A Reminder

I've been going through this phase (for probably a year and a half) of wondering, not so much if God really speaks, but how one really knows. Or at least if I've ever really known. Then on Saturday I went to a wedding.

But first, I need to backtrack a little bit.

After London and that strong sense of "leading away," I never got a very clear sense of "leading to," so I went to grad school for a year and disliked it and quit. Then I wanted to open a coffee shop, but I had neither money nor coffee-knowledge, so I headed back to my home state to work at Starbucks. For a while (even though I was concurrently going through a heinous time of reverse-culture-shock), I really felt like Starbucks was just the place to be, because I could still hang out with people and talk to them about Jesus. But in the last two years I haven't felt I was doing that so well, and so I've been casting about, trying to find other "callings" or something, and not really succeeding. Because I've felt sort of "flounder-ish" lately, it's made me doubt that I was right to work at Starbucks in the first place, and then that I was right to leave London, and then pretty much everything else.

But on Saturday, Jerry got married to Kristin. Jerry was one of my first and best friends at Starbucks. Even in my first week there, he didn't make me feel like I had to prove myself before I could feel like a valued member of the team. He also started, pretty much immediately, talking about faith-related issues. We ended up having a lot of those conversations. He didn't really seem to "get" where I was coming from a lot of the time, but he tried really hard, and he still kept asking me about it, challenging me, not (usually) to be obnoxious, but because he really wanted to know why I did or didn't do certain things, and how consistent I was about doing or not doing them.

Eventually our conversations tapered off, but then a while back, he started asking questions again. They were a lot more specific and a lot more personal to him. Also, Kristin started working at our store. Kristin is a pastor's kid like me, and she was just beginning to walk back toward Jesus, having taken a break from Him for a while. I can't really unravel the chronology at this point, but eventually (in some order, but not necessarily this one) Jerry and Kristin started dating, Kristin's relationship with Jesus re-established, and Jerry's relationship with Jesus got started. It was really exciting for me, because in spite of having been a missionary, I haven't really seen very many of my friends decide that Jesus was really worth it to them. But it's been some time since Jerry did, and it's amazing (and dismaying) how you can take something miraculous for granted after a while.

At the wedding reception on Saturday, I sat with a former Starbucks colleague and her fiance, who Jerry is now sort of discipling. We sat with some other people, too, who were really cool and also really into the usual Conservative Evangelical Christian Subculture, so I found myself talking about My Life as a Missionary. Then I talked about Starbucks as mission. It was sounding all very spiritual until I confessed how discouraging it sometimes is never to see friends whom one has been given to love and care about, learning to love and care about Jesus. One of our table mates said, as people always say, "Well, but you were planting seeds. You were being faithful." It's just that sometimes that's not very comforting to hear. Sometimes I'm not always sure.

And then Former Starbucks Colleague burst out, as if it were most obvious and I was just being silly, "What about Jerry? Come on, Jenn. He's changed so much. He's not the same person at all!" And I realised that, though I don't know how much of that change was related to anything I did or said, God did allow me to be in Jerry's life at that time, and He did allow me to see at least the beginnings of the transformation.

I thought of that pious-sounding thing we evangelicals like to say at meetings or choir concerts: "If just one person comes to know Christ through this, it will have been worth it." I wondered if I believed that, really. I guess I do, but I think I might need reminders, especially if I end up at Starbucks for years and years (more than I already have been). But this was a good time for the first reminder to come.

And then I thought . . . Jerry's discipling Former Starbucks Colleague. And her fiance is the cousin of another former Starbucks colleague. And I'm still friends with her. And relationships grow and fade and sometimes come back, but none of our stories are over yet, and maybe there will be more than just one person who comes to know Christ . . .

London Calling?

Here is (at least partly) how I came to be in London in the first place, and how I came to leave it again:

I grew up wanting to be a missionary. It didn't hurt--though it very well could have given another set of parents--that my parents were missionaries and church planters and pastors (sometimes at different times, sometimes all at once). I also grew up wanting to live in England. I thought the two "wants" were mutually exclusive, and then one amazing season (around my senior year of college and for some time thereafter) I discovered they weren't. I went to England on a two-year commitment, but I said early on, "I have a feeling I'll be here five years."

At the end of my first term, I really finally settled in, and, having received "indefinite leave to remain" from the British government, I decided to remain indefinitely. I was queuing up for dual citizenship. I was thinking about transferring my church membership to the church I attended and worked in, in London. Then I went back to the US for another furlough.

While I was there, I had a number of conversations with people who didn't even know each other, and who, though all Christians, have very different approaches to God. (Well, I mean, they all approach through Jesus, but their respective "styles" are different.) These conversations shook me up a little and started to make me wonder if I was supposed to leave London instead of staying there. Three days before I was to return, I was overcome with a sense of utter dread at returning to my life there, that I never really could explain. I decided to go back, take six months, and see if I could figure out what God was really telling me to do.

I guess it depends on your level of cynicism as to how you interpret things, and which things you decide are open to interpretation. It's probably also partly dependent, if you're looking for God's leading, on what kind of church you affiliate with. I've affiliated with a pretty broad range, so when I got back to London, I was bombarded with intimations in my Scripture readings, words of counsel from my friends, dreams of my own and dreams of my friends and colleagues, strong senses of direction. Eventually I decided that, though things were tremendously better for me than they had been immediately before I had left London, I was being called to move away. It was okay that I was leaving when things were good again; I always think that it's better to leave on an up-note than in shame or high dudgeon. On the other hand, it was hard to leave, too--all those friendships that had been forged, all those prayers that had been prayed, all that learning and growing. Not to mention the urban environment and the cosmopolitan nature of the place. I knew I'd never find another place like it. I haven't.

But the sense to leave seemed unequivocal. I even believed I had been directed as to a specific date of departure, which was appropriate, because the date of my arrival had also been significant. And so it was that in May 2002, I moved back to the USA. I had lived in London for five and a half years.

To be continued . . .

Hannah

I have a niece! I am an auntie!

Hannah Louise was born to my brother and sister-in-law last night. Isn't she cute? Congratulations guys!

Number 7

The day I moved to London, Lisa took me to have tea with Megan, so that I could stay awake and get over jetlag more quickly. Megan lived at number 7, Cotswold Gardens, a house with a Winnie-the-Pooh-yellow door. (You could maybe also call it goldenrod, but Laura Lee, a much later addition to the team, cited Winnie the Pooh.)

I'm not the biggest fan of "goldenrod," except on goldenrod, but I absolutely loved this door. It was such a happy shock of insane brightness in such a usually grim and grey city. I also loved the house on the other side of that door. I thought to myself, "I love this house. I'm going to live in it one day." The house was owned by the churches I worked for, and it was often changing hands, though I didn't know that when I first "met" it.

About two years later, I really did move in. That first night, as I lay down to sleep, I thought to myself with a sense of confirmation, "Yes. This is your house."

It was my house for three years, and when I left, they painted it and Laura Lee picked the colour. She wanted to paint the door something sensible, but I made kind of a stink about and spoke up for the yellow door. So they did repaint it, but it was still that crazy yellow.

Last year Jayne told me in an email that the church was trying to offload some of their extraneous properties, and that was one of them, and they were putting it on the market. I wanted to buy it. It was my house, after all. But they don't pay you enough at Starbucks to put a downpayment on a home in London. I never heard anything else about it, until I got to Jayne's house for dinner on my first day in London last week.

"Number 7 finally sold last week," she said.

I shouldn't have been surprised. And it's good for the church and everything. But was I ever disappointed. I stayed the week in the house next door, with some friends, and so I got to see my house every day. But the house had been painted off-white, and the door had been painted blue, and the last three days I was there, the new owners spent gutting the place. The front garden was full of the bricks that didn't fit in the skip (dumpster) hired and sitting in the middle of the street.

I think I might have been sadder, except with the door now blue instead of yellow, it wasn't my house anymore. It does kind of feel like the end of an era, though.

London Revisited

After Ireland, I spent this last week in London and saw a whole bunch of people I love and missed a whole lot of other ones because of time constraints, and saw the first copies of my book. I just got back and now I have a headache, but it was worth it.

London still holds a strong and significant place in my life, even though I haven't lived there in six years and I actually got lost trying to walk from Oxford Circus to Covent Garden yesterday. (This was demoralising. And I didn't have an A-Z to help me out.) London is the place, I tend to say, where I became an adult. Not necessarily a mature one (maturity might be an attribute my possession of which is still debatable. But it's okay. I've got the convoluted grammar down). I've changed in some ways since then, and there are plenty more ways I dare say I should change. But I still feel like that was the beginning of it.

So going back is kind of bittersweet. The first time I went back after moving to the States, I felt like everything was all wrong, and London was my home, and why was I not permitted to live there anymore? The next time I went back, I felt like I was in a place I had never been before--but where I knew exactly what to expect. This time I feel like I could move back. Or not. (Most likely, according to the Home Office at this point, not.) It's both hard and easy to imagine moving back and slotting into the same neighbourhood and churches that I worked in and with before. And it's equally hard and easy to imagine moving back and living and working somewhere else.

And meanwhile, I still haven't found a new job.

I have a lot of posts built up in my head since probably January. They're going somewhere, I think (kind of like me), but I'm not quite sure where (also kind of like me). Bear with me while I keep trying to figure it out.

The Edge of a Precipice

You would think I would be all "Ireland this," and "Ireland that," and I dare say I'll get to that point . . . sometime back on the other side of the Atlantic. But for now, we're going to talk about other stuff.

Someday, when I'm ancient and long-ago menopaused, so that no one about whom I could possibly be alluding even remembers me, let alone thinks I'm talking about him, I'm going to write a book about the role of sexuality in evangelism. Of course, it might not make much of a book. I can tell you the conclusion right here: it doesn't help anything. At least until recently, any overt or covert heterosexual attraction between me and any guy I've ever tried to talk to about Jesus has not led either to dating or to conversion. I do wonder sometimes, though, if God allows that dynamic so that people who might never get prayed for otherwise, get someone praying for them for a while. (When I'm feeling less positive about this, I think cynically that God's purpose for my life is "bait.") At the very least, it paves the way for unexpected conversations.

Like, one time I was returning to London after a visit to the States, and there was this striking man on my flight. We caught each other's eye, and then, during a stop in Frankfurt (yes . . . I had to fly through Frankfurt to get to London), ended up conversing a little bit. He was Turkish, and a doctor. (Well, he might not have been a doctor, I suppose, but he said he was.) My relationship with Jesus is usually the first thing I tell attractive men about me. In this case, I think that information might have come right after telling him I had learnt to make kisir and borek a few weeks before. Turkish Doctor, trying to be tolerant, no doubt, did not try to argue with me about my Jesus-fanaticism, but he did hint something along the lines of people being like trees--how they grow and change and don't look the same when they're finished as they did when they've started.

I had just recently gone through the tolerance-challenging, grace-building upheaval of my life, and so I could agree with this, except that I would have said that that had only drawn me closer to Jesus instead of making me branch out farther. And after Turkish Doctor and I had got on our respective and divergent planes, it occurred to me that what I really could have said was that he was right about the tree, except that the thing is, it's still always a tree.

I was thinking about this a couple of weeks ago on a walk when I passed this tree. I pass it every time I walk in that direction, but I had never looked up at it before. This time I did, and it struck me just how astounding it was. It's enormous and beautiful and serene. I thought about how a tree's root system is supposed to be as extensive underground as its branch system is above-ground. I know something about this tree's root system already (see fifth photo down in this link). It has kind of "eaten" the rocks in the stone wall above which it grows, and I could imagine the rest of its roots extending back into the yard behind it. It is kind of awe-inspiring. Who knows what it's gripping, under the grass, under the rocks, under the road. It would need that, because like I said, it's a massive tree, and it's growing right on the edge of a mini-precipice. I don't know how big or how old it was when they dug out the land to make the road this tree is on, but it's still growing straight and strong and rooted.

I couldn't help wondering, though, what would happen if there were a really big storm. I suspect it has already weathered really big storms, and like the house on the rock, this tree is rooted in the rock and it's still standing. But the last few weeks I feel like I've been standing on the brink of a precipice, too. Maybe a bigger one than the one than the hop between yard and street. I feel like, thanks to God, I'm pretty well-rooted. But it's still scary on the edge like this. I have to trust in the Rock to hold me and not let the big winds blow me over.

Out of Commission

Well. Not really. Just on vacation. With limited internet access. But I'll be back.

Meanwhile, Ireland is drizzly and beautiful, and I'm loving it.

Good Tolerance/Bad Tolerance

Back in January when our Teen Girl Squad started, we were talking about the charge to love God and love people, and some question came up--maybe one about how to do that, exactly. And somebody mentioned tolerance.

Tolerance is (and has been for a while) the big-word-on-campus. The "secular world" loves to exhort us to exhibit it, and, by and large, the Christian subculture like to tut about it and talk about how it's all well and good, but What About Relativism, and Humans Do Sin, You Know.

All of that is as may be, but I have a sort of tenuous relationship with the concept of tolerance myself--partly because I grew up as a self-righteous twit for some reason, and partly because my own encounters with tolerance have left me a little jaded. So I told the girls about this jading experience:

Back in the day ("the day" always being a different point in time depending on my story, in case you hadn't noticed), I had this group of about six friends. We were a mixed group both in terms of gender and in terms of culture, so this led to some interesting dynamics and also a lot of talks at McDonalds. McDonalds was the place where any two of us would meet to "have it out" if we were experiencing, shall we say, communication difficulties, and because of this we ended up avoiding it most of the rest of the time. (Well, also because, you know, it was McDonalds.)

Everybody has their own personal failings, and mine were, perhaps, a little more glaring or culturally inappropriate in this group or something, and so eventually things broke down pretty badly, and I had to meet up with one of the guys in the group--at McDonalds--to have things out for the last time. The conversation (which is a polite word for what actually went down) was summed up when the guy made this statement: "Jenn, for as long as I've known you, you've been [this particular personal failing]. I've tolerated you for four years and I can't take it anymore. I'm not speaking to you again."

We ended up speaking again (though we're not in touch now), through a long and painful and healing process, but it was in that one instant that I decided I don't have much use for tolerance. It sounds all nice and innocuous when someone says, "We should just tolerate everybody," but when someone tells you they are, or have been, tolerating you, it's like they just slapped you in the face.

I don't, I realised, want to be tolerated. Ideally, I would like to be understood, but I'll go for being challenged if understanding isn't a possibility. I think it was C.S. Lewis who said that the opposite of love isn't hate but indifference (quote, anybody?), and I think that's true. Love and hate at least both dignify their object with some sort of value. Indifference is complete and utter disregard. Indifference and tolerance, in my experience, end up being just about the same thing.

My McDonalds friend was right about my personal failing. I can see how it could have become unbearable. But I wish these friends would have told me ahead of time how unbearable it was, and would have tried to help me through it, instead of tolerating it up to the point where they couldn't take it anymore and just slammed the door in my face. I realise they might not have known how to do that, or furthermore that I might not have been as willing or able to change if I had been coaxed instead of being outright rejected. Sometimes it takes a shock to make a change. But I'd still like to make the argument that love of any variety, and tolerance, don't really go together very well.

But, we asked in our girls' group, aren't there ever times when tolerance is good? The girls talked about their younger siblings, and how they would stand up for them if it came down to it because they love them and they're their siblings, even if they drive them crazy. We tried to define this and didn't really come up with anything more definite than "good tolerance" versus "bad tolerance." But upon further reflection, I have started to wonder if maybe the name that distinguishes "good tolerance" is grace.

Anybody have any thoughts on this?

Teen Girl Squad

The Teen Girl Squad (not to be confused with the virtual but original Teen Girl Squad) has a concluding party here at my house tonight. This was a group of girls (it ended up being just me, a co-leader, and two high-school girls) who got together to study the Bible on Tuesday nights. There were a lot of interruptions. It took us about three months to get through six studies. But we did it, and we have bonded. I'm going on vacation for two weeks, but then we need to talk about whether we're going to keep doing this.

I was going to talk about one of our "deep topics" of conversation that came up fairly early on in our meetings, and I think I still am. But it suddenly feels daunting, and I really do need to make some chocolate chip cookies for this party . . .

****************
Update:

Photos: Jenn, Tisha, Julia, Sarah. April 2008.

I'm Not Lying

In case you were doubting my freelance writing claims, the publishers who print New England Condominium magazine have finally posted online the issue with my first article. It is, I admit, the March issue. And it is, I acknowledge, almost May. But never mind.

St. George's Day

Hat tip to my father for reminding me of this.

Apparently today is St. George's Day. I knew that once--back when I lived in England. You would think that, having lived in England, I would maybe remember this better, since I'm all about little-known reasons to celebrate. (I forgot No-Ruz this year, too, and I never forget that.) I rarely have trouble remembering St. David's Day (1 March) for Wales, or St. Patrick's Day (17 March) for Ireland--although I nearly forgot that one this year, too--what is it with this year?--or even St. Andrew's Day (30 November) for Scotland (although with that one, sometimes I only remember the month). But St. George?

Poor St. George.

Probably why I usually forget him completely is no one likes to celebrate the oppressor. To these other places, that's what England was, at least at one time. (I suppose some might say still is, but I'm not convinced they really have a case.) Apparently even the English had kind of forgotten to celebrate him--or were too embarrassed to. Now, however, it seems, the holiday is reviving. I'm not certain that St. George really embodies all of the things that people would like to pin on him, but maybe some of them. So sure--let's celebrate him.

Happy St. George's Day, everybody! What's left of it, I mean.

Being Glad

That Barrington day? I was walking back to my car after the breeze got too much, and found myself absolutely riveted by the sight of a dead tree. I couldn't stop looking at it--or taking photos of it. An older couple walked by and the man said, "Pretty wood, isn't it?"

It was a relief to know that someone else got it, even though I'm quite sure "pretty wood" didn't encapsulate it. I don't know how old that tree was, or what killed it, but there was that pretty wood, rising sinuously out of the ground, as if the tree had spent its life pouring itself upward.

I know I keep going on and on about trees. I just can't get enough of them. They make me think of God for some reason, but it isn't a consciously unpackable reason. I mean, sure, there's lots of tree imagery in the Bible--the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the Cross of Christ, the Tree of Life, and even the trees of the fields clapping their hands. But I don't usually look at a tree and think, "This reminds me of a cross" (it very rarely does) or, "This makes me think of the Tree of Life in Ezekiel." Even though I appreciate all that imagery, of course.

I'm a great one for analogies and allegories, but I just don't think there is one to sum up why trees remind me of God. They just do. They remind me of God in a glad way--even if I'm mad at Him or something (which I'm not, currently, but I have been a fair bit), if I look a tree it calms me right down and makes me feel like thanking Him anyway.

Oh. And I didn't do this on purpose, but . . . Happy Earth Day, everybody!

Barrington

I went to Barrington this weekend.

It turns out there are quite a lot of Barringtons out there, but the one I went to is in Rhode Island, and is where my mother grew up. I kind of grew up there, too, because we visited my grandparents a lot, and also I spent eight weeks each of five summers living with them while I worked at a daycamp at the church they helped plant a long time ago. I didn't have a car at the time, so I guess Grandpa must have driven me to camp when it rained, but for some reason I can only remember the sunny days, when I would ride his ancient brown bike (which I still have but haven't ridden since that last summer at camp) to the church, and then in the afternoon take myself on leisurely bike rides around the local neighbourhoods.

Nobody I am related to currently lives in Barrington, but I have some friends there still, so I stayed with them. I thought I was going to feel all nostalgic, and I drove past the house where my grandparents had lived for decades. It is now yellow and not green, but there's a baby-swing hanging from a tree in the front yard, and the house looks cared for but lived in, so I'm going to trust that the people in it are the kind of people who should live in your grandparents' house if your grandparents can't and you can't. I did sort of wish I could park my car in the driveway and go for a walk in Haines Park and then walk back and have tea and danish puff pastry with my grandmother, but other than that I felt more happy than wistful about my memories and the fact that that's all they were.

Unable to park in the driveway, I drove to Haines Park instead, left my car in one of the many intermittent car-spots, and walked down to the water. Then I sat on a picnic bench under a tree, facing the water and the boats and the wind. I journaled until the breeze got too bracing, and then I walked back and drove to my friends' and had a nice time with them, too.

I like weekends like this.

A Time to Rejoice and a Time to Whinge

And now is the time to whinge. Well. Actually. I suppose that really it's always time to rejoice. I further suppose that, even if that were not the case, I should really rejoice a whole lot more than I do. But . . . right now I'm going to whinge anyway.

Getting old is really annoying:

For as long as I have had teeth, not one of them has had a cavity. Today I went to the dentist and found out that . . . one of them has a cavity. I really can't take any credit for my previously cavity-free teeth (can you say "cavity free"? is there such thing as an absence of a hole?)--it's heredity and early and regular fluoride treatments and such. But I feel somewhat affronted regardless. The dentist is calling it a "pit," which I guess is not as deep as a "cavity" and is somewhat less invasive and painful to treat, but whatever. There is something wrong with my tooth. I am not pleased.

Probably the reason there is something wrong with my tooth is that I have taken to drinking milk steamers with honey syrup in them at work, and this is because of getting old, too. No, no--I don't think old people drink milk all the time. But, because of getting old I guess, I have some other physical health concerns which are soon to be checked out. The presence of caffeine affects these tests, and so I have not been drinking anything caffeinated, formerly caffeinated, chocolate, anything, for three weeks. Me. Let me remind you I work at Starbucks. I really only like my brewed coffee with milk, or maybe black tea--but those are off-limits. Herbal teas are getting on my nerves. So I'm drinking steamed milk with syrup, and I just bet that stupid syrup made that "pit."

Also, my metabolism has finally slowed down, I think. I am finally my optimal weight--instead of dangerously below it. This is cause for rejoicing indeed--except that now that I'm there, and my metabolism is slowing, I feel that I actually have to make conscious choices about whether or not I eat french fries (a long-standing weakness) or stuff with whipped cream. And sometimes those choices have to be "no." Sheesh.

Okay--so I guess I don't have so much to whinge about after all.

Corrections

It has been brought to my attention that the Milk Guy actually puts half-and-half, and not milk, in his coffee. Perhaps we should call him the Half-and-Half Guy. I think that this makes it sound like he's sitting on the fence about something, but he doesn't seem to feel this is a problem, so, if he manages to come up in conversation again, I suppose we could call him that. Or we could call him the Guy Formerly Known as the Milk Guy.

Also, there is some concern that I was unclear about the nature or the tenor or the something of the email in which he objected to certain implications of arrogance in Christian assertions. I thought I was clear that it was the assertions he was objecting to, not to all Christians, and also that we only had this discussion once. But looking back over it all, I suppose I did say things like "the Milk Guy's charge of arrogance" kind of a lot, which could make it sound like he just kept harping on how arrogant Christians are, or something. Plus I kept talking about it. I hope everybody knows that was me talking to you about it, and not a conversation I actually had with him.

But if you missed that, I apologise. Let it also be known that he did not require me to write this. I did it myself.

Reflections on a Saturday Afternoon

Stuff That's Too Big for My (Even MY) Head

I feel like I should be continuing the discussion started by the Milk Guy (who, to my knowledge, doesn't even read this blog, although he's welcome to) and continued by some of you. But I suddenly feel like I'm in the middle of this idea that's so big that not only can I not get my head around it, but I can't find a piece to grab onto and start talking about. Or keep talking about. Or whatever.

So, while I'm trying to figure that out, here is a blog my brother just alerted me to. (I'm a little annoyed at him for this; as if I didn't have enough internet reasons to procrastinate! So . . . I'm just going to take out that annoyance by recommending it to all of you.) It is kind of like this site (or, as its author says, "a direct rip-off"). And here is a post that kind of reminds me of what we've been talking about lately. Which I alert you to because, tongue-in-cheek regardless, I like the point he makes at the end--and the way he makes it.

For Future Use

If I ever decide to write a novel about the city in which I work, I would like to incorporate the following sentence:

It was spring, and the tax-help businesses in Webster Square were proliferating again, like mushrooms after several days of rain.

I'm not sure exactly in what context I would use this, but it just sort of came to me this evening as I was driving home from work . . .

My Next Point

Jeff, who, one might say, has some personal knowledge of these matters, left a comment on my second-to-last-post that set things up well for what I was going to say next about the Milk Guy's charge of arrogance. I don't know how to link to comments, and he delineated the argument better (or more concisely) than I was going to, so I'm just going to quote him here. He said:

It might not be thought out in this way, but I think the "arrogant" argument goes like this:
A) There are many people who are in circumstances that make it easy for them to know Jesus.
B) There are many people who are in circumstances that it literally (or atleast nearly) impossible to know Jesus.
C) Many of the determining factors of A. and B. above have nothing to do with the actions of the person.
This seems to leave open only the following conclusions:
1. Somebody who is in circumstance A. is more loved by God than somebody in circumstance B: If God loved them both the same he would have put everybody in circumstance A. This is where the claims of arrogance come in: it can be said that if you're in circumstance A, in some sense you're claiming to be better, or more loved than circumstance B.
2. The alternative is God is quite random and capricious about who is in A. or B.; if this is the case his love, fairness, and wisdom are all called into question.

I do think that, really, this is what the Milk Guy was talking about. And, as Jeff further says, I don't know exactly how to tease all this out. I mean, I believe God really loves everybody, so I don't understand why some people are in situations where they get to hear about Jesus easily and others don't. But I will say this (and this, and this).

First, just because you live in a place where it's easy to hear about Jesus, doesn't mean you'll accept him. Clearly. So something else has to be in play here, too. Also, there are all sorts of evidences that God has made Jesus known even in places where it should be impossible. I think that (for reasons I still can't get my head around) God would rather use His Church to communicate Jesus' love. But I personally know people from ideologically closed countries who have had visions and dreams of Jesus, and I've read plenty of other historical accountings of other supernatural communications to tribal peoples or individuals, which were only interpreted later. I guess I imagine that God judges us on the information (or relationship) we're granted, and it's His business how much information He chooses to give, though I don't really understand all that.

But anyway, the other irony of this version of the arrogance argument is that it's always linked with what we were talking about before. So . . . people get upset that not everyone has an equal chance to hear about Jesus . . . but then they also get upset when we try to tell them? I'm sorry. This makes no sense.

I wonder if the Milk Guy would be appalled to know that this discussion with him is making me consider going back into traditional missions overseas . . . ?

Caahffee and Tauwlk

I'm not done with the previous discussion, but I would just like to interrupt the thought process for these totally unrelated little asides.

So, you know how I've been writing community profiles for New England Condominium? (You only know because I've told you, because so far, their website still only carries the February issue, as far as I can tell.) The community profile for the June issue is on Providence, Rhode Island. Today I had to call the Providence tax assessor's office for some information. I've lived in New England for a significant part of my existence, and I've heard Rhode Island accents for a significant part of that. But today's experience seemed notable for some reason.

The actual people I talked to had their own version of Rhode Island, of course, and it was noticeable. But the woman they used to record the message telling you which number to push in order to be directed to certain departments could seriously be considered for Ms. Providence-Accent 2008. Most of the words that you would spell with an "o" were pronounced with a flat "ah" sound. ("Plot"--this is a tax assessor kind of plot, not a book publisher kind--sounded almost like "plat"). Meanwhile, the words spelled with "a" were pronounced with that "auw" kind of sound that sounds almost New York--"If you're cauwlling about . . . " It was an interesting linguistic experience.

Furthermore, wikipedia has this interesting little tidbit:

"Providence also shares Rhode Island's propensity for coffee, as the former has the most coffee/doughnut shops per capita of any city in the country."

Take THAT, Seattle!