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.

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."

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.

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.

Crude

This movie creates a good back-drop for the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill. I recommend it.

The Office

I think TV stinks and sucks. It causes parents to neglect their kids. It robs us of creating our own entertainment.The commercials try to sell us things we don't need. They also try to shape our thinking so that we will think we need what they sell. They warp children's minds by lying to them about 1.) what sex should be like, 2.) what will make them valuable, and 3.) what happiness looks like. And then they tell the same lies to adults. People's marriages are messed up because of these TV lies, especially the ones about sex. On top of all the destructive stuff, it is most of the time, just really bad entertainment.

Ok. End of rant. All of that being said, I really like The Office.

The characters in The Office are true. They are oh-so-shallow, and selfish, and the Writers show that as much as they can. Not, I think, as a celebration of shallowness, but as a poking fun. And poking fun at the flimsy fabric of our character and shallowness of our thought as Americans is to be appreciated. As crazy and maddening as they are, the people on the show are very much like real people. It is made clear that Michael Scott mainly, but others, too, are motivated to act like lunatics because of their own insecurities. Here is Michael talking about his desire to be liked (which motivates him to do be the odious man he is):

I like to be liked sound bite The Office (US) sound bites

The show is also well-written. There will be 4 straight episodes of plain old goofy scenarios, when something strikingly poignant will happen. Like when Pam came clean about her feelings she'd been harboring on the beach in front of everyone. I thought the writers showed a good understanding of human nature when they then showed the freedom the coming clean gave her. They do a good job with taking moments everyone knows are coming, like the engagement or the announcement of Pam's pregnancy, and playing them out in a believable, but not-too-cheesy way. I also appreciate how the Writers take characters who at first seem normal, like Jan or Ryan, and show how if you watch for long enough, they turn out to be just as crazy as the rest. And I think the inclusion of the 'Nard Dog took the show to a whole new level.



And here's another good Office memory:



I appreciate that its dirtiness is not glamourized. The show jokes about things that I wouldn't let my kids see for many years to come. But its wanton immorality is not done in a way that makes immoral behavior look attractive. And I think without immoral and thoughtless behavior from everyday people, the show would lose its ring of truth.

So it's a good show. Don't tell me what happens in Season 6, because it's not out on Netlix for another couple months.

A Mother's Day Poem

I don't know anything about Billy Collins, but I really like this poem.

classroom quips, 5-3-10

Suriel: I hate sensible people.

Mr. Stipp: Hmm, me too. Why do you hate them?

Suriel: Ya know, they're always getting their feelings hurt.



This next one's from home, not school.

My three year old, Eli, has the unfortunate combination of a scab on his knee, a speech impediment, and red-green color blindness.

Eli: Daddy, I gotta ouchy it huwts so bad. It's wight thewe on my knee. It's gween, gween, gween, or wed, wed, wed!

parenting thoughts

Like many parents, Beth and I sometimes worry that influences from outside our home will infect our kids. A friend of ours, whom we both respect as one of the holiest people we know, recently assured us that her kids have picked up on her values - even those she hasn't explicitly taught them. This had the ring of something true and got me to thinking.

If kids will pick up on who we are, is there any sense in talking about how to parent well independent of talking about how to live well? Isn't the best advice to parents to get their own lives in order? to rid themselves of unhealthy behaviors and thinking? to be holy?

And then I came across a similar idea in a Barbara Kingsolver short-story, called Quality Time. Miriam, a single mother, is reflecting on a conversation she had with her sister-in-law Janice back when she was pregnant.

According to Janice, parenting was three percent conscious effort and ninety-seven percent automatic pilot. "It doesn't matter what you think you're going to tell them. What matters is they're right there watching you every minute, while you let the lady with just two items go ahead of you in line, or when you lay on your horn and swear at the guy that cuts you off in traffic. There's no sense kidding yourself. What you see is what you get."

Miriam had argued that people could consciously change themselves if they tried, though in truth she'd been thinking more of (her ex-husband) then herself. She remembers saying a great many things about choices and value systems and so forth, a lot of first pregnancy high-mindedness it seems to her now. Now she understands. Parenting is something that happens mostly while you're thinking of something else.











And here's a picture of my boys picking up on their mother's delight in creation, and my girl watching her mother mother.

Think with no words

This morning as my son Isaac sat on my lap and said nothing, I had the notion to use that time to teach him something. I thought better of it, though, and just let the silence be. Before Isaac interrupted the silence by telling me how great he was at something-or-other, most of these thoughts came to me. I thought they'd work as a poem.

Think with no words

Strain to hear silence
Listen, with alert ears
to the wind blow;
to the robin sing
Hear what has been heard by your brothers who traversed this land before it was America

Watch, but do not classify
The beauty
A pear tree’s buds;
A father and his girl
See and wonder at resilient creation, unscathed by this modern experiment, at least until now

Think, with no words
For just a moment, discover truth deeper than language, culture, religion, time
Like God, have only creation with which to concern yourself

More thoughts from Simply Christian (which I always type "simply christina")

Sometimes a barrel of truth can run off of you like water off a ducks back, like it could have stayed in the barrel, and you would have been fine either way. Sometimes a drop of truth can change your life.

“At the heart of the Christian ethic is humility; at the heart of its parodies, pride. Different roads with different destinations, and the destinations color the character of those who travel by them.”

-N.T. Wright, Simply Christian

This idea has become one of those hugely-important drops of truth for me. Last summer I underwent a period of intense doubt. My self-talk sounded like this: If we are longing for Him to come again, what good did His first coming do for us now? I need something more than heaven and hell. What is the evidence of His salvation now? How do I know that my experiences with God have not been self-fulfilling products of my longings?

A good friend helped me through this doubt, and I clung to one thing that came up in our conversations. He explained that He has known many Christians, with lives full of compelling morality and care for others on one hand and with radiant inner beauty, peace and humility on the other. He explained that he had known very many non-Christians who lived admirable moral lives, but there were very few who along with this morality were characterized by inner beauty, peace and humility. The idea struck me as something new that I hadn’t considered, something that seems true, and something that points to the gospel as true; as a proof in the pudding.

So just last week I came across this same idea from N.T. Wright, which confirms to me the truth of what I’ve been suspecting for almost a year now. The idea responds to my doubt as follows:

If we are longing for Him to come again, what good did His first coming do for us now?

Jesus saves us now and changes our lives now, not just for some future destination. He takes the good we try to do and makes it better than we could hope. At the same time, He makes us to be more moral. All the while, He gives us peace and humility as we travel our paths following Him.

What is the evidence of His salvation now?

a. The peace He has put in me. I might be able to do some of the same good things I can do as a non-Christian, but I could never provide myself with peace and humility. My efforts to manage life on my own, without God have been laughable.

b. The change He makes in other people’s lives now. Not just the change in right behavior I see when someone “gits religin,” but the change that happens on the inside of converted people that shines out and that they couldn’t hide if they wanted to. The friend of mine who came to Christ and heard the birds sing for the first time since he was a boy; the lady at our church who just two years ago looked like the embodiment of depression and whose face and hugs now light up our little congregation.

How do I know that my experiences with God have not been self-fulfilling products of my longings?

I suppose “knowing” in the objective sense is not an option for me, here. I must take the evidence in front of me, including my experiences with God and either believe or not believe. When I try hard to look at Christianity objectively, as if I had nothing to do with it, Christ being God seems far-fetched. But when I look at the world around me and the daily miracles that are popping out like buds on a tree, I find this world itself to be just as far-fetched. The types of miracles, gifts and mercies I have found to be the heart of creation, run parallel to those found in the Bible, and I do believe they come from the same Source.

I’m getting off the subject. The subject is this idea that Christians are on a better path, a path that ultimately makes them better people than they would have been if they were not Christians. The subject is also that this idea holds tremendous import for my doubt. It suggests that Christianity is more than just a defensible “rival conception of God,” but is actually true. For me, it is something like proof.

The thoughts going on in my head right now sound something like this:

Is it true that the path of following Christ takes our good works and begins to play behind them an accompaniment of humility, peace and joy? Is it true that doing these same good works, but on a different path, leads one to pride, self-conceit and despair?

I invite your input.

A book worth Wrighting about

I just finished and thoroughly enjoyed a book called Simply Christian, by N.T. Wright. I can’t talk about the book without comparing it to Mere Christianity, which is perhaps its wiser grandfather, consisting of the same marrow, but written to a different world. Making this comparison consistently earns me responses of disbelief at my audacity from faithful fans of C.S. Lewis, but the two books are so alike that it is the only place I can think to start. The books have the same purpose, which is to explain the basics of Christianity, common to all of its true manifestations.

They both talk about the inner conscience as a hint to the fact that justice is a real thing in the universe, that there is something that makes us long for it, and that this something is the same God that the Bible talks about. Wright adds that the knowledge of spiritual reality, the enjoyment of beauty, and the longings for community are also signs that point to Christianity being true. They give a lot of time to problems they find in the rival conceptions of God. They both conclude that the God the Bible talks about is the most coherent understanding of the universe available on the market, and beyond that, that He was and is God. They both talk about central Christian acts (baptism, the eucharist, prayer). Yet for those of us who have spent a lot of time with Mere Christianity, Simply Christian is not redundant. It adds a lot to the conversation.

Simply Christian talks more than Mere Christianity about the Jewish understanding of God and how Jesus fits into that understanding. Wright’s background as a New Testament scholar is helpful here. He explains that “heaven” was understood by Jews to mean “the realm/dwelling of God.” Important to this notion is that throughout the Old Testament, heaven and earth come together. So Jews did not understand heaven and earth as always-separate realms, but that God consistently brought His realm to ours. Through God’s election of the Israelites to be the instrument of God’s blessing, through the temple, and through the reading the Torah, God meets with the Jewish people, bringing “heaven” to earth, reminding them who they are and of their purpose.

Wright has helped me wrap my mind around this notion of “heaven” as central to understanding the thinking of the Old Testament people, and how early Christians (who were also Jews) understood Jesus’ coming. Early Christians understood that the God who had seen fit to overlap the two spheres of heaven and earth in a limited way, through his calling the temple and the Torah, had now come with the message that the kingdom of heaven was among them.

As a New Testament scholar, Wright speaks with authority about the Bible, and with how we should understand the words “inspired,” “infallible,” “inerrant,” “literal” and “metaphorical.” If I had read these chapters 10 years ago, it would have saved me a lot of headaches in trying to understand the Good Book. If someone has serious questions about how Christians should approach the Bible, these chapters (13 and 14) would be a good place to go looking for well-thought answers.

In his last chapter, discussing morality and justice, Wright says the following:

“At the heart of the Christian ethic is humility; at the heart of its parodies, pride. Different roads with different destinations, and the destinations color the character of those who travel by them.”

This idea struck me as an affirmation that Wright is not a wishy-washy “we’re all the same, follow your own path, and it’s all good” kind of thinker. And the point he makes has hung onto me more than any other idea the book offered. I will delve more into this idea in the sequel to this post. Stay tuned.

Safe Families

Here is a link to an article and video about Safe Families. They are an organization we have worked with to take care of babies in need. They are making the world more of what it was intended to be.

classroom quips, 3-9-10

Antonio: Hey, Mr. Stipp, we got big problems at home. Our power went out. Someone's at the house fixing it right now.

Mr. Stipp: (with all the sarcasm I could muster) Oh no, what did you watch instead of TV?

Antonio: Oh, it was no problem. My dad has a DVD player in the van, so we just went out and watched that.

Disaster Averted. Whew.

on limitedness

There are a lot of options available for explaining what’s gone wrong with our society. Blame it on the break down of the family, or on the influence of television, or our glamorization of sex and violence in media. Blame it on turning our backs on God, or on the federal government. Blame it on materialism, racism, sexism, feminism, classism, or egotism. I do not want to negate the vailidity of any of these options, but to offer another option, that I think underlies and perpetuates any problems that we already face: unlimitedness.

God created limits. He created springtime and harvest. He created day and night. He gave us the earth and our families. He created the Sabbath. A detrimental effect of industrialization and globalization has been the obliteration of our consciousness of such limits.

Hear me out.

Our country and its wealth were built upon the folly of unlimitedness. Colonialism, imperialism and slavery draw deeply from the unbridled lust for more. These forces say, “It is conceivable to make more money, to have more land and to spread our influence further…Do it.” It is clear to me that our enslavement of Africans came not from a hatred toward people with dark skin, but from an inability to recognize limits. We saw that more money could conceivably be made in a growing season, and we did it, with conscience as our only limit. And conscience doesn’t often put up much of a fight against cash. Now we have gotten rid of slavery, but unlimitedness is more alive now than ever. The symptom is gone but the cause remains. Unlimitedness is an axiom that defines us. And as a people unlimited, we will always enslave and oppress.

There is a natural, God-created order in seasons. The Bible’s wisdom literature tells us, “There is a time for everything.” Because of our technological and globalizing leaps, though, we now know that truth only in theory. We can have food which is out of season, grown by farmers in lesser-developed countries, ready for us to consume whenever we want, year round. Our homes are heated and cooled to a “perfect” temperature, so that regardless of the season, it always feels the same inside. Our knowledge of the limitations and structure that seasons bring to our lives is gone. Developed countries re-write the biblical passage to say, “Now is the time for everything.”

Another limit God gave us was dependence on land and on our families. We were all born somewhere, from some woman, and in that moment were given community and a place. Modernization and globalization have made us isolated individuals committed to no place and no one else. Getting up and leaving the place and people that brought us up is expected. I’ve written more on this here.

God created day and night, and I believe he did so as a gift that told His creatures when to start and stop work. Because of electricity, we are now capable of operating outside of the naturally created day-night boundary we were given. And the more we operate outside the natural boundaries, the more we forget there are boundaries at all.

And this must be the deepest problem. Not that we are unlimited in the particular ways that I am highlighting (and in dozens others as well), but that we have no knowledge that limits can and should restrain us.

All affronts on limitedness require counteraction to lessen their consequences. Our independence of land and manual labor has made us weak. To offset the weakness that urbanization and its resultant sedentary lifestyle have wrought, we can buy memberships at gyms to use machines, which can replace work, which used to keep us healthy and strong. It's a run-on sentence. Air travel breaks the earth-sky separation that God created. Counteracting its effects on our atmosphere will require the energy of our most brilliant scientific minds before it demands restraint on we who ruin the atmosphere.

I believe the beginning of much wisdom is saying “no” to the things we are told we have to have, the things we have to do, and the full-throttle pace we have to keep. We are wise to limit ourselves. And I believe a good place to start in keeping limitations is with the Sabbath. The Sabbath is different from the other creations, because it is also a command. There is nothing we can invent to counteract a command, as we can, say, seasons or place or community, or day and night. No matter how far we advance (or retreat) as a society, the command to keep the Sabbath holy; to rest, will still be there. I think one point of the Sabbath is that we recognize our own limitedness. Wisdom says, “work six days, and rest the seventh, even though there is more that you could do. Stop. Rest. Go this far, and no further.”

The tower of Babel was built by a people who did not understand where they should stop. But God’s limits humanize us. They remind us who we are as creatures subservient to Him, and that all we do must be done with a head not cocked to our glory, but bowed to His.

winter? what winter?

We in the Stipp house are longing for the great thaw that means Spring and Easter and life beating death and hope beating despair. Longing so much that we sometimes forget it hasn't yet come.

my first song

I Googled my name yesterday morning to see if my new blog would show up. And for the first time in like 50 searches since the history of the internet, there i was, on the top of the search page.

It freaked me out. I felt exposed. I felt scared of all the scrutiny that most people around the globe were probably putting me through.

Moments like these of intense illogical fear only come to me when I am not relying on Jesus. They only hit me when others' responses are defining me and not Him. Since doing the Google search I have felt like I am panting for air and hiding. These emotions are the same ones I felt once when I wrote this song about the fear of being exposed; of putting myself out there. Here are the song's lyrics.

I'd rather succeed at nothing
Than fail at trying something at all
There's a safety in staying in safety
I'd rather not fly than fall

Like the first time I jumped off the high dive
Or asked Jaime Zaidjzeck to the prom
Or the first that I kissed my wife
Or sang you this my first song

Now I'm glad I did all of these things
I'm more of a man for it
But the throat-bump I feel as I sing
Forces me to admit

That I'd rather succeed at nothing
Than fail at trying something at all
There's a safety in staying in safety
I'd rather not fly than fall

Proof of the Beatitudes

Brian McLaren

I will forever be indebted to the book, A New King of Christian, by Brian McLaren. Though I haven't read anything by him in the last 5 years, his books gave me a framework for understanding world history that I still draw from. Here are some of his thoughts.



So what do you think?

a few more classroom quips

Part of the deal with teaching special ed. is you have kids working way below their potential, not just in a skill like reading, but in analytical thinking. A lot of my job is waking kids from their mental slumbers. One way I do this is by asking them questions that require active thinking. Because it's true that if you expect kids to respond intelligently consistently, most will. I actually had a kid who'd been with me two years tell someone else, "man, when i came to this class, i used to be retarded."

So in asking kids some questions I get some off-the-wall answers from kids who think they're retarded. Like these:

Mr. Stipp: Where do babies go to the bathroom.
(students responded in rapid fire)
student 1: in the toilet
student 2: outside
student 3: in the kitchen
student 4: in the diaper bag

Mr. Stipp: Is 47 closer to 40 or 50?
student 5: (exuberantly) yes!!!

Mr. Stipp: Write about what you want to do when you grow up:
student 6: Mr. Stipp, how do you spell FBI?

Mr. Stipp: I want to talk about the word "voyage." Does anyone know what "voyage" means?
student 4: (as if he's meeting me half-way) I know what aluminum foil is.