Hey. Thanks for stopping by. As you've probably noticed from the sparity of posts, this blog project is shelved for the time being. Kind of taking a break from writing about my spiritual life.
I will say this: I've always believed that God can heal us, even as I've believed we should be honest about how screwed up we are. Sometimes I've gotten frustrated with Christianity, and even more frustrated with myself, and wondered where my efforts are even going, what's the point of anything. But more than ever, I believe that the central message of this Jesus guy--the central message of the incarnation and the Old Testament and the New and everything else--is that God is making things right. And now, more than ever, I believe we can experience that restoration.
There's a trick my priest taught me. Breathe in for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, and exhale with a brief prayer. The breathing helps you connect your mental prayers and musings with your real physical life, with your heart. Lately my single-sentence prayers have been Lord, have mercy on us, and Lord, give me life.
I'm hopeful. And I'm enjoying the hopefulness.
I did start up a new blog venture, this one much more frivolous: mediaobsessio.blogspot.com. Books, movies, music. I hope we can hang out there. And I hope you're experiencing grace in your own world.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Hot Soup
This is how you heat up soup in the microwave:
First, you remove the plastic outer lid and peel off the inner metal seal, because if you put that much metal in the microwave, it will catch on fire. Then you put the container in the microwave, set it to cook for a minute and thirty seconds, and press “start.” You walk away, because who likes to watch a microwave? and wait a minute after you hear the buzzer so that the soup can cool off.
You remove the soup from the microwave, careful to hold it by the sides as per the directions on the label. Then you try to remove the plastic lid, but it’s too hot to touch. So you occupy yourself by goofing off on the Internet for a few minutes. When you return to the soup, the lid is still too hot, and the microwaves have rendered it pliable and hard to remove. But you keep trying, and when it flies off, the hot soup sloshes over the side of the container, all over the counter, burning your hands.
“Frick!” you interject between your teeth. Because it’s not just the soup. It’s also that you just went to Home Depot with your roommate to help her pick out switch plates, and the fixtures guy flirted with her, but not with you, and you hate your skin and you’re worried about the noise your car is making.
And you’re basically the last single person left in your group of friends. This wouldn’t be so bad if all your couple friends were married, because hanging out with married people is infinitely easier than hanging out with dating people. Married people see each other all the time, so when they hang out with you, they want to talk to you. A group setting with a bunch of dating couples, on the other hand, is kind of brutal; it’s like a giant group date, and you’re the proverbial fifth wheel.
Married or dating, though, everyone has their own thing going on, and you’re left without anyone with whom to spend significant amounts of time. And this makes you feel this very rudimentary kind of sad, and you worry that feeling that way makes you completely petty and immature. And that doesn’t help either.
But you know it’s not going to be this way forever. And you know that sometimes the most uncomfortable periods of time are the best, because they force us to confront or acknowledge certain things or develop courage in some way.
So you eat the hot soup and go about your afternoon.
First, you remove the plastic outer lid and peel off the inner metal seal, because if you put that much metal in the microwave, it will catch on fire. Then you put the container in the microwave, set it to cook for a minute and thirty seconds, and press “start.” You walk away, because who likes to watch a microwave? and wait a minute after you hear the buzzer so that the soup can cool off.
You remove the soup from the microwave, careful to hold it by the sides as per the directions on the label. Then you try to remove the plastic lid, but it’s too hot to touch. So you occupy yourself by goofing off on the Internet for a few minutes. When you return to the soup, the lid is still too hot, and the microwaves have rendered it pliable and hard to remove. But you keep trying, and when it flies off, the hot soup sloshes over the side of the container, all over the counter, burning your hands.
“Frick!” you interject between your teeth. Because it’s not just the soup. It’s also that you just went to Home Depot with your roommate to help her pick out switch plates, and the fixtures guy flirted with her, but not with you, and you hate your skin and you’re worried about the noise your car is making.
And you’re basically the last single person left in your group of friends. This wouldn’t be so bad if all your couple friends were married, because hanging out with married people is infinitely easier than hanging out with dating people. Married people see each other all the time, so when they hang out with you, they want to talk to you. A group setting with a bunch of dating couples, on the other hand, is kind of brutal; it’s like a giant group date, and you’re the proverbial fifth wheel.
Married or dating, though, everyone has their own thing going on, and you’re left without anyone with whom to spend significant amounts of time. And this makes you feel this very rudimentary kind of sad, and you worry that feeling that way makes you completely petty and immature. And that doesn’t help either.
But you know it’s not going to be this way forever. And you know that sometimes the most uncomfortable periods of time are the best, because they force us to confront or acknowledge certain things or develop courage in some way.
So you eat the hot soup and go about your afternoon.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Marian
I really did try, and sometimes my efforts paid off. One afternoon, my roommates had all scattered for the Fourth of July weekend, leaving the apartment in my capable hands, so I decided to have people over. I called three girls and asked if they’d like to bake chocolate saucepan cookies with me while we listened to one of the audio books required for class. A great idea, I thought, until I realized that listening to the tape meant that we wouldn’t be talking while we baked, which was a little awkward.
Nonetheless, everybody seemed to have a good time, especially Marian, who came with her roommate Heidi. In fact, after Heidi left, Marian asked if I wanted to walk to the mall with her so that she could drop something in the mail. I said sure.
I think Marian was a little lonely. She’d come to the States for school, and I think she felt a little out of step, maybe a little culture shocked. By hanging out that afternoon, I had done something a little like inviting a starving woman over for dinner. After strolling around the mall talking about food and her boyfriend and her native China, I had a hard time drawing the afternoon to a close, and I felt unbelievably guilty for trying.
The next week, at the end of one of our classroom discussions, Sheryl sent us out in groups of three to discuss self-esteem and write down things we liked about each other (we did that a lot) and just generally share, and I joined in with Marian and my roommate Christa.
Marian was the last to share, and when she began, she seemed desperate to talk. She talked about how lonely she felt and how she missed her best friend back in China, how she hadn’t talked to her in so long. And as she spoke, her beautiful, clear, friendly eyes filled with tears.
Christa responded appropriately; she knew enough to hug a person who was crying. But I just sat there, unsure. I didn’t know how to hug a sitting person. And Marian continued to cry, all the while looking at me, and I felt her asking me for something, something I didn’t know how to give.
I felt like a machine that I didn’t know how to operate. I didn’t know how to click this button or wiggle this joystick to make myself know what Marian needed and how to help her. So I laid my hands on the table between us in a desperate attempt to communicate thereness.
Here I sat with someone who needed something from me, and I just couldn’t find it. And I felt that I was hurting her. I felt that I had failed.
When I remember this now, I think about that deep disappointed feeling, that feeling of wishing I were better and wishing I could get the last five minutes back. But I think that when you're doing something new, or doing anything at all really, sometimes you just fail. You just come up short. And I have a little compassion for my former self, that girl who was realizing she was in over her head a little in this making-new-friends thing. It's not fun to fail, especially when you feel like you're failing other people. But being in over your head is the only way to get taller.
Nonetheless, everybody seemed to have a good time, especially Marian, who came with her roommate Heidi. In fact, after Heidi left, Marian asked if I wanted to walk to the mall with her so that she could drop something in the mail. I said sure.
I think Marian was a little lonely. She’d come to the States for school, and I think she felt a little out of step, maybe a little culture shocked. By hanging out that afternoon, I had done something a little like inviting a starving woman over for dinner. After strolling around the mall talking about food and her boyfriend and her native China, I had a hard time drawing the afternoon to a close, and I felt unbelievably guilty for trying.
The next week, at the end of one of our classroom discussions, Sheryl sent us out in groups of three to discuss self-esteem and write down things we liked about each other (we did that a lot) and just generally share, and I joined in with Marian and my roommate Christa.
Marian was the last to share, and when she began, she seemed desperate to talk. She talked about how lonely she felt and how she missed her best friend back in China, how she hadn’t talked to her in so long. And as she spoke, her beautiful, clear, friendly eyes filled with tears.
Christa responded appropriately; she knew enough to hug a person who was crying. But I just sat there, unsure. I didn’t know how to hug a sitting person. And Marian continued to cry, all the while looking at me, and I felt her asking me for something, something I didn’t know how to give.
I felt like a machine that I didn’t know how to operate. I didn’t know how to click this button or wiggle this joystick to make myself know what Marian needed and how to help her. So I laid my hands on the table between us in a desperate attempt to communicate thereness.
Here I sat with someone who needed something from me, and I just couldn’t find it. And I felt that I was hurting her. I felt that I had failed.
When I remember this now, I think about that deep disappointed feeling, that feeling of wishing I were better and wishing I could get the last five minutes back. But I think that when you're doing something new, or doing anything at all really, sometimes you just fail. You just come up short. And I have a little compassion for my former self, that girl who was realizing she was in over her head a little in this making-new-friends thing. It's not fun to fail, especially when you feel like you're failing other people. But being in over your head is the only way to get taller.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Okay, so I was a little different. Let’s just say that I’m the kind of person who sometimes refers to the NRA derisively, who has vegan sensibilities. One day in class, the professor—a large, funny guy with a voice that belonged in Volkswagen commercials—said something about the war in Iraq, and after we’d dismissed, I went up to him and said I’d like to talk more about it; I felt frustrated by the way a pro-war stance was often presented as the default position of faith.
I can’t remember what I said after that, but I concede that it may have been a little shrill. He said sure, we could talk more about it sometime, but not just then. Neither of us brought it up again, as it turned out. I was embarrassed by my sudden bravado and the way I could tell, by the look in his eyes, that I had made myself a thorn in his side.
I had similar conversations on three or four other occasions—minimum wage, welfare, things like that. Once, I went up to talk to the professor (a different, older, slightly gentler one) about how sweatshop labor factored in with that day’s economic lesson, and he said to me, bobbing his head down toward me slightly for emphasis and making firm eye contact, “Did you know? That most of what you read about sweatshops is not true?” I squinted at him.
And it wasn’t just politics. I also stood out in my approach to faith in that everybody else seemed to have much less trouble with the details. At one of our Friday night dinners, I sat at a TGI Friday’s table with one of my roommates and her new BFF, and one of them brought up the subject of biblical inerrancy, since we’d talked about it in class that day. I was the first to speak, and I said something like this: “See, that’s a hard one for me—it’s tough to iron out that definition. I mean, I think the Bible is something, but there are so many human fingerprints, and I just have a hard time sorting out what that might mean.”
After a pause, Katie said, “I think it’s inerrant,” and Christina breathed, “Me too!” with ecstatic relief. So I was the only doubting Thomas at the table that night—and every night, it sometimes seemed.
But the people—oh, the sweetness of the people. My small group leader had the most maternal soul. She showered us with love, and most of our group meetings consisted of going around the room saying what we liked about each person. Sheryl, who taught the Family Studies class, hugged me at least twice before she knew my name. And then there were guys like Zach, who reminded me of a puppy and could often be seen smiling and doing things for people.
Everyone was like this, really. I often felt dark and sarcastic and moody in comparison, but they were even sweet about that. I felt like they were bearing me, bearing me with patience and an innocent curiosity. I have to say, it was fun.
I can’t remember what I said after that, but I concede that it may have been a little shrill. He said sure, we could talk more about it sometime, but not just then. Neither of us brought it up again, as it turned out. I was embarrassed by my sudden bravado and the way I could tell, by the look in his eyes, that I had made myself a thorn in his side.
I had similar conversations on three or four other occasions—minimum wage, welfare, things like that. Once, I went up to talk to the professor (a different, older, slightly gentler one) about how sweatshop labor factored in with that day’s economic lesson, and he said to me, bobbing his head down toward me slightly for emphasis and making firm eye contact, “Did you know? That most of what you read about sweatshops is not true?” I squinted at him.
And it wasn’t just politics. I also stood out in my approach to faith in that everybody else seemed to have much less trouble with the details. At one of our Friday night dinners, I sat at a TGI Friday’s table with one of my roommates and her new BFF, and one of them brought up the subject of biblical inerrancy, since we’d talked about it in class that day. I was the first to speak, and I said something like this: “See, that’s a hard one for me—it’s tough to iron out that definition. I mean, I think the Bible is something, but there are so many human fingerprints, and I just have a hard time sorting out what that might mean.”
After a pause, Katie said, “I think it’s inerrant,” and Christina breathed, “Me too!” with ecstatic relief. So I was the only doubting Thomas at the table that night—and every night, it sometimes seemed.
But the people—oh, the sweetness of the people. My small group leader had the most maternal soul. She showered us with love, and most of our group meetings consisted of going around the room saying what we liked about each person. Sheryl, who taught the Family Studies class, hugged me at least twice before she knew my name. And then there were guys like Zach, who reminded me of a puppy and could often be seen smiling and doing things for people.
Everyone was like this, really. I often felt dark and sarcastic and moody in comparison, but they were even sweet about that. I felt like they were bearing me, bearing me with patience and an innocent curiosity. I have to say, it was fun.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
My Very Own Reality Show
I guess I wanted an experience. I wanted to break out of what had been my monotone existence for the last four or so years, to try something new, conquer a city. So when an editor I knew—he edited a webzine for a large Christian ministry and had published a couple of my pieces—asked if I’d be interested in attending Large Christian Ministry Institute, I gave the idea serious consideration, and then I applied. It would be kind of like going on a reality show, only (hopefully) offering greater chances of career advancement and (hopefully) not as humiliating.
The Institute accepted college juniors and seniors and recent college graduates, with the goal of transforming them into lean, mean, social-change machines—me and 87 other students, only about twenty of whom were guys. We would take classes like Worldview Studies and Family Studies and camp and hike and happily bond in the summer Colorado sun.
First of all, I barely made the cut. I actually—I'm serious—neglected part of the application, so I got wait-listed. And about a month before I had to move, I got the call letting me know I was in.
Second of all, I was a nervous wreck. I didn't really do the college thing the way normal people did, so this would be my first facsimile to the dorm experience. This meant wall-to-wall people all the time (because in my world "wall to wall" is, like, four), most of whom were girls.
It’s not that I didn’t have any female friends. My church small group contained three girls, and we’d taken to hanging out sometimes. But even though we had a reasonably established friendship, the groove wasn’t very deep.
I wanted things to be different at the Institute. I don’t know what I had in mind, exactly, but I wanted a firmer sense of connectivity. I wanted deeper grooves.
The night before I was to arrive at my new apartment with my three new roommates, I thought, I don’t know if I can handle this. I don’t know if I can do this.
The Institute accepted college juniors and seniors and recent college graduates, with the goal of transforming them into lean, mean, social-change machines—me and 87 other students, only about twenty of whom were guys. We would take classes like Worldview Studies and Family Studies and camp and hike and happily bond in the summer Colorado sun.
First of all, I barely made the cut. I actually—I'm serious—neglected part of the application, so I got wait-listed. And about a month before I had to move, I got the call letting me know I was in.
Second of all, I was a nervous wreck. I didn't really do the college thing the way normal people did, so this would be my first facsimile to the dorm experience. This meant wall-to-wall people all the time (because in my world "wall to wall" is, like, four), most of whom were girls.
It’s not that I didn’t have any female friends. My church small group contained three girls, and we’d taken to hanging out sometimes. But even though we had a reasonably established friendship, the groove wasn’t very deep.
I wanted things to be different at the Institute. I don’t know what I had in mind, exactly, but I wanted a firmer sense of connectivity. I wanted deeper grooves.
The night before I was to arrive at my new apartment with my three new roommates, I thought, I don’t know if I can handle this. I don’t know if I can do this.
Friday, August 10, 2007
My Damaged Ego
Henri Nouwen once wrote about how when you write something, sometimes people assume that that one piece is your whole life. And I'm not at all comparing myself to Henri Nouwen, but I'm feeling that dynamic this week. I wrote a little commentary on Relevant's website on The Office versus Grey's Anatomy, and one poster left a comment saying something like, "Why don't you go read a book instead or do something that makes the world a better place? If this is the biggest problem you have to write about, you should rethink your priorities." (You can read everything here.)
I know I have to let it roll off my back, but comments like this always cut me deep. I have to tell myself that this guy doesn't know anything about me. I do read books and I do try to help people. I just wrote a single thousand-word tract about the minutiae of two TV shows because I think obsessive analysis is fun and funny. And what's wrong with a little levity every now and then, anyway?
I think I can forgive this guy, though, because as easy as it is to assume a person's whole character on the basis of one article, it's even easier to judge people too harshly for the comments they throw down. There's a chance I might like him if I met him in person---I too think more people should care about making the world better.
Still, it's his loss that we're not friends.
I know I have to let it roll off my back, but comments like this always cut me deep. I have to tell myself that this guy doesn't know anything about me. I do read books and I do try to help people. I just wrote a single thousand-word tract about the minutiae of two TV shows because I think obsessive analysis is fun and funny. And what's wrong with a little levity every now and then, anyway?
I think I can forgive this guy, though, because as easy as it is to assume a person's whole character on the basis of one article, it's even easier to judge people too harshly for the comments they throw down. There's a chance I might like him if I met him in person---I too think more people should care about making the world better.
Still, it's his loss that we're not friends.
Thursday, August 2, 2007
So Anyway...
Eventually I agreed to meet Tim for coffee on a Wednesday night after church. As I walked away from the church building, junior high kids clambering everywhere under the dusky summer sky, I approached my boss’s wife, Lecia.
“Hey, um, I need a weird favor.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I’m taking off to go get coffee with someone. Could you call me in, like, forty-five minutes?”
She looked at me darkly, but with a spark of amusement. “What are you doing?”
“Just . . . meeting someone . . . that I haven’t actually met yet in person. If you could just call and make sure I’m not in the trunk of someone’s car or something, that would be fabulous.”
“Oh. My. Gosh. How did you meet him? Please don’t say the Internet.”
“Um . . .”
“Jess.” She looked skyward, exasperated and plaintive. “Okay. Forty-five minutes.”
“Thanks,” I smiled.
I’d scoped out pictures of Tim on his grad school’s alumni website, so I had a rough, somewhat pixilated idea of what he looked like. When I stepped through the glass door at Starbucks and looked to my right, I saw him there in front of the merch shelves, standing flat-footed and rocking slightly as he sipped his beverage, waiting for me.
Sometimes when you meet someone with whom you’ve corresponded only in text, you have the sense of suddenly understanding more fully everything they’ve ever written to you. This wasn’t quite one of those times. Tim’s physical presence and the things I already knew about him somehow seemed to have a complimentary relationship, and the overall Tim effect was patterned and multi-colored. Like the shirt he wore.
But, thankfully, I read him as entirely non-threatening, and thirty minutes later, I had a conversation with Lecia that probably sounded to Tim something like this: “Hey. . . . Yeah, everything’s cool. . . . Thanks, I appreciate it. . . . Okay, bye.”
He looked genuinely hurt when I reenacted my trunk joke.
The conversation proceeded with reasonably few awkward pauses. At some point, though, after the first hour or so, I retreated back behind my eyes a little bit, removing myself just slightly. I do this sometimes when I’m scared or just too tired to interact. I can’t help it.
Unfortunately, I think he thought I was bored. And so he decided to liven things up with some history. He went on relatively uninterrupted for a good thirty-five minutes about the Protestant Reformation. I fidgeted with sugar packets and fleetingly thought about fashioning my stir stick into a rudimentary tool with which I might signal for help.
Tim was with me—either on our third or fourth coffee session—when I called to decline the position in Capital City. And soon there would be an eighth coffee and an eleventh coffee, and within a couple months, I would consider Tim my closest friend. I think we even might have been dating for about seventeen minutes, but I’m not sure; in any case, we decidedly landed on friends, and he was the only one I knew was my friend for the sake of being friends, not out of the convenience of attending church or working together. This was probably because he was into relationships—he thought about them a lot and consciously did things to further them. I knew I could count on him calling every couple weeks or so. And I can't be the first to have noticed that when people do things like this, it makes you feel worth knowing.
“Hey, um, I need a weird favor.”
“What is it?”
“Well, I’m taking off to go get coffee with someone. Could you call me in, like, forty-five minutes?”
She looked at me darkly, but with a spark of amusement. “What are you doing?”
“Just . . . meeting someone . . . that I haven’t actually met yet in person. If you could just call and make sure I’m not in the trunk of someone’s car or something, that would be fabulous.”
“Oh. My. Gosh. How did you meet him? Please don’t say the Internet.”
“Um . . .”
“Jess.” She looked skyward, exasperated and plaintive. “Okay. Forty-five minutes.”
“Thanks,” I smiled.
I’d scoped out pictures of Tim on his grad school’s alumni website, so I had a rough, somewhat pixilated idea of what he looked like. When I stepped through the glass door at Starbucks and looked to my right, I saw him there in front of the merch shelves, standing flat-footed and rocking slightly as he sipped his beverage, waiting for me.
Sometimes when you meet someone with whom you’ve corresponded only in text, you have the sense of suddenly understanding more fully everything they’ve ever written to you. This wasn’t quite one of those times. Tim’s physical presence and the things I already knew about him somehow seemed to have a complimentary relationship, and the overall Tim effect was patterned and multi-colored. Like the shirt he wore.
But, thankfully, I read him as entirely non-threatening, and thirty minutes later, I had a conversation with Lecia that probably sounded to Tim something like this: “Hey. . . . Yeah, everything’s cool. . . . Thanks, I appreciate it. . . . Okay, bye.”
He looked genuinely hurt when I reenacted my trunk joke.
The conversation proceeded with reasonably few awkward pauses. At some point, though, after the first hour or so, I retreated back behind my eyes a little bit, removing myself just slightly. I do this sometimes when I’m scared or just too tired to interact. I can’t help it.
Unfortunately, I think he thought I was bored. And so he decided to liven things up with some history. He went on relatively uninterrupted for a good thirty-five minutes about the Protestant Reformation. I fidgeted with sugar packets and fleetingly thought about fashioning my stir stick into a rudimentary tool with which I might signal for help.
Tim was with me—either on our third or fourth coffee session—when I called to decline the position in Capital City. And soon there would be an eighth coffee and an eleventh coffee, and within a couple months, I would consider Tim my closest friend. I think we even might have been dating for about seventeen minutes, but I’m not sure; in any case, we decidedly landed on friends, and he was the only one I knew was my friend for the sake of being friends, not out of the convenience of attending church or working together. This was probably because he was into relationships—he thought about them a lot and consciously did things to further them. I knew I could count on him calling every couple weeks or so. And I can't be the first to have noticed that when people do things like this, it makes you feel worth knowing.
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