Monday, December 27, 2010

A 5-year-old's monologue

My Suzy doesn't realize she's recording, so she thinks her camera clicks are snapping pictures.
 

Thursday, December 23, 2010

The Sadness of Christmas

As a kid, I looked forward to Christmas with the best of 'em. 3 huge gift receivings awaited me each year, and I would be getting most everything I wished for, plus some pleasant surprises, too. In my mind, Christmas was the time to get set. All my problems, from acne to holey underwear, from boredom to nerdy clothes were on their way out the door. Satisfaction was just around the corner. Jesus had come, Santa was coming, and life would be better.

Looking back on those days, I recognize a recurring theme of sadness that crept to my heart in opening gifts. I would realize as I stacked the final presents onto my impressive mound that I was not, in fact satisfied. Even with my super-cool new Reebok windsuit, my Kirby Puckett rookie card (pictured), my silk shirt and my Steven Curtis Chapman CDs, I was still Brian. I would haul my wares happily to my room, admire them Gollum-like, and then feel the sadness come on.

As I got older I came to understand the sadness as greed's melody. So I reacted by trying to forget my own presents. I'd try not to think about what I might get, or to focus on others' happiness. As I failed in this effort, the sadness would come again, but with guilt as its dissonant accompanist. In opening presents, I found a limit to the fulfillment I longed for on Christmas day, and this in itself left an emptiness.

But it wasn't just the giving times that left a hollow. It was the fun with grandparents and cousins that I longed for all year that had to come to an end. It was the last game of bumper pool or Carroms. It was the race to see which cousin would get the last of Grandma Stipp's chocolate covered peanut-butter cracker sandwiches, or my Grandma Flint sneaking me a  few coconut and cream cheese snowballs for the ride home. As joyous and peaceful as these days were, they came to an end. And I remember feeling something more than sadness that comes when things don't go one's way. It was grief that seemed to always come with Christmas's end.

I think I know why.

As an adult, by celebrating the week's before Christmas during Advent, I have come to understand that Christmas day is only one part of the holiday. The whole Advent season celebrates the day of His first coming, but also points to Christ's return as the time when the world will finally be judged and put to rights; the time when my own greed would be gone, when the surrounding of profound love and safety would not end. We look forward during this time to Chirst's second advent, which means looking past today, dreaming of a new reality. He will come again, but He has not yet.

I believe there is a grief and longing native to this Holiday and even to our religion.  All is not celebration and praising. While the greed, the guilt and the loneliness that little boys and girls will feel this weekend will someday be wiped away, while the beautiful vision cast for us in Revelation 21, when he finally crushes once and for the forces that leave us empty is to come, it has not yet. And for that we have only to look forward. 

So when the sadness comes these days, I urge you to take it in stride. Look beyond the day to the future God has promised.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The Christmas Wars

I like this article's perspective on "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays." It says that pressuring people who don't believe in Christ to use His name may be at the very heart of what it means to take the Lord's name in vain. Yet another suggestion from Evangelicals for Social Action's E-pistle.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

On the way to Montgomery

We’re driving down the country headed to Motgomery, Alabama to see our friends, the Jecks. We’re going in a way that runs against many of our ideals. Instead of taking the trip slow and drinking our country in with long drafts, we’re zipping along. We’re sticking to the unnatural and boring interstates opposed to the beautiful, intriguing countryside. Right now, in fact, we’re in Louisville, just 30 minutes from Wendell Berry’s Port Royal, Kentucky, a place whose beauty and significance I have read and thought much about. But we’re not stoppin’ to see, baby.  Not this trip. We’re blazing right past at 70 miles an hour. Instead of packing meals or getting supplies at small-time grocery stores we ate at a Dairy Queen and got coffees at McDonalds. Our Days Inn is within earshot of the zooming cars of I-65.

At some point, our interests and the kids’ needs come into competition. Here on this trip, their needs win. We find that as much as we need to live out what we believe, our kids have greater and more urgent pulls on our energy. They desperately need our training – a big job that takes all our attention. Suzy needs to feel protected and to be heard by her mommy and daddy. Eli needs to learn that apologizing first and then biting his brother just doesn’t fly. Isaac needs to hear when told to change his undies, “I already changed them once this week” isn’t an acceptable stance. And Leeli needs to stop every few hours for her mama’s milk, which means that the trip is long enough even on the interstates.

So instead of beholding the beauty outside our van, we’re focusing on the beauty within it. And there’s is a beauty as breathtaking as any we’re passing. And it is ours to nourish. 

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Christmas music suggestions

The existence of the Christian music industry boggles my mind. Not that Christians shouldn’t be making music, or singing about the Lord. We always have, and should. But what we find on the radio, benefiting from the industry, has been a poor imitation of secular pop music since I’ve been old enough to compare the two. The following are examples of good music that celebrates the coming of the Christ. Its singers’ discipleship is an inspiration to me moreso that their musicianship, which is also quite good.

1. Sara Groves is giving away copies of a live Christmas show she did in a women’s prison here in Illinois. This live album is good not for its sound quality but for the statement she is making by giving the concert in the first place. When my kids asked whose were the voices singing along with Sara, it was a joy to answer them, and let the joy-filled voices of women who did God-knows-what fall our ears together. Singing of Christ’s hope with inmates. That is both a proclamation and an enactment of the Kingdom.

2. Andy Gullahorn and Jill Phillips are a husband and wife team, and their first album together is called "Christmas," the unoriginality of which sounds like a sad conclusion to a marital argument to me. The album is good, but their rendition of "Nations that Long in Darkness Walked" is great. It adds a bridge that shows how this old hymn captures the central  message of the gospel, and the Christian's Advent longing.

“Nations That Long In Darkness Walked” by Andy Gullahorn



3. Randall Goodgame made a very fun kids' Christmas album, A Slugs and Bugs Christmas to accompany his and Andrew Peterson's Slugs and Bugs and Lullabies. Very good stuff. On the song the Happy Birthday Jesus, the "lump in my throat," is what I hope my own kids get as they realize all the hubbub is about the most important event in history.





4. And if you've never heard Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God: The True Tall Tale of the Coming of the Christ, it's the best. And you can hear the whole album here.
 
Items 2-4 can be purchased at the Rabbit Room Store, which I (obviously) frequent.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Family Pictures

A friend of ours from church gave us a family photo shoot as a welcoming gift to Rozalie. Here's a link to her blog where you can see a sampling.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

N.T. Wright, on hell, my thoughts

I just wrote a long response to the N.T. Wright excerpt. Then I re-read his excerpt and found that I had pretty much written the same things as him, but not as well.

So very briefly, I really liked his tone on hell, "I am well aware that I have now wandered into territory that no one can claim to have mapped." And his suggestion that sin does more than separate us from God but threatens our very humanity was a new idea to me, and I think he's wright. (sorry)

Also, If you were too lazy to read the original post, or if you dig British accents, here he is saying many of the same things.


Tuesday, October 26, 2010

N.T. Wright, on hell: The Excerpt

Part 1 gives some context for this rather long excerpt from N.T. Wright about hell and final judgment. I hope you'll take the time to read it and give it some thought. 


God is utterly committed to set the world right in the end. This doctrine, like that of resurrection itself, is held firmly in place by the belief in God as creator, on the one side, and the belief in his goodness, on the other. And that setting right must necessarily involve elimination of all that distorts God's good and lovely creation and in particular of all that defaces his image-bearing human creatures. Not to put too fine a point upon it, there will be no barbed wire in he kingdom of God...

For "barbed wire," of course, read whichever catalog of awfulnesses you prefer: genocide, nuclear bombs, child prostitution, the arrogance of empire, the comodification of souls, the idolization of race. The New Testament has several such categories, functioning as red flashing lights to warn against going down a road that leads straight to a fenceless cliff. And in the analysis offered by early Christians from Paul onward, such patterns of behavior have three things to be said about them.

First, they all stem from the primal fault, which is idolatry, worshiping that which is not God as if it were. Second, they all show the telltale marks of the consequent fault, which is subhuman behavior, that is, the failure fully to reflect the image of God...Third, it is perfectly possible, and it really does seem to happen in practice, that this idolatry and dehumanization become so endemic in the life and chosen behavior of an individual, and indeed of groups, that unless there is a specific turning away from such a way of life, those who persist are conniving at their own ultimate dehumanization.

This is at the heart of the way in which I believe we can today restate the doctrine of final judgment. I find it quite impossible, reading the New Testament on the one hand and the newspaper on the other, to suppose that there will be no ultimate condemnation, no final loss, no human beings to whom, as C.S. Lewis put it, God will eventually say, "Thy will be done." I wish it were otherwise, but on cannot forever whistle "There's a wideness in God's mercy" in the darkness of Hiroshima, of Auschwitz, of the murder of children and the careless greed that enslaves millions with debts not their own. Humankind cannot, alas bear very much reality, and the massive denial of reality by the cheap and cheerful universalism of Western liberalism has a lot to answer for.

But if there is indeed final condemnation for those who, by their idolatry, dehumanize themselves and drag others down with them, the account I have suggested of how this works in practice provides a somewhat different picture from those normally imagined.

The traditional view is that those who spurn God's salvation, who refuse to turn from idolatry and wickedness, are held forever in conscious torment. Sometimes this is sharpened up by overenthusiastic preachers and teachers who claim o know precisely which sorts of behavior are bound to lead to hell and which, though reprehensible, are still forgivable. But the traditional picture is clear: such human beings will continue to be, in some sense, human beings, and they will be punished in an endless time.

This account in then opposed by the universalists. Sometimes they suggest...that God will be merciful even to the utterly abhorrent, to mass murderers and child rapists. Sometimes they modify this: God will continue, after death, to offer all people the chance of repentance until they finally give in to the offer of his love.

A middle way is offered by the so-called conditionalists. They propose "conditional immortality": those who persistently refuse God's love and his way of life in the present world will simply cease to exit. Immortality, such theories point out, is not (despite the popularity of Platonist!) an innate human characteristic; it is something that, as Paul says, only God possesses by right and hence is a gift that God can choose to bestow or withhold. According to this theory, then, God will dimply not confer immortality on those who in this life continue impenitently to worship idols and thereby to destroy their own humanness. This view is therefore sometimes known as annihilationaism; such people will cease to exist. That word, however, is perhaps too strong, suggesting that such people are actively destroyed rather than merely failing to receive a gift that had been held out to them and that they had consistently rejected.

Over against these three option, I propose a view that combines what seem to me the strong points of the first and third. The greatest objection to the traditional view in recent times - and the last two hundred years have seen massive swing toward universalism in the Western churches, at least the so-called mainstream ones - has come from the deep revulsion many feel at the idea of the torture chamber in the middle of the castle of delights, the concentration camp in the middle of the beautiful countryside, the idea that among the delights of the blessed we should include the contemplation of the torments of the wicked. However much we tell ourselves that God must condemn evil if he is a good God and that those who love God must endorse that condemnation, as soon as these pictures present themselves to our minds, we turn away in disgust. The conditionalist avoids this at the apparent cost of belittling those scriptural passages that appear to speak unambiguously of a continuing state for those who reject the worship of the true God and the way of humanness, which follows from it.

Using that analysis, though, presents us with the following possibility, which I believe does justice both to the key text and to the realities of human life of which, after a century of horror mostly dreamed up by human beings, we are not all too well aware. When human beings give their heartfelt allegiance to and worship that which is not God, they progressively cease to reflect the image of God. One of the primary laws of human life is that you become like what you worship: what's more, you reflect what you worship not only back to the object itself but also outward to the world around. Those who worship money increasingly define themselves in terms of it and increasingly treat other people as creditor, debtors, partners, or customers rather than human beings. Those who worship sex define themselves in terms of it (their preferences, their practices, their past histories) and increasingly treat other people as actual or potential sexual objects. Those who worship power define themselves in terms of it and treat other people as either collaborators, competitors, or pawns. These and many otehr forms of idolatry combine in a thousand ways, all of them damaging to the image-bearing quality of the people concerned and of those whose lives they tough. My suggestion is that it is possible for human beings so to continue down this road, so to refuse all whispering of good news, all glimmers of the true light, all prompting to turn and go the other way, all signposts to the love of God, that after death they become at last, by their own effective choice, beings that once were human but now are not, creatures that have ceased to bear the divine image at all. With the death of that body in which they inhabited God's good world, in which the flickering flame of goodness had not been completely snuffed out, they pass simultaneously not only beyond hope but also beyond pity. There is no concentration camp in the beautiful countryside, no torture chamber int eh palace of delight. Those creatures that still exist in an ex-human state, no longer reflecting their maker in any meaningful sense, can no longer excite in themselves or others the natural sympathy some feel even for the hardened criminal.

I am well aware that I have now wandered into territory that no one can claim to have mapped. Jesus, Christians believe, has been to hell and back but to say that is to stand gaping into the darkness, not to write a travel brochure for future visitors. The lat thing I wants is for anyone to suppose that I (or anyone else) know very much about all this. Nor do I want anyone to suppose I enjoy speculating in this manner. But I find myself driven, by the New Testament and the sober realities of this world, to this kind of a resolution to one of the darkest theological mysteries. I should be glad to be proved wrong  but not at the cost of the foundational claims that this world is the good creation of the one true God and that he will at the end bring about that judgment at which the whole of creation will rejoice.

N.T. Wright, on hell: A Preface

I finished Surprised by Hope. It took me reading a simpler N.T. Wright book, several starts and stops, and 2 1/2 years, but I got through, and it was worth it.

I want to offer a long excerpt that he wrote about hell, but in doing so I'll be cutting out the most important part of the book to share what was to me the most interesting. I read an interview where he said he almost wrote the book without this hell section, but so many people wanted to read his thoughts on the matter that he decided to include them. Before I get to the excerpt, let me share what the rest of the book's about.

Wright starts by showing all the ways that the myriad Christian churches are  confused about what happens after death, and that much of this confusion can be cleared up with some good understandings of history and early Christian thought. He explains the same point he made more thoroughly in Simply Christian: that the Bible's first readers understood heaven not as a place apart from earth, but as the place God's realm intersects with us. He devotes a whole chapter to the Jewish idea of bodily resurrection; explaining that the earliest Christians' hope was never to be in a heaven that was removed from this world, but to be raised with Christ after death, in an earth renewed. He delves into how early believers and non-believers both would have understood the first Easter, and applies sound thinking to the problems that some skeptics have with believing in His resurrection.

Here is a decent summation of what he has to say on life immediately after death:
"My proposition is that the traditional picture of people going to either heaven or hell as a one-stage postmortem journey...represents a serious distortion and diminution of the Christian hope. Bodily resurrection is not just one odd bit of that hope. It is the element that gives shape and meaning to the rest of the story we tell about God's ultimate purposes. If we squeeze it to the margins, as many have done by implication, or indeed if we leave it out altogether as some have done quite explicitly, we don't just lose an extra feature, like buying a car that happens not to have electrically operated mirrors. We lose the reason for working. Instead of talking vaguely about heaven and then trying to fit the language of resurrection into that we should talk with biblical precision about the resurrection and reorganize our language about heaven around that. What is more...when we do this we discover an excellent foundation, not, as some suppose, for an escapist or quietist piety (that belongs more with the traditional and misleading language about heaven), but for lively and creative Christian work within the present world. (p. 148)

So all of that is the point of the book.

But there's this really interesting part on hell, and that's why I'm writing this post. Why, I wonder, does hell so intrigue me?

I think because I long from deep inside me for judgment against the forces of evil that now reign in this world. And the evils of the world must surely not get off scotch free. Also, I think the way hell is "used," in the evangelical circles I tread must be wrong. Used, I mean like bait to get someone to say a sinner's prayer. Or used with certainty, like the speaker knows who's going and who's not.

This passage by N.T. Wright on hell is the best I've read on the subject. I think it gets to the heart of what the language in the Bible about judgment is all about. It  has a ring that I find congruent with the scripture. I'll finish typing out the rather long excerpt and I'll post it soon. I recommend printing it out, reading it with others, wrestling with it until it sinks in deep.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

3 things, totally unrelated


This is a picture of my Eli, who just turned this many:

This is a very good piece of writing about Halloween. It's by Jason Gray, a singer whom I've never heard sing, but who is a very good blogger.

This is another very good piece of writing on Christians' relationship to homosexuals. It's by Ron Sider, with whom I almost always agree about politics. He is the founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, which puts out the weekly "E-pistle," whose name I find very corny, but whose content I like.



Thursday, October 14, 2010

Before 6 this morning

This morning, at 5:50, I pulled my mini-van into a gas station. It was still dark out; cars and people were sparse.

My credit card wouldn't work so I headed inside to empty my wallet of cash for as much gas as it would buy. On the way in, the owner of a new, blue, Buick Rendezvous asked me if I had any spark plugs. I told him I didn't and asked what was wrong. He told me he needed a jump. I could hear from his speech that he was from the streets, and because this sort of talk just comes out sometimes I told him, "I gotchu when I come back out,"

"Alright, coo" he replied.

Once I started pumping, he double-checked anxiously, "Yo, chico, you outta here in a hurry or what?"

"Naw, man, I told you I gotchu. I'm just gonna pump here, then I'll pull over."

"Alright, then," he replied, and he went to pop the hood.

It took him a few minutes to connect the cables because he wouldn't put down  his thin, brown cigarillo. But we finally got it going, and I put the cables back in my nifty little white-boy, mini-van jumper cable bag.

As I moved towards my car, he raised himself up on his and thanked me the best he knew how. "Hey man," he shouted, "anything you need, I can get it for you."

My terse thanks made him think I didn't understand what he meant, which was drugs. So he called me over to his rolled down window, and he said to me, "Listen man, I can get you anything. Anything! Money, drugs, bitches. I can getchu bitches, man!" I guess he was right; I hadn't understood.

"Whatever you want, man. I mean, how's a man gonna turn down bitches?"

He misinterpreted my smirk as interested. "You want some bitches, don't you. I'm gonna getchu a  bitch."

"Naw, man, actually I don't," I told him, "I'm happily married."

"Really, man?" he asked, "that's coo den." He paused a moment and thought, "You know what, man? Tha's coo. You wanna know how I really feel from da bottom of my heart? I wish I was happily married, too. Man, I respect you for this, fo real. This means you just did this for...for...for..."

He searched for words, it seemed he didn't have a category for this sort of behavior. I finished his sentence. "just tryin' to help out a neighbor."

"Yeah man, thank you," he said. And we drove away to our worlds.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Classroom quips, 10-13-10

As I've shared before, this has been a rough year so far in the life of this Special Ed. teacher. I took some time over my 2-week break and prayed over what to do about it. God gave me a few specific ideas, and already the first two days after returning from break have been far better. I'm back in the driver's seat, which means I'm in a generally better mood, which means I've been able to enjoy the kids more.

So with this good news as the backdrop, I present the first classroom quips from the 2010-2011 school year, all of which happened today.


Mr. Stipp: Does anyone know what a miner is?
Javier: Yeah. Like if I win $50,000 in Gold/Cash prizes from the gas station, they'd probably take it away  because I'm a minor.


Henry (reading out loud): Ovary and Wilbur Wright were born in Dayton, Ohio.



Mr. Stipp: Stephen, why were you absent yesterday
Stephen: Oh, I fell out of a tree.

Monday, October 4, 2010

teh affexts of mediu on the braain

I heard this radio show a few weeks ago that gave me some desperately needed insights. It was during my 7 posts in 7 days blogging binge, and my brain was strung out with blogging and arguing with some people I'd never met on someone else's blog. Rozalie wasn't even a month old and I couldn't stop thinking about my online conversations long enough to enjoy her. 

It's a Fresh Air episode where Terri Gross interviews a New York Times reporter who researches the affects of cell phones, smart phone, multi-tasking and internet usage on our brains. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work. It was clear as I listened that my ability to be present where I was had been worn thin by my involvement in the cyberworld and in all the other thoughts I was trying to cram into my brain.  So I decided to fast from media, and after a few days of detoxification remembered how to marvel at new life again.

You should listen to this radio show when you get the chance.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

A night of Reconciliation

Last week Beth and I drove to Elgin to witness our friends' reaffirmation of their  marriage vows. These friends had had some marital problems that will most likely in the end be the saving of their marriage.

About a year ago, the husband confessed that he had a sex addiction. He decided to deal with the issue the right way, or a least a right way.  He sought and found healing by going to a church-led group similar to SAA. And he went through a 9 month program called Redeemed Lives, started by a man (Mario Bergner) who came out of a homosexual lifestyle. He lives on the east coast now, but has ministry that deals with healing in sexual brokenness. The program incorporates Scripture, small groups, healing prayer, solid psychological teaching (family origins, maladaptive tendencies, etc.) He also spoke with a friend about his addiction and the process of reconciling his marriage every day for about two months. The couple separated for several months, too. The last year has been full of sadness and loneliness; a long painful journey for them both. It's also been full of relying upon God and their community of believers for strength and wisdom.

That night we who were witnesses celebrated their courage to not hide their problems or hide from them. It was a deeply joyous occasion devoid of pretenses. No one there thought the couple had it all together. Personally, the all-too-familiar pull to put on a public image other than my real self simply stopped its pulling.  Their vulnerability made us all more vulnerable; more real; more human.

I'm sharing this story as a model of Christian discipleship. We should expect that following Jesus will include one stretching, faith-building and humbling step after another. By facing their problems head-on and relying upon the help of Christ and the church, our friends have put themselves on the journey of reconciliation and marital health.

The night of reconciliation stood in opposition to the the powerful notion that Christianity involves an arrival; a being set; having our house in order. Our faith does involve working towards holiness, but my experience tells me that when we think we've arrived we haven't. Working towards holiness is always an undressing, and there is no Christianity without that undressing. My prayer for our friends is that they don't understand this last year as an unseemly anomaly in their Cristian journeys or in their marriage, but as the pattern to be expected until death do them part.

Monday, September 20, 2010

MY MESS Part 2, A Boon on the Road

One of the things that has been hardest about these first 6 weeks of school is their juxtaposition with the last 4 years. I have been used to success. I haven't had a behavioral problem that really worried me for a long time. Experiencing failure at work, even temporary failure as I hope this is, is foreign to me. Last year I worked towards the prestigious National Board Certification and all my co-workers were sure I would achieve. My school's reading coach told me I was one of the best teachers she'd ever seen, and she made sure I knew she was serious. The compliments rained in. And now, at a new school, failures are bountiful.

So last Wednesday morning I took some time to pray about school. That's when the notion began that I should pray for salvation. Right after I did, as I was brushing my teeth, a Sara Groves song lyric popped into my head, "I pray for an idea, and a way I cannot see."

The lyric's song is "The Long Defeat," and I believe God has given it to me to pray during this season of my life. It is my prayer for salvation.


I have joined the long defeat
that falling set in motion
all my strength and energy
are raindrops in the ocean

so conditioned for the win
to share in victor's stories
but in the place of ambition's den
I've heard of other glories

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I can't just fight when I think I'll win
that's the end of all belief
and nothing has provoked it more
than a possible defeat

I pray for an idea
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

We walk a while we sit and rest
we lay it on the altar
I won't pretend to know what's next
but what I have I've offered

I pray for a vision
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

I pray for inspiration
and a way I cannot see
It's too heavy to carry
and impossible to leave

Friday, September 17, 2010

MY MESS, Part 1: A Cry for Salvation

I have normally stuck with blogging about overarching principles: society, or God, or some political issue. It's the stuff my mind gravitates towards, and it interests me, and I could spend more time than I should writing about it. But I'm sort of consumed these days with what are for me some major challenges at work, and I think it's time after spending most of my posts weighing in on the world's problems that I share my own.

I'm having a hard school year.

For the last four years, at my previous school, teaching 4th and 5th graders to read took most of my time and energy. I taught about 10 kids to read each year, which was deeply gratifying, life changing, and really fun work.

The group of sixth graders I have this year is overwhelming. I've spent hours designing and implementing behavioral plans that aren't producing any noticeable result. I have a boy who calls me names and refuses or resists doing his work, or anything appropriate, all day. Today he showed up to school at 11:30 without a book bag and acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. Everyone at the school knows his family and tells me he'll just get worse as the years go on. I have a girl who within the first six weeks has spread the rumor that she herself is pregnant, slapped and pushed two other girls, and come to school with hickies (sp? I've never needed to spell that til now!) She got suspended today, so I have a one week reprieve. I have another boy who is full of potential but doesn't like to work. He just mopes around the room as slowly as you can imagine, and starts looking for his materials right when everyone else is finishing. I have another boy with impulsivity issues; he shouts out whatever comes to mind. I don't know how well you remember sixth grade, but the things that run through a sixth grader's mind should not be shouted.

Yesterday things boiled to a head. I lost control of my own classroom. I could not teach and did not know how to respond to how the kids were acting. This is my 7th full school year as a teacher and it felt like my first week. I have no answers.

I've been praying for salvation. You know how David constantly asks for or thanks God for His salvation throughout the Psalms? Well that's what I'm asking for. I don't know if God will save me from this situation, or if He'll bring me an idea that will save me from it's messiness. I don't know if He will save me by strengthening me to endure or if He will save my students from their hellish lives. I do believe that it is He who saves, and I know that I have no idea how to go forward.

And that's where I am

Coming soon: MY MESS, Part 2: A Boon on the Road

Friday, September 10, 2010

The Joy of Sales Resistance

I just re-read this little essay by Wendell Berry called "The Joy of Sales Resistance." I first read it about a year ago and it has changed me, and I'm glad for having been changed. Here, you can read it for yourself. It's better to read Berry from a book, but I can't put a link to a book in my blog, so just read this instead.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

The Old Way

My great grandmother, Birdena (Healey) Flint, was born in 1901 near Wolcottville, Indiana, where she lived most of her life. She worked on a farm, raised her children, served as her church treasurer and taught in a one room school house. I never knew her husband, Truman, who died months before I was born. But she I was privileged to know. She died at the age of 106 just two years ago.

I remember visiting her home as a kid in the 1980s. Some of the things I saw just didn't fit into my thinking. Her ways were weird. Most of her front yard was taken up by an enormous garden (what a waste, I thought). She saved Ziploc bags, and even stored used Saran Wrap in her unused dishwasher. You couldn't eat from the boxes of cereal she had, because it had been in the cupboard for so long (probably left from the last person who had visited). And strangest to me, she would only use one square of toilet paper per "sitting." Somewhere along the line someone explained to me that a lot of her ways could be attributed to the fact that she lived through the Great Depression.

My thinking has wandered towards the depression lately. More accurately, I've been thinking about how we have framed the depression. I've wondered how people who knew life before the depression thought, especially those who hadn't migrated to the cities yet. I've wondered if, without the roaring 20s, the depression would have felt like much of a dip in rural America, where life had always been very hard. I've wondered if people who entered those years, having endured many other hardships, chalked it up as something to be expected. If we thought of our nation as bi-polar, could a depression be one swing, whose opposite is a manic episode? Will the past few years of indiscriminate waste be looked upon by our children as the Great Mania?

These are all wonderings, mere meanderings. They started with Wendell Berry, who started on me right before my Great Grandma's death. Berry has instilled in me a deep appreciation for the "old way." He has given a rudimentary understanding of the patterns and necessities of life that produced in my great grandmother, her ways.

The most recent novel I have read is called Andy Catlett: Early Travels. Others of Berry's novels (Memories of Old Jack, Jayber Crow and Hannah Coulter) tell the whole life of one person who is a "member" of the life of Port William, Kentucky, and in so doing, tell the story of the changing of America through eyes of these lovable characters. In Andy Catlett: Early Travels, Berry takes a snapshot of one week in the life of a nine year old boy at the end of 1943. Andy is Berry's alter-ego throughout his fictional series.

Thoughout the week, he goes to visit his two sets of grandparents, and joins as much as he can in their way of life. The grandparents' way of life, is the way Berry refers to throughout his writing as the "Old Way." Andy is coming from Hargrave, where he lives with his parents; a world given to the new way. Narrating as an old man looking back on the change from the old way to the new, Andy says,
"That those two worlds were in mortal contention had never occurred to me. When in a few years one had entirely consumed the other, so that no place anywhere would ever again be satisfied to be what it was, I was surprised, and I am more surprised now by the rapidity of change than I was then. In only a few years the word of pavement, speed, and universal dissatisfaction had extended itself into nearly every place and nearly every mind, and the old world of the mule team and wagon was simply gone, leaving behind it a scatter of less and less intelligible relics."

More valuable to me than his social commentary, though, this book is full of descriptions of the old way. You can see and hear how everyday life was before electricity and cars. Not only in the patterns of doing, but in the patterns of thinking. And he paints it as beautiful, as I'm sure it was.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

a clash of titans

Andrew Peterson went to Wendell Berry's house, and wrote about it. Nothing could interest me more. He wrote about it in the Rabbit Room in this post. I have a review of Berry's Andy Catlett: Early Travels in the works, but I think both titans would agree that it's more important that I spend time listening to my wife. Maybe tomorrow.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

A review of Capitalism: A Love Story

I watched Michael Moore's latest, Capitalism: A Love Story a few weeks ago. If you know Michael Moore at all, you'll probably guess how he handled the matter. He blamed all of our societal problems on Republican presidents, the Right-leaning, fear-mongering media, and Wall Street fat cats. He oversimplifies and over-vilifies; he twists facts, and uses strategic camera angles and loud music to underscore his points.

Knowing all of this before sitting down, I still find his movies entertaining and thought provoking, even if I do disagree with him time and again. Plus, there are a lot of people watching his films, and it's good to see first hand how the far left (often over-vilified themselves) thinks.

Before I get into the film, a few words on capitalism.

I like the system, in theory. On paper, I see how more real wealth is created when people and nations have the ability to specialize their efforts and provide the goods or services that are most advantageous for them to provide. Capitalism has tremendous potential to fight world poverty and inequality. What plays out, though, I think is deeply damaging to the people who benefit from the competition and those who lose. On one side we have people rewarded and encouraged towards greed and selfishness, and on the other we have people either poor or dependent on the rich.

I don't think the problem is the fallen-ness of man, selfish business people or bad politician. I think the problem with our current system is its size. The world economy as we know it is too big for conscience or neighborliness to enter our thinking as we make economic decisions. I could envision capitalism working for many if we knew and cared about the people who we were trading with. But we don't know them, and we can't know them.

In my neighborhood there is a coal-powered electrical plant run by a large corporation, Midwest Generation. The electricity the plant produces does not even power the homes in our neighborhood. It powers homes in Michigan, I've heard. This article explains, "A 2001 study by professors at the Harvard School of Public Health correlated emissions at nine Illinois coal-burning power plants with health data. The study estimated that the plants in Pilsen and Little Village together are responsible for 41 premature deaths, 2,800 asthma attacks and 550 emergency room visits per year." ( The article also explains that due to recent pressure, the plant claims to have recently cleaned up their act). The problem here is that the good people who are running their air conditioners in Michigan have no idea what their actions are doing to my recently born Rozalie's lungs.

And it is a safe bet that every time we buy anything from a large corporation, whatever they're selling, that somewhere along the supply chain, profit, efficiency, leverage, and competition is put above humanity and creation. We can buy almost nothing with a clear conscience. Did capitalism do this? I don't think so. I think it's more capitalism + globalism + isolation of individuals that has exploded the system into something that subtracts thoughts about our fellow man and the earth from the equation. The marketing industry has taken the sum and made us fully trusting buying machines, thoughtless of our consequences.

Capitalism: A Love Story has a simpler bent. Throughout the film, Moore shows eye-popping disparities of income and lifestyle between rich and poor. He makes the case that our society will be judged by future societies because of these disparities. He shows real estate vultures and how they go after properties that they can flip for massive profit, without a thought for the people involved. And a story of a privatized juvenile home that bribed a judge, who would sentence youth to stay there to the home's immense profit. He did a segment on Dead Peasant Policies, which are life insurance plans that many large companies buy and then collect from when their everyday employees die. He actually used the Bible to make the point that care for the poor and care not to become rich are of deep importance. I was pleasantly surprised that he did a nice job with the Bible (not taking verses out of context, not saying more that it does).

He showed this story.



I appreciated his depiction of these and other very real issues. All results, at least in part, to our current system.

The solutions he offered, though, were far too simple. From what I could tell, Moore thinks that if our businesses are run as co-ops and if we elect politicians who will put limits on free trade and distribute the wealth a little more, we can all sit back and watch society mend itself. Moore is sort of a populist, in that he doesn't blame anything on the decisions that common people like you and me make.

It seems to me, though,, that our problems run much deeper than politics and business, and right into our lifestyles, which create our daily economic decisions. We cannot become a responsible society in spite of ourselves. There is no short cut. We must make responsible decisions each day, and in so doing engage in the long and grueling work of mending our world, deeply frayed though it is.

Monday, August 23, 2010

work

My pastor sent me a link to his friend's blog, which discusses work in relation to Christian discipleship. After reading a few (good) posts, I wrote these thoughts about work. I saved this post to expand further, but never got to it.

One major problem with work is that in the post-industrial revolution world is that home and work are now separated. When people used their homes and land as work space, both places were of utmost importance, to keep orderly and maintained, fertile and healthy. People depended on the land they owned to provide for their existence, so of course they took great care of their workplace. Maintenance of one's house and one's outbuildings and fields was all in a day's work.

Now our work has very little connection with where we live. Home is an oasis; a place of leisure, where the real enjoyment of life is supposed to take place. "Home is where the heart is," and because the two are apart, people don't put their heart into their work. Our workplaces are burdens; a price to pay for getting back home to the real stuff. This mentality can only result in shoddy workmanship - only doing our best on that for which we are held accountable; doing just enough to not get fired.

In agricultural days, many people owned, lived, and tended small pieces of land. Today, most everyone works for someone else, and people do not "own" their work. Lack of ownership is a problem for which I see little end in sight. If you are not doing work that you want to last for years to come, but just getting your paycheck, your mentality of work will be treating it as something inferior, to be rushed through.

The way forward here, I think, is to find the meaning in what we do, and to work with that meaning in mind. But also, we must abstain from doing work whose only meaning is the paycheck that awaits us; from allowing ourselves to be cogs in meaningless wheels.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Kohl's run!!!

A few years back, Beth decided that she would stop buying clothes from retail stores, and would only get our clothes second hand. This started because we were frustrated and troubled that it is nearly impossible to trace who made our clothes, or in what conditions. The thought of buying clothes made in sweatshops that abuse their workers is repulsive to both of us. There's also the constant frustration and waste of buying cheaply made clothes from clothing stores, and the fact that we could save some money, but the main reason for the change was that we do not want to support the global clothing industry, at least not directly. Well, today we made an exception. I needed a belt and some white t-shirts for work, and Beth had come up empty on her thrift runs, so off to Kohl's we went. Today I was shocked with the world of the department store. And amused and sickened, too by what I found on our trip.

The first thing that struck me was how much extra stuff there is in this country. Rows upon rows of all kinds of clothes, and jewelry, and underwear, and everything, just sitting there unused. If that Kohl's shuts down tomorrow, everyone who lives around it will be just fine. The store is serving no otherwise unmet purpose, except, I suppose increasing shareholder profit.

Then there was the over-the-top signage and displays, all designed to persuade me: back to school displays; stoic or overly happy models; 75% off; extra amounts to take off if some requirement or other is met. There was no respect for me that I was willing to pay what something was worth, or buy only what I need. There is obvious intent from the sign-hangers to manipulate me into buying as much as they can.

Then comes the soothing music, with frequently intermittent interruptions about ways to save even more money. And at the end of the message, just when you think you've heard enough they say it: "The more you know, the more you Kohl's." I won't say more about that.

When we paid for my belt and a pack of white t-shirts, the lady (who had already tried to take ahold of my address and credit rating in exchange for an additional 10% off) informed me that I just saved $24.25. I won't say more about that, either.

On the way to the car, I told Beth that I imagine a shareholder meeting in which one guy stands up and says, "You know, if we spin the truth a little, we sell more product... I wonder if we make our entire store revolve around spin...," at which point some other guy interrupts excitedly and finishes his evil sentence. Beth thought it more likely that the shareholders spend there meetings just sitting around and laughing.

We humans can get used to anything, and we Americans are very much used being controlled by the hangers of the signs. If you've never abstained from going to a department store for an extended period of time, I strongly encourage you to do so. It takes some adjusting, but buying less, buying only what you need, and thinking about where it comes from are habits worth getting used to.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

7 posts in 7 days


I've dropped blogging since my Leeli was born and I started a new job (two days later). Leeli's great and the job is squeezing me. My friend told me that if you squeeze a tube of toothpaste, toothpaste comes out, and when a Christian gets squeezed, Christ better come out. I liked that. Christ hasn't come out, though, but that I need Him has.

So I have 4 blog posts that are half done, and a couple more that are floating around in my head. As a way to kick start this SOB, I'm gonna commit to you, my faithful reader(s), to post these posts, however edited and coherent, one-a-day, for the next week. This may mean not going back to delete possibly offensive swear-word abbreviations; it may mean publishing thoughts offensive to everyone I love; it may end up an offense to the written word. But there's no going back, friend(s). This here, is my commitment to you(s).

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Rozalie Hope Stipp


Here she is.

Rozalie. Beth's grandma on her mom's side was born Martha Rosalie Polka. She was a wonderful, humble mother to her five daughters. Her husband, Joe Dhondt taught driver's ed. and coached football at a High School in East Moline, Il. When she was in her 40s Martha had a stroke that took away her movement on the right side of her body and her speech. Her life that was only half over was to finish far differently than she had expected. She became dependent upon Joe in nearly every way. Joe took on the responsibility of caretaker, cook, communicator, and sole breadwinner, all with the grace and joy of one who had loosed his life and found it. Joe died five years ago, and Martha has kept on, giving the sweetest smiles, the juiciest kisses, and the most joyful laugh you'll ever find.

Hope. We are raising our family in Little Village, a Mexican neighborhood with many good qualities, but a place also where the presence of evil is thick. We stick out here - sometimes like a beacon, and other times like a sore thumb. We came here not because we like evil or sticking out, but because we have sensed from the beginning of our marriage a call to bring light to the darkness that reigns in Little Village. Satan uses all sorts of principalities in here. Alcoholism, cycles of poverty, prostitution, witchcraft, drug abuse, domestic violence, inequitable education and health care, joblessness, marital infidelity, gang warfare, inadequate places for children to play. The list goes on, but what Satan does with these things here in Little Village (and elsewhere, of course) is bring people to their knees in despair. It is against despair in Little Village that we aim our lives. Saying the name Hope will be a reminder to us that darkness does not get the final say here, or wherever she goes.

Stipp. Even though Rozalie is as much Polka, Dhondt, Dame, Witt, Flint, Mitchell, and Remole as she is Stipp, she is named Stipp, and I am glad. Being a Stipp will first mean that she is raised in our home with her brothers and sister, who already understand themselves deeply as Stipps. This reality will sink down deep into her bones. She is sure to pick up on our laugh that consists mostly of noisy inhalations, our honesty, our love for one another, and our commitment to Jesus, all of which we Stipps have been given by our forbears. We will all tell her that "Stipps are tough," and "Stipps don't quit," just as my dad told me and his dad told him and on and on. And the name Stipp will be a gift, tying her to the past, and telling her who she is.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Ever feel like skipping church?

One time looking through my dad's bookshelf, a book caught my eye because it was prefaced by C.S. Lewis. The book was "A Faith of our Own," a collection of essays by an English theologian named Austin Farrer. I promptly stole the book. One essay in particular has stuck with me over the years. It's called, "Sabbath and Sunday," and I've never heard the points it makes anywhere else. I think they are important points for everyday, non-pastor type Christians like me. Important enough that I summarize them here for your benefit. (I'd recommend you buy the book, but it's not easy to come by.)


Farrer writes,"When Christ died and rose on the first day of the week, he made a revolution of all things, and among others, of our attitude to time. Before Christ we used to keep the seventh day, but Christ rose on the first and now we keep that...The Jew saw himself giving the seventh day to God, we see ourselves giving the first, and there is all the difference in the world between the two. The Jewish system seems very sensible. Do not indulge yourself, do the slogging first; fulfill your practical duties, get your work out of the way, and clear a block of time for God."

He explains that the Jewish thinking held that once one's house was in order, one could approach his maker. This, he says, is a religion of merits; Pharisaism. "No one's house ever is in order, that is the trouble, and so the time for appearing before God never arrives. If you were an ancient Jew you were at least forcibly stopped putting your house in order, and dragged into the divine presence by the dawning Sabbath. But if you are a modern Christian living that bad old Jewish principle, there isn't even Sabbath, and the day when you have caught up with your conscience and are fit to appear before God's altar never arrives at all."

This is one reason some Christians find it hard to go to church. Their conscience condemns them, and they misunderstand that approaching the Lord has to do with proclaiming a clean conscience, instead of receiving from Him.

"But what are we to do about the yawning gulf which opens between this Christhood of ours and our actual performance - between our laziness, selfishness, uncleanness, and triviality and the painful absurdity of our prayers? This gulf which yawns between what Christ has made us and what we make of ourselves?...What else but the very thing Christ's disciples did from the first: early in the morning on the first day of the week reassemble the whole body of Christ in our community - not a member lacking - when the sun has risen, and have the resurrection over again. In that moment, dead to the past and trusting him for the future, bathed in his blood and strong by his victory, united by his person, loved and forgiven by his Father - in that moment at least we are what he has made us; the gap is closed.

Here, another reason Christians don't want to go to church (or communicate, as Farrer calls it). We don't see the importance of remembering, celebrating and drawing from the resurrection with "not a member lacking" as the early believers did. And we don't understand that something really important happens to us at church - the gap being closed.

So some of us don't want to go because our conscience condemns us. Others stay home because we don't understand the importance of celebrating and drawing from the resurrection weekly. But others skip because of our feelings: either we feel like doing something else, or have real, emotional pain that repels us from "communicating." In most of life, getting in touch with our feelings is a healthy thing. But in regards to going to church on Sunday, discussing our feelings related to church shows that we've missed the point of church.

"What do you think St. Peter or St. Paul would have said if you had told them that you feared always to communicate, lest it should go stale on you? They would not have known what on earth you were talking about. It would have been all you could do to bring them to conceive the possibility of such emotional frivolity, such reckless individualism in a Christian man. What, is the body of Christ to lack a member because you are not feeling soulful? Don't you know that Christ wants you there, that he has died to give you what you there receive, at what is the weekly resurrection of the body of Christ?

Saturday, July 24, 2010

A beautiful movie

Just wanted to pass along a recommendation for the movie, Children of Heaven. Created by Iranian filmmakers and set in an Iranian city, the film shows the life of a family that is as dependent on one another as it is joyous. It shows the hardship and blessedness of poverty. It's bright colors against gray and brown backgrounds, and its sound, which was done almost completely without music, are as much a part of the art as the story itself.

Seeing kids so full of love for one another as the siblings in this film, changes my expectation for what is possible for the relationships between my own children. As soon as they are able to read subtitles, I will show them the movie, too.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Dancing in the Minefields

Few songs address the beauty and difficulty of love within marriage. I burned a CD of about 10 of these songs for my girl last Valentine's Day. This song, by my longtime hero Andrew Peterson, wasn't out when I burned the CD, but it would have made the cut. If you're married, wait to watch it with your girl or guy. Enjoy.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

more on fire boats

I have more to say about fire boats.

Fire boats were used by the US coast guard to put out the flaming oil rig in the gulf of Mexico at the end of April. Fire boats were our collective response to our collective problem, which in this case was oil dependency. Of course the fire boats did not stop the oil leaking or even hope to cure us of oil dependency. They just responded to the emergency.

I've been thinking since I wrote my rant last night that our political debates center around such fire boats. Democrats advocate fire boats, and that the government should provide them, with an underlying tone that they will solve our true problems. I'm talking here about welfare, unemployment insurance, VA hospitals, after-school programs, controlling guns. The sense from the democratic party is that by responding with fire boats, our problems will go away. But without the underlying causes of poverty, joblessness, war, poor education and violence lessened, the interventions advocated for by democrats spray problems while the gushing oil exacerbates underneath.

Republicans rightly understand that the democrats' fire boats are incapable of solving our problems. But often I find that the policies the Republicans advocate worsen the fires, instead of push against their causes. Pushing most often in the direction of leaving the needy to fend for themselves, corporate interests, attacking our enemies, tax cuts for the very rich, and access to semi-automatic weapons, the Republicans often widen the gaping, gushing holes.

Friday, July 9, 2010

What's on my mind

I'm done. I give up on the status quo. Western society as it is known is a lost cause; a failed experiment; a flop.

Look at us. We are more emotionally and physically unhealthy than anyone has ever been. Depression, diabetes, PTSD, asthma, suicide, obesity, autism, alcoholism. These are not flukes. They are the results of lifestyles we as a society lead. Some of these issues (like autism, diabetes and depression) are hard to connect with specific causes, but I can't think about them without thinking that generations now of sedentary, fast food, unnatural light, 69 degrees, rat-race lifestyles is messing with the way our bodies are composed.

But we can't stop. We are on an unstopping roller-coaster ride that we didn't choose to get on, and can't get off. Do you see those fire boats in the picture? The fire boats are part of the roller coaster. To every problem we create, we throw solutions. We spill oil because we use so much, but no one is really gonna stop using so much. All we'll do is spray the results with water. Another example: our carbon emissions from plane trips is ruining the atmosphere, but we wont really stop flying. We will hope for another fire boat when catastrophe comes. We will hang on for the ride.

I want off. I will question as many decisions as are in my power to question. I will question work, spending, consumption of food, clothing, waste, travel, war, the use of money, food, care for creation, where I shop and eat out, entertainment, the origin of every item that enters my home. I will monitor as best I can my time, my spending, my patterns of life, my consumption of art. I will not buy any gadget that is the latest thing, and laugh at the notion that it could have made me happy. I will read the Psalms every day. When something breaks, I will do without it for awhile, and enjoy having life a little simpler. I will not work on the Sabbath. I will not be too busy to help someone in need along my way.

I am not trying to be holier than you. I am trying with all my might to resist the schemes of the evil one; to throw off all that hinders and run with perseverance the race marked out for us; to test everything and hold on to the good.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Happy Independence Day

This song puts our holiday into proper perspective, I think. You can hear other great songs from Ben Shive's website. Just scroll over the music player. His only album, The Ill-Tempered Klavier, is one of my favorites.

4TH OF JULY
Words and Music by Ben Shive

The first star of the evening
Was singing in the sky
High above our blanket in the park

And by the twilight’s gleaming
On the 4th day of July
The city band played on into the dark

And then a canon blast
A golden flame unfolding
Exploded in a momentary bloom

The pedals fell and scattered
Like ashes on the ocean
As another volley burst into the blue

But the first star of the evening never moved

We stood in silence
The young ones and the old
As the bright procession passed us by

A generation dying
Another being born
A long crescendo played out in the sky

Yeah

This nation, indivisible
Will perish from the Earth
As surely as the leaves must change and fall

And the band will end the anthem
To dust she will return
So the sun must set on all things, great and small

But the first star of the evening
Will outlive them all

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Wyoming Trip, day 9

We're having a great time. I have made it my goal to learn about this country, specifically about the 351-person town of Meeteetse, Wyoming. The land where the town sits was originally a seasonal hunting site for the Crows Indians. It was not settled by white Americans until 1877. This is a town and state completely given to the life of ranching. Everyone is in some way connected.

I got to meet a young 2nd year college student, home for summer, and helping her mom run their ranch. She was brilliant and seemed twice her age. Several points stuck with me from our conversation. One is that four years ago, she and her mom decided to raise cattle that will only eat grass, called Heritage Herefords. They are some of the only cattle in the country that don't get sent to corn-fed feed lots, and because they are relatively small, can be maintained on a small amount of land. They can't afford getting the organic label put on their beef, but she was impassioned about raising healthy, natural cattle. One of the many striking things about the conversation is that even though she did not personally agree with the ranching practices employed by her neighbors and family, she supported the industry as a whole. She did not try to tell others why they were wrong. She just lived her life acting upon her ideals, and enjoying good, sustainable farming. She could have been one of the good guys on Food, Inc. We cannot buy her cattle in the Midwest. They sell only locally.

We had a good time horse-back riding with Holly's sister, Faith. Suzy for some reason found that horse-back aroused some affinity for the third reich!









Eli enjoyed himself.


















Yesterday we went hiking in the Rockies. We didn't take a gun. Someone we met today said this is a bad year for grizzlies, and we were dumb to have not taken a gun. Maybe my fears weren't that far off base, after all.

We went to Meeteetse Community Church today. The pastor is Chad and Holly's brother in law. It was a small group that deeply loved the Lord and their town, and that shines with light. The Kingdom of God is among them.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Wyoming Trip, Day 7

We drove across South Dakota in bewilderment. I didn't know there was anyplace so unpopulated in the world. For one stretch we drove for 3 hours on state roads and didn't pass a single habitated home.
























We drove through The Badlands, to which Isaac commented, "these badlands are terrible."












And we saw Mount Rushmore.











And we drove through the Bighorn Mountains.


And we drove and drove and finally, stopped just East of Yellowstone, to this town of 351 people, called Meeteetse, Wyoming, the outskirts of which will be our home base for the next week or so.









So I sat on this hill this morning sandwiched between Meeteetse and the Snowcapped Rockies, and wrote. Here is an excerpt from the thoughts that came out of my pen.


Being out West, I come from Back East. Back East I've got a lot of control on what goes on in my life. I get things. How life works, what people do with their time, who to trust, where to go and when. I'm in the driver's seat Back East. In a sense I'm like a Humanist, who can make decisions, and situate my life to make things happen to my advantage. There's safety and comfort in that reality.

In many ways, these next five weeks represent a period of transition for me and my family. A new baby is to come, I start a new job with new challenges and opportunities, I begin to construct post-National Board life pattern.

And here I am in Wyoming. In more ways than I anticipated, away from it all. On the cusp of the Rocky Mountains, I feel like a grizzly bear could come and tap me on the shoulder -- and then maul me. I'm confronted with unfamiliar fears and insecurities. In a culture wholly different from mine, with stores, and people, and land, and animals, and music, and beautiful landscapes, and sounds, and wildflowers, and customs and rhythms of life, and jokes, and shared struggles of which I can only be a students, with no hope of real participation.

And the humanist in me from back East says, "Why the did you come here? How does this help?" But up from my heart, the Christian reminds me, "watch and listen, He will show you why."

Monday, June 21, 2010

Wyoming Trip, Day 4

My blog is gonna change directions a little for the next week or so. I'm gonna do more status-update type stuff over the course of our Wyoming trip. Read along if you're so inclined.

The plan has been to camp 3 days with my parents and sister, Carolyn, drive two days to Wyoming, stay there with the Kimball family in a cabin for about a week, and be back in Chi-town around the 1st of July.

We finished our fun camping adventure with my parents and sister this morning.








Bein' that I got sick Sunday Night, and that Beth's 8 months pregnant (except her ankles, which are 10 months pregnant), and that Iowa is beautifuller than expected, we decided to turn a 2 day trip into 3.

We drove through Iowa today, most of the way off the interstate. It was great. In hilly country like Iowa's the interstates feel all the more obtrusive. Pieces of land that God made one have been severed by us. With interstates we force land's natural curves and peaks to bow to our will. County and state highways are humbler. And beautifuller.

Monday, June 14, 2010

Two Radio Shows

I want to pass along a couple episodes from shows that have been rattlin' around in my head.

The first is called, "Island Time," from the show This American LIfe. It's about the current state of Haiti and our (Americans) involvement versus some of the Haitian nationals involvement. The show left me wrestling with the wisdom/folly of supporting agencies and people who are in the business of helping the poor. And it makes me wonder: Does anyone know a sound way to support very poor people (like people groups dealing with AIDS and starvation) without paying for a missionary or aid worker's plane ticket or 401(k)? I guess I want to grow up a bit in my giving. It's clear enough that as Christians we are to sell all we have and give to the poor, but I find it hard to give to organizations or people who are paid well to care for the poor, especially after hearing this show. On top of raising these questions, the show highlights Americans who are there doing some really good work. The good ones are not presented as the rule, but the exception, which lines up with what I saw and heard from all sorts of missionaries when in Latin America in 2000. Hear it by clicking here.

The other show I listened to tonight. It's called, "Land, Life and the Poetry of Creatures," from another NPR show, Speaking of Faith. It features one of my oft-quoteds, Wendell Berry, and Ellen Davis, a biblical scholar whom I knew nothing about until tonight. Davis said that as she began to read the bible with "agrarian eyes," she found "there was a huge gap between the kind of exquisite attention that the biblical writers are giving to the fragile land on which they live and the kind of obliviousness that characterizes our culture...in respect to our use of land."

I've noticed the same thing in reading the Old Testament. The land and its care is all over the place. I noticed it most recently, and for me most powerfully, in reading of the Year of Jubilee in the book of Leviticus. In this passage (chapter 25), God grants the land a Sabbath rest(!), and establishes distributive justice by ensuring that none of his people become too rich/powerful/corrupted by thinking the land they have accrued is truly "theirs." Verse 23: "The land must not be sold permanently, because the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants. Throughout the country that you hold as a possession, you must provide for the redemption of the land."

Which gets me back to the radio show. Davis talks later in the show about the way city dwellers can become more agrarian in our mindsets. She recommends being conscious of the sources of our food. I think, and I'm sure Davis and Berry would agree, that this food-source-consciousness is a crucial step in the redemption of our land here in America. And here's a link for that show.

You can download the podcast from both shows at the iTunes store.

I really am curious how others give to the very poor in the world. Please share.