Unequally Yoked

Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said:

“I will live in them
and walk among them.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
Therefore, come out from among unbelievers,
and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord.
Don’t touch their filthy things,
and I will welcome you.
And I will be your Father,
and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

(2 Corinthians 6.14-18, NLT)

Lots and lots and lots of Christians like to use the above passage to prove that Christians should not marry people who aren't. This interpretation isn't totally unreasonable, but I have said before and will say again that even if this passage applies to marriage, it isn't about marriage. And neither is this post.

Once upon a long time ago, during the Roman Empire before Constantine, the emperors were persecuting the Christians and even though there were a lot of really noteworthy and amazing Christian martyrs, there were also a bunch of regular people and they ended up recanting their Christian faith until things got a little easier. Then later, when they wanted to go back to church, some of the churches wouldn't let them because they saw them (understandably, I think) as being duplicitous, or weak. They said they wanted a "pure" church. Thing is, they weren't really offering a whole lot of grace.

Then Augustine came along and, citing Jesus' parable about the wheat and the weeds, said that no one should be kept from church fellowship if they had repented and wanted to be reinstated. And from there (going through a number of permutations, naturally), the concept/practice of a "parish church" type of set-up was born. The idea is that anyone can be a part of the faith community, whether they're an actual believer or not, as long as they play by some basic rules. So when a baby was born in a community, he or she would be baptised right away because the family was a part of that parish . . . everyone "belonged" to a church. You didn't have a conversion experience because you were "in."

Once the Protestant reformation hit the scene, ages later, this concept began to be switched up a little bit. The Lutherans and the Calvinists, who believed (in different ways) that church and state should work side by side, maintained the sort of parish/wheat-and-weeds setup. They hung onto infant baptism and But the Anabaptists, who believed that the church would always be a persecuted entity until Christ's return and so must therefore be totally separate from the state, wanted to see a "pure" church, where the only members were people who had a genuine faith in Christ and been baptised as adult believers. Their idea was total separateness.

So here I am, this mix of a Germanic Anabaptist and Swedish Lutheran heritage, who grew up in a Baptist church with Reformed leanings, working at an interdenominational church which baptises any little baby whose parents walk them through the door. And I'm taking another big ol' church history class (could you tell?), so I'm thinking about this "what is the church" thing a lot lately.

I will always be a Baptist on the issue of . . . baptism. But I kind of go back and forth as to whether Augustine was right or whether the Anabaptists were, as far as the whole "separateness" thing goes. The passage above seems to indicate fairly unequivocally that a Christian separation from the world is required. Keeping apart from "the world" makes it a lot easier not to "touch their filthy things." I myself have seen and heard of churches and other organisations who have "teamed up with unbelievers" toward a good common cause, and then the Christ-centered aspect of the cause for the believers gets watered down and washed out, and sometimes the entire enterprise tanks. Compromise is maybe inevitable, and, if these verses are anything to go by, it is unacceptable.

On the other hand, I have a really hard time seeing that Jesus did this. I do believe that all Scripture is inspired by God, and so therefore the above verses are something God wanted said, and so therefore Jesus must somehow have abided by them, but however He did it, it didn't look anything like the way I've ever seen those verses interpreted. He is, after all, the guy who got accused all the time of associating with "tax collectors and sinners." If He was exclusionary of anyone, it was the religious folk, the ones who would probably cite verses like the above, if they had been written yet. And I keep thinking about when I was in Gospel Choir in college, and how our drummer who toured with us wasn't a Christian, but how after touring with us for a while and seeing God answer some prayers, he became one. And I think . . . I'm still confused. What is this 2 Corinthians passage really telling us to do. Because how do we make sure the church keeps its necessary distinctives? But how else are people who don't know Jesus going to meet Him unless they're in our lives?

Rest

You know those times when you're reading a familiar passage of the Bible and all of a sudden you stop short and think, "Um . . . when did that get in there?" Something strikes you a different way, or you're reading a different translation so an aspect of what's written becomes more apparent or something?

Yeah, well, that happened to me yesterday.

Hebrews is a potentially confusing book of the Bible. Probably particularly to those of us who are not ethnically Hebrews. I like to think I have a pretty good handle on the Old Testament, and I think my "handle" on it is probably better than a decent number of Gentile Christians', but I'm still not Jewish, nor do I know many Jewish people, and I can't very well pretend I am or do.

However, I do have this Bible . . . the Complete Jewish Bible. It's part translation and part paraphrase and you can read about the philosophy behind it on the website, but I guess what I'm getting at right now is that, because it's been translated/paraphrased by a Jewish person, there are occasions where I have a minor epiphany that has more to do with a Jewish worldview peering through the words than simply the fact that the words are slightly differently ordered than the NIV/NRSV/KJV conglomeration of words I imbued as a child. Then again, surely I've read Hebrews in this version before . . .

Yesterday I was reading Hebrews 4 (all ensuing Biblical quotations will be from the CJB unless otherwise noted). "Therefore," it begins, "let us be terrified of the possibility that, even though the promise of entering his rest remains, any one of you might be judged to have fallen short of it."

Really?

The writer of Hebrews has just been using the account of God's "resting" on the seventh "day" after creation as a picture of His promise for all of us. Said writer is warning his (or her!) readers not to ignore God's voice if they hear it, and so miss out on His "rest," like the ancient Israelites did when they doubted Him in the desert. So now here's this injunction to be terrified in case you miss out. I'm going to be honest and tell you that the first, not very politically correct, thought that entered my head was, "Okay, so there are some verses in this book that make 'works theology' seem pretty biblical!" I guess what I meant is, this verse in this translation makes it sound an awful lot like you have to try to earn your own salvation.

Of course, this verse sounds a little different in, say, the NRSV: "Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care than none of you should seem to have failed to reach it." Seem to have failed, huh? What does that even mean? That makes it sound like the whole thing is about appearances.

The next verses completely turn the "works theology" around, though: " . . . for the Good News has also been proclaimed to us, just as it was to them. But the message they heard didn't do them any good, because those who heard it did not combine it with trust. For it is we who have trusted who enter the rest" (4.2-3). Ohhhhh.

This is one thing I really like about the CJB. It never uses the word faith, which I feel is one of those words which has been spiritualised to the point of being well-nigh meaningless. Any time another translation would say faith, the CJB says trust. So . . . those ancient Hebrews didn't "enter God's rest" because they didn't trust Him. They didn't trust He was going to get them through the wall of giants and . . . so He didn't. Not until the next generation, anyway.

The thing that really jumped at me yesterday, though, was verses 9-11: "So there remains a Shabbat-keeping for God's people. For the one who has entered God's rest has also rested from his own works, as God did from his. Therefore, let us do our best to enter that rest; so that no one will fall short because of the same kind of disobedience."

"Rested from his own works." I've read this chapter so many times, and I think I've always thought, "Yeah, yeah . . . Sabbath rest, a Jewish concept . . . good symbol for Heaven . . . " I never until yesterday saw this passage as talking about the here and now. Because of Jesus, our great High Priest/Mediator between us and the Father (a concept which the Hebrews-author will talk about at length shortly), we can rest from our "works" as God rested from His. At most I saw it as an injunction to take time off every seven days. But this passage does exactly the opposite of defend a view of salvation in which we have to purchase our own by our own good works (including, maybe, taking time off every seven days? Which I still think is a valuable practice, regardless). It clearly says that the only thing we have to do is trust. Trusting implies resting. That resting trust is the keeping of the Sabbath that the writer is talking about here.

The disobedience that causes us to fall short is our own works. As any good born-again evangelical will tell you, you can't do enough good works to get to Heaven, or to get in good with God. If that's what we're trusting in, there will be no rest at all, and we will certainly fall short of the rest. That kind of lifestyle is completely opposed to rest--antithetical to it. It's not so much that God shuts us out of His promise, as that we shut ourselves out.

Why is it so hard just to trust Him and rest?

Everything You Think

Here at Jennwith2ns' blog, we're analysing popular cultural catch-phrases. Why are we doing this, you ask? Because they're there, and I, Jennwith2ns, overanalyse everything. (You mean you hadn't noticed this yet?)

Previously on Lost . . . I mean, on this blog, I analysed an email forward, and then right before this here post here, I analysed a couple of bumper-sticker sayings but this afternoon, because I found the previously-mentioned awesomely-hippie site, Soul-Flower, I have a whole lot more bumper-sticker-catch-phrase fodder in which to revel, so here are my bumper-sticker reviews. I'm not going to give the nod to every single sticker on the site, but it turns out I have something to say about quite a few of them, so here I am, going to say it.

Bumper stickers that make me feel very un-hippie (i.e. make me want to punch someone in the face):

1. Coexist - Indeed. Please let us exist together peaceably. But I don't intend to stop talking to people about Jesus and the fact that I believe He has a vested interest in their lives, and also, I don't believe that all religions are on the same level, so seeing all those symbols mashed together on a dark rectangle makes me start having extremist feelings, which I don't really want to have.

2. Treehugging Dirt Worshipper - "So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen" (Romans 1.24-25, NLT).

3. Karma Happens - I actually kind of agree that it does--I kind of agree that there is something like karma out there. I just feel like Jesus came to free us from it. If it was really for freedom that Christ has set us free, I'd rather not get tied up again in slavery to the law--even by acknowledging it on the back of my car.

Turns out, though, that there are a lot more bumper stickers on here that I actually do like, even though you might not expect all of them to be right up my street.

1. Peace Be With You - Hey guys, they say this in church. 'Cause Jesus said it first. I'm down. (Interestingly, though, He isn't cited. Unlike Bob Marley, Gandhi, and John Lennon on other bumper stickers.)

2. Lord, Help Me to Be the Person My Dog Thinks I Am - This might not be a bad thing to pray, really.

3. Support Organic Farms - 'Cause I do.

4. Support Your Local Revolution - Especially if it's the next Great Awakening or something.

5. Break the Chains! Shop Independent Stores - I like this sentiment. I would never put it on my car, though, because it would make me a card-carrying hypocrite. I shop at Marshalls and Old Navy and I used to work at Starbucks, for crying out loud.

6. Change is Inevitable. Growth is Optional. - Both things are true. As I have observed and personally experienced.

7. Roots Run Deep - I don't know if I even know what the hippie meaning for this is, but they do, and I want to be rooted deeply . . . in the Jesus-life.

8. Compost Happens - Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

9. If We Don't Change Direction, We'll End Up Where We're Going - Do I need to explain this?

Okay. The end. I'm happy to have got this off my chest. What are some of your loved or hated bumper stickers?

Well-Behaved Hippies

So . . . remember how I have this pipe-dream (pun sort of intended) of being a sort of abridged hippie? By this I mean I maintain somewhat old-skool, monogamous, etc, sexual standards, and I have no desire to take up recreational drugs, but I like the clothes and the colours and the wind-chimes and the barefootness, and stuff like that. So today, thanks to a Facebook side-bar ad (because you can't tell me you never click on those), I discovered Soul-Flower.com. How much more hippie can you get? For the record, I would wear almost any of the women's clothes on there, minus the slogan ones, or ones with identifiably Bob Marley and/or Grateful Dead designs. In case anyone wanted to know. You know.

I confess I scoured the site to see if they were secretly selling marijuana on there . . . not 'cause I wanted any (honestly), but because it just seemed like they might try to be subversive in that way. Hippies want to be subversive, right? The closest thing I found was incense and hemp lip balm. But maybe I just don't know how to find out about these things. I could never be a narc.

Anyway, one of the things they did have was plenty of bumper stickers and graphic tees, as any good hippie shop should, really. I have a love/hate relationship with the types of slogans that end up on these sorts of things, for similar reasons to my ambivalence toward emails like the one I analysed last time. For example, I actually love the one that says, "Don't believe everything you think," but it's because in my head, I turn it around toward the idea that things are "true for you" as opposed to there existing an objective Truth "out there," like they told us on X-Files. I'm sure the writers of the sticker want me to stop "thinking" about my faith and just "feel" things, but frankly, although my feelings toward God are often somewhat obstinate or confrontational, I both think and feel that He exists and that the story of Jesus as recorded in the Bible is true, and if I have to submit to some sort of esoteric drug-induced experience to stop thinking and feeling that . . . well, it all seems a little suspect to me.

One of the slogans on Soul-Flower, usually found on bumper stickers but in this case on a woman's t-shirt, was the one mentioned by George Norman Lippert in a comment to my last post. (George and another guy named Darren have been blogging it up on Pastor Marty's blog this week. You might want to check it out.) One of GNL's pet peeves, evidently, is the slogan, "Well-behaved women rarely make history." The first time I, myself, saw said saying, it was paired with another bumper sticker which said, "Eve was framed." I think that's the peeve-making thing about it. In spite of being something of a feminist (maybe an abridged one of those, too) and an attention-seeker, I do believe that Eve (and Adam) actually sinned--hey guys! I believe there's such thing as sin!--and the implication that we should "break rules" for the sole reason of making our presence known to the world sort of drives me crazy. GNL puts it best, I think, when he says, "As with any of us, the breaking of the rules is only meaningful, methinks, when it is done for a powerful reason, and not just to be cool."

I probably hate the "well-behaved women" thing slightly less than GNL does, but only because I choose to look at "well-behaved women" in a different way than probably the authors of the phrase were actually thinking of it. By which I mean I can think of some women who broke rules for powerful reasons and not just to be cool. True it is that there have been mistresses and scandalous queens (Jezebel comes to mind) and Yoko Ono (sort of--though I'm a little skeptical that she and Angelina Jolie will be historically viable in a real sense if human history gets to muddle on for a few more centuries) who have made history because they have not been, in the traditional Western sense, "well-behaved."

On the other hand, there are ways of "misbehaving" against society which are actually Biblically moral and upright and still end up being subversive. GNL points out the Biblical Ruth and Esther (each of whom asserted themselves to men in a culture where that was not usual or even acceptable, but did so for family or the nation, and to uphold the larger law of God). There are also people like Mother Teresa, who subverted a selfish, capitalistic, shallow society where arbitrary value is put on human life. Also, in my church history class this spring I learned about people like Catherine of Siena and . . . some other Catherine--I'd have to look her up . . . who worked to reform aspects of the Roman Catholic Church before the Reformation even happened. I suppose people who slap "well-behaved women" bumper stickers on their cars don't really know about the Catherines. But it doesn't matter. They still, in some way or other, made history. But in all cases, I don't think it was because these women were trying to make history. Or even trying to be subversive. They were just trying to do the right thing.

Does that mean they were well-behaved, or not?

Speaking of Heresy

My "new" car is fantastic. I am so happy with it. The only things wrong with it are that I have no (working) way to plug my ipod into the sound system, and . . . it has a tiny, well-nigh tasteful, American flag sticker in the lower left hand corner of the rear window.

That's the heretical part of course--that having an American flag sticker stuck on my car would be "wrong." I don't know. I guess I just spent too long in the down-and-out East End of London to be comfortable with iconography that identifies me with one specific ethnic group or nation. Ever since my uncle came out with the album and song "Citizen of Heaven" (what? you've never heard of it? yeah . . . it was kind of like my book: worth it, but obscure) and I realised that was an actual Bible verse, I have had a little trouble being patriotic. (Either that or it gave me an excuse not to be.) Yes, I am an American, and I appreciate the freedoms that I have, and I daresay I take many of them for granted. I just have a little trouble wanting that to be my identity--the thing I'm known for.

When I was a little kid, living in Honduras, I thought the USA was Heaven. After all, we had to fly to get there. Through clouds and everything! Plus, everyone spoke English (i.e., I could understand them) and we could drink water directly from the taps instead of having to boil it first. After we moved back here, however, my attitude started slowly but surely to shift. I guess that happens when you've been exposed to another culture at an early age--even if you spend that early age trying to resist it (stupidly, I refused to learn Spanish). You just realise that there are other people out there and other ways of doing things, and while you may still prefer your way, the lines dividing cultures and nationalities get to feeling really arbitrary and frustrating. At least they did to me.

I've been reading Jeremiah lately. That book is fascinating to me, in part because Jeremiah was so faithful to God, and God was so faithful to him, but he ended up feeling disappointed with how God was demonstrating His faithfulness a lot of the time. Sometimes he just wished God would leave him alone--that he didn't have these words burning a hole in his heart and his tongue that he just had to speak but which got him in heaps (or cisterns) of trouble every time he opened his mouth. I haven't hung out in a cistern lately, and hope not to . . . ever, but there are still some things about this guy that I resonate with, I guess.

The other thing I find fascinating, though, is his message. Here he is, going to the priests and prophets and leaders of a country whose claim to identity was having been hand-chosen by God. They are telling the people, "God's not going to abandon us. Look--His Temple's here. That's His house. He won't let anything happen to that--or to us, either. We are the people of God." And Jeremiah's saying back, "Um, guys? Stop hiding behind this Temple and these religious practices, okay? God knows you haven't really been worshiping Him in a while now--all these idols and stuff instead--and He's getting ready to send in the Babylonians to take you all away for a good long time."

("No He isn't"--"Yes He is"--"No He isn't" . . . )

"So here's what you have to do. You've got to cooperate with the foreign army. Let them in, abide by their laws, go where they tell you, and seek their good, and you'll be spared. If you resist? It's not going to turn out so great for you."

Somehow, the people didn't like this message all that much. And I think I understand why not. For one thing, it sounds heretical. Here they are, the people of God, being told to capitulate to a bunch of heathens. (Never mind that they've been worshiping idols in tandem with God for a long time now.) To make matters worse, the guy that's telling them this is saying that God is telling them to do this. It's another one of those, "God wouldn't say that," moments, like "Go marry a prostitute" (Hosea) and "I'm going to form a child in your womb so it looks like you got pregnant out of wedlock in a culture where that's not okay--okay?" (Mary). Sometimes God asks us to do stuff which is according to His plan, His wisdom, His goodness . . . but it doesn't sound Biblical, if you will.

This message of Jeremiah sounded treasonous--well it was treasonous--and the assumption was that treason against the nation was treason against God, but the fact was, it wasn't. The nation had run away from God a long time ago, and the only way to get any of them back was to send them away for a while and stoke up the fires of repentance and true faith and God-seeking and character-building that God wanted.

I got to thinking about this. I got to imagining modern-day equivalents. I thought about how there are plenty of people in this country who don't believe in God, or believe in different gods, or are open about not caring less whether there is a God or not. But there are also a lot of people in this country who do believe in God and for better or worse are convinced this country once was a Christian nation and that it needs to become so again. I started imagining what would happen if some Christian somewhere began telling everyone that, say, extremist Muslims were going to take over the USA, and that we should let them. It doesn't just sound like we're giving up our national freedoms (which some people seem to equate with, like, the fruits of the Spirit or something anyway). It sounds like we're capitulating to the spiritual enemy. It sounds like by that very action we'd be denying our faith in Christ. Doesn't it?

I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I'm not Jeremiah. As far as I know, God did not wake me up this morning to tell my occasional blog-readers to get ready for a terrorist influx by giving into it. (And I should probably also say, for any Muslim friends of mine who might be reading this, I am not tarring all Muslims with the same brush, but I think we both know there are people of that faith who want to take over the world by shari'a law, and that such a law does not exactly grant equal treatment to people of other faiths. Certainly such impulses exist within aspects of "Christianity" and Buddhism and Hinduism, too, but extremist Muslims seem to me a little more global with theirs at the moment.)

What I think I am saying is, I think it's easy to mix up nationality and national rights and privileges with Christianity, and I don't think they're the same thing. And while fighting for universal rights and freedoms is likely a good thing, I don't think they, as political constructs and national benefits, are as important to God as they are to us or as we think they are to Him. And sometimes I wonder, if there were to come another Jeremiah, whether we'd think he wasn't the anti-Christ and throw him in a well or something.

Writing His Own Reality

So, for those of you who haven't been following along, in the last two posts I've been processing the idea of God's having created and set human history in motion as a way to work through His own issues. I don't think He did, but still, sometimes you have to process thoughts you disagree with, too, and give them an honest look.

While I was talking about this, though, I had one of those moments where you say something and then you wonder if it means something more than you meant when you first said it. This was the thing I said:

You feel, if you're writing a story through which to work out your issues, that you can't make anything happen that you don't want to happen to you, so you allow some conflict and stuff, but you can't let anybody get into really deep water, because you don't want to get into it yourself. You might end up writing your own reality.

It suddenly occurred to me that here was something God actually did. He wrote His own reality into the human story. I don't mean He wrote it through the vehicle of the human story. It's not that He had issues and has been inflicting them on us this whole time. It's that we have issues and He allowed us to inflict them on Him. I didn't love my NaNoWriMo characters and so I didn't want to get to involved. But God? Well, evidently He wasn't afraid of getting into the deep water Himself.

I didn't know, before, when people talked abstractly about how amazing it is that God entered the human story, or that God suffers when we suffer, quite what that meant. And I'm not sure I can really describe in words what those abstracts mean to me now. But I have this sense that "amazing" doesn't even come close, and that God knew what I only discovered by talking about it--that if I got close enough to my characters to create real, transforming conflict in their lives, I'd get close enough to get hurt myself. But God didn't just know it. He did it anyway.

We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.

(Isaiah 53 segment, The Message)

Signs

God and Moses are having their little back-and-forth about whether God knows what He's doing in choosing Moses to get the rest of the Israelites out of Egypt, and whether Moses is going to do it, and God says, "Here's how you'll know it was me who sent you to do this: after you guys all get out, you'll come back and worship me on this mountain."

The first time I really noticed that (and many times subsequently), I thought, "What kind of a sign is that? It's after the fact." You really have to step out in faith for that kind of thing . . . only finding out if you went the right way or made stuff up after you've tried it.

Well, Moses and the Israelites got out of Egypt, and they did worship God on that mountain, but it wasn't exactly easy sailing (or hiking, or whatever) anyway, and the Israelites were more prone to say, "Why didn't you let us stay in Egypt? Huh? At least we could eat leeks and garlic there." (I like leeks and garlic--a lot--but I have often thought that was a strange thing to choose as a consolation for slavery. You'll say anything when you're desperate, though, I guess.) Even though that worship-on-the-mountain sign was after the fact, it ended up being before a lot of other challenges, in the end, and I wonder if Moses hung onto that when the people he was more or less babysitting for forty years got particularly annoying. "Well. I'm not entirely sure how wandering around with this lot is God's will, but He did say we'd worship Him on that mountain, if it were true he sent me to get them out, and we did it, and here we are. I guess I'll carry on then." I suspect there were times, though, when he wished for a few more signs to keep him motivated.

Right now I have a much less history-altering (I think) application of this same after-the-fact-but-you-aren't-out-of-the-desert-yet-honey sign principle. Remember how I was trying to figure out if I should get that car? And I was wondering if the $2 over the monthly amount I was wanting to spend was significant or not? Then I made the decision to get the car after all, and took out a loan from a local credit union. Not only did I get an excellent APR (relatively speaking, of course), but I also learned that the amount I thought I'd have to pay per month was $27 less that $202. (It is not difficult to do the math. I just wanted to write it that way. So there.)

This, I thought, was kind of like one of those retroactive signs: "As a sign that I have chosen this car for you, you will have smaller monthly car payments that you asked or imagined." Pretty cool.

Only . . . then I discovered I'm not out of the desert yet. My car insurance rates just jumped up with this purchase, and I didn't realise just how much excise tax and all that stuff was going to cost, so I probably should've asked for a slightly larger loan, and in the meantime, my health insurance changed hands, so I'm now paying for premiums and deductibles again, and I have no financial buffer. Is this evidence that I made a bad decision and should have waited on the car? Or is it the Red Sea and dearth of water and the plague of poisonous snakes and the battle with the Amalekites? These are just some of the things I'm thinking about these days . . . but I'm kind of a fan of Moses.

Labor Weekend

So, no more Labor Days off for this chick. You should know I'm saying that with tongue-in-cheek . . . why would I have had Labor Day off when I worked at Starbucks? The way I have found myself employed during said weekend the last two years has been much more enjoyable and rewarding.

Last year was scarier, though. This year, though I can by no means call myself an old hand, I felt much more relaxed about my church's annual Labor Day youth retreat, affectionately (and oddly formally) known as "Conference." Which is good, since I was officially in charge this year.

This year we had a video curriculum, which the kids made no bones about making fun of, but I didn't really care, because they were still interacting with it and we still had some great discussions. The theme was "Friends," and we talked about loneliness, peer pressure, comparisons, and identity, while the kids solidified friendships with each other that I'm pretty sure some of them had forgotten about.

In the cabin of girls that I stayed with, we talked about Jesus' meeting the woman at the well, and how He might approach the situation if he were to go on the show Paris Hilton's My New BFF. (We talked about this because we were coming up with a skit.) Probably not too differently . . . although we hypothesized that Paris might not have given Him as warm a reception as the Samaritan woman ultimately did.

During a small-group Bible study group, one of the kids asked, "You say you believe the Bible is true and is from God and everything. But . . . isn't there ever anything in there that you disagree with?" Another kid said, "I know God is good and everything, but sometimes He seems really mean."

It may sound strange to say, but I love these questions. Not because they're easy--they're not. (If they were, a lot more of my friends would be on speaking terms with Jesus right now.) But I love that these kids are actually thinking about this stuff, daring to ask the questions--even of someone who might be, to their manner of thinking, a little obsessed about the whole thing.

The other great upshot of the weekend was that it seemed like everyone remembered how much they like being together. So that the following weekend, when, on a whim, I put out an invite to go to a Christian concert and ride the rides at Six Flags, 13 kids showed up instead of the 2 or 3 I was expecting. About that many came to our youth group kick-off meeting the next day, too. There is also a sudden influx of adults who want to help out.

I can't trace all the whys and wherefores of how this is all coming together, and I'm the kind of person that often looks around the happy stuff for the big crash that I always feel is sure to come around the bend, but I can't deny the good, either. So far the worst that's happened was that I had a headache for two days when I got back from Conference . . . but it was worth it.

Blood

Grandma Grosser used to keep Reader's Digests in the bathroom. I must have been pretty young when I started reading the jokes, which probably explains a lot about my sense of humour. As I got a little older, I started reading the articles, too, if they weren't too boring, and I remember once reading something that said people who had a lot of nightmares were usually very creative and had a greater chance than other people of going crazy.

This was not overly comforting to me at age 14 or however old I was when I ran across it. It was bad enough not knowing who my friends were on any given day. Now I learned that Yay! I was creative! (already knew that) and Boo! I was going to end up insane! This all because I had had nightmares (or at the very least extremely vivid dreams) ever since I could remember. My childhood bedtime prayers had always included a request that I would have "a good sleep with happy dreams." It rarely worked, although I kept praying it for years without seeming to have been too terribly disillusioned by the lack of results.

Or maybe it was just a really delayed result. I don't have nightmares much anymore, and when I do have them, they generally seem to be of a repetitious variety, so I'm not very frightened. There is, of course, always the suspense as to whether the "bad guy" chasing me through the secret passages of a house is going to find me this time, but this kind of thing has happened so often that it doesn't usually really induce genuine fear anymore.

This past week, though, I've been having lots of weird dreams again. I don't remember them as well as I usually do. They just haven't been very restful. And at least two of them have involved blood. In one of them, a blood vessel burst in my eye, but instead of making that rather alarming red patch that such things cause, it burst externally, so that my eye was actually slowly oozing blood. I could see with it and everything, but it was pretty annoying having to continually wipe blood out of my eye. It was even more annoying that everybody around me in the dream was so grossed out by it that none of them would help. Everyone kept saying, "You really need to go to the doctor. You really need to get that checked out." But apparently I was incapable of getting to the doctor on my own, or else other more grave things kept happening to other people who we had to help more urgently or something, and no one was willing to bring me to the doctor themselves.

The other dream was just two nights ago. A lot of things happened in it, but one of the things was that someone kicked or punched me in the mouth or something, and loosened my teeth. We (whoever "we" were) decided to just leave it and hope that they'd firm up again, but shortly before I woke up, one of the teeth loosened instead, and blood started oozing from around it, too.

So now I'm wondering. What's going on in my head? And what's this blood stuff? And is there some kind of connexion between the fact that one dream was about an eye and one was about a tooth, and "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth"? I don't think I'm feeling particularly vengeful toward anyone . . .

Oh. Except maybe Sleepy's. Which is a little ironic, really . . .

Living Up to the Feast

Do you ever do that thing where you're talking, and you say something you didn't even know you knew, or you learn something as you're saying it?

Last night I was hanging out with CourtneyinAfrica (who is not presently in Africa, though she will be again soon and briefly), having Christmas leftovers and an improvised salad.

We were having deep and meaningful conversation, mostly around trusting God and its implications for real life, and I suddenly thought of the story of Peter asking Jesus to let him walk on water. CourtneyinAfrica and I had been divulging certain Impossible Dreams we have each been dreaming, and hashing through whether or not these were things we were supposed to hope for, and therefore trust God to perform (because we both know He can fulfill them, of course), or if we were "wanting the wrong things" for reasons known only to God, and therefore supposed to do something decisive to sever ourselves from the wantings.

When I thought of Peter, I thought, "What a crazy thing to ask for," and then I thought, "He didn't ask Jesus if it was His will--he just went for it." So I started to point this out, but what I actually ended up saying was, "Peter didn't say, "Lord, if it's Your will tell me to walk to You on the water. He said, 'Lord, if it's You . . . '"

I stopped.

CourtneyinAfrica stopped.

We both stared at each other. Probably we both got the chills. It felt like we had just uncovered something momentous, without actually being able fully to grasp or explain its significance. CourtneyinAfrica said, "It has something to do with relationship." I'm still not sure what I think this means, but it's as if, in the relationship Peter and Jesus had, Peter could ask something ridiculous, but it wasn't actually going to be wrong. And Jesus loved Peter so much, he didn't say, "See, Peter, you don't always get everything you want. This is your day to learn that. It will make you a stronger person." Nor did he stand there with his arms crossed, tapping His foot on the waves, waiting for Peter to say, "Oh--I mean, if it's Your will. If you want to. Yeah . . . that." Peter didn't doubt that Jesus could do it, and he doesn't seem to have doubted that Jesus would want to (at least, not initially). He had simply said, "Lord, if it's You," and it was Him, so He did it.

And then, even though it was an isolated event and only involved two people and a dozen or so eye-witnesses, He even used it to glorify Himself, because it ended up in the Bible. I hardly think it's a fluff human-interest piece. It's got to be there for some reason.

I have been praying for some version of my Impossible Dream for more years than I can count, probably, and for a more specific version of it for a little over a year. And I don't know what the outcome of all this praying is going to be. I don't ever expect anything I pray for to look the way I imagine it when I'm praying for it (because to date, nothing ever has). And I'm a pessimist; I tend to expect the worst, in hopes that I will be wrong but bracing myself in case. So although it's not hard for me to trust that God can do miracles, I have a bear of a time trusting that He wants to do them, for me--that I might actually want something He wants.

Now I'm wondering. Maybe most of this praying-year, I've largely been asking the wrong questions. So the waves loom and I start to lose my balance and I start to sink and I think, "See? I knew I didn't want the right thing." But every time--every time--I've finally stopped trying to stay afloat myself, and said the equivalent of "If it's You," the waves have subsided and I've seen Jesus' face (figuratively, but clearly, and that's still something . . . ) and I've been able to take another step. I still don't know what this means, exactly, but I guess I'm probably not supposed to. Yet, anyway.

After CourtneyinAfrica left, I (wasted a little time on Facebook and) got ready for bed. I sat down and opened up a new devotional book that some person had anonymously left me at Starbucks. I opened it to the reading I was up to. It was about Peter, asking Jesus to invite him to walk on the water.

Today it occurred to me that yesterday was the Feast of Epiphany . . .

Christmas

The balloon ended up deflating in a flood of tears rather than a round of screaming, and the techs who did my first radiation treatment this afternoon (who were women, and not the guys of the initial visit) thought I was crying because I was upset about the treatment.

I suppose there might have been something in that. But mostly it's because I feel that, like the Milk Guy's appliances, my circuits are fried--by a whole lot of little things rather than one big thing. And added to that is guilt. Huge amounts of guilt.

I live in a "developed" country. I am not homeless. I have healthcare. I have friends with electricity and food and . . . heck, I haven't had to cook or go grocery shopping in weeks. The Nurse Practitioner's comment kind of rankles, because I want to be selfless, but apparently only on my own terms. I used to think I would go On The Mission Field for the rest of my life and maybe live somewhere less "developed" than this country and, you know . . . have to boil water or something. I've been in many different countries and managed the hole-in-the-ground toilets and eating mystery foods with my fingers and washing my face in a bowl of water and wearing the same clothes days in a row, and it didn't bother me at all. But I chose to go there and do those things, and those were the things that were "done" in certain locations.

Those things aren't generally done here, and I had no control over the circumstances bringing them about. It's not like a camping trip, which I don't enjoy much either, but which I can choose and modulate a little. And so everything in me revolts (as it does in many people, I've observed). I can listen to myself and think I sound absolutely pathetic, and yet I'm still a bundle of nerves because I can't flick a lightswitch and see the entire room.

I feel that the timing of this "ordeal" (which I feel is an unfair word, because this could have been so much worse--it's no Katrina) is sort of interesting. By which I mean, it's making me think of Christmas a little differently. Usually there's all this talk about "the true meaning of Christmas" and to some extent, I usually squint my brain every year and try to remind myself that the birth of Jesus is so much more important than the Christmas tree and that it wasn't all pretty and cozy and lights. Not . . . that there's anything wrong with that.

This year I'm probably about as distracted from the birth of Christ as I've ever been, but I can't pretend I'm not interacting with it on some level all the same. There's so much going on in my life right now, and there's this kind of deprivation, and there's a very distinct (if presently guilt-inducing) reminder that Christmas is actually about inconvenience and deprivation. Jesus gave up all his glory (light! weightiness! splendour!) and schlepped around in a Roman-occupied "under-developed" country for thirty-some years, talking to a bunch of people who often didn't get what He was talking about. And Mary and Joseph gave up their reputations, and had to pack up their lives and trek down to Bethlehem, and then down to Egypt, and their lives were in upheaval for, oh . . . pretty much the rest of them.

Jesus kind of does that, I think. I suspect Mary and Joseph had to come to terms with that more than once. Unless, of course, they had no controlling tendencies at all . . . I kind of doubt it. But maybe I'm just thinking like that to make myself feel better.

Pre-positions

There's a church down the street. It is neither my Old Church or my New Church, but I used to work at a living history museum with one of their lay leaders, so I feel a mini-connexion with it anyway.

They have one of those signs out front where you can put out the movable white letters on the black backdrop and either announce church events, or put a thought-for-the-period-of-time-before-you-remember-to-put-the-next-thing-up-there.

Back in September and October the sign said, "Everyone is invited at God's table."

For the entire time it was up, whenever I would drive by, I would do a little grammar-and-theology shuffling with that verse. Something doesn't seem quite right, but I still can't make it say what it seems like it should, to be both grammatically and theologically correct.

To me, "Everyone is invited at God's table," sounds like what we often do in the Church anyway. We sit around and look at everyone already at the table (as we assume, anyway) and yeah, we're all invited. The question is, to what? If we're already there, what's next? Going into the Divine Family Room to watch angel football?

Or maybe it's one of those assertions of the obvious: "See all those people at the table there? They were invited." Oh. I guess it's comforting to know there are no gatecrashers? I guess?

I thought maybe it should have said, "Everyone is invited to God's table." That could, I suppose, sound like we can just help ourselves to the table and leave. But when I first thought of it, it was in the context of the invitation through Jesus being open to everyone, and we just have to accept the invite. I suppose it could be further clarified by saying, "Everyone is invited to come to God's table," or to "dine at God's table." Or something.

My dad suggested it could say "Everyone is welcome at God's table," which I think probably says the "invited to" thing a little better, although it might imply, "under any conditions," which, if the conditions were without the received forgiveness of Christ, I think would also be erroneous.

In spite of all the brainwaves being invested in this conundrum, the letters on the board did not move. I still have questions, though. The first one is, do you think we as Christians act as if we're the only invited ones, sometimes? What do you do with the "many are called but few are chosen" verse, and are any of the above sign-posting suggestions valid in light of that? Are we actually supposed to do anything with that verse, or should we just treat everyone as if they were both called and chosen? And if we did that, what would it look like?

Balking

When I saw my Oncologist a week ago, she gave me a choice: chemo or randomisation (wherein I would either get chemo anyway, or I wouldn't, but I'd have no choice in the matter). I was feeling tired and stressed and sort of resigned, so I thought I was going to go for the chemo. I didn't feel like fighting with my very pro-chemo doctor, and I didn't feel like deciding anything. I didn't feel like talking to my Second Opinion Doctor, either. But I did.

"Great!" she said. "You have a low recurrence score! You'll do great in the protocol!"

But I don't like the idea of being randomised. Waiting some more, just to find out I'm being assigned something by chance, doesn't really thrill me. No one was suggesting I could just opt out of chemo altogether. My Oncologist is a treatment-conservative (which, for some reason, translates into very un-conservative treatment). My Second-Opinion Doctor is a researcher. Why would they offer me the "third way," I guess?

Then the People Closest to Me started asking questions, which basically boiled down to "How on earth is pumping extra toxins into your body when you only have a 9% risk of recurrence actually going to help you?" and "Why don't you just refuse the chemo?"

Oh. I can do that?

I understand that my cancer may come back. And maybe it will be worse. And maybe I'll have to have chemo then. But maybe it would even with the poison. And maybe I'd go into menopause before I'm forty. And maybe I wouldn't be able to work at Starbucks because my immune system would be compromised and working there is pretty much like working in a preschool with how everybody gets sick in the winter. And maybe the long-term effects would be such that years from now I'd be regretting the treatment more than the recurrence of the disease.

I kind of feel like Daniel and his friends when they asked the Babylonian steward to let them be vegetarians. Maybe someone should do research on the hormone-therapy/radiation/prayer course of treatment.

Why Do We Do This, Again?

The Milk Guy says that if there's a God, He must be a cosmic Sadist.

I never really know how to respond to this when he brings it up, because frankly, sometimes I think things like that myself, and so I have no idea how to explain how Christians (generally) view trials, without sounding like we have made ourselves into Masochists-for-the-God.

Here are some cases in point:

1. Pretty much all the Old Testament prophecies. God's people are not cooperating with Him. He gets mad. He causes or allows (depending on your theology--but the words in the Bible usually sound like "causes") really horrific things to happen to them. Today I read in Zechariah 14.2 (NRSV) "For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses looted and the women raped . . . " It actually goes on from there, but the rape thing alone causes me to recoil so violently, I kind of lost track of the rest of it. He mercifully allows some people to be spared these monstrosities, and then He restores them, and they're supposed to (and do, at least for a time) return to Him with love in their hearts because He essentially beat the stuffing out of them. Or . . . that's what it reads like.

2. I'm reading an autobiography of an English evangelist, whose prayer as a child was that she could get into the center of God's heart. Or something like that. She had a fairly difficult childhood and then suffered some serious health issues (and miracles) as an adult, and at the end of the second-to-last chapter, she renewed her request to God that she be satisfied with only Him. Three weeks later, her husband of 30 years, who had been involved in ministry with her, left her for another woman. What?!

3. I've prayed similar prayers, and meant them, and I've even asked God to do whatever it takes (even to me) to cause certain people to come to know Him. Now I have cancer? I don't know if that's "what it takes," but I do know there's some way that this is supposed to draw me closer to Him.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Old Testament prophets (although I've decided I don't like Zechariah all that much), and I think the prayer for God and God alone is probably the best one we can pray. (It's also pretty audacious, if you think about it, and so the fact that we can pray it is pretty amazing.) I love that God wants to relate to us enough to open Himself up to our rage--to the point of His own death in Jesus. I know (at least intellectually, although sometimes that's all it feels like) that He doesn't ask us to do anything He didn't live through Himself, or experience along with us. I've sensed His presence with me in this cancer adventure and I've seen Him answer prayers in surprising ways and I know He's been faithful to me through my whole life.

I also understand that if He tried to coax us to Him with blessings all the time, it wouldn't work. We just get distracted. All right, I get distracted, okay? I get all caught up in the blessing and start to treat it, instead of Him, like God.

I'm just saying that causing or allowing the rape of the people He chose when He hates rape, or answering Jennifer Rees Larcombe's prayer through a divorce when He hates divorce, is downright baffling, and I don't really know how to argue with the Milk Guy when he says, "You talk like everything God does is perfect. But He makes bad stuff happen, too. You have to take the good with the bad."

"As for God, His way is perfect," but I do see the Milk Guy's point. For all I said about "It's all good," God's perfect way often feels really bad. And even if I am settled in myself that I have about as complicated a relationship with God as I do with the Milk Guy but that it's good; even when I feel that I can trust in God when I suspect He might hurt me and that I love Him even when He does; even when I know that I am free (thanks to Jesus) to argue with God and that somehow through all this turmoil it will bring me closer to Him, I really don't know how to explain that to anybody without its sounding like I have some kind of psychological malfunction that causes me to seek out pain. I don't. I really don't like pain.

So . . . why do we do this, again?

Illumination

Have you seen this yet?It jumped out at my eyeballs the other day while I was waiting for a friend to turn up for coffee at Barnes and Noble. I managed to scan through the Gospels before she arrived. I guess I don't agree with every single visual interpretation, but I found a lot of them unbelievably powerful, and some of them made me cry.

Today I was at another Barnes and Noble with my mother on her way to the airport. She wanted to see this book, and I couldn't find it anywhere in the shelves, so I approached a clerk behind one of the counters.

"Excuse me," I said, "Do you know if you have--I don't know exactly what it's called--it's a version of the New Testament that looks like a magazine?"

He looked slightly perplexed but dutifully turned to his computer and began searching. "You don't know who published it at all?" he asked hopefully. "The author?"

I paused a moment before saying, with a bit of a grin, "Umm . . . God?"

Strangely, he didn't grin back.

"It didn't look like this, did it?" he asked after a moment, turning the screen toward me.

"Yes," I said. "That's it."

So . . . I didn't get the grin. But there was a look of surprise and interest. That might be good enough.

It's All Good

Long, long ago, on a PC far, far away ('cause I didn't have my Mac yet), I wanted to date a guy who had among his life goals the desire to eliminate the phrase "It's all good" from the English language. We didn't end up dating, although that's not why. At least, not to my knowledge. Now I hang out with the Milk Guy, who says, "It's all good," at the end of almost all of our arguments. ('Cause, um, sometimes we have them.) Occasionally I find that mildy frustrating. It almost sounds dismissive or something, even though I don't think that's how he means it.

A week before my surgery, I was having dinner with him. We weren't arguing this time, but he started getting philosophical and asking me how it was that since I believe in God, I am not mad at Him for, if not giving me cancer, at least not preventing it.

The short answer, as we have already discussed here, was, "I have no idea." Getting mad at God has been my modus operandi for a very long time. The long answer was a little harder to get out and was, evidently, completely unintelligible to him anyway, but it did start a train of thought that I'm still riding toward the station: It occurs to me that the Christian understanding of God gives a unique ability to assert, "It's all good."

Of course, it's not all good. The Christian understanding of things also argues sin, which by definition is not good. But there's also redemption, which is. And I'm beginning to think that the whole "God works everything together for good" thing could actually be another way of saying, "It's all good."

I have cancer. (Or . . . I did, until they took it out--yay! they took it out!--but there's still treatment to come.) I could be angry and ask God why He didn't prevent it or outright heal me or something like that. I could be upset about the purely financial aspect of it. Or I could open my mind to the idea that He might have allowed it so I could learn something new about Him, or about me, or about His people. I could open my mind to the idea that furthermore, my concept of "good" might not be exactly the same as His anyway, and that while there may be reasons beyond my own understanding of the need to suffer, He knows what I need and what He needs to do about it. The Bible uses birthing analogies a lot when talking about suffering that results in something wonderful and alive. I really believe that that's what this cancer is about.

I confess I have a little bit harder time reconciling myself to something's being "good" when it involves human mistakes or selfishness or evil. I still get all bent out of shape when my friendships get slightly off-kilter, never mind when something really horrendous or horrific happens. I don't know that I could look a child-abuse victim in the eye and tell him or her that the abuse itself was "good." I have friends who fall into this category, and I know I couldn't say that to them. But I really do believe that God works everything together for good for those who love Him, even if they don't know how it's going to work together, or what the "good" is going to look like. And I guess, verbal crusades aside, I do believe that in the end, "It's all good."

Encouragement

I had about five blog posts I wanted to write today. Instead . . . I didn't. But here's a start.

On Wednesday, the night before my surgery, this Psalm turned up in my readings:

1 The Lord is my light and my salvation—
so why should I be afraid?
The Lord is my fortress, protecting me from danger,
so why should I tremble? . . .

4 The one thing I ask of the Lord—
the thing I seek most—
is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
delighting in the Lord’s perfections
and meditating in his Temple.
5 For he will conceal me there when troubles come;
he will hide me in his sanctuary.
He will place me out of reach on a high rock. . . .

7 Hear me as I pray, O Lord.
Be merciful and answer me!
8 My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.”
And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.”
9 Do not turn your back on me.
Do not reject your servant in anger.
You have always been my helper.
Don’t leave me now; don’t abandon me,
O God of my salvation! . . .

13 Yet I am confident I will see the Lord’s goodness
while I am here in the land of the living.

14 Wait patiently for the Lord.
Be brave and courageous.
Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

(Psalm 27, excerpted. New Living Translation)

On Thursday morning, dark and early, before I left for the hospital, this came up in my morning readings:

6 “What is the price of five sparrows—two copper coins^[b]? Yet God does not forget a single one of them. 7 And the very hairs on your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows."

(Luke 12.6-7, NLT)

On Thursday night, back home, groggy with painkillers and lingering anesthetic, I read this Psalm:

1 I will exalt you, Lord, for you rescued me.
You refused to let my enemies triumph over me.
2 O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you restored my health.
3 You brought me up from the grave, O Lord.
You kept me from falling into the pit of death.

4 Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones!
Praise his holy name.
5 For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime!
Weeping may last through the night,
but joy comes with the morning.

(Psalm 30.1-5, NLT)

Kind of an encouragement-sandwich. I just feel like giving a little credit where it's due. More disgusting details, happy thoughts, and wry observations in the next few days. It's not like I don't have time for this, after all . . .

Hair Today . . .

Right this second, I'm not feeling as upset about the likely chemo aspect of this whole process as I was. Still, I was a little startled at the strength of my reaction to the news that I have baldness in my future.

The funny thing is that I've never been much a fan of my hair. It never does what I want it to, and it's only within the last four years that I've found a hairdresser who can really cut it to my taste (but he's expensive, so I only go, like, twice a year). It is a strange, indeterminate colour and it's frizzy but never actually curls, and in moments of frustration I've been heard to burst out, "All right! That's it! I'm shaving my head!"

It's just . . . I never really meant it.

If you know me at all, you'll know that I am neither the most liberal nor the most conservative student of the Bible, and I don't really think that a woman's hair length reflects her salvation status. But I do kind of think Paul was onto something when he said "a woman's hair is her glory." Long or short, dyed or naturally hued, When I joked around with some of the guys at Starbucks about being bald for Christmas, they were sympathetic and still laughed at my jokes, but when I told 409-Caitlin, she practically started crying for me. Heather-of-Six cried for me at the news, too.

I know it's only temporary. And when it comes back, they tell me, it will come back curly. And maybe blonde. I used to be blonde. And I always wanted curly hair.

(One time I prayed that God would make my hair curly, but seriously? This is a little extreme. On the other hand, I suppose it might indicate that God really does listen to our prayers, and sometimes His answers include a big ol' long wait . . . And then . . . a really weird answer. Is this doing "more than all we could ask or imagine"?)

But the thing is, this is my hair. Like it or not, it's what I've had since I've had any. I've grown into it, and it has (though not always as I wanted it to) expressed something about me. Even when I've hated it, it has in a way been something of my "pride and joy." And so sometimes, when I think about it, I can't help getting a little sad.

Me-Ville

I was going to introduce this post with a funny little story about me as a kid conflating words in songs and thinking they said something else . . . and then I realised that the post would end up being about me, instead of about the book my friend the Zimmerman recently had published. Which would be ironic, since the book is called Deliver Us from Me-ville.

Me-ville, where everything is all about me. That would be in my head. And, respectively, in most other people's heads, too.

This is a tricky topic to tackle. How do you write about self-absorption without being self-absorbed, and yet also without sounding as if you think you're preaching to a whole bunch of people who you think are self-absorbed, while you yourself are exempt?

I'm not sure how the Zimmerman did it, but he definitely did it. It doubtless helps that he has a knack for self-deprecation, although even that can become an outlet for selfishness if overdone. He did not overdo it. He's just self-aware enough to know that he can be as guilty of self-absorption as the rest of us. He admits it, but doesn't get mired in a self-gratifying public guilt-fest.

As a reader, reading it was a different but similar kind of challenge: if I happened upon a part to which my gut responded, "Hey--he's talking to me!" I then had to pull back with a, "Hey--wait a minute . . . " How can I not resonate with talk of self-centeredness? But . . . it did seem a little suspect.

I'm glad he wrote the book. I'm glad I read it. I don't want to tell you you're selfish or anything, but you might want to pick up a copy and read it, too.

While you're waiting for your order to come in, you could play along with this little game which the Zimmerman devised recently in a brief email exchange we had about the prophets of the Old Testament:

"Which prophet's trials and tribulations would you be least unwilling to endure?"

He says this would be a good icebreaker for Bible nerds. I agree. But even if you weren't the kids whose hands they tied down in youth group so that you wouldn't answer all the trivia questions, I think you can play along . . .

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.