and are to be loved and treated with dignity and respect”?

I was baffled, and did not feel that they had accomplished their mission of “bear[ing] witness to the good news of the kingdom of God” that week.  If anything, I had little confidence in this board, which I felt lacked the courage of its convictions (wherever those stood). Also, what a way to alienate a group of people that the Church so desperately needs to love well and love better. Oh, hey, we’re going to include you. Oh, on second thought, we changed our minds.

I had just promised to support a WV child. But, now that sponsorships were being reinstated again by those who initially cancelled them; the critical need was not so critical. So, I decided to keep my eyes out for another organization doing similar work.

And it just so happened that Sarah Bessey (author of Jesus Feminist, a book I highly recommend) was traveling in Haiti last week for the sole purpose of documenting the work of Help One Now in remote places where children fall prey to trafficking and malnourishment. Help One Now is focused not only on orphans, but on vulnerable children whose families of origin remain somewhat in tact. They also work through the initiatives of local, native leaders who understand the needs and social dynamics of he culture.  

I chose to sponsor Clervoir, a 17 year old boy, and my hope is that he will be able to fulfill his dream of becoming a teacher by advancing his (fifth-grade level) education.

One thing Help One Now asks is for its sponsors to spread the word about what they're doing around the world. So here I am, spreading the word. If you're looking for a cause or just looking to sponsor a kiddo, this is as good a place as any to start.

Frustrating Things (About Church)

There is minutiae. The stuff that, if we didn't know better could derail a person, a ministry, a team, an entire church.  The minutiae in a growing church in a too-small building can look like things gone missing for weeks or months. Like my class supply box frequently disappearing. Like snacks for Sunday morning disappearing. Like holes in communication: the wrong person getting the right information and vice versa. Like our functioning women's toilets in the building have decreased to 50% for a short time and are now back up to 75% of prior capacity. Like we have no personal offices and no great meeting spaces on Sunday mornings, and I'm about to commandeer the out-of-service women's bathroom for strategy sessions. Like my "stuff" is divided between four different closets and rooms in the building. Whatev. Like I said, these little things are easily overcome with a dose patience and sense of humor. 

Others things are harder. Like learning to be comfortable and respectful with disagreement and different temperaments. Like gender and racial stereotypes that linger, spoken or silently present. Like how church systems and governments don't always seem to adequately reflect or express the Kingdom-come. (Oh, we're trying to get there, we are). Harder still: People scare easy and run away--right about the time I want to coax them to “come toward, come toward.” There are misunderstandings that could get resolved speedily through brave communication, but brave communication sometimes takes a while to work up to. Weeks, months. Years. I have been guilty of this. Also, feelings get hurt. Things are said that shouldn't be said, and there are consequences.

Most profoundly difficult: With church (and the Gospel), there aren’t provable answers for everything. We have to live in this liminal space of not-proving and not-being-scientifically-sure of certain things in an age when so many want to form beliefs upon the foundation of empirical truths. But the Bible is not an almanac, an encyclopedia, a dictionary, a science book, a rulebook, a treatise, a constitution, a manual. It’s more like a traveler’s map. With hundreds of important landmarks—places where important things happened to people and people groups and where God happened to people and their groups. And somehow these landmarks are all connected. There was a journey from one place to another, from Adam to Christ and from Genesis to Revelation, and the journey was messy and complicated and filled with confusion and people running here, there and everywhere and worshiping the wrong gods and killing and oppressing other people groups and making rules that ultimately didn’t do any earthly or heavenly good. And one has to look at all that and work at deciphering truth out of the relationships between historical events, between narratives, between the story God wanted to write and the story of human action and history and the way in which God entered history, anyway, and did something good. And, oh boy, relationships are complicated (just ask anyone who's ever been in love); they are subject to interpretation; they are sentences eluding grammar, impossible to diagram.

Sure, some things are fairly self-evident when we look at the Bible's big picture, and we preach those things, we teach those things, we celebrate those things. We teach Jesus as God. As light in the darkness. As hope for the hopeless. And a bunch of other foundational assertions about this thing Jesus called the Kingdom of God. These assertions are like little pins on the map. Places of [unprovable, faith-filled] certainty. On one hand, this faith-infused surety about the pins on the map is oddly satisfying: I've lived with faith long enough to see it as the substance that keeps me connected to God, that keeps my eyes open for the ways in which prayer is answered, in which provision is offered, in which hope shouts louder than the sick child, the broken marriage, the mother's tragic death.

But, all of those things (the child, the marriage, the death) speak of mystery. Frustrating mystery. Disappointment. Oh, elusive answers! Oh, suffering in the midst of eternal hope. And we can only walk alongside and ask the questions together, digging for answers we may never unearth. 

All of this--the map, the pins on the map, the questions, the interpretations--is what we have to give away, to hand to believers and seekers. There is no manual when we want one. There is no cosmic Google search or ASK.com when it comes to the ways of the Kingdom. No mechanism for generating tidy answers and step-by-step instructions. Ultimately, what is frustrating about Church is also what is so beautiful: We have only this invitation from living words and a living God and a living Church. Listen. Pay attention. Come close. 

**If you missed it last week, catch up on the first post in this (About Church) series. 

Beautiful Things (About Church)

So many things have me thinking about church and church stories lately, especially Rachel Held Evans, who recently solicited readers' stories about church. I love her questions and I love her idea of swapping stories, so here's me daring to say that this is just one in a beginning of posts about church. And, if you're wondering, I did submit RHE a little something. If she doesn't end up using it on her blog, I'll share it here.

But for now, I'm drawn to her question: Tell me a story that encapsulates everything that is beautiful about your church.

I have too many stories.

Church is a constant reminder to me that God loves people better and more capably than I ever could. That I am a privileged witness, a pray-er and an exhorter who sometimes doesn't even have faith or hope on par with whatever healing or restoration that God eventually weaves into a mess--my own or anyone else's.  In other words, I can't even imagine the amazing God-fix that he applies to the seemingly hopeless situations and mindsets and people. And so, it's a delight every time to see him do it.

As a I work with other church staff to create atmosphere where people can become followers of Christ, it's beautiful to me when people show up and say, I'm here! in every aspect of those words. I'm here to give, I'm here to love. I'm here as a brother/sister/mother/father to anyone who needs one, I'm here in need of healing, I'm here to receive. 

Beautiful when someone moves from the shadows of destructive choices and behaviors to living in the light, to using their voice, to telling their story, to helping others heal.

Beautiful when a woman whose been accepted in no other community of faith turns to me and says, "I love this place. This is home." Beautiful that she fell in love with the real Jesus because real people loved her with real, unconditional love. Beautiful that she gave up the old life, the running, the throwing-herself-away so that she could drink of this community, of the strength of its relationships and of the water Jesus has to offer.

Beautiful, too, that I/you/we don't need to own everyone else's problems. We can love. We can pray. We can help. But we're not responsible or in charge. Except for ourselves. But that's another story.

Beautiful to let people live free this way. Without us reminding them of rules and shoulds and shouldn'ts.  Beautiful, instead, to ask questions, to point them to Jesus and let them follow his Way.

And beautiful is the relief of knowing I/you/we don’t have to have all the “right” answers, that we can embrace the mystery and tensions in the Bible and in the ways of the kingdom, that we can live in the middle-ground of the now and not-Heaven-yet with promise here and promise coming. That we can say “I know some things...I don't know everything...I don't know that." But most important: "I just know Jesus."

What's beautiful to you about church?

Notes to Self: #AWP14 Seattle

An Iowan should not be cold in Seattle. But I am cold.
Hats in hotel rooms. It happens.

So, I'm here in Seattle on Day 2 of the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference. Twelve-to-fifteen thousand writers have converged upon downtown and, surprisingly, we have not overtaxed the plethora of Starbucks in a four-block radius. I'm spending time with lovely friends, eating good food, selling books, and listening to dynamic (and not-so-dynamic) panelists while taking mental notes on the conference and my fledgling writerly endeavors:

1. Instead of a cab, take the city rail from the airport with a woman you barely know that becomes a friend. Wander through an empty bus station and then through city streets, first this way then the opposite direction, late at night while you're starving and your back aches from the weight of your luggage. Congratulations, you saved $42.25 and you laughed a lot.

2.. Take the time and opportunity to talk to people you know and love and would be sorry to have missed a meal with.

3. Talk with friendly, non-competitive strangers. Trade names, cities of origin and, possibly, your web sites. If you talk long enough, you might evangelize them into reading Christian Wiman's My Bright Abyss, and they'll say, That sounds so familiar!! I'm going to check that out! 

4. You may not understand most of what you hear on the poetry panel--the one that was supposed to help address your life-long struggle regarding the tension between the sentence and the poetic line, but the panelists are too smart for your own good and one talks about Augustine the entire time. You find out afterwards that the real poets in the room don't understand much of it either, which is comforting albeit unsettling, because then what was what you just sat through for an hour and fifteen minutes?

5. You are not a poet. You thought you were. You were a poser in college; you tried for so long. But You. Are. Not. A. Poet. 

6. Nor are you a fiction writer. Sitting down to write a made-up story would be like sitting down to find out you don't have a brain.

7. Ear plugs are important when you share a hotel room even if you have the best possible roommates one could wish for (and you do).

8. If you've written a book and people ask about it, speak in an engaging way. But don't promote it when nobody's asking. If and when they buy your book, say thank you, smile, offer to sign it, and thank them again. They may have just shelled out ten dollars, but they've also given you the gift of audience, which is priceless.

9. Imitate the locals when at all possible, This means you should refrain from standing on a street corner with two of your roommates while all three of you stare intently into your smart phones and look up directions/restaurant information. Also, take off your conference badge. It's Friday night, and you're not at the conference. 

10. Imitating the locals would also mean not dropping your water bottle, coat, books, and wallet at various points throughout the day as you try to manage the growing mass of conference survival paraphernalia that grows inside your backpack and threatens to spill out every time you need to unearth a credit card to pay for a cup of coffee.

11. That you have a backpack indicates you cannot avoid appearing like a tourist.

12. You lose your favorite hat (at the airport). You almost lose your favorite water bottle and have to retrace your steps on an escalator or two to recover it. Do not travel with anything you would describe as "favorite" ever again.

13. You get excited about the Cheesecake Factory and your friends, with more experience in bigger cities, say, "What's that?" You realize that you really are the hick from Iowa who is excited about a chain restaurant. Meanwhile, one friend wants to visit a local joint whose name, Radiator Whiskey, would work just as well as a book title or an indie band.

14. There are homeless and hungry people everywhere. Figure out your responsibility to them. Figure it out ahead of time. What will you say when, not if, you're asked for bus fare, for food, for money, for a blanket. Get creative. Maybe the money will get spent on booze, but you can buy extra fruit at the Pike Place market to give away to the next person who asks. 

15. Writing and craft in and of themselves are not an end in themselves. The state of your art does not hinge on whether you are "allowed" to write a whole essay in the present tense or second person or in couplets. You can do what you want. Just make sure it's good.

16. And make sure it means something. Make sure it matters to you and to strangers.

17. Some panels sound like blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah...blah blah.

16. Practice reading your writing aloud. Be a good reader. Take acting lessons if you have to. Take note of all the panel attendees who walk out prematurely from what appears to be profound and insanity-enhancing boredom.  Note that you too could have this effect on an audience if and when you ever are so honored with the opportunity. Knowing is half the battle, as G.I. Joe so frequently cautioned us throughout childhood. Prepare in advance.

17. Promote good writers and speakers and otherwise exemplary human beings who are making a positive contribution in this world. There are so many. Be generous in your sincere praise. Acknowledge the good. Writers are anxious and insecure people (you know; you are one of them). A little love goes a long way.  

18. You are reminded of the Fred Rogers statement you saw on the Facebook, which so aptly fits your reflections today: "I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does."

19. So appreciate the people you're with, the people who've sown into your writing and your reading and your understanding of the craft. Appreciate the many kindnesses of a roommate who will hat-shop to replace your lost one and lend you fleece zip-up jackets when your hotel room thermostat is set to 64 degrees. Appreciate the investment in your work, real money people are using on your book when they could buy others. Appreciate the way-makers, the handouts, the generosity of others who've helped you get to where you are.  Be a way-maker for someone else.

#19: When it Doesn't All Depend on Me, Random Nature Sightings, and My Grip on Reality

I was sitting in bed two weeks ago with whatever feverish yuck had been floating around my house this year, and I was musing at the ways in which life has been so interrupted and yet everything's okay. January and February were supposed to be my busiest months of the year. And they are, to some extent. But half the things I thought I would have to do, I haven't had to do. This is because of insane levels of snowfall, a cancelled class, and volunteers stepping out of the woodwork at church to relieve some of the burden. We were a church plant just 8 years ago, which means that there haven't always been a multitude of volunteers to help with things like teaching classes, organizing spreadsheets, developing curriculum. Now there are more and it warms my heart like nothing else.  And here's another thing that makes me smile. I was at the building last night teaching a class while my friend Christi taught a parenting class. When I walked past the classroom, I could hear group discussion buzzing and crescendoing with the excitement of parents who felt like they were on to something.  Afterward, a woman I'd just met breezed out of the classroom with a grin on her face. "Looks like you're having fun," I said (or something like it) and she said, "I AM! That was great!"

A tree full of robins in a snow storm
outside Ghurties, the frozen yogurt shop.

That is a miracle right there. That parents of children of all ages would drag themselves and their offspring out on a cold February night (despite the demands of homework, dinner, jobs, sports and music practice) and actually enjoy what they are learning about being good parents. Yeah. That makes my heart sing. What's more is that I have almost nothing to do with it other than emailing Christi twice a year to set a class date, advertising in the program, and answering email inquiries.

*

There was a night this month when I was laying in bed listening to Tiny cough cough cough cough. I myself had a headache and could barely function at nearly 10 p.m., but I decided we needed cough medicine or she'd never make it through the night. So I packed myself up for Walgreens. Sleep deprived and knowing I was on the verge of sickness, I started whispering prayers. Please let her sleep. Please stop the coughing. And then my mind turned to my church to-do list. If Tiny was sick tomorrow, I wouldn't have time to get everything done. Then: Babysitter for class! Need babysitter! I was reminded again of the need for a sitter for an event I was conducting in five days. I called one sitter and fired off emails earlier in the afternoon to five potential sitters but hadn't heard back yet. So, I continued to wander and ramble in my prayers about needing this or that, sitter included, as the car crunched through the snow-crusted streets.

When I stumbled into Walgreens, the clerks looked at me like I was crashing a party I wasn't invited to (and found me in an aisle a moment later to inform me they were closing), but in between walking in and getting kicked out of the drug store, I walked right past Grace.

Grace was first on the list of sitters I'd contacted.  "Did you try to call a little while ago?!" she asked. I did! I had! I told her. And Grace said she would babysit. Odd timing, a prayer answered right in the middle of the chaos of yet-unanswered prayers. Uncanny, nonsensical, but relieving all the same. The palpable weight of my to-do list, of sick children, of emails unanswered lifted a little because of that one moment of grace, further proof that it doesn't all depend on me.

And it can't all depend on any of us doing it all perfectly, right? I mean, something's got to give. Case in point: there hasn't been a moment in four weeks when everyone in the family has been completely well. The children have missed a combined 3.5 weeks of school. Mark and I are each missing at least some work time daily. I'm telling myself it's just a marathon. Just a very long race and we have to pace ourselves. Go to bed early. Let some things slide. Dinner, for instance. (Can't they just eat bread?!?) And then I'm leaving Mark (poor man) for a whole week for AWP in Seattle because of that book thing. Oh, so let me segue:  Dear Boy is going on the road. Actually, it's going Media Mail to a friend's house in Portland and then it's driving with her to Seattle to sit in a ginormous convention center among hundreds (or thousands?) of other books. But Seattle is where so many of the RWW alums and faculty will be, so I'll be in good company and so will the book.  And speaking of good company, I am making my way through the other Ovenbird authors' books and they are phenomenal, and the more impressed I am the more honored I feel to have been named among them. We have Judith (Ovenbird's founder) with a lyric novella-length mediation (The Circus Train) on memory and language in the context of a cancer diagnosis, an almost pre-posthumous memoir, if such a thing could exist.  And then Sandra Swinburne's The Last Good Obsession is meditation on fiction as it relates, in a memoir-like way, to her own life, to her own psyche, to her own history. It is smart, so smart, and so engaging.  I highly recommend. Tarn Wilson's The Slow Farm is forthcoming and I'm so, so excited for it's arrival!

*

For a leader development program at church, I've been reading the book LEMON Leadership. "LEMON" is an acronym for a bunch of leadership styles, and of course, the author seems confident that these are the only leadership types worth studying. While that remains to be seen, I've been strangely comforted by the description as myself as a strong "M" (for "Manager") with a good helping of "L" ("Luminary"--an ideas person, a philosopher really). What took the cake, though, was this sweet little graphic I stumbled upon that illustrates the different types' varying grips on reality. Don't mind if I quote from it: "Managers have what I call the Reality Index set to True North, to center. They have the most grounded sense of what is real....The Manager is the sane one at the party." Growing up the way I did, I've often called my sanity into question. And also, I work with other ideas people, and people strong in entrepreneurship and networking--you know, those who aren't always obsessing over the implications of each and every micro-decision. Sometimes I worry I'm a little too Debbie Downer-ish and, obviously, us Managers need to share our perspectives without stifling the enthusiasm of other leaders-types. BUT, this little Reality Index just made my day, maybe my decade. So, thank you Brett Johnson. True North, Baby.

Notes #18

*

In a house full of three girls, things are bound to happen.  And let me just say that things are happening, people. Things that I'm not allowed to put on FB or blog, not allowed to text or whisper to any other living soul. Because when you have growing-up-girls, the things-that-happen are the stuff of the innermost feelings and insecurities and making-her-way-in-the-world. This week, I've been honored to be not just a witness, but a curator of their growing-up-environment and the person who hears the secret offered in quiet, shares the advice, and is privileged to know the code words and the hand signals meant for my ears and eyes only.  And sometimes, I'm just an observer. And I see things like this, that happen without me even knowing quite how, and they make me smile.

*

Sickness. Plague hit our home first with the husband and then with Tiny.  See the counter top behind Tiny's head? Those are all the things we gave her to stop her asthmatic coughing. Her plague cost us about $100 in medications that didn't work or get used, for various reasons, and then I found some prednisone from earlier this year that knocked that cough down a few notches. The "cold air" and the "steam" recommendations from nurses-on-call were really not cutting it.  I'm telling ya, moms really do know a few things.  I wasn't quite sure, however, if Oldest had outgrown some of those pesky nut allergies. Do you know she ate a [highly processed, likely protein-destroyed sliver of] a walnut last month and not a thing happened??  Last time she did that, she landed in the emergency room.  So I took her into her new allergist (a doctor who's seen me since I was Oldest's age) and they scratched her up a bit with food proteins and toothpicky-things.  Number 3 is "Almond," meaning she's not allergic to that anymore, but the walnut reaction flared up with a wicked itch and swelling. Go figure.  In case you're wondering what the negative reaction to almonds means, well, it really won't change her life.  Doctors categorically recommend you avoid all tree nuts if you are allergic to any--simply because of factory contamination and cross-reactivity that could possibly occur. 

*

Right now Middle is waiting for me to come watch Toddlers & Tiaras with her. She's home sick (fever, headache, yada yada) and she's discovered that shows on TLC just aren't that fun to watch without someone with whom to make snide comments with about said shows. So, off I go to snuggle and feel great about the fact that I have not subjected any of my daughters to spray tans, eyebrow waxing, false eyelashes, fake hair, high heels, or smiling lessons. Oh! There is much to be thankful for.

And...this one's just for fun....Happy Friday, everyone!

When Your Grandfather is 92 Years Old

He took me to McDonald's at six in the morning when I was small.  Early was his calling card. He got up at 5 or 5:30 to tinker on his HAM radio, morse-coding with people all over the world, and then, when the rest of the house was sleeping, he would slip me out of it and drive me to pancakes and sausage. He wore Hawaiian shirts and trousers. Always. Except on his ten-year-increment wedding anniversaries (and he's had 7 of those!). Then, he wore suits. And his hair always looks fancy because it is long in front and swept back and to the side in a white pompadour, fluffy and floppy on more recent days after he naps or after, say, he had the stroke.

That was Tuesday. My father called to say that Gramps wasn't waking up from his nap. It's all we knew for the longest time. Then information came in dribs and drabs: he was at the hospital. He was sitting up. He was "perky." But the next morning, he was "in and out;" he couldn't speak properly, couldn't move an arm, couldn't swallow, couldn't walk, didn't know who was who. We truly thought death was imminent. So did the nurse. So did the hospital chaplain.

So I packed a bag and drove to Little Company of Mary Hospital in Chicago and met him at the elevator on my way up to his room. He was shrunken in a hospital bed, rolling down to an EKG with a nurse. "Hi Grandpa. It's Heather--from Iowa."  His eyes half opened and he groaned acknowledgement, and I could hear underneath it the always-cordial, the ever-keeping-track-of-who's-who-and-what's-what man who wasn't keeping very good track at the moment.

My grandmother, his wife of 72 years, arrived for an afternoon visit and waited for Gramps to return from the test. She was in good spirits, likely due to her mild dementia; the air was light. All my girl cousins in the hospital room distracted her with stories of toddler potty training, great-grandchildren and dancing. Grandma danced with Maureen next to Gramps' empty hospital bed. Then, winded she sat down. A moment later she eyed me opportunistically. "Do you dance?" she quizzed. And then she was giving me instruction, teaching me steps while I followed to the music on a cousin's phone.

*

"Are your eyes tired? You look tired," My 5-foot grandmother leans over his bed after he returns from his test. Gramps' eyes roll back toward the corner of the room.

"He can't hear you," a cousin explains.

"What?!" says Grandpa snarkily. We laugh and Gramps puckers his lips, kissing the air, reaching for something with his mouth.

"What are you doing, Grandpa," Beth asks.

"Drinking my coffee," he explains, still puckering, now bringing his fingers up to his mouth as if tipping an invisible cup.

"What's he doing?" Grandma asks.

"He thinks he's drinking coffee," explains Beth.  "There's no coffee, Grandpa. It's all gone now."  He still puckers and resists Beth's attempts at stilling his hands in his lap. "That's enough now, Grandpa. It's all gone!"

"I'm sssluring my S's." he announces to Grandma.

For everything he understood there was so much he didn't: why he couldn't get out of bed, why he couldn't have water. For hours, he argued, he strained against loving hands and firm voices until a nurse belted him into the bed. He just wanted to go home, he said. A TV repairman for Sears before he retired almost 30 years ago, his favorite place to tinker was the basement where all manner of electrical and mechanical odds and ends waited. He just wanted to go down to the basement, he said. He yanked off the external catheter, which ultimately didn't help his cause. He exchanged harsh words with Grandma. "If you want to come home, you need to stay in that bed!" she warned.  "Now look here!" his own voice rose and fired off something that reduced her to tears.

"I've never cried so hard in my life," she told me repeatedly after we'd ushered her into the hallway outside his room. She cried, and my father and I took her home; she cried in bed that night and then came and sat in a rocker in the living room across from the couch where I was sleeping until she fell asleep herself. And the next morning she cried when he wasn't there to make her coffee and pour her cornflakes and make fun of the horoscopes in the Chicago Sun Times. I sat in his spot at the dining room table and resisted the urge to read from the paper. Instead, I encouraged her to eat so she'd have energy for the hospital later in the day.

Grandpa was sleeping in his hospital bed when I arrived with my father. We sat in silence in his room, both of us praying, the sun gleaming into his fourth story windows, the television on the wall glittering with silent images. When he woke, his eyes were wild for a moment until they seemed to focus, "What happened?" he asked.  And, "How is Grandma?" We explained the stroke, the bed, the lack of water ("I just need to drink a ton" he said, and he'd be fine). And then my grandfather scrunched his eyes tight and cried at the fact that he'd just laid down to take a nap on Tuesday afternoon and had a stroke. "It's amazing how you can almost just slip away like that," he slurred in broken voice.

He seemed to understand now, and he wasn't fighting. And he knew who I was--a granddaughter who'd spent so little time with him that my most prominent memories from childhood were McDonald's outings when I was 9, a granddaughter who lived hours away and came once or twice a year, if that, but held him and his wife fiercely dear. He knew who I was and it seemed he knew that the occasion of my visit wasn't random. When he said to me,"It's so great that so many of you came and hung around," his voice quavered and broke again in a way I've never heard on Gramps, so foreign still that it was a shock to hear him cry and to imagine what thoughts ran through his sometimes-lucid mind--facing death, surrounded by family but very much alone, as alone as one can be when embarking on a journey. It was his to take and we couldn't take it from him. It's what happens when your grandfather lives to the age of 92. Instead of railing against the car accident or the cancer that struck in the prime of life, we're left with the inevitable conclusion that our bodies expire, no matter what, simply because they are old.

"I've got to head back to Iowa, Grandpa. I love you." He tilted his head and I kissed his forehead, not knowing if I'd rest my hand on his face like that again, not knowing if death would wait a while and/or if memory would preserve his knowledge of me a little while longer. So, I kissed him like it was the last time.

My Enemy, the Birch.

In tenth grade, my English Honors project team and I videotaped a stuffed-animal rendition of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. We lined up animals along the fence in my backyard, behind which was a row of bushy poplar trees, their long trunks standing at attention as young King Arthur--a stuffed bear? a giraffe? (I no longer remember)--pulled his sword out of the proverbial stone. Our backyard then was lush--all those poplars, a tall bushy evergreen that today towers three times my height at least, a lilac, a flowering dogwood, and a white birch tree on the northern side of the front yard. 

As a child, I rolled in the tall green grass, picked lilac blossoms to use as beds for the miniature animal figurines I played with, and hopped the back fence when the poplars were still skinny enough for me to jump through the spaces between them. But the birch tree was the least of my outdoor acquaintances. I remember asking my mother its name because of its oddly colored trunk. Birch trunks are white, I noted, pleased that I could classify a leafy green thing by name, and then I moved back into a world where I was oblivious to nature’s--and the birch tree’s--particulars.

When I was a pre-teen and gripped with daily asthma attacks, the allergy doctor scratched me with allergens common to the region. Ten years later, another allergist did the same. With a strange sort of ironic pleasure, I repeated over the years that I was allergic to every known allergen in the state of Iowa except the moth, the cockroach, and the caddis fly. (The wheals, raised pale welts on my skin that resulted from testing, indicated extreme antipathy for trees, weeds, dust mites, pollens, molds and household pets. The doctor measured the length of each wheal and its accompanying flare (surrounding red area) with a ruler marked in millimeters. 

The years of allergy symptoms were many and varied. Sometimes, I wasn't able to breathe through the summer without a battery of inhalers, rounds of prednisone and daily antihistamines. I stepped out of the air-conditioned homes I lived in and was assaulted with unseen pollens, mold spores, and the essence of grasses drifting in on the breeze, all wreaking havoc inside my lungs and sinuses. It was unsettling to not know the particular identity of my attacker at any given moment. To not see it head on, or know its rationale, it's motive, in this case, for flooding my veins with histamines. 

*

Last winter I ate a pear, and it made my mouth burn, my sinuses flare. I sneezed repeatedly. Random hives appeared on my neck and abdomen. I felt as if I had swallowed a cat (I am allergic to cats). In the spring of this year, I ate an apple and it did the same. Disbelieving that this long-friendly fruit was making war on my insides, I ate another one. It made me sick again. Then peaches were added to this short, but growing, list of produce that did not like me. After months of eating the occasional apple and experiencing the same extreme reactions, I mentioned it to my allergy doctor, who pulled out a colorfully illustrated chart of known allergens and foods likely to give allergic patients cross-reactions. It turns out that apples, pears, peaches and assorted other produce all have a long history of producing reactions in people allergic to birch tree pollen, which I'd been highly allergic to for as long as I'd been allergic to anything. 

When my daughter was first diagnosed with food allergies, we were told about cross-reactivity in foods. I am not a scientist, so you won't get the technical explanation here, but basically, some foods' molecular structures are so similar to others that the body can mistake one for the other. For instance, we heard a story about a peanut-allergic kid who almost died eating lentils.

One theory about food allergies is that exposure precedes the allergy. One eats peanuts one time, for instance, without a reaction. The second time it’s all a slick madness of inflammation, phlegm, and dilated bronchioles, sometimes anaphylaxis. Like I said, it’s a theory, but it made me think hard about birches, remind myself that I’d noticed one once, next to my childhood home. And I wondered how I’d crossed it, how and why the species had pegged me as its target (was my ambivalence offensive?), or why--rather--my body made birch trees the enemy without my consent. Was the birch tree pollen a symbol to my subconscious and immune system of all that didn’t go right on that plot of land and in the house that stood beside it?

But now, that’s irrational. And, then, so is illness much of the time. The rogue cancer cells, the Parkinson's, the ways our bodies betray our spirits and we end up having conversations with our bodies (like I do), saying it's taken things too far: people are not allergic to apples (for instance) because they are allergic to birch trees! They are not allergic to apples--most mundane, most innocuous of foods, staple of my last three decades: Baked with cinnamon in winter. With peanut butter or sharp cheddar cheese in a brown-bag lunch. In pies at Christmastime. Dipped in whipped cream in the heat of summer. Shredded and stirred into pancake batter. Dried into slices. Pureed and dehydrated into fruit leathers for my children.

To question the apple is to question the birch tree, which is also to question ourselves, our responses. And sometimes, those questions flutter into particles drifting on air like tree pollen looking for a place to land.

A Post in Pictures Signifying Many Gifts and One Sorrow

It's Christmas time in Iowa City, and sweaters wear trees. I'm super glad about this--a reason to giggle when I walk downtown through wintertime slush. You should see all the sweaters on all the trees, each with their own 70s-inspired pattern. Some hippies were very industrious. This Christmas I'm trying to be less industrious than them. I'm thinking about rest in the face of sacred cows such as The Holiday Photo Card, featuring all Webers, clean, smiling and otherwise in tact. And it's hard enough to let my left hand know that my right hand is not addressing all those envelopes this year, harder to articulate it in writing here. And that there are people who mean the world to me that I am just not. buying. gifts. for.  Because it's just so much frenzy, too much all at once. I'm trying, instead to sit still sometimes, in scenes like this one:

Yes, that's a pile of laundry you see behind Tiny, and a bag of groceries that is yet unpacked. Tiny is delighted by all the chaos left haphazardly around the kitchen. And her delight is a gift, it really is because it encourages me to pause and appreciate small and unexpected things, like joy over dirty laundry and empty baskets. And--how's this for a segue?--this guy is a gift, too. That's John, my friend and graphic designer for my 

book. He's pretty talented, and spent hours and hours and hours fine tuning my cover while I spazzed about details of alignment and shadows and brightness. Yeah, he should win an award. And he's also a great photographer too, and has taken most of the good pics you'll see of me and the fam on the FB and the blog. If you're in the area, you should look 'im up. 

Now, this here is a family tree. Not mine, but the one belonging to my half-brother, Henry, about whom said book was actually written. When he died five years ago, I knew, in theory that there were multitudes of relatives on his father's side (other than his own half siblings and dad), but I never thought about them as real people with names and memories and sorrows like my own over losing the Boy. This month's most surprising gift was the flurry of Bertka relatives who began buzzing on FB about the book, contacting me to introduce themselves, and to claim me as one of their own. It's been bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter, to hear their memories, to see their faces and family resemblances, and to know their stories with flesh now on skeletal plotlines. So, Rita, Mike, Mary--and of course, Naomi--I thank you. (And as I write this quickly, I know I must be leaving out others--it's a big family, as you can see!)

But here's the sorrow this month. My book, my beloved darling, has been literally misaligned by the printer. Many of the copies are produced with lines all aslant (see the bottom line of text--it's much more noticeable in person). It's depressing and left me a bit numb after unpacking sixty copies at my home yesterday. The printer will replace/refund any defective copies purchased by any individual or vendor, but it's still a sadness to know that some are going out into the world all askew. The manufacturer is investigating the problem at their production sites, but these things take time, as you know. If you buy a copy and it comes to you like this, it probably will do me and the book some ultimate good if you ask for a replacement. In the meantime, you could read the free kindle version that comes with purchasing the paperback book on Amazon. 

And there it is. And now I must go to preschool to pick up Tiny, and then it's off to dance class--hers, not mine.

When You're Not My Enemy

Recently, I was chatting with a friend about the healing and recovery process she's been in (the same one most of us have been on at one time or another, where we recover from whatever garbage-y messages we were saddled with as younger and more vulnerable versions of ourselves). My friend was saying what a significant thing it was to have accomplished a certain achievement--something she'd always dreamed about--but something that put her so out there, so her-own-person, living a life that is now in obvious and loud contradiction to everything she was ever told she couldn't or wouldn't or wasn't allowed to be. An achievement that asserted, Yes, I really am who I am, and who I am is not as shabby as I once believed. I'm a powerful person.

Have you ever been there? These are the moments in which the things we think and believe about ourselves in the world can rearrange themselves, where the truth we are living can get louder than the messages we cowered under for so long. (Oh, it doesn't always, but it can.) And those achievements or breakthroughs or "ah ha moments" are sometimes a little like pinnacles after long and exhausting climbs over and around all the obstacles on the path--the boulders, scraggly weeds, the heat, the altitude.

I've been In Process as a daughter, mother, writer, minister, a female minister. There were years when I spent a lot of emotional energy trying to convince myself that I was meant to do or be all those things and responding to the people who spoke against me or simply had different opinions about who I was or what my life should look like. Sometimes those people seemed like boulders, entanglements on the path. I wasn't on a mission to dislike them or fight against them, but they became like enemies simply by definition.

They were powerful and seemed scary + I felt weak and afraid = ENEMIES.

I spent a lot of time having interior dialogues with imaginary versions of my enemies--defending myself, explaining how they got my political views all wrong, my gender views upside down, and my basic constitution turned inside out. They didn't understand what I'd said over Thanksgiving dinner; they took a comment out of context; they misinterpreted a facial expression. Or: they just. didn't. like. me. I had essays in my head; sometimes I had short, sharp quips. I had a thesis defense ready against their rejection.

Like many of you, I have emerged onto a few mountain plateaus: I have a better sense of who I am and why that is a good thing. It doesn't bother me so much if I meet someone who doesn't think I should be a pastor, for instance. (Oh, it bothers me, but much less). Somehow the grace has been given for me to let my life, my tangible reality, do more of the talking about who I am and what I'm worth. I know I'm powerful, just like you are, and I can live without reacting even when knives are thrown because

you're powerful and may be unpleasant + I'm powerful and not afraid = 

Equals what? 

Jesus said, "Love your enemies. " Too often, we've equated love with quiet neutrality. But is disengaged tolerance the kind of love Jesus wants us to embrace?

Once we realize we're powerful and able to love anyone, once we think we have recovered some measure of ourselves and our true identities, once we realize we don't need to fight against anymore, is the answer really indifference and silence toward those who disagree?  Or does love bear more responsibility?

I've been musing on this and maybe you'll muse to--about love that disagrees and explores, that contends against and humanizes at the same time, that is powerful and at odds while blessing. 

I'm not afraid of you and I bless you.

What if this sentiment was behind every difficult thing we had to say to someone who doesn't see the world the same way we do? From...

I dislike your cranberry stuffing to...

I don't like it when you yell at me,

Your words are judgmental and they hurt,

I'm a woman in ministry,

I'm gay, a Muslim, an NRA member, a unitarian, a Christian,

or in the words of Mythbuster Adam Savage: "I reject your reality and substitute my own." 

I'm not afraid of you and I bless you.

It's easy for us to cling to our circles of safe people who think the way we do and talk the way we do. It's easy to let go of dialogue with those on the outside.  But when we do, we give up the privilege of engaging others in meaningful conversation about the change we want to see in the world.

I ran across a post by Sarah Cunningham today in which she speaks of the kind of bravery that goes hand in hand with powerful love.

"I must learn to hold bravery in one hand and humility in another....humility creates a better chance of being able to address hate without perpetuating it. To confront injustice without wielding more of it."

Yes, that is what I'm getting at. When we live in reaction, we often perpetuate hate. When we live defensively, we are poised to wield more injustice, more judgment, more wounding.  So, I'm asking myself--and us--what more is required now that we're not enemies?

When Mothers "Happen"

I stumbled into this article by Shauna Niequest last night through Rachel Held Evans' blog. Shauna is the daughter of Lynne and Bill Hybels, founders of the mega-church Willow Creek. Shauna writes about her mother Lynne as a role model of healthy and whole womanhood--and about how, when Shauna was a teenager, Lynne began giving herself permission to pursue her passions, passions and gifts that weren't limited just to her role as a mother.

This journey she was on began when I was fourteen. I was just learning what it meant to be a woman. And the woman I was watching most closely was just beginning to reshape her definition, and in turn, mine.

Watching my mother while I was a young teenager gave me a front row seat to a hard, messy, important, beautiful transformation. I watched my mother become herself. I watched her come alive. I watched her discover her gifts. I watched her eyes sparkle when she returned from a meeting or a trip. I listened to her bubbling over with passion about what she was reading or learning.

And as I watched her, I promised myself that I would follow this new example she was leaving for me, to pay attention to my gifts and passions. The life I was seeing in her for the first time was so inspiring to me. I loved it in her, and I wanted it for myself.

I couldn't help but think of my own three daughters as I read these lines, about how, over the last 6 or so years, they've had a front-row view of their mother redefining and embracing who and what she could be. The two oldest have seen me labor through hours of graduate study, reading and writing furiously and excitedly and passionately (sometimes while crying, sometimes while laughing); they've watched me conduct science experiments in the kitchen, excitement bubbling over as foods fermented on the counter; they've watched me sit with a guitar or at the keyboard for hours, learning parts to songs because it gave me pleasure, because of a driving hunger to hear the sounds, to make melodies out of single notes; I've danced into the house after a prayer time with someone struggling, excited that the person was encouraged, that they encountered God in some significant way; they watched me pastor, teach classes, take difficult phone calls, solve problems, rejoice in making peace with others; they watched me labor nightly, for months, on a book and then listen to triumphant reports of "it's done!" They've watched me refinish furniture, paint endless walls, learn to crochet, use power tools, write book reviews, write sermons; they've listened to me read, through winter months with a quavering voice, literature and stories with which I long to fill their imaginations. They've watched me pack suitcases destined for far- off places, raise money for mission trips, take cookies to the neighbors just because.

Danny Silk talks about how important it is for women to "happen"--for life to surge through them, for their gifts to bubble forth, for the community to bless and encourage their pursuit of all God has called them to be. My own life has been happening these last six years or so, mostly because I've cooperated in ways I never thought about cooperating a decade ago as a new mother, or even as a teenager, when watching my own mother make her way through the world. I was a young woman afraid to open my mouth to sing or speak, afraid to stand up in a room of people sitting because they might see me; I was a woman afraid of being in my own skin, of happening.

There are other mothers happening around me, too. One friend has started a business around her phenomenal ability to create, re-design, and refinish anything she gets her hands on. Another friend decided to address some personal health needs that she'd been long putting off. Another is engaged in study, pouring over historical texts, researching ancient and holistic medicine practices. Others are standing at the foot of the path; they've said yes and they're about to step out on the journey.

I don't care what my daughters decide to "be" when they grow up, but I could weep with gratitude that somehow allowing ourselves to happen in front of their eyes might just inspire a confidence that some of us didn't have for decades, might just banish the protestations of self-doubt that haunted some of us for years, might just pave the way for them to happen, too.

#17, In Which I Experiment With and Ask Questions of Generosity

For the most part, Mark and I have systematically given away a percentage of our income since we were first married sixteen years ago. We've had years that were lean, cars that broke down, surprising and large-scale medical expenses and yet, (except for a year or so of re-evaluation of our giving) we still gave.

There's a biblical principle of giving that states (in my way of summarizing) that if you give, more will be given. Surely, there's not a formula here, not a calculation on returns, and perhaps the "more" is sometimes less tangible than what is given away, but more nonetheless. And, I would conclude that as we gave over the years, we were given more, we've were given enough.

Perhaps not surprisingly, as our income has grown, my concern over spending has grown along with it.  We have more income now than I could have imagined having when we were poor as crickets living in a basement apartment that oozed black slime through cracks in the kitchen linoleum. That money concerns me now almost as much as it did then disturbs me. That we've found so many things to spend it on disturbs me. Yes, there are three children now. Yes, we are paying for more vitamins and doctor visits now. Yes, we've traded in our white noodles for proteins and vegetables and healthy fats. All of this costs more.

More and higher expenses makes me, a "J" on the Meyers Briggs test, outline precise budgets and hold to them (read: I experience it as failure when I don't). And so, even though we give a respectable amount of our income away to pre-determined places, I haven't been very fluid in responding to the needs that happen right in front of me. I haven't risked spontaneity in giving more, money that wasn't pre-allocated, money or goods or supplies that someone needed right in the moment, right now. It was easy for me to say, "I've already given this month, therefore I cannot give to you." It was easy to say, "I cannot give to you because all I have left is my savings/grocery/phone/miscellaneous money."

But what if it's the right thing to give those things in those moments? And what if it's precisely the wrong thing to turn away from the Philippines relief fund on Facebook or another struggling minister because I've already given, as if this excuses me from relieving and refreshing those who need refreshing most in the moment?

And if the biblical principle holds true, then won't I continue in abundance?

I experimented this month. I gave a small sum, a little more than was allocated. I responded to two different needs in two different moments. On one of those days, after giving, I sat in prayer and mentioned to God the upcoming medical expenses, the Christmas gifts for our kids, the holiday travel. The next day we received a check in the mail that was five times the extra I had given. It was a random, just-because gift from a relative, but really it was a gift card from heaven, a memento reminding me of provision.

And then, a few days later, a car engine started rattling badly. And then, a second car's ignition broke. And the batteries in our cordless home phones suddenly gave out.  And my replacement cell phone dropped every eight out of ten calls. This culminated all on one day, a day I was near tears and my husband and I were a little less than patient with each other due to the mounting anxiety about repair costs. But then, when the cars were rounded up and brought home in their various states of disrepair, while we waited on appointments with mechanics, while I suddenly remembered we had an old-fashioned (read: not "smart") cell phone tucked away for emergency use for our kids, I was able to calm my anxious heart down and I heard in my head the inaudible words watch and wait.

So that's what I'm doing.

And the Print Edition is Released!

It happened yesterday: Dear Boy is now available in print!

Perfectionism, Self-Worth, and Why We Write

Is it okay to take a moment to say that perfectionism is killing me? There are a lot of checks a writer must make before a book is finalized, and in my case--because us Ovenbird authors retain more control than usual over the interior--there are a lot of checks. But honestly, everything's looking pretty good right now. It's just that the anxiety of there being some sort of unseen problem with the book is almost overwhelming--it's almost enough to keep me from ever stamping my approval. Sometimes, I have to tell my OCD-self that my editor-self made an editorial decision that is just, simply, out of my hands. Tough luck. Deal with it. This is a collaborative effort, after all, between editor-, artist-, and OCD-me.

That aside, I've had a few readers purchase the Kindle version (thank you!) and I've already heard back from some of you (mostly friends and extended family). You are reminding me that I opened wide a window to my life that doesn't normally get cracked in the day to day. Obvious, yes. But when you spend so much time objectively and robotically proofreading a manuscript, you might forget that it's about something; you might forget that what it's about has to do with things that move people, things that make people feel connected with you in a way you weren't even thinking about when you wrote those things.

Now, in truth, there is a corner in my mind rooting for this book to make some sort of impact, some kind of (splash is entirely. the wrong. word.)...maybe what I mean is that I am hoping it will color the world in some way, if only by hue or tint--some shade (nuanced is fine) that reveals its having been here. I'm rooting for a plop into the pond that will send ripples (minute ripples are fine!) to the farthest reaches of the water. And, let me be perfectly and shamefully honest, if those ripples did happen to shimmy all the way over to Oprah's living room, I'd be ecstatic.

But forget about books and writing for a moment: don't we all feel that we want our very existence to make ripples that reach the far side of the pond? To find out, at the end of the day, that we made a difference, that we made some contribution that shifted the landscape of a soul or altered the dialogue of a community or a world? That Oprah would find us interesting and meaningful enough to sit us down in her living room and ask, ask, comment, ask, offer her two cents, mention Nate Berkus, and, when it's all said and done, give us a car? 

I remember Anne Lamott describing the faulty expectations of insecure writers that, once they were published, self esteem would arrive by phone, fax, and mail. Thank God I didn't publish in my twenties because I'd be an absolute basket case after having found out that a book in print wouldn't do anything to soothe my raging need to BE OKAY. So, if it's not self-esteem we slightly less neurotic versions of ourselves are after--what drives us? What do we want? Conversation? Dialogue? The catharsis that comes by storytelling? Or, to be so dramatic: the healing of the world?

I don't know. I really don't. But, like any author, I hope this book is widely read. I hope it matters to strangers.

Because the Kindle Edition Has Been Released

If you need something to read this weekend, you can snatch Dear Boy up for your e-reader. It's been released in its Kindle edition two weeks ahead of the print release! Happy reading, readers. And, if you want to chat about Dear Boy, I'd love to hear from you in the comments section of the post!

On the Occasion of the Boy's Birthday, an Excerpt:

I'm told that Ovenbird Books' new web site should be up and running in the next week or so, and Dear Boy is set to release shortly thereafter in print (so many considerations in the first stages of founding a press and its first releases!). And, ironically, today is the Boy's birthday, in honor of which I'm posting an excerpt, the memoir's opening letter:

Dear Boy,     

I wrote you an email last year, addressed to your tattoo shop. Did you ever get it? It was about our cousin’s wedding—you were invited, but she didn’t know where to send the invitation. You know, your house really was out in the middle of nowhere. How many houses are there in that tiny town, anyway—five? And a church? And some railroad tracks? And just a little bit up from the churchyard, that narrow country road where you landed after flying out of a car.

You never saw this house I live in, and you’d been living in your home for years before I ever visited. We weren’t too busy, but were we scared to act like brother and sister? Today I was thinking that it’s still July, a few weeks before your blood marked the gravel with a great brown stain, but the leaves on the silver maple in my front yard have turned sunny gold speckled with mildew. Meaning the accident already happened. Too late for me to ask you how the distance between us unfurled, why your once-tight grip on my hand loosened into a flat, retracted palm.

Too late now—but death demands an account. The closer the death, the more detailed its demands. And all this accounting I must do with you, Boy, is like sending a hundred years’ worth of birthday cards and getting none in return. But so it will be. I have no other way to speak to you.