Outlandish

ProvokEtive...

2011-11-21T20:44:00.005+01:00

I've been asked to contribute regularly to a new online journal called ProvokEtive, which is kind of a spill over from Emergent Village. Jonathan Brink, the senior editor describes it so,

"In a world saturated with people shouting at each other, it’s rare to find a place where people can engage in conversation with each other. Provoketive Magazine hopes to change that. We’re creating a space of rich conversation about life, faith, justice and culture without judgment. Our desire is to provoke the reader’s imagination through conversation and open up spaces of dialogue, learning, and hope."

Anyway, my first article is up:
Journey Through Conflict.

Check it out and leave some comments people!

Irksome. Banksy, Me and Everybody (spoiler)

2011-05-19T22:37:00.002+02:00

I discovered him a couple of years ago, when we vacationed in Bristol.
It was love at first sight.
There happened to be an exhibit at the Bristol City Museum. We didn’t see the exhibit, only the lines stretching for blocks of people who were already showing signs of post traumatic stress disorder just from waiting so long. We had seen enough traces of his work around town tho, Bristol being Banksy’s Ur, that I knew I needed more. Now I wish we had just given our kids over to juvenile detention for the day and gone to the exhibit. So, what I didn’t have to do in Bristol, I got to do last night: “Exit Through The Gift Shop,” Banksy’s documentary film debut.
It was irritating.
Nails on the chalkboard stuff.

It took me a while to get behind what it was. What was the film about anyway? Was it asking what was once a standard high-school philosophy question, “What is art?”
No, that wasn’t it.
Closer would be, “Who counts as an Artist?”
But for someone who has been telling people for the last couple of years, that EVERYONE is an Artist, I was overly irritated by the unforeseen twist in this movie.
(spoiler)

The film is not actually about Banksy, but about Thierry Guetta, a small, eccentric Frenchman with a filming addiction, who seems to be making a movie about Banksy and a number of other semi-criminals. He follows and films and “assists” Banksy and these street artists the world over for years, but when it becomes clear that Guetta is a borderline “Messy,” and doesn’t know the first thing about film making, Banksy turns the tables, and tells Guetta to handover his enormous collection of tapes (tapes Thierry has never even watched himself), and go do his own artwork for a while. Having “apprenticed” with the Space Invader, Shepard Fairey, Andre, Borf and Buffmonster, Guetta begins to follow their lead. He first creates an image for himself, or rather has someone else do it, and begins posting it in all shapes and sizes around LA as Mr. Brainwash. He then hires a team, sets up a large warehouse, and begins crankin’ out (or rather, has his team of Artists crank out) an Andy Warhol - Banksy mashup of pop-culture Ikons. At the climax of the film, Thie… um Mr. Brainwash gets in way over his head, when he wants to make a big, no, huge splash on the LA scene with a debut exhibit… Everything looks as though it is leading up to the ultimate belly-flop, until the doors open and people start pouring in by the thousands and money pours in by the Millions! It is insane.

I was irritated.
Banksy is obviously irritated.
Shepard Fairey is obviously irritated.
Even the people who were hired to set up his exhibit were pissed (I’ve worked for a psycho Frenchman before, so believe me, I know what they were going thru!).
But it also appears they can’t really put into words, what it is that bugs them so much.
Was he a copy cat? A poser? A wanna be?
Or a successful apprentice, who they hadn’t realized was apprenticing?
With no real artistic mastery of his own, he hired skilled artist to carry out his artistic direction. He seemed to have stumbled more onto a recipe than a message. So, in a way, it’s like he had stolen the answer sheet, crammed for the exam the next day and gotten an “A”, while the other guys slugged it out through the years old school style… with mastery, skill, meaning and depth.
Irksome.
But it still takes a kind of genius to pull off what Guetta pulled off; why do we allow him his piece of the pie so begrudgingly?
Just before falling asleep, I realized what it was that irritated me so much, and might have irritated Banksy, what it was that the film reminded me of, that feeling it was tapping into.

Thanks to facebook and the internet, I have reconnected with or been updated on people from just about every chapter of my life… and there have been many chapters: Ever so therapeutic. Several months ago, when I had slowed down long enough to listen to my own heart beat and opened up space there for new perspectives to grow, I became intensely aware of a deep truth. Of all the mean and nasty and terrible things I have thought and done in my life… more than running over a cat while driving before I got my license, more than getting busted, dropping out of school, getting kicked out of the house, puking my guts out at keg parties, or peeing in alley ways; more than cheating, lying, stealing and yelling at my kids,… the thing I regret the most, and will, on my death bed, regret more than anything else,
is a life time of underestimating people.
Time and time again, with each new “friend” request from a ghost of the past, seeing where people had gone, what had become of them, how they too had “grown up,” I became aware of what a small box I had up until that moment kept them in…what limited expectations I have for so many; how quickly I size people up and arrange them in a small corner of the world stage, never expecting them to be called out for an encore. Knowing myself the pain of being shoved to the back of the choir and not being expected to ever give a solo, makes this trait in me even more regrettable.

So, tossing from side to side, trying to wrestle this movie out of my head so I could get at least a few hours of sleep, I finally made the connection: The irksome aspect of Thierry Guetta or mbw, was that, in his quirky, sideways, clumsy way, this funny frenchman surpassed everyone’s expectations.
He became a huge success, and no one saw it coming!
How dare he!
How irritating it is, when we are sure someone isn’t playing with a full deck, and they end up winning the pot, because, as it turns out, they have an Ace up their sleeve!

I have been trying to allow other people’s stories to remain open-ended. I have been reminding myself, that there is usually more than meets the eye, and that anyone of the various people criss-crossing my life has every chance in the world of exceeding my amateur estimation of them. But my annoyance at watching Guetta, poised for a belly flop, succeed in doing a swan dive, shows me, that I better keep working on it until I make that final “exit through the gift shop.”

Maher: The Atheist Who Keeps us Honest!

2011-05-15T20:46:00.002+02:00

Bill Maher, the Atheist, who loves to goad (ok, relentlessly ridicule and attack) religious people, exposing American Christians (especially Evangelicals) yet again in their hypocrisy. His take on Christians and violence: "if you are a Christian and support killing your enemy and torture, you have to find a new name for yourself."

favorite line:

"Jesus has lines like ‘Do not repay evil with evil and do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you.’ Really. It’s in that book you hold up when you scream at gay people."

(some explicit language)

What's your response?

Osama Salad

2011-05-03T12:35:00.004+02:00

Yesterday, “couch-potato” was on the calendar.

Completely spent after going all out For Charis’ big day on Sunday, I was hoping to just sleep it off. Tune out everything and at the most just watch the winter return outside our bay window.

But someone had to go and shoot Osama bin Laden!

Thanks for that.

So I wake up to weird fb status quotes… bible verses about not rejoicing over my enemies death; or in another vein, “I wish I had pulled the trigger. May he rot in hell.” (speaks volumes for the friends and family I have on fb!).

Obviously I had missed something.

“Thank God I don’t have a tv. Actually, I’ll thank myself for that.”

The bare facts and the endless fb, twitter commentary are more than enough fodder for that half-asleep-trying-to-ignore-my-bladder-and-stay-in-bed-at-least-another-half-an-hour state of mind. In this groggy, grey, morning SDDS (self-directed-dream-stage), when my internal computer was still booting up, I processed the news of Osama bin Laden’s assassination.

“oh.”

“Never thought that would happen.”

Then I was in this abnormally long train station, and I couldn’t find the bathrooms.

“What does this mean?” “Does this mean anything to me?”

I was desperately trying to find the train to take me to that gorgeous Hawaiian Island, that I would love to go back to… the one with toilets right next to the beach...

… but instead my thoughts took me back to Goroka, PNG, where we got the news about the Columbine shootings. My son was about 2 or 3 years old, and I remember thinking, that the worst thing that could ever happen to me, is if my son grew up to be a murderer, worse still, a mass murderer. What an utter nightmare that would be.

Well, obviously the next link in that chain of thought was finding myself, not on some Hawaiian beach, but in a Burka in some hut sitting on a dirt floor throwing dust over myself and wailing… wailing for my son, Osama bin Laden, the mass murderer.

Then there was someone playing the same iphoto presentations that I had played for Charis on Sunday, only with pictures of Osama growing up, with the lovely and sad song 10,000 Miles, by Mary Chapin Carpenter, which I had used for one of the slide shows, playing in the background. They were the same pictures I had shown: as a baby just after delivery, a smiling child on the swings, playing in the water, mucking around with his brothers and sisters (all 49 of them), crying while getting a hair cut, in silly costumes… and I, now his mother, was wailing and weeping, “where had my little boy gone? He was so bright and passionate, full of conviction and a thirst for justice. He had so much potential! What had eaten away at his soul and carried him into darkness?”

Then other pictures were mixed in, and it was clear that those were the people lost in the towers, and the embassies, and soldiers… their families. There were slides of them on the swings and mucking about, making funny faces into the camera with their moms and dads and sisters and posing with their friends. Multi faceted gems reflecting the full spectrum of the colors of life: joy and fear and sadness and humor and anger and disillusionment and desperation and hope and determination and wit and vulnerability and a fierce longing for a better version of reality. They were all gone… 10.000 miles and maybe more….

And the frustrating thing was, that this hut too, had no bathroom.

So I went outside and began looking for justice.

But I didn’t find it in the planes that flew into the Towers.

And I didn’t find it in the tanks in Afghanistan.

And I didn’t find it in the drones in Pakistan.

And I didn’t find it in the bullet that killed Osama.

I didn’t find it in the myth of redemptive violence.

I found it in the rain that falls on us all irrespectively.

I found it in the sun that shines for everyone, hoping to grow good things in our gardens, leaving us to weed and tend to our fruit and flowers.

I found it in the idea, that we do not all get what we deserve (whew!!),

but that we should strive to give everyone what they need to grow and flourish in harmony and peace and dignity.

I found it in the dandelion growing in the crack of a concrete sidewalk.

I found it in the time that has healed old wounds.

I found it in the rebalancing of power, through creative, self-sacrificing, persistent and patience protest.

I found it in the handshake of persecutor and persecuted.

I found it in the embrace of enemies

Eating leftover chips and salsa with my now 15 year old son at 10pm yesterday evening, he asked, “Mom, what do you think of Osama’s being killed?”

hmmmm. “I think if his name had been David, we might evaluate it all in another light.”

Jonathan, “hunh?”

“I was just wondering, how much the two have in common.”

We started to list ways they were different and ways they were the same.

“David was just a shepherd boy, not the son of a construction tycoon,” he said.

Yes, I said, “but if the United States was Goliath, even the 17th son of a billionaire, seems pretty small in comparison.”

“and in one sense, David also was hiding out exercising “terror” attacks on occupants of a country.”

“Yeah, some of those stories are pretty harsh! Can’t really wrap my head around destroying the whole city of Jericho and everything in it, men, women and children,” Jonathan confesses. (not a David story, but we can add Joshua to the “terrorist watch list”).

Weighing the unimaginable hugeness of America’s military strength, the enormous sums we spend on it, and the ferociousness with which the arms industry protects and propagates its interests, I will admit, that it was always hard for me to emotionally perceive Osama as the Powerful tyrant in the equation bin-Laden vs. United States of America, and I am sure he saw the planes as his lucky sling-shot stone that brought down the giant Goliath, much to his own surprise.

So, perhaps the names have all changed, the heavy-weights and the underdogs have different faces, but the cycle of violence and the rhetoric that fuels it is that same ole lion crouching at the door to devour us.

I can’t help to mourn for what might have been had we Americans poured the same amount of time, money and manpower into humanitarian efforts in that region of the world and at home among our own instead of unleashing this hungry lion of war. Call me a daughter of the 60’s, a naive, hippie flower-child, but I can’t help thinking that maybe we could have killed the terrorist and saved Osama’s mother’s son.
And that would have been a beautiful thing.

What REALLY Scares Me!

2010-11-24T11:39:00.003+01:00

I'm aware of the terror warnings here in Germany.

I've read about the strike on S. Korea.

It appears that Ireland is going to pull all of Europe down the tube.

But nothing since 9/11 has turned my stomach with dread like the news of the Naked Scanners and the forced pat downs... uh, gropings of intimate areas.

HELLO! Have we gone completely insane?

I don't even know where to begin to tear this apart... just me trying to imagine traveling back into the States with my family, teenage boy and two girls and my very European looking husband, and watching anyone of them be so violated is more than I can take. That is just not going to happen!

What more blatant proof do we need, that fear gives licensee to barbarity of all kinds and robs us of the one fundamental thread in the fabric of a functioning society: trust!

God help us!

Third Way? One Little White Man in a Sea of Black People… Emergent 2010

2010-11-22T16:05:00.005+01:00

The car was packed. Last meeting over. Last stop at the ladies room…. and that is when it seemed the fun began!

I’m the wrong person to give a good complete picture of this past weekend in Essen, since I spent a significant amount of time in only 3 rooms, but I guess my perspective is also a perspective, so here it is.

The smell of the kerosine burners wafting in from the buffet in the adjacent room accompanied the obvious Black and White themed room decoration with living room lamps and soft candle light wresting a cozy atmosphere from the otherwise unattractive, all purpose room big enough to hold the (plus/minus) 130 of us. A rough start with the visual and sound technics, which seemed intent to buck us off our time plan, had to be subdued by the incredible team from the Weigle Haus before we were able to jump into our theme for the evening with a fun ice breaker, that got people talking to each other. This was followed by a personal introduction from me, which was meant to highlight the problematic of the dualistic, “either/or”, “black and white” thinking that presupposes a need to look for a “Third Way.” (I’ll post that in German with the pictures I showed). The official part of the evening ended with a beautiful meditation and sung call and response prayer (gregorian style).

What everyone else did after that was lost on me, since I was again engulfed with the final preparations for the theme room which Esther Deletree and I spent many, many hours creating. A better title for our room, than the one given to us, would have been “Exclusion and Embrace: a way forward for individuals and communities to negotiate their boundaries (values, ethics, needs, wants) with each other and avoid the unfruitful and stifling polarities of victimization and violence.” As it was, there was some confusion! We had a slow trickle come through our very elaborate installation throughout most of the day, which only picked up in the evenings after the other workshops were done. However, those that did invest some time in our presentation, found it to be well worth it, and we plan to put it to good use in the near future.

The lounge area was filled with mostly young people!!! Lots of young, white guys with something in their hand with which to twitter, and when any given one was asked, most likely would admit to being in seminary. The few that I met were very “sympatisch” or “likable.” Lots more young women this year than in previous ones… (yeah!) also studying theology some of them. Most people were there for the first time. Few were die hards, like us, who had been to all four Forums. And it seemed like the big question on everyone’s mind was “how can we change things? How can we do things differently?

Saturday evening found us all together again for a great wrap up. First Sandra Bils, had us all laughing as she told of attempts to explain “Emerging Church” to her colleagues who wanted to know what this new “Emergency room” is. In this humorous way, Sandra was able to touch on the somewhat “elitist” nature and insider language often used at these forums, and helped us all to laugh a little about ourselves. Then came my favorite thing from the whole forum: An artist had been invited, who had had no previous connection to Emergent, to experience the entire weekend and then make comic sketches and present a review. The sketches can be seen here, which, along with his honest commentary, again made for a hilarious, somewhat ironic laugh at ourselves. Directly following this was a photo montage by Judith Goppelsröder, whose unique way of seeing things was a feast for the eyes and provided me with a peak in the rooms I hadn’t gotten to see at all. I’m hoping all of her pictures will come online soon.

I can’t say much to the “meat” of the weekend, since I didn’t get to visit any of the rooms except for ours. The titles of the workshop rooms can be found on the Emergent webpage.

As we were packing and loading, cleaning and putting things back in order, another group was slowly starting to gather and pick up momentum until by the time we were just about ready to get in the car and set our navigation systems, they had burst into song and dance. An African church service uses the Weigle-Haus facilities, and tho there was a regular trickle of finely dressed African people still making their way into the building, the vibrant worship service was already in full swing. We couldn’t help ourselves, and stood sheepishly in the doorway, letting the music course through our limbs and persuade them to convulse in time to the music. I wanted to stay. I wanted to dance with these beautiful people. I wanted to meet each one of them, hear their stories, and just soak them in. I became acutely aware of a deep thirst and hunger to be in their presence and thrust myself in this black sea, but we had a long drive ahead and three children waiting for us to finally come home. And then I saw a funny sight… a couple of rows from the front of the room, there was a small, white, middle aged German man in his Sunday best suit, also moving “expressively” to the music. He was so out of time and looked so out of place, that it was quite amusing to watch him. But I was filled with admiration for him, and had to think of David dancing before the ark… making a fool of himself for the lord, with no thought of his own honor.

This man was doing what we at Emergent Forum had yet failed to do, and that is to cross over cultural boundaries. As different as each person was from another, and as from as many places on the map of Germany we had hailed from, it was still a pretty homogeneous group, with narrowly defined aesthetic appreciations, and a rather narrowly defined cultural niche. We have not yet truly, in this frame at least, “opened ourselves to the distant other” as Volf would put it, and the ache I felt as I drove away from Essen was of a child artist who has been given a box of crayons with only a few varying shades of just one color to play with, and the disappointing suspicion, that a truly “Third Way” still lies far beyond us.

pictures by Judith Goppelsröder

I Publicly and Sincerely Apologize...

2010-10-01T12:51:00.002+02:00

I publicly and sincerely apologize to my garden for utterly neglecting her this entire year!

And I am even further humbled by the fact that she has not repaid me in kind with the bareness I deserve, but has winsomely turned the other cheek, gifting us, even in this late season, with these tokens of beauty and grace.

Christa's Baptism

2010-08-05T16:30:00.003+02:00

What was meant to be a dunk in the pool and then a garden party, was moved indoors because of the weather. Nonetheless, it was a very special day not only for Christa, but also for our whole family. Thanks to everyone who came and helped to make it so special; to Alan for leading us through the ceremony, to the "Burgertreff Hochzoll" for letting us use their beautiful and practical accommodations at the last minute and for a big discount, and a huge thanks to Katherine for cooking those delicious Nigerian dishes!!! And of course thank you to everyone for all the yummy salads and cakes that were brought! It was certainly a day that Christa will cherish, and that is what we wanted. Maybe at some point, I will get around to translating the mini-sermon Jan and I gave in tandem and will post it on the blog as well, but for now, here are some pictures of the day.

Mama Bear!!! Grrrrrr!!

2010-07-27T22:46:00.002+02:00

Ok, so this is a longer story….

Since shortly before this past christmas break, Charis (12) fell in outs with the “click” in her class. One of the girls, who she had been friends with (had even spent the night here), stopped being her friend from one day to the next, because of a new girl who purposefully wedged Charis out of this group. Then they proceeded to make her miserable every day, writing notes, whispering about her, glaring, trying to get others in the class against her. With every girl Charis tried to hang out with in the break, they would start to be sugar sweet to her and monopolize her. It took weeeeeeeeks before I could get the school to do anything. Finally there was one talk with all the girls and Charis, and the worst of it stopped. Still, this group of girls dominates the class and is totally prissy about every little thing. Charis is not your wall-flower-I’ll-do-whatever-you-say-just-so-I-can-be-near-you kind of girl, so she keeps getting in the line of fire.

She has been asking for a long while now if she can switch to Jonathan’s school, but I haven’t really entertained the idea, until I spoke with a mother recently, who did switch her daughter, and was glad she did. So, I called the Principal to see if he could give me some kind of reason to keep her at the school… some assurance that they would finally take the problem seriously… ha! “Problem? What problem? That is just Charis’ side of the story… no one else in the class seems to have a problem. It’s a normal class and none of the teachers has mentioned that there are any problems. It depends on how you define “fighting”…. bla bla bla!” Basically, he wanted me to know that it was my problem and not his.

Anyway, that very day Charis comes home in tears…. this little prissy brat (sorry, but I’ve still got my fangs and claws out!) was screaming at her in sport class, because Charis fouled her, then threw the ball at her as hard as she could. Later, when Charis went to change, her new shoes had been stolen.

So, today, I went into the class (luckily at the same time the sport teacher went in to bring up the issue, and she let me in, and let me rant!!), and I told that class exactly what I thought of them. Especially this particular brat and the two girls who had been guests in our home, and now don’t give Charis the time of day. I also scolded the entire class for letting this little mouse of a girl intimidate them all… “just because she has a big mouth, you think she’s a lion, but she is just a little mouse! You should all be ashamed of yourselves that you let some of these girls boss others, and scream at Charis, and NOBODY does anything against it… but then talk about her (the brat and the click) behind their backs… how lame is that and cowardly?” By the time I was done, a couple of girls who I had targeted were in tears.

While I was waiting for the sport teacher and the girls were switching classes, and Charis came down surrounded by girls from her class, I asked her if she found it terribly embarrising, and all the girls started in “no way, that was great! finally someone speaks up and finally DOES something!” When Charis got home, she told me that a few girls came to her and apologized for stuff that had happened back at the beginning of 5th! grade, or finally told her why they stopped being friendly with her (one was hurt, because Charis hadn’t shown up to her birthday party (our bad). Some came up to her and asked if I was mad at them, because I was looking at them so intensly (I basically stared that entire class down to the size of pin head). and tonight Charis got a message on her school network from the girl who had screamed at her… half apology, half trying to get me not to call her parents. Her turkish friend in the class, said it was too bad she could never get her mom to do something like that, because she can hardly speak german!

Moral of the story: parents should be way more involved in what goes on in school!

But, the way it looks, we got the one and only spot that opened up for a seventh grade girl at jonathan’s school, and Charis still wants to switch, so I will make the call tomorrow to confirm it.

It's Just Not Right!!

2010-05-21T11:17:00.002+02:00

Anyone who knows me even a little bit, knows that I am no great Phileos Animalis. In our family, I am the one immovable barrier to my children’s desperate pleas for a domestic canine experience (thank God that Christa is allergic to cats, so we at least don’t have to have that battle). The only compromise I was willing to make was to let them get turtles, who sleep a good 6 months of the year in someone else’s garage. Talk about low maintenance! The only pet I had as a child was the adorable little kitten we got as kids one Christmas and creatively named… Christmas, and who just disappeared one day even before it stopped being a cute little kitten. Then there was the tank of amazing tropical fish my parents were “fish-sitting,” while the real owners were traveling for a few months. Every last fish was dead within the first few weeks. The small white budgerigar I was given when I was 18, whom I named Coca (yes, after that stuff!), survived my care, against all odds, for about three years, but not the care of his “bird sitters,” when I was away in Europe for a year.

The only pets I’ve had since then were the ones we had in PNG. Our dog, Hadley, who died an agonizing death after eating pesticides while we were away in Germany for a couple of months, and our ants, cockroaches and mice, who survived despite our decisive efforts to exterminate them. In fact, the real reason I don’t mind staying in Germany, is because there are no cockroaches here. A couple of days ago, my neighbor friend Louisa invited me in to see her three new kittens. The whole time I was petting them and saying how cute they were, I was thinking, “What kind of crazy people have a house full of cats?” And every morning when another neighbor’s cat wants to be let in for breakfast between 5 and 7 am, yowling like a squeaky violin, I am sure that if I still had a bb-gun from my wild and crazy teen years, I would have long put an end to its miserable little existence (I’m obviously also not a morning person).

So I feel almost hypocritical when I start to listen to my own heart’s response to the oil gushing out into the Gulf of Mexico, and I find there much more compassion and heartbreak than I would have expected. In fact, I started sobbing convulsively on my way to Ikea the other day, as I imagined the violence being inflicted upon this living, pulsating and diverse ecosystem, and wrote this poem when I got back home. Every new article about the failed attempts to cap the leak, every aerial video of the sprawling black pest, and every picture of the birds and sea life who are suffocating and smothered in the fuming, sludgy crude, wrenches from my heart new waves of horror and sorrow, of feeling angry and helpless and… responsible. It’s just not right! It’s just not right!

In stretches such as I’ve had the last few weeks, when melancholy has settled in like a long bout of bad weather, this tragedy seems to have given me that last right hook emotionally and landed me on the mat for the final count of ten. The actual physical crises of the unrelenting oil still intruding into the aqua blue Gulf is daunting enough, but the network of corporate and political corruption, the world wide scale of unsustainable consumption, and my own addictive behavior, which keeps the whole system well lubricated and in ceaseless operation, appear to me to be an unstoppable herd of buffalo stampeding us all off a cliff. Will it ever change? Will I ever change? How do you stop a stampeding herd of anything?

Any ideas?

Sojourners

2010-05-18T11:37:00.004+02:00

Brunch-n-More: The whole family enjoys it. Casual conversation with others over eggs and morning rolls with jam and honey, cold cuts, cheeses, coffee, chocolate milk. Catching up with each other, filling each other in on the latest news, expressing grief or joy over the local and global events, movie reviews. Deeper sharing while cleaning up the kitchen, putting the tables away, nuggets from the philosophical or theological book we are in the middle of, stories about the arduous road family, or oneself, had to take to immigrate to a new country… unimaginable hardship for some of us, lived through for others who are standing in the kitchen, drying plates, tossing eggshells. Even little three year old Alexander is helping to vacuum the floor. We all come from somewhere. And we are all welcome here.

We want to try and enter someone else’s journey. Someone from long ago. Someone whose life was an experiment. We are also experimenting today, with a new method: Biblio-drama. We read the story together, name the characters, and each choose a part. We have a few minutes to ourselves to read some background information about time and place, people and culture, and then we come together to re-enact the first steps of faith for a man who was called to a better country, called to be a pilgrim, a sojourner, called to be the father of many and blessing to all: Abram. (Genesis 12)

And, like all experiments, there are chinks. The teens are perhaps too self-conscious for this method. The younger kids are having a blast playing pretend, and milk it for all it is worth to muck around and giggle. The adults? Are we able to feel the tension that Abram must have felt? The apprehension? The heavy weight of responsibility for his family and his servants, which he carried for a decision that would dramatically effect the course of their lives? What it must have meant for Sarai to follow someone, who was following someone else? Can we allow Abram and Sarai’s story to enter our story, and draw us out of our comfort zone, to become sojourners of another kind? Especially when the only thing we have to weigh against all the skepticism, know-better advice, doom-sayers, and scoffers, not to mention our own fear of failure and of the unknown calamity that surely awaits us ahead, is God’s call to us to move on. God’s call? What the heck is that? Please!!!! That is sooo Old Testament! What does that even sound like? Feel like? How would I know what it is, if I ever heard it?

But we do know, don’t we? Wouldn’t want to tell anybody about it, but there is that special kind of gnawing, isn’t there? A voice our own, and yet not our own, that irritates the crap out of us, telling us it is time to move on… or sometimes, time to make a stand, and get in someone’s way, who is up to no good. But that is another story. This story is about moving out, being the first to go into uncharted territory, becoming a foreigner and stranger among strangers, being led moment by moment without a plan, about never being too old to try something new, going as a guest and not for conquest, about putting a little distance to ties that would otherwise keep us stagnant and immobile. This story, which could also be our story, is about the free flow of blessing, and culture and hope. It’s about the promise of life, where we perhaps least expected it.

As in all experiments, there were chinks in their travels… as any can see who keep reading Abram’s story. So, I feel like we are in good company, when we don’t nail a bulls eye every time. I still believe in experimenting, and I still hear the call to search for ways to include everyone, encourage participation, and search for meaning together not only in ancient stories, but in each other’s stories especially.

Now She Knows

2010-05-15T09:03:00.001+02:00

Nine years old

and now she knows

She asked me in the car

driving to her violin lessons

pretty as can be

her long blond her

uncombed as always

Nine years old

and now she knows

Emre, a Turkish boy

in her class

told her

How does he know?

Just out of the blue,

he says something like that?

Nine years old

and now she knows

she will ride in a horse drawn carriage

and her flower girls will ride ponies

she has lots of names for her children

so this is hard to understand

she thinks being a mommy

is the best thing in the world

and I am the best mommy

Nine years old

and now she knows

“Mommy, is it true,

that some people

kill their babies

even before they are born?

Their girl babies?”

Nine years old

and now she knows

Girl babies aren’t as good

Boy babies are better, but

“I’m going to keep

all of my babies,

boys and girls,

I’ll love them both

the same”

Nine years old

and now she Knows

A Maternal Memorial

2010-05-10T21:54:00.003+02:00

Driving.. on my way to buy stuff

By the Hand of My Father,

from the Paper Boys

Is playing on my ipod.

As the words that I am singing along to

start to sink in

all the way in

past my defenses

past my consumerist distractions

past the soft layers I’ve added on over the years

One day late

I cry for her

Crazy as a loon

By the hand of my father

but never by the hand of my mother

she never used power and violence to hurt me

maybe because she had no power

A powerless crazy ol’ woman

who never beat me

suffered

gave birth

plunged me into this world

taught me how to tie a bow

and draw paper dolls

and carried me through the snow

and that was it

all she could give

but enough

I cry

Maternal memory is carried down river

as grief for our great matriarch

casts its yawl into my willing emotional current

Our Mother

perpetually raped

is now being soiled

with the black semen

of man’s lust for power,

Our Mother

left barren

must watch

as her children drown

in it’s filth

We weep

We mothers weep

We grandmothers weep

for our great mother

our schizophrenic mother

who heaves and throws tantrums

and sometimes tries to

shake herself free of us

and protect herself

from the hands of our fathers

Safe Place

2010-04-30T11:35:00.002+02:00

I’m longing for a safe place

A spot of heaven here on earth

To dance, to sing, to play

To laugh as the light tickles my nose

Bubbling passion, color and zest

A living collage of leather, velvet and lace

I’m longing for a safe place

Where a hand on my shoulder says,

“I give you strength, have courage!” and

Eyes full of dangerous adventure sparkle,

“Go ahead! Dare! Take a risk!

I’ll catch you when you fall!”

In a web of homespun grace

I’m longing for a safe place

Where visions can be safely birthed

Through the jungle of doubters and scoffers

Someone ploughs ahead

And someone has got my back –

Carving out a way to an Inn, a barn, a shed,

Or some other fertile space

I’m longing for a safe place

Where an unmistakable voice rings out

Clear as a bell

For all to hear,

“This is my beloved friend, in her I am well pleased!”

Yeah! Where I can grow tall and confident,

blossom and flourish,

Every self doubt erased

I’m longing for a safe place

Where the game rules are easy to understand

And the foul lines clearly marked for all to see

So I don’t have to tiptoe around

In fear of tripping a live wire

Before I safely reach home base

I’m longing for a safe place

Where I am treated like a good novel

Each word savored

Every page carefully turned

with hopeful anticipation of a happy end

Where the clues to the plot are uncovered,

And the Author’s intention traced

I’m longing for a safe place

Where vulnerability is a two way street

Where we entrust each other

with our insufficiencies

Where we celebrate each other

as our missing part

Where power and titles are lost

in a friendship’s embrace

I’m longing for a safe place

A spot of heaven here on earth

To live, to work, to pray

Where I love as I am loved

And I dare to find a friend

In an enemies face

It's All Part of the Adventure!

2010-04-20T11:23:00.003+02:00

(continued from...)

Once I had said my goodbyes to Jan at the airport in Memingen, my motto became, “It’s all part of the adventure!” Not enough leg room on cheapo Ryan Air? “It’s part of the adventure!” A long, expensive cab ride to my first B&B? “It’s part of the adventure!” At home I live at points “A” and “B,” and “C” etc, and the transit times between them, I regard as annoying interludes to be kept as short, uneventful and expeditious as possible. In Ireland, I overruled this attitude, and allowed even these intervals to carry their own import and become a rich part of my experience. Have to get up at 4 am, take a cab to a bus to take me from Belfast to the airport in Dublin and then wait two hours? No worries, “It’s all part of the adventure!”

Hopefully, elaborating on my pledge will illuminate how I happened upon the most significant experience of my time in Ireland and stumbled upon the words that have haunted me ever since.

The full day of sessions held out at the School of Ecumenics was over, and the Re-Emergence conference was relocating to the Black Box downtown for an evening concert with Vince Anderson and then Foy Vance. I had started chatting with a delightful couple from Northern Ireland, and by the time we had come up for air, everyone else had gone to find something to eat. The Irish emergent couple had a date with their son, who was studying in Belfast, so they generously offered to drop me off near the Black Box. At first I was disappointed that I would be on my own until 8 pm, having enjoyed meeting and conversing with several other participants, but I decided that I would savor some time alone to have a good meal and reflect on the abundance of words I had already heard that day.

To this end I slipped into the Four Corners restaurant, one of the few which was not overcrowded with St. Patrick’s Day revelers, and was waiting to be seated after the two women who had come in just before me. Having been led to a table not far from theirs, I had hardly laid my little pink notebook on the table, when one of these women, who had obviously been celebrating St. Paddy’s herself, approached me with an invitation to join them and the two male companions who would be meeting them shortly. Taken aback, I scanned my brain for a tactful way to decline: maybe that “I needed to go over my notes from the day and was glad for some alone time, before I met up with others later in the evening.” Or that “I had the H1N1 virus, and would instantly self destruct, if I came into contact with drunk people, whom I’d never met before.”

But just as I was about to say all of that, my pledge intervened, “Lee, you’re in Ireland! It’s part of the adventure!. Do something you’ve never done before, and who knows, maybe something will happen that has never happened before.” It seemed apparent from her friends reaction, that inviting strangers in a restaurant to join her was something this well dressed woman, about ten years my senior with short but styled reddish brown hair and high heels, had never done before either. We were all quite surprised that I said yes, as was our waiter, who admitted, when we asked for a new and larger table for all of us together, that he had never had that happen before. The men that joined my host and her blond Finish sister-in-law were equally quizzical about my presence at the table, when they arrived a few minutes later.

Introductions were made, and you know, I can’t remember a single one of their names! So, I will call my intrepid, tipsy new Irish friend, Maggie, if for no other reason than I have grown to love that name and have been looking for “Maggie” ever since I’d gotten to Ireland. Maggie’s brother and a Scottish man, who was not her husband (silly me for asking) had also obviously been honoring St. Paddy that day. Of course they wanted to know what an American, living in Germany was doing in Belfast without her family. When I told them about the conference, and tried to explain what “The Emergent Church” was, Maggie had a vague idea of what I was talking about. She told me about growing up pentecostal, and that their parents were actually pastors. She also told me that unanswered pleas for divine intervention during a long, unsuccessful battle to save her marriage with an unfaithful husband had robbed her of her faith in a “happy-ending God.” But recently she had seen a speech by someone on tv about this “emerging way of faith,” which really caught her attention.

I couldn’t help myself, but had to ask them about the conflict. Had they been touched by it personally? Maggie’s brother jumped on that question, “You don’t want to hear about that do you? Do you really want to hear about my friend getting shot in his own home by an IRA dressed up as a Postman? No, you don’t want to hear about me standing shoe deep in his blood in the entrance of his home. Or about me going upstairs to fetch his father, who was shakin’ like leaf all over his body. You don’t want to hear about me laying him in my bed next to me, just to keep him warm and to get him to stop shaking. You don’t want to hear any of those stories. Of having to choose which bar you can go to by whether you’re catholic or Protestant.” I smiled, “No, at least we didn’t have that problem between our denominations in the states!”

How were things now? “Things are better now. For about the last ten years, with each year, things get better. Every year is better than the last.” Why do you think that is? What has helped to bring peace? I asked, wondering if he might mention grassroots efforts for reconciliation. Then Maggie’s brother looked at me with his clouded over, red eyes, making sure he had my full attention and said, “Imagine Al-Qaida, who have bombed and killed American citizens. Now imagine putting one of the head leaders of Al-Qaida in a top position of your government. That’s what we did. We put a terrorist in a top position of our government. That’s how we started to make it better.”

Seeing that I was drawing a total blank, Maggie took over, “We took one of the main leaders of the IRA and made him Minister of Education.” And after waiting for that to sink in, she added, “and you know what? He was the best damn Minister of Education we ever had!”

And though I don’t think I have grasped their full implication even now, these words have stalked me ever since that night. What Maggie and her brother tried to convey has only gained in significance, as I have sought to fill out my embarrassing lack of knowledge about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. Maggie’s brother was talking about the implementation of a power-sharing executive as part of the devolution of Britain’s control. Maggie, I believe, was referring to Martin McGuinness, who was a leading member of Sinn Fein and had been a noxious and seditious IRA thug, as the title of a biography about him might suggest, “From Guns to Government,” and who became Minister of Education in December 1999 and deputy First Minister on May 8, 2007. More amazing is that Ian Paisley, co-founder of the DUP, who called Pope John Paul II the Anti-Christ and who in 2006 said, "[Sinn Fein] are not fit to be in partnership with decent people. They are not fit to be in the government of Northern Ireland and it will be over our dead bodies if they ever get there," became the First Minister. The two of them represent the most extreme and aggressive positions on their respective sides of the conflict! On 8 December 2007, while they both were visiting President Bush in the White House, McGuinness said to the press "Up until the 26 March this year, Ian Paisley and I never had a conversation about anything – not even about the weather – and now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months and there's been no angry words between us. ... This shows we are set for a new course." Indeed, “Paisley and McGuinness subsequently established a good working relationship and were dubbed by the Northern Irish media as the "Chuckle Brothers."

When eight o’clock drew near, I excused myself, thanked them for inviting me to join in their lives for a couple of hours, and went to pay for my dinner, only to find that the two gentlemen had already taken care of the bill. I left the Four Corners Restaurant with a fond admiration for these strangers who had shared a meal with me, a deepening respect for the people of Northern Ireland, and in awe of the courageous steps they had taken to pursue peace. And I find myself still amazed at the mystery, as if it were the first time I had encountered it, that within the very souls that exert a horrifying propensity toward violence and destruction, it is also possible to find a divine potential to self-sacrifice for peace.

What better gift could I have asked for from the Irish? I must look no further for my Irish inheritance, Maggie’s mit-gift to her American descendants, something I can salvage from a family that has not survived the rough storms at sea. This is why it is so bloody good to be Irish! They have given me words; ancient words (Thomas Cahill, How the Irish Saved Civilization), written, spoken, recited words; words sung; words in a quiet, powerful, chance conversation; words that can challenge me, change me, and words that can guide me home. They have given us all a treasure of language, a language with which to embrace each other.

Ireland: Who Said That?

2010-04-11T19:06:00.006+02:00

They are everywhere. All around me. Every where I go, restaurants, along the roads, airports, trains and train stations, stores, bathrooms, cafes, taxis, B&B and buses. And they are all English! Blessed, beautiful English. Blessed, beautiful English WORDS. (Absence really does make the heart grow fonder.) And the best ones have an Irish accent!!

I can’t help but notice that the Irish seem to celebrate their writers and give homage to the written word. Little rhymes or quotes from literature kept winking at me from unlikely places. Above the seats on trains, at train stations, on the doors to restaurants. Some made me wonder if Dr. Seuss was Irish: “The seats are not for feet.” Or “Going to the game? Take the train!” But mostly the quotes caught me off guard and were in places I didn’t expect with no apparent context. Wrapped around a kiosk in Drogehda I read:

“You’ll never see the man again, who sat across from you,

better to look away.”*

and in the train:

“There was really nothing else to say

it was an awkward silence

I read the back of someone’s paper

I stared out the window.*

At first I thought it was just in Dublin, to attract tourists to the Writers Museum (exhibits @ Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Yeats, and Brendan Behan), the James Joyce Museum or the birthplace of George Bernard Shaw. But even as I left Dublin, I kept noticing these little epigraphs. As if Ireland was calling out, “have you read the works of our sons yet?” Upon hearing that C.S. Lewis, who was Irish, has been one of the most significant authors to me personally, an endearing Irish couple, during one of the breaks at the conference in Belfast, emphatically recommended that I read the Irish poet John O’Donoghue (which I intend to do, once I’ve finished the ten other books I’m in the middle of!). There are many more Irish writers that will join that list.

The Re-Emergent conference afforded another onslaught of words:

From Phyllis Tickle, a living religious encyclopedia, who used no notes and whose words went from her brain, through her larynx, and gushed out of her mouth at a freakish speed, I heard more than just the live rendition of her book, The Great Emergence. Words to put things into perspective, place ourselves in history and paint the grand scheme of things. Some disturbing words, some mind-boggling ones:

“There are over 39,600 distinguishable denominations (not religions, but Christian denominations!).”

“We still have to answer the question, “What is a human being?”

“A big part of this new spirituality is happening in virtual space...with about 70 million people whose only religious experience is on the net in one of the 800 virtual churches.”

and bingo: “If you reduce God to a proposition that you can articulate, you just lost God!”

Samir Selmonovic’s words drew water, when he illustrated Miroslav Wolf’s stages of Embrace (Exclusion and Embrace) through a story of the exclusion and embrace from his own Muslim family, after his spiritual journey led him to follow Christ. That story can be found in his book, It’s Really All About God. Some of his words that stuck:

“When I left Islam to become a Jesus follower, I had many adjustments to make.. I started to become bitter, because the “Christians” made no adjustments from their culture to become Jesus followers.”

“The Emperor might be naked, but he has a very nice body...”

“Bible study is like a marriage: sometimes you are angry at the text, sometimes you don’t want to talk to it for a while, sometimes you make up again.”

Dave Tomlinson had an English accent when he said, “If you don’t have doubt, you don’t have faith; you have certainty and fundamentalism.”

Beki Bateson, who I’ve quoted the most since I’ve been back:

“The kingdom of God is where Faith, Art and Justice intersect.”

As Christ followers, we should be “creating just spaces.”

“How do we move from injustice to justice? Exactly where we stand!”

“Art can help people imagine an alternative future and inspire them to actively move toward it.”

Kester Brewen’s words would also make a good lecture for the tv series “Lost.”

“the world is exploding in strangeness and it is causing us stress!”

conflict is “the failure to properly engage the other...”

...”God is much stranger than that.”

“...penetrated by the marvelous....”

“You are not a gadget”

That evening at the Black Box, IKON wove words together around the theme of choice... recited homespun words, gave us words to say in unison:

“We have been caught between

one thing and another

We have had to choose

between sister doubt

and her uncertain brother.”

And then the words exploded with melody and rhythm and voltage, when first Vince Anderson and then Foy Vance took the stage. Foy Vance’s words were funny, melancholic, perceptive, personal and Irish. Being transported by his phenomenal music, they were often deeply affecting. By the end of his concert, he, like a pied piper, had corralled us all into the much smaller foyer singing these words over and over again as one big unpracticed choir,

“When I need to get home, you’re my guiding light, you’re my guiding light.”

The next day after the closing session and some time eating and conversing at Common Grounds cafe, I had the unexpected opportunity to hear words from the first and only female Justice on Britain’s supreme court, The Lady Hale of Richmond at the MacDermott lecture in the Great Hall at Queen’s University. Her words were about the pursuit of justice and the complexity of applying the law in discrimination cases.

“I’m here to talk about the neglected virtue: Equality.”

“At the current pace, it will take 75 years to close the gender pay gap.”

“...the Human Rights model is better than Anti-discrimination laws...”

As rich and delicious, moving and challenging, informative and thought provoking all of these words were, the words that left a truly indelible impression on me were spoken outside of the context of the Re-Emergent conference altogether. The words that, though I never wrote them down, keep grabbing my attention, purring their way into my stream of thought, like a cat who wants to be stroked, were spoken in what at first seemed to be a parenthetical adventure, a detour from the charted route. Words born out of a truly Irish experience, which I would like to tell you about in my next blog entry.

*(Can anyone tell me who the above quotes are from?)

Travel Log: Fill in the Blank

2010-04-07T15:05:00.006+02:00

The Re-Emergence conference in Belfast was mainly my excuse to finally come to the magical land of Leprechauns. I have no explanation for why it has taken me this long to get to where I have always had a fancy to go (I’ve made it to England three times now, Australia twice, PNG and even Hawaii), but now that I am here, I have the silliest notion of needing to finish this sentence: “The Irish are _______.” I want to know who our people were, who Maggie was, who I am. And that in a mere five days!

Not knowing anyone in Dublin, my first whiff of Ireland came from my “chauffeurs.” Quite literally, the taxi I took from the airport to Skerries, just outside Dublin on the coast, smelled as if it might double as an escort service. The driver was unsure how to get to my B&B and was secretly using a navigation device, which he had on the seat between his legs. He could now afford to buy a more expensive cologne, because the ride cost me a fortune, double what I was told it would. The next day I took a train into Dublin and indulged in the Hop on, Hop off bus tour, which would have been out of the question had I been traveling as a family of five. Most of the drivers seemed to be auditioning for a stand up routine, peppering their tasty nuggets of Irish lore and factoids about historical landmarks with puns and punch-lines. One driver left out the lore and factoids and just told saucy one-liners about his “ex-wife.” Another tour guide told us that St. Patrick didn’t actually wear green. He wore royal and navy blue clergy colors. Green was, as Santa and his sleigh, thrust upon the religious holiday to make it more commercial, more appealing to a culture that was growing ever more secularized, a marketing scheme.

Looking for a place to have a coffee, I happened to walk into Bewley’s Oriental Cafes, which is home to Harry Clarke’s world renown stained glass windows. The building which once housed Whyte’s Academy, where the Duke of Wellington and Robert Emmet both went to school, became Bewley’s Cafe in 1927 and was the “hang out” for some of Irelands most famous literary and Artistic figures including Patrick Kavanagh, Sean O’Casey and Samuel Beckett. I was very pleased to hang out there and do some writing as well, and felt recompensed for not affording myself a glimpse of the Book of Kells, while I was at the beautiful Trinity College.

But for the architecture and the Guinness signs everywhere, the shopping district offers the same here as the world over: Gap, Gucci, Armani, The Body shop, McDonald’s and Burger King, with the later tempting me to forgo the culinary adventure of fish and chips. What frustrates me is that it seems no matter where I go in the world, I always find something American there. And indeed, in Dublin, anyone passing me by or sitting next to me in a cafe was as likely to have an American accent as an Irish one. The people waiting on me at my B&B, at restaurants, train stations, etc., however, had neither American nor Irish accents. They were mostly polish who had come over to earn money during Ireland’s economic boom and then go home again, but had gotten stuck when Ireland’s economy busted. It was a notable contrast to Belfast where it seemed everyone in service positions was Irish, and things were also less expensive.

My last stop of the day was in Malahide, another coastal town on the way out to Skerries. Getting there after the shops had closed, and having a bit of time before the next train and very tired feet, I stopped in at Duffy’s Pub after a quick walk down to the waterfront. Being too late to order something from the menu, I ordered a Becks (you don’t have to go all the way to Ireland to drink a Guinness, and drinking one in Ireland doesn’t make them taste better), and got out my little pink notebook. Of the 25 or so customers, there are five other woman besides myself. None of the men are younger than 45, rather quite over 50, white, with grey hair and casual, conservative dress. Malahide is obviously a notch or two above Skerries on the social scale. The bartender knows almost everyone in the house by name. They are all regulars except for myself and one other table. “These are the evening drinkers,” he responds to my question of whether the Irish drink a lot, or more than other folks; “ they’ll go home and then the night drinkers will come out.” He doesn’t know too many, that “drink straight through.” I understand him to mean that the Irish believe in moderation: they drink only once a day.

Now Lionel Ritchie is playing. The only place I’ve heard Irish music until now was in Burger King, where I stopped to use the restroom. I don’t spend a lot of time in bars now a days, so sitting here in an Irish pub, a horse race on the wide-screens, the salty sea smell of a coastal harbor town mingling with the savory sweet smell of malt, and this fill-in-the blank question gnawing at me like a dog on a bone, I am easily transported way back to the days when I did spend a lot of time in bars: as a little girl no older than six. The “Show Boat” and “Millie and Al’s,” were bars that my biological father, that precious Irish blood coursing through his veins, frequented daily. I’m guessing he didn’t have the knack for moderation, and am thinking he was more the “straight through” kind of drinker. Pistachio dispensers on the bar, dancing in front of the jukebox, gambling, poker games, trips to the horse races, the smell of fish and dirty water from the wharf in DC, large stuffed tuna and swordfish on the walls of Millie and Al’s, Shirley Temples (ginger-ale and grenadine with a cherry) were a few of the brighter spots of those years.

I sure would like to find some other traits to fill in the blank with, intriguing connections between the Irish and myself, more noble heirlooms that Maggie might have bequeathed to her American decedents, something worth salvaging from a family that shipwrecked on poverty, alcohol, crime and insanity. But I should be patient, this is only day two... I still have another three days to find out why being Irish is a bloody good thing. Ah... is that the theme music to “Shipping News” I hear.....

A Sneetch Breach?

2010-03-25T21:04:00.004+01:00

During the final session of the Re-Emergent conference in Belfast last week, an attending Sociologist from America tossed out a question that had arisen out of the conversations he had been having with different ones of us. It was a question of motive, or rather propulsion: Were those of us who are setting sail for new shores, experimenting with new forms, daring the rapids of a new theology, and willing to take only the most portable and flexible of “tents and gear” with us... were we being “pushed out or called out” of the community of believers we once belonged to? Are we following an Abrahamic call into a new country? Or are we fleeing for our lives, dwelling in caves and among the heathen, as when David fled from Saul? Are we Emergents stomping off in a huff, because they didn’t play our song at the party? Or do we really hear the call of the wild to venture into the unknown terrain of the next great era? I must have caught the question as it went out into the room, because I took it with me to the Dublin Airport in the wee hours on Friday: “Am I a starless Sneetch who got thrown out of the Frankfurter party?”

With enough coffee in my system I am able to turn my attention toward this question in the hour or so I have before I board my flight back to Germany. My answer is clear as a bell: both /and & neither/ nor! What is at work in me, a calling to or vision for what could be, is clashing with the construct of church as it has existed throughout the modern era. I am not being pushed out of a system that I actually want to be a part of, a sneetch moping along the beech and jumping at the first chance to let McMonkey McBean paste a star on my belly. Rather, I simply could not ignore the signs and sounds of a faulty transmission. The cogs of the gears of church are not meshing smoothly along, but are jamming up making a painfully loud and irritating grating noise.

When I was about 13 I flew down to Miami during spring break to meet my dad who had sailed down to Florida on our Dutch sloop. He was there with his momentary motorcycle chick girlfriend and the three of us drove back to DC with her BMW bike and his 1969 blue VW bus (you know, the one with the oval windows at the top along the sides?). I got to switch up between the two. The bus made it until Richmond, Virginia and then the clutch gave out. A credit to VW, we drove the whole last two hours without it! All was well as long as we were on the highway, but every time we had to down shift, things got ugly. A grating gearshift is easily one of the most irksome sounds there are, right up there with fingernails on the chalkboard and my children’s incessant use of the “M” word!

Cars have clutches for a reason, and if it’s not working you are going to destroy your transmission by continuing to shift without it. Even I know that! Phyllis Tickle observes in The Great Emergence, that the grinding is not simply a friction between cultures, or faith traditions or even generations, but that it belongs in an even broader context. Tickle contends that we are in a transitional period of the kind that come around every 500 years, and skipping back through time, she lands on each one of these great transitions, like boulders sticking out of the river of history, to summarize how each has sent that river off in a new direction. The cogs that are now grinding out such a cacophony are of the modern era transitioning into the next era, in many places without a clutch, and this shift is being called, “The Great Emergence.”

There are some, like the charming Danish pastors I got to spend time with, who see this coming, embrace it and are trying to ease their traditional, Modern-era congregations through it by wisely and sensitively engaging the clutch as they attempt to shift to a higher gear. But many of us were neither in the drivers seat of our previous congregations, nor was there someone there who shared these sensibilities. I think some of us, who have opted out of the modern church construct altogether, jumped ship, so to speak, because we found ourselves in a setting (local congregation, denomination, para-church organization, Academia) where there was no clutch, or we ourselves were not in a position to engage it. At first we did take it personally, and indeed such a shift gives rise to much personal conflict and friction, of which we have certainly had our share. But discovering testimonies world wide of others who were experiencing or observing the same grinding of gears, helped us to put our experience into a larger context. Also the observation that alone in our small town of a quarter million people, we know of scores of congregations that are struggling with leadership, vision, control and trust issues leaving many, many disillusioned and wounded.

So, have we been pushed out or called out of the congregations in which we once worked and worshiped and wept? Yes. We have. And... No. We haven’t. We have chosen to pull off to the side of the road and have a look under the hood. We are trying to distinguish or name the interference, describe the clogs on the gear of the new era, and see if we can get the vehicle operating again without completely ruining the transmission. Many of us recognize that we are a part of this new era, but still want to engage with the best part of our faith tradition, all the while remaining as flexible, light weight and transient as possible.

Maggie, We're Back

2010-03-17T13:12:00.003+01:00

I’ve long retired the word coincidence. I’ve experienced too many amazing circumstances, incidences of time and space colliding together for good in my life, to assume that they all just tumbled out of the bag that way. The nearest I’ll come to this expression is to use the word serendipity, which I borrowed from Scott Peck many, many years ago. Call it what you will, but what are the chances that just days before my feet at long last touch Irish soil, my aunt Becky would send me the first installment of my ancestral chart, which neatly locates three and four boxes back from mine the last of our line to be born in the land of clover? Luck of the Irish? Anna Collins, born in Ireland in 1862, Henry McGivern born about 1835, and best of all, Maggie, born just as the potato famine was starting to decimate the population of Ireland in 1845.

I’m relishing the solitude as I walk along the coast from my room at the Redbank Inn in Skerries to the Stoop Your Head Tavern which was recommended to me by the two “native” women on my flight. And they were right, dinner was delicious. But more than my taste-buds have been tantalized. I think I would never tire of hearing the lovely Irish lilt, especially when it comes from the likes of the little girls sitting next to me. Katie is the oldest of the three and most curious about the single woman writing in her little pink notebook and eavesdropping on her family. Maybe Maggie was about Katie’s age when hunger drove her family to look for the land of plenty. I might never know when and why Maggie sought American soil, but I do know that she survived the five year famine, which reduced the population of Ireland by a quarter. I,600,000 people either starved to death, succumbed to disease or fled Ireland by the time a new census was taken in 1851. I also know she survived the harrowing voyage across unfriendly seas in the overcrowded “coffin ships,” which took the lives of many hundreds more.

As I pay my check with a little plastic card, I can’t help but smile. Maggie made it, Married an English man and had a daughter. An American daughter. Maggie, we’re back, and there is plenty of food in Ireland now!

Travel Log: Departure

2010-03-14T21:07:00.002+01:00

Of course I had “to go” the moment we got to the airport, but couldn’t until I had gotten my luggage checked in and gone through the gun and knife detectors. My well trained traveling eyes quickly scanned the large hall for the code language signaling my next immediate destination. The one universal symbol to distinguish the lady’s powder room from the men’s john is a knee length hooped skirt, but looking around the Memmingen airport at the 300 plus or minus people who are waiting with me to board the Ryan Air flight to Dublin, not one of them is wearing a skirt or dress of any kind... oops, there is one. Only one. Wearing a tight mini. Funny how our symbols live on long after the reality has left town. Peculiar too, how we use symbols not only to help us get closer to something, but also to help us keep a safe distance. We use them as a kind of shield, so that we don’t have to go to some uncomfortable place. Although only one person in that waiting hall was actually wearing a skirt, about half of us were most likely wearing a bra (see, still keeping my distance). We all know what really distinguishes those who need the men’s room from those who need the lady’s, but for some reason, we still find it vulgar to make any kind of direct reference to it. Where so many outer, symbolic images are loosing their validity in communicating the distinction between the sexes, each trying to catch a live fish with their bare, oily hands, the essence of this gender specific diversity lives on to goad us.

And in case you are ever unsure which one is the lady’s room, it will usually be the one that all the men are standing in front of.

Elephant Baby

2010-01-26T13:14:00.005+01:00

I just beat the elephant in being the land animal with the longest time of being pregos. Yup, my three years (plus) of gestation out does their wimpy 22 months hands down, and yesterday my colorful 14 p. 3 hr. cuddly baby finally saw the light of day. We’ve had a name for a few weeks now, and if you’ve kept up, you’ve gotten the “birth announcements” in advance of the big day and know that we our calling our latest offspring “Brunch-n-More, for body and soul."

Fourteen of us ages three to 43 gathered in rooms we are renting from the CVJM at 10 am yesterday for a continental breakfast, good conversation and a messy adaptation of musical chairs. Everyone got to mix his/her own unique color of choice (no two people could have the same color) and choose a painting utensil (bottle brush, paint brushes, basting brushes etc.). We each started off at a blank Din A3 page and after putting our name on it, had about 5 minutes to begin a picture while music was playing in the background. Each time the music stopped, we rotated to the next picture and painted for a couple of minutes. We did this until we each made our way around to all of the pictures.

As you can see, the pictures are bright, colorful and unique. What one might not see at first glance, however, is what the pictures and indeed the process tells us about our social interactions, the fact of life that we are not an island, not solely responsible or “in-charge” of what ends up on the canvas of our life, and that, whether we want to be or not, we are sometimes major, sometimes minor contributing artists on the canvas of other people’s lives. This was frustrating for Charis, soon to be 12 yrs, who started off with a pretty concrete idea of what she wanted her painting to look like. When little Constantine came and painted a big blue blob on top of her little pop art people, she felt that her picture was ruined. For me it was no new revelation that Charis would have the hardest time of everyone “letting go” of control and finding beauty in something outside of her own narrowly defined objectives.

It was interesting to see that some chose loud colors which they used plenty of, some quieter, warmer colors, which they used more sparingly. Some responded more to what they were presented with in the painting already, choosing to “fix,” enhance, react to, continue something that was already going on, while other’s contribution was an object or pattern carried out through each painting. I believe this says a lot about who we are and how we interact with others.

It was also no surprise to see that the smaller/younger the children were, the less concrete their contributions were and the more “space” they took up on the page, the more likely they were to ignore whatever else was going on, and seemed intent on just getting as much of their color out there as possible. And I have had my years of my “painting” being dominated by the blue blobs!! It takes a real artist to work with those, find the balance of letting the blue blobs fill up space, and helping them to notice the beauty of the other colors and that those other colors need some space too without suffocating the artistic exuberance of the blue blobbers. That takes a lot of creativity and Grace, a lot of grace.

I just finished Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, which I was in the thick of Sunday afternoon after we got home from Brunch-n-More. I have to quote one of the many cool things she says in trying to describe her understanding of Grace. She writes, “Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.” Thank you Ms. Lamott for that bit of color, that brush stroke which describes so well what I’m hoping Brunch-n-More might be. People coming out of isolation, learning to “paint” with each other, give each other enough space to be, but not too much space to monopolize and become mono-color. I guess we do the best we can and hope that when the music stops, we will all get to take a very bright, colorful and unique painting home with us.

Open Letter to Jonathan for His Confirmation

2010-01-08T17:42:00.003+01:00

Dear Jonathan,

Because you didn’t want me to give a long sermon during the confirmation celebration, I had to leave out some of what has been stirring in me in regards to this momentous step you’ve taken, but I would like to share those thoughts with you none the less.

We just celebrated Easter exactly one week before you confirmed your baptism this past Sunday, so the timing for our theme verse is just perfect. After Jesus rose from the dead he appeared to the still disbelieving disciples, Mark 16:15 and told them, “Go into all the world and preach the Good News to all creation.” A lot could be said about the verses that follow this one, but actually, this one short verse captures well what my deepest longings for you are.

“Preach” is the very center of the verse- the verb, without it the whole sentence falls apart. I think for too long I was made to think that, “to Preach the Gospel (Good News) meant to tell people the 4 spiritual laws and get them to sign a religious document, and swear them into our “group.” But that is not what Jesus did when he was on earth. Some might think, that “preaching” is something that only pastors or youth pastors, or only men can do, but that is not true. I don’t think Jesus is talking about giving a well crafted monologue to a group of passive listeners. I believe if we follow Jesus’ example, then “preaching” means that our whole being becomes a message of life, liberation and creation. “Preaching” means choosing to become a Channel of God’s Shalom as we live dialectically in this beautiful but often gruesome world. And that is what I deeply long for your life to be, Jonathan: a channel of God’s, creative, nurturing, protecting and liberating power, which offers others an alternative to enmity, abandonment, greed and violence.

Much more than just an excuse to use the colors Mint and Chocolate-brown as a decorating theme (which was more fun than anyone can possibly imagine:-), the pillars of this verse couldn’t be more relevant or more necessary to our present day if they had first appeared in the news paper yesterday. “Into all the world.... to all creation.” This is very simple, but immensely profound: There are no boundary markers, which delineate that God’s love and goodness has gone far enough! (“if I go to the far side of the sea, even there your love will find me. Ps.). There are no borders that can deny God’s death defying power passage. No one, no country, no ethnic group, no religion and no race has any claim to a monopoly on either God’s alternative to enmity and death or to God’s benevolent nurture and protection from oppression. My deep longing for you Jonathan, is that to the extent that you experience freedom and nurture, forgiveness and grace that those things never end at your borders, never end at your comfort zone, but spill over to your family, your street, your neighborhood, your school, your city. That you not only bring God’s love across the border of your city to your country, but that you break through the boundaries of your culture and have eyes of compassion for the “other” that seems so foreign and distant. God’s love is even not limited to our species! The good news is for all of creation, for every living thing. We are intrinsically connected, not only to each other, but to all of creation. If one part suffers, we all suffer. So, my prayer for you, Jonathan, is that God’s offer to live free of condemnation, alienation and destitution never runs up against any constraints in your life, but instead finds a free passage “into all the world... and to all creation”, because no one should be excluded from the goodness of God.

Only one teeny-tiny word I still want to chew on!

“Go!”

Unfortunately, too much of the message last weekend was “stay!” “Find a comfortable niche in our church, serve here, stay with us!” Jesus does sometimes say stay... but always only for a short time, to pray, to wait for direction, marching orders. Here he is saying a very clear GO! The Good News is not a group we invite people to, but something we bring with us everywhere we Go! Jonathan, you chose this year to “confirm”, reaffirm your child baptism. Baptism is an initiation right, it marks an entrance into something. Not an entrance into faith, faith in Christ is what led to the decision to be baptised/confirmed. But it is also not an entrance into a “group”! Not the “group” LKG (our local church), not the group “Christians,” and certainly not the group with the “stars upon thars!”

You have been confirmed into a MOVEMENT not a club! A movement that is scheming and plotting creative and alternative ways of spreading God’s freeing, nurturing and protecting love to everyone and every living thing everywhere! It is not something that we do as a hobby in our spare time, on Sundays or one night a week at band practice. It is a mighty, rushing river, and once we have put our foot into it, it grabs us with its full force and takes us on a white water adventure that will never bring us back to the same river bank from where we started. There is no “in part.” God doesn’t just toss us His spare change as He is passing by. He identifies Himself in solidarity with all of humanity; He invites us into deep communion with himself; and He invites us to share in all of His wealth! Your baptism was with water from this rushing river, and symbolizes your entrance into a Movement of people who have chosen to channel and translate God’s solidarity, His offer of communion and His divine wealth through every aspect of their being toward the whole world and all of creation without exception!

So what about the subject of this sentence? Gospel: Good News? That is a question I want to leave you with. As you watch this presentation, as you later move through our world, ask yourself, “What is good news for this world?”

Most of the information in this video is taken from the book "Everything Must Change," by Brian Mclaren.

Music is from Ben Harper ; Ben Harper and Jack Johnson

pictures are mostly stolen off the net, but many are from our time in PNG

Our Conservative Children

2009-12-11T17:41:00.006+01:00

My enthusiasm for seasonal decorating is waning. I still love the house to be decorated, I’m just tired of all the work involved. So, I find myself starting later, simplifying the process, cutting corners and generally trying to avoid baking altogether. But my kids will have none of that. Charis and Christa, especially, are my early warning alarm system, sounding off about the time that the first Lebkuchen appear in stores. Lest I forget my true purpose in life and think for even a moment I will escape recreating exactly the aura of Christmas’ past, they implore me to put up the advent stockings in time for the First of December, nag me to finally get around to doing the top of the piano and the bay windows, and with almost photographic memory, insist even on the specific placement of certain Ornaments. This year I was taken aback and began to ponder the deeper psychology of this behavior, after Christa grabbed one of the stockings and forcefully insisted, “We have to hang this one on this door, that is where it was last year. It has to go here!”

“Oooohkaaaay. Weird. What’s that all about?” Suddenly I saw us meticulously following a recipe, aligning all the pieces in just the right place, so that something would happen. A kind of time machine made out of one family’s collection of handmade ornaments, which, if set to exactly the same coordinates as previous Christmas’, would teleport the anticipatory joy, the warm glow, the comfort and good cheer of the past Noel into our experience of the present season. A kind of magic ritual to conjure up for our current pleasure that part of our past experience which pictures and videos were not able to capture. An almost desperate attempt to grab these fond holiday memories by the tail and pull them back up from the abyss of history to once more satisfy our nostalgic longings, conserving them like pickles in the mason jar of our annual holiday rituals. That is when the penny dropped: my children are CONSERVATIVES!!

Unholy Prophecy

2009-11-09T20:28:00.002+01:00

Many are trying to block Healthcare reform by spreading bleak worst case scenarios of the mix of absolute political power and medical technology, extrapolating a dark future to which the legislation could ultimately lead. But I am wary of such prophetic projections, and, speaking from first hand experience myself, I am sure that huge jumps are being made in such calculations. Indeed, I believe it is a grievous misstep to incite fear against legislation being proposed today to HELP people who are CURRENTLY not being properly cared for medically, based solely on the premonition that it COULD lead to abuse of power and loss of needed care for others in some "Brave New World" of the future.

I personally find these tactics not only lacking integrity, but also unbiblical, disobedient to Jesus' teachings, and glorifying the darkness rather than the Father of Light, who has given us a Good News of God's victory in the world to be bearers of. I am mortified at how many Christians are spreading a message of doom and gloom, of the hopeless "inevitability" of man's depravity, using scare tactics and generally being caught up in a fear frenzy instead of being the torchbearers for the transforming power of the cross: A message of Faith, Hope and Love.

Jesus has warned us to not only not be overly confident about the future, but also not to "meddle" in it, not to "hang out there," not to overlook the present good we can do (each day has its own worries), by being too concerned with what evils might be headed our way in the future. My gut feeling tells me that these attempts at "foreseeing" are akin to witchcraft: trying to gain power over present circumstances by grasping beyond the veil, "divining" what only God can know for sure.

I personally can testify that such measures to insure all citizens of their basic medical needs does NOT lead to the kind of government, genetic Cherry picking, that they are suggesting. Wether it be our 90 year old, widowed landlady with no near relatives, who receives regular home visits from her doctor; the 3 year daughter of friends of ours, who has Down Syndrome and is getting the best treatment possible now for Leukemia, or my own expensive MRIs, OP and extensive hospital stays for a preexisting back condition, I can assure you that the Doctor-Patient relationship here in Germany is in good health. Any claims to the contrary are a misrepresentation of the facts, which are easily accessible and verifiable, and lacks the integrity necessary for an honest and serious debate. Here is good information for how healthcare is actually provided for now in the other industrialized countries (of which America is the only one without universal coverage) http://www.healthpaconline.net/rekindling/Articles/Glasser.htm

(another two good articles describing Germany's system can be linked to from here .

I was very happy to find this morning that the bill in the house passed, and happier still to find that a good band of Democrats (64), led by Rep. Stupak, used their leadership to block federal funding for abortions and still get a bill passed that would make a tremendous impact on the lives of 36 Million Americans. So, again, it is just not accurate to make claims that "Democrats" are supportive of abortion loopholes. A good bloc of 40 fought hard for the amendment, 64 voted for it, and it was the only Democratic amendment that Pelosi allowed on the floor (to the vexation of abortion advocate party members). Post article

In addition, as reported by the Wash. Post:

"The complex package would affect virtually every American and fundamentally alter vast swaths of the health insurance industry. Starting next year, private insurers could no longer deny anyone coverage based on preexisting conditions, place lifetime limits on coverage or abandon people when they become ill. Insurers would be required to disclose and justify proposed premium increases to regulators, and could not remove adult children younger than 27 from their parents' family policies.

For the elderly, the group that has been most skeptical of Obama's initiative, the House package would immediately offer discounts on prescription drugs and reduce a gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage, closing it entirely by 2019. Uninsured people who cannot get coverage could join temporary high-risk insurance pools, and unemployed workers would be permitted to keep their COBRA benefits until the public plan and insurance exchanges started in 2013." Post article

These are good things, and they are long over due in a Nation that still claims to be leading the world in Democracy. I truly hope that we can bring the political will of the people to bear on the unjust practices of the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries who have become the bullies on the block in our time zone, one of the "worries" of our "today," which we can legitimately be concerned about.

(Similar post)

Germany's Health Care System

2009-10-29T11:48:00.003+01:00

I wanted to write something explaining Germany's Health Care system, and perhaps clear up some false assumptions and claims being made about "Socialized Medicine." Thankfully once I started to look for information to fill in my own blanks, I ran across these two great articles by a Professor at Princeton who gives not only a concise and informative (what we really need to know) summary of Germany's Universal Health Care Coverage, but also highlights the antipodal assumptions of our two countries' approaches to filling this fundamental human need. So, thank you Uwe Reinhardt for saving me a ton of work.

1. Health Reform Without a Public Plan: The German Model

2. Germany's Health Care Plan: It's Not The American Way

I’ll Have Those Words With Ketchup, Please.

2009-10-26T10:13:00.002+01:00

For the seventeen years I’ve been living in Germany, my favorite way of describing the difference between Americans and Germans was to use the train-station illustration. If a German and an American were waiting for a train in a station with no announcements and no signs on the platforms, the German would sit until kingdom come before he got on a train that might be going the wrong direction. “The American,” I have, until now, proclaimed confidently, “would get on the first train out of there and then hop back off again if he found it taking him somewhere he didn’t want to go.” But thanks to the current debate on Healthcare reform, I have had to eat those words without any sauce to help them go down. Where did all those rugged, brave Americans disappear to? What has happened to their adventuresome spirit? What awful specter has struck this paralyzing fear into the hearts of my fellow countrymen?

During numerous failed attempts to convince friends and loved ones of the merits of getting on the Healthcare Reform Train, I believe I have caught glimpses of the apparition which is haunting them: The Spook of Slippery Slope. The logic is always the same: “If we take a left at this intersection, we will end up in Communist China.” “If you follow this to its logical extreme, you will see how dangerous such a first step actually is.” “Give ‘em a hand, they’ll take off your whole arm.” The most extreme example of such arguments came before Obama’s election in a letter from James Dobson from the year 2012 of an eventual Obama administration: A worst case scenario of all loathed liberal ideology; a conservative’s “Nightmare on Main street!”

Unfortunately, the scare tactics haven’t disappeared with election defeat. Blocking the way to meaningful reform is a large minority of Americans who appear to be stuck in this ideological cul-de-sac. In continuing to defer to some extrapolated future nemesis, this “un-American” brand of conservatism is not only holding the country hostage in “juncture station,” it is also dodging its responsibility for the actual and current suffering in America and is eluding the necessary systemic evaluation and reform of our run away free market. These voices of caution might imagine that they are trying to save Americans from some future calamity which reform would bring upon us, but many Americans are living through tragedy now, for which our present, undeniably flawed healthcare system is responsible. The fox is in the coop with a hen in his mouth, and some would warn us to barricade the farm house against an inevitable poultry revolution!

Of course there are “slippery slopes”: If I open a bag of chocolate chip cookies, chances are I will eat them all, and it is probably not a good idea to try heroin even once. But reality rarely fleshes out this law of extremism. When I leave the house and hang a left, I usually make a right before too long, and then another left and so on, until I get to Starbucks, to work or to my hairdresser. Most of us, most of the time, don’t dump the whole bottle of Tabasco into the chili, don’t place all of our money on one horse or press the petal to the metal just because the speedometer says we can. Most of us, most of the time, live our lives within the bounds of moderation and are better off for it. I have every confidence, that after hanging a right eight years ago, Americans can safely make this little left turn toward a pronounced healthcare reform guaranteeing everyone affordable quality coverage without waking up to find ourselves on a non-stop train to Animal Farm.

Redemption is A Pink Chair with a Floral Seat Cover.

2009-10-12T15:35:00.007+02:00

I guess she was only doing the natural thing. How many times had she been in the car, when we stopped at a pile of junk in front of some building to look for something that seemed “interesting?” The three old wardrobes (two of which we have passed on to friends or family), tables, fold up chairs, old wood, stools and even picture frames are now a part of our home ensemble thanks to a habit both Jan and I have picked up from our parents: scavenging! Don’t anybody get grossed out, we don’t go through people’s garbage cans, just the bulky furniture and old “stuff” that people don’t want or need anymore. What in the states would probably be a sure sign someone had been evicted, is called “Sperrmüll” here in Germany. We clean out our basement about once a year, call the city’s waste management department and make an appointment for our stuff to be picked up. We then organize it into very tidy piles of metal, wood, and plastic the night before. The pile usually inspires the neighbors to do a bit of spring cleaning themselves, and so the pile grows (and then inevitably shrinks a little again) by morning.

One day this past spring, Christa, my then 7 year old, still 2nd grader, comes home to tell me that she passed by one of these piles on her way home from school. “There are some chairs.” I “should go check them out.” I guess I was really busy that afternoon, because I didn’t squeeze in even a few minutes for my compulsive hobby, wasn’t swept away by the usual fantasy flow, that maybe someone, unbeknownst to them, was throwing away a valuable retro-designer piece. Next afternoon my then 7 year old, still in 2nd grade, with a heavy school bag on her back, on an unusually warm day, comes home carrying one of these chairs!

If I had fallen in love with the chair, I would have rushed out and retrieved the other three, but I didn’t. Realizing what Christa had done, however, I knew that I was going to have to get creative with this chair. My little dumpstering daughter was just too adorable. Of course I took my time getting around to the project, so it wasn’t until months later, once we got back from our summer vacation in England and still had lots of good weather for working outside, that I got to work filling out the dents, sanding, spray painting, removing the nasty layers of fabric and then covering the seat with a fresh new, but retro floral fabric from Ikea. The neighbors were intrigued. I love the chair now, and regret that I didn’t go back to get the other three when I had the chance.

What took one sentence to describe, tho, took hours and hours to actually do. Our “new,” “free” chair wasn’t free at all. The swath of new fabric wasn’t costly, but the two cans of spray paint weren’t cheap, and if I would charge a decent hourly rate (a local charges 30€ an hour), few could afford to buy the chair for the amount I would feel obliged to write on a price tag. One could say, that a chair which had lost all of what value it might have once had for its original or previous owner, has become priceless to its new owner (me) primarily because of her own attitude and actions toward the afore mentioned furniture. This activity of making a renewed, creative and significant investment in an object, a system or a person, so as to reclaim its lost or inherent value, or uncover its possible/potential value is what I call Redemption. It is one of the most beautiful words in the English language, an immensely profound reality, a “deep magic” existing since even before the foundations of the world. Redemption is the ultimate joker; it’s the ace up a sleeve. I feel mischievous, almost cunning, when I have succeeded in turning something found on a garbage pile into something beautiful and functional, like I’ve circumvented some ubiquitous consumer principle; outwitted the odious constricting tentacles of decay, deterioration, and yes, even death itself.

The Redemption Reality offers us a way to view not only broken and unwanted things, but broken and unwanted people, broken relationships, dysfunctional systems and miserable circumstances. For a Redeemer, each is a challenge to be creative, make a significant and personal investment and cheekily break the rules of death and decay in order to make something beautiful and of immeasurable value. In this vein, beauty truly is in the eye of the Redeemer. I am immensely pleased that my daughter seems to already be infected with this kind of foresight.

cara luft in concert, 25.10.09, 18.30, liliom

2009-10-09T20:20:00.003+02:00

herzliche einladung zu einem konzert mit der kanadischen folk-rock sängerin

CARA LUFT
http://www.caraluft.com

So, 25. Okt 09 / 18.30 Uhr
LILIOM, unterer graben 1, augsburg

 
vorprogramm:

JAN FISCHER
http://www.myspace.com/janfischer66

karten für den abend gibt es im LILIOM oder bei lee fischer
(tel. 7479914/outofaustin@googlemail.com)

I Just LOVE People Like This!!!!

2009-06-18T17:09:00.007+02:00

This guy is just bursting at the seams with creative social projects. He started a Ricksha-service, and then turned it over to students. He came up with a bicycle version of the ice-cream truck, and turned that over to someone (with MINT-CHOCOLATE CHIP! a rarity!). He has worked as a spinning trainer. He was taking a course to be a city tour guide, when he got the idea to rev. up Augsburg’s image by initiating the worlds longest city tour! It lasted 2010 minutes (basically the whole weekend) and was a huge hit. He organized a semi-successful program for the youth of his area who could earn points for doing helpful services around the neighborhood, doing chores for elderly neighbors, clean up, various things, and then be able to “spend” those points at different stores in the neighborhood. All this from a banker turned stay-at-home-dad! And I haven’t even gotten to the part that really gets me excited!

Living in Oberhausen, a neighborhood in Augsburg, where people from over 70 countries live door to door with little interaction between them, Bernd Beigel was wracking his head trying to come up with ideas of how to help especially the women overcome their isolation and become more integrated into their multi-cultural neighborhood within their new country. He held language courses using methods similar to those of TEFL (using pictures/photo, real life trips to stores, doctors), and although they were well attended, the women dispersed back into their own isolated worlds after the course was finished. Looking for something that would offer these immigrant women an integrated community over a longer time-frame, he found it in the one, world-wide common denominator: food! The one thing that connects women everywhere, so Beigel, is cooking!

Advertising in neighborhood kindergartens and schools for recipes from their home countries for an international cook book, and volunteers to form a cooking group to test the recipes, got a resounding response - over a 100 recipes, of which 60 recipes from 30 countries were published in the Oberhausen 5 Star Cookbook. But this is only the beginning of the story! The group of 15 women who formed the cooking group to test the recipes displayed such enthusiasm, initiative, team spirit, and appetite for learning new skills, despite the language barriers, that Beigel sought ways to expand the integration project. The women were trained in the “how to’s” of a professional kitchen in a rented kitchen, and with the city’s Social Minister pulling a few strings (are we ever sad that he was replaced when the new elected mayor took office), they began cooking lunches at the main school in the neighborhood for well over a 100 kids and locals every weekday. The Kulturküche (Culture Kitchen) was born!

The 15 women from 9 different nations working on a part time bases, with two working full time, have since expanded their range and now include cooking for a second school, an afternoon Cafe, a Jam (as in strawberry) factory, and a professional Catering-service! (The one we engaged for Jonathan’s Confirmation Lunch). The whole project just thrills me to death, because it brings together so many things that are close to my heart and addresses the particular social problems that have been becoming a growing concern to me.

I mean, way to go for bringing together compassion (seeing, and being moved, stirred to action by someone else’s plight or suffering) and creativity (out of the box problem solving, trying something new)! What a rare breed! Here is a man who had eyes to SEE these otherwise invisible women and the conflicted situations they are in: NO money, completely isolated by a language barrier from the host culture as well as the multiple cultures around them, often left alone with their children, and little to zero self-confidence or independence. These women needed to learn German, gain at least some financial freedom if not full independence, regain their self-confidence and be included in true community. And that is exactly what this project enables.

Mr. Beigl makes a conscious effort to organize the cooking teams into a good mix of nationalities, trying his best to avoid putting more than one woman of a nationality together for the same shift. This way they are forced to use German as the common language for communicating. Katja had been in Germany for years when she began at the Culture Kitchen one and a half years ago, and even Mr. Beigl wasn’t aware of just how little German she understood when she started. Thanks to the safe group of women, who were more or less in the same boat, and a language dictionary, she now has a good grasp of the language and is improving her skill steadily. Finally being able to communicate with offices, schools, doctors, sales people herself, instead of being dependent on her husband and children, has not only given her greater independence, but has boosted her confidence and self-esteem as well.

A Turkish woman, perhaps in her mid-forties, is now able to afford what for many years seamed an unreachable dream: getting her drivers license! Both the learning material for the extensive theoretical exam, as well as the many hours of payed lessons behind the wheel in preparation for the practical exam can run up to a couple thousand Euro in Germany and were well beyond her family’s budget. Seda is not only proud of herself for accomplishing this long sought for goal, but she is also enjoying her new found freedom and independence. A woman from South Africa is saving money, in order to return to her homeland, now that her husband has left her and their four children. Two and half months ago, Mr. Beigl was approached by social services and asked if he would consider incorporating a war trauma victim from Serbia into his colorful catering service. (Sergio) makes the first male employee in the Kulturküche and is already well integrated into the group of women.

Because Beigl’s main focus is to address what he sees as the social concerns in his neighborhood, and less on just generating profits, his hiring and scheduling practices veer considerably from the beaten road of the “anything and everything for profit” corporate practices. For starters, hiring a bunch of people who can’t talk to each other definitely won’t make the best sellers book of must do managing tips. But the women, most of whom have children, also enjoy flexible schedules and a relaxed work climate, so that when their children are home from school or need to go to the doctors, the mothers can easily switch shifts or bring their kids to work with them, finding odd jobs for them to do as well. Child labor?! Not in the least. I am growing increasingly suspicious, that the separation of work and family life that has prevailed in our industrialized era is an unhealthy dichotomy and is one of the major contributors to many of our societal ills. But that is a blog for another day. For now, I see the opportunities and the climate that the Kulturküche is offering the women in this multi-national community to be strengthening and empowering the family rather than putting a strain on its vulnerable seems.

And the Bavarian Minister of State for Family and Community, Christa Stewens, seems to agree with me. She presented Bernd Beigl with the Bavarian Award of Women’s Advocacy for Best Practice last October. And wouldn’t you know it, tho Beigl’s initial motive was not to start a lucrative business, the idea of an international catering service seems to have filled a gap in the market here in Augsburg. The Kulturküche has several engagements weekly to keep track of, and is continually expanding its range. And the Banker turned stay-at-home dad is not close to being out of ideas. Not only is he hoping to expand the Kulturküche to another neighborhood this fall, but he is also looking for a location to open up an international cafe, where the cultures can find not only a place to meet, but also a space to embark on an array of other crafty projects, a sewing group being one idea of many.

I am putting this guy on my Boaz list. (if you haven’t a clue what that might be, you’ll have to blow the dust off your Bible, or go buy/steal one, and read the book of Ruth in the Old Testament). Since Boaz is probably my favorite dude in the bible, this is a pretty honorable list, and in all honesty, not too many people have actually made their way on to it. But Bernd Beigl is on it for sure... I just LOVE people like that!!!

Dupont Circle

2009-06-09T20:23:00.007+02:00

It seems kind of kooky, but I have lots of fond memories of Dupont Circle. My friend Niki and I, who were shopaholics even at the tender age of ten and eleven, loved to go to “Nicely Nicely,” a little shop with just the kinds of pretty trinkets and colorful shnick-shnack an eleven year old girl can embellish her fantasy with. I would smuggle this wonderful world out of the store by purchasing the tiniest, and cheapest item I could find. At home this small and insignificant purchase would swell and release its magic, transporting that entire store into my otherwise uninspiring room. The magic never lasted very long, so we made frequent trips to Dupont Circle, or to Georgetown, which also had many such shops.

The middle school (6th thru 8th grade) I went to was on the other, better, side of NW DC, and to get there, I had to take the #42 bus down to Dupont Circle and transfer to the D2 bus. On the return tour, the bus stop for the #42 was right in front of Kramer Books and Afterwards. Obviously a book store, but it was also a cafe, restaurant. If I hadn’t already spent my piteous allowance at the penny candy store across from the school, I sometimes could afford to buy an ice cream at Kramers. Mostly, though, we liked flipping through the picture books and magazines (especially in the Sex and Marriage section), the smell of coffee, the clatter of plates and glasses, the swish of the waiter’s apron as they passed by with delicious looking treats on their tray. Sometimes we even caught a later bus, just so we could stay longer. This was when I first knew what I wanted to be when I grew up: someone who can afford to go to breakfast at a cafe just like Kramers, drink coffee and talk all morning long!

I haven’ t a clue if it is still true, but back then Dupont Circle had the Metro stop with the longest escalator down to the underground subway, and it was at the top of this escalator that two historical moments in my life converged. My first and only blind date ever, and the loss of my... gullibility (ok, partial loss, to the joy of my children, I’m still pretty gullible).

The blind date wasn’t humiliating, but it was no winner either. I had been to Europe twice at that point in my mid 20’s, mostly in England and Germany, but also doing my own version of the summer Euro-rail tour. I never attempted to hit every major city between Stockholm and Rome, but instead visited friends in different countries and stayed with them for longer periods of time, getting the feel for life in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, etc. The blind date was set up by my college roommate and was the brother of her best friend, who studied German and apparently also had a “thing” for all things German. He (name long gone) had invited me to see a German movie, with subtitles, playing at the Goethe Institute on 19th, I think, just behind Kramers somewhere. The movie was a bomb. Some advent-guard 60’s Psycho movie that seemed more like a recording of someone’s bad dream than any real artwork, but no harm done, he and it were quickly forgotten.

What I didn’t forget so quickly, was what happened while I was looking for this person I had never seen before at our meeting spot at the entrance of the Dupont Circle Metro station. Since I wasn’t charging past like the other commuters, I was easy prey for the young pawn who was being payed to pass out flyers. It was a glossy, designer flyer, eye catching and trust inducing with a picture of the sweetest old women you’ve ever seen. On it were several points simply explaining why I should vote against the proposal to introduce deposit bottles in DC. I wish I could remember all of the silly points on this otherwise very serious looking pamphlet, but I can only remember the tear wrenching claim that frail old ladies, like the one pictured, would have to carry those heavy deposit bottles back to the store, and we couldn’t be so heartless as to impose such a hardship on the elderly.

And that was it! My moment of awakening: the world is evil and full of liars, and even in broad day light at Dupont Circle, you had to be on your toes or someone was going to try and pull the wool over your eyes. Growing up in Adams Morgan, I knew about being on my toes and what dangers were lurking in the neighborhood, but not until that day did I understand that even little old ladies and white people in nice suits would take me for bad, if I let them! The really sad part is, that if I hadn’t spent over a year in Europe, witnessing first hand what a perfectly normal part of society the concept of deposit bottles are, I probably would have fallen for the glossy lies on that flier!

I haven’t thought about that day in a long time, and probably would have forgotten about the blind date altogether, if it hadn’t been for the recent debate and propaganda campaign against Nationalized Health care. Until that day at Dupont Circle, I had assumed that “propaganda” was something the Russians did, a Russian word even, which we don’t need in our vocabulary, because Americans tell the truth! But hearing of the recent parade of videos depicting Canadians dissatisfied with their health care, I can almost feel that glossy printed page in my hand, and I am on my guard. Again, I think I would myself be easily duped (it all sounds so convincing and compassionate), if it wasn’t for my own experience these last 17 years of living overseas with “no worries” health care, and the testimony of the same from many, many others I know in countries with Health Care systems superior to that of the States. It seems like a no-brainer to me, but I guess there are a lot of people who are still falling for the glossy fliers and biased advertising. I can live without deposit bottles, after all, you do have to carry them back to the store, but I can’t live without health insurance, not in todays world of high medical costs. What will it take to get people to stop being so gullible?!

Here are a few links to what I believe is real information about Canadian health care. Please ignore the first paragraph of the first link, she wigs out on Republicans. I know that is rot, but the following points she makes are good ones I thinks. I had a third link on here, but there was really only one sentence about the survey of Canadians which found that 91% are happy with their health care.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/francis/archive/2009/05/12/health-care-lies-about-canda.aspx

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/mythbusting-canadian-health-care-part-i

Jonathan's Confirmation

2009-05-04T14:55:00.014+02:00

April 19th we celebrated Jonathan’s confirmation (Lutheran version of Bar Mitzvah, without any of the really challenging parts!) with close friends and family from out of town. I’m posting this only now, because I waited for the photo’s from the “official” photographer, who is to thank for documenting the ceremony for the families. After the church ceremony, we celebrated with a lunch and afternoon tea in a newly renovated old school house, which has been converted to a neighborhood, multi generational community center. Among many other events/programs, they encourage the performing arts by hosting Sunday matinée concerts. Jan and I have performed one of our “story concerts” there several weeks ago, getting a positive review in our local paper. In addition to the great location for our party of about 40, we had the opportunity of engaging a catering service of which I have become a huge fan. I will write more about it in my next blog, because I am so impressed with it and with the man who started it. Fitting to our “into all the world,” international theme, we had a buffet with hot and cold dishes from a myriad of countries mostly in the southern hemisphere, the recipes of which stemmed from the home countries of the women who cooked them.

We kicked off the party with a champagne reception and game. Upon arrival everyone got a paper with a country and pertinent information about that country taped to their back. Then everyone had to ask yes or no questions to try and find out what country they had, asking no one person more than two questions. When everyone was let into the main dining hall, they found their table by looking for the one labeled with the continent of their country and got a “grab bag” of table mates. We also had a large, blank map posted to one wall, in which guests where asked to write in any and all of the countries they were able to name - we, as a group, filled in almost all of them- and then they could also use the post-it arrows to mark all the countries they had already been to or lived in. As you can see from the pictures, our World theme was carried thru the entire decoration as well.

Through the afternoon, however, Jonathan was the center of attention, and not only was he (and we even more so) overwhelmed with an abundance of very generous gifts, but he was also the subject of a fun quiz show, was serenaded by little Alex singing, “He’s got the whole world in His hands,” and was featured in a back drop of a running slide presentation with accompanying background music. Also his very creative God-parents, who are long time friends and have been very engaged in both Jonathan’s and Charis’ lives since their baptism, staged a couple of gigs. Stephen performed a song on guitar, and Hella peddled a sundry of costume hats and accessories for guests to choose from for their big photo debut behind a large antique frame, thus giving Jonathan a comical documentation of every guest.

Below are pictures of the day, and HERE is an open letter from me to Jonathan and a presentation (here the extended english version) which was shown as the climax of our theme that afternoon.

We are very thankful for the presence and participation of all of our friends and family at this celebration, and are even more touched and grateful for the involvement of so many in the lives of our children! We are truly blessed.

Good Friday

2009-04-10T18:09:00.003+02:00

The streets are crowded with pointed fingers,

open windows, scornful sneers

self-righteousness breathing past every

curtain sheer

Heads tossed back, noses high,

lips are tightly curled and wry

Eyes are squinted, scornful, wild,

darting, dancing like a lusty fire

Under shade of shadow,

dark and night

my heart is pounding, racing, aching,

slipping hastily out of sight

Endless are the alleys- cursed this

wretched winding maze

No safe place for me – no where to

escape their dreadful, daunting gaze

Down and down,

swept out through the city gates

by their stinging jeers, “how dare you

stain our Holy place.”

One against a vast universe

One in an endless void

One roaming in a haunted silence

thoughts scoring a reckless noise

One tired of straining, reaching out

for something to hold

awkwardly stumbling through this

blackened cold

Ascending rough and jagged

steep incline

Hope for friendly years long poured out

like bitter wine

Shameful memories taunt,

painful pictures flash

as knees against these craggy rocks

are dashed

The climb is over as the ruthless sun

begins its rule

breathless I stare at the city

set and shimmering like a jewel

How fair and admirable you seem

taken at a far off glance

With veil of masked perfection, silence, and

denial, you weave a master dance

But underneath the lying silken cover

lurks controlling, condemning an

unappeasable, moody lover

How I strived to curt you,

paying much too dear a cost

I played my hand at your game

but like a fool have lost

And now from limb and geist

Have gone the fight

And fitful, tardy sleep relieves

this early hour of its deceitful sight

All at once my every sinew,

muscle bound

wrenched from rest by a

nightmarish sound

The sharp and blood-thirsty cracking

of a whip

mean and menacing shouts

from a battery of mocking lips

fueled to a frenzy by their

righteous cause

slandering the heretic

for breaking their laws

Fear fraught and horror stricken

I lie low and frozen to the ground

Panic struck and heart sickened

to have so soon been found

Cringing, shrinking, wishing every past wrong

would disappear

all the while the shouting mob

draws near

Knowing all is lost

I hold my breath and wait

for the scourging blow

the culmination of their hate

❈

But what is this?

One man alone so bold

stands with outstretched arms

to bid this band of fury hold?

And what such a man is he?

My wet and wishful eyes can barely see

this foolish act which may

yet set me free

Beyond belief he stands exposed

and stays an army in its path

Suspending comprehension,

he remains composed

as he consumes their awful wrath

Bruised and battered his skin in tatters

and soaked in blood red

Taunted and tired his honor mired

a cruel and caustic crown upon his head

Solemn and sober he endures

their morbid glee

Sovereign and serene as they

nail him to a tree

Such noble assembly

does not stop to rest

they hurl their insults and abuse

they jeer and jest

hang a wooden sign

as a last assault

King of The Jews

they credit to his fault

But naked outstretched limbs

withstand the fury of disgrace

and low and tortured whisper

commands his final case.

Arms open wide

invite an enemy’s embrace

as stolen breath

requites this ignorant, lynching mob

with amazing grace,

Winding back up through

the city’s malevolent maze

I will never forget the tears,

the blood, his benevolent gaze

Love has subdued hate,

subverted violence, swallowed shame

and needing no one’s permission

I am free to do the same

"We're All Gonna Die"

2009-03-03T14:40:00.004+01:00

Just found this link to a cool project (click on the title):

"100 meter long panorama picture of Berlin displayed online

Photographer Simon Hoegsberg spent 20 days on a bridge in Berlin taking photos of pedestrians from the same perspective resulting in a fascinating 100 meter long panorama image. The project with the rather gloomy title, “We’re all gonna die” captures the number of different styles and variety of people in Germany’s capital. The 100 meter long panorama photo features 178 people and was shot from a spot on a railroad bridge on Warschauer Strasse in the summer of 2007.

The Copenhagen-based photographer writes on his website that most people did not even seem to know that their picture was being taken.

The freelance photographer is no stranger to unique projects. In winter 2004, he packed a few belongings including his camera, pen and a notebook and set out to travel the 1700 kilometers from Copenhagen to the Mediterranean Sea with just 14 euros in his pocket." Young Germany

Bowel Movement

2009-01-21T11:28:00.007+01:00

Forgive me for moving back in time here. When Jan came back from spending a few days with the kids at his parents this fall, and brought with him the delicious fruits of what has become a traditional father - son autumn photographic outing, I was quite touched and knew that I wanted to share more than just the pictures themselves. But, as I confessed in my last blog entry, I let my Christmas addiction squeeze out any time for such reflections, and am just now finally allowing them to surface.

Loading this latest batch of pictures up into iphoto, I became aware of how familiar these German countryside vignettes are: rolling hills, each topped with their own fortress, like a cherry on a sundae; apple orchards; steep hillside vineyards and the beloved town of Beilstein, with its long history reaching deep into the Middle ages, the traces of which are slowly disappearing. These are some of the themes of which there are countless versions in albums on our shelves dating back to long before I ever even met Jan and his family. This is a world which father and son have captured again and again, from every corner of our four seasons, framed by an ever maturing and changing perspective, through the lens of an ever advancing instrument, first on slides, then paper and now digitally. This is a world which a father loves and a love, which this father has passed on to his son. Precious.

But the love that Jan’s father has for his romantic surroundings goes deeper than the hobby he shares with his son of reducing it to two dimensional images stored on our hard drive. It is a love that is demonstrated in the various other projects that my father-in-law has engaged in over at least the last 20 years. Some of these projects connect him to the organization Friends of the Earth (BUND für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland) and have their beginnings in the mid- 80’s, when the Fischer’s Protestant church held seminars and sermons promoting Intentional living with an emphasis on Peace, Justice and Creation Protection. With a strong urge to get practical and inspiration coming from another area in Germany (Marktdorf), Jan’s father, Klaus, and two of his acquaintances set out to preserve natural habitats for local fowl, small field animals and useful insects by giving local farmers an incentive to maintain their organic fruit orchards.

What began as a group of about fifteen people gathering 5 tons of apples from organic orchards themselves and financing the cost of cider production for consumption within their small community, has turned into the Steinkautz label, which produces up to 350,000 liters of organic apple cider/juice per year and is sold in a variety of stores in the wider area. There are more than a hundred organic fruit orchards scattered over an area of approximately 20 kilometer, together comprising 2-300 hektare (about 800 acres) natural habitat for some 50-60 species of birds plus hedgehogs, wasps, bees, polecat and hazel dormouse, to name just some of the creatures enjoying this natural environment. To motivate farmers to maintain these less productive organic orchards as opposed to the low growing, chemically protected and fertilized plantations, the Steinkautz Natural Habitat project, a non-profit organization, ensures farmers a much higher price for their fruit, when they sign to follow strict organic growing policies. They have just recently celebrated their 20th anniversary.

Related to this project, are the regular inspections of the orchards and the nesting facilities that have been placed in the apple trees. It is a real treat for our children, when they can accompany their grandfather on winter afternoon “house cleaning” duty! They eagerly take turns clamoring up the ladder to inspect and sweep out the nesting houses, being careful to first check for dead eggs, which, when found, are collected like trophies.

In the nearby hills of Prevorst, Klaus supports an amphibian protection initiative, which has erected a system of fences and tunnels to keep the frogs, toads, and salamanders (newts?) from being killed by traffic when they make their way to the ponds to lay eggs. Jan’s father is part of a team which checks the fences, makes sure the tunnels are free of leafage, and counts the survivors from year to year to determine the success of their methods and alter their strategy as needed.

My father in law is also a history buff, as the many boxes and armoires full of historical family documents and photos substantiate. Having saved at least three, 300 year old houses in his home town from destruction, it is a given that he is also a member of a German-wide organization for conserving historical landmarks. But I won’t say anything more about that, because the story of Klaus’ houses is my favorite story, and it will one day get a blog entry all of its own!

But Klaus’s charity is not limited to bugs and birds and buildings. For almost 4 years, Jan’s father has been the local coordinator for an initiative to offer affordable, practical assistance to the elderly or infirm called Citizen for Citizen. It is a program of volunteers who are listed with specific skills or services, and whom can be called upon when needed, for example, to drive someone to the doctor, fix a sink, or just come by with some chicken soup. The recipients pay a small fee, but nothing close to the cost on the open market. In the Fischer’s town of Beilstein and the neighboring town, Abstadt, my father in law coordinates 60 volunteers, who meet about 800-900 service-requests per year (although this number has declined more recently).

It is always a slippery business to second guess someone else’s motives, and I don’t want to be presumptuous here. However, through the many years I have been a part of this family, I have come to witness my husband’s father as a deeply compassionate person. He is someone who seems to feel pain himself, when others, even the smallest creatures, suffer due to loss, illness, erosion, decay, physical discomfort or pain. It sometimes appears that his very insides churn and tangle with turmoil at the thought of someone else’s misery. In fact, this is exactly the meaning of one of the Greek words in the New Testament used to describe Jesus’ response to human suffering.

Splanchna means inward parts, entrails, bowels, and is metaphorical for the seat of emotion. When someone “splanchnizomai,” literally their entrails are churning, their bowels are moving in response to someone else’s suffering. And usually always this churning produces some course of action meant to relieve the observed suffering. When I reflect on my father-in-law’s acts of compassion, I can’t help but think of Paul’s declaration that all of creation is groaning and awaiting salvation...from atrophy, entropy, disunity, erosion, decay, death, alienation, abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence. (19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Romans 8). If this is the case, then it certainly couldn’t hurt if we all had more bowel-movement.

I am so thankful that my children have a grandfather who shows them by example how precious all life is, that we are connected with our environment as well as with each other, and that we each can do a small part to counter the forces of alienation, exploitation, decay and disconnection in the landscapes and communities around us.

Christmas Junkie

2009-01-06T02:25:00.004+01:00

Something just doesn't seem right when one holiday, even if it is my favorite one, takes up a whole two months! Do the math, one sixth of the year! I mean, my life is busy enough without holidays, and then this one comes crashing in on our existence like a comet from outer space. So much for the cute little star of Bethlehem, this thing has gotten huge and leaves a crater in its wake!! I'm writing this looking at the most perfect Christmas tree we have ever had (a far shot better than the ones we crafted out of two trees in PNG with saws and drills), an obligatory manger in a decorated bay window and christmas cards on the mantel. I can boast of a tasty turkey with all the mandatory side dishes; a few, not all, of the sweets I planned to bake; homemade Christmas presents; a dining room that could be right out of a swedish Home & Garden; even funky new handmade decorations in front of our house (well, they would look good if they were in front of any other house); and a merry time was had by all (including my parents who spent Christmas with us for the first time in 15 years!). But I'm exhausted! and I am asking myself, where did those two months go?

I only have myself to blame (and the Home & Garden). I don't know why all my artistic inspiration and zealousness seems to be concentrated on Christmas, but that original hand size snow ball has quickly rolled up into a large, unmanageable snow boulder of ideals, promises, expectations, new craft and deco ideas, obligations, hopes and demands. Inevitably all of those things add up to more than the amount of time usually left over to honor any holiday sanely. The temptation, then, is to start earlier and be more organized (how many years have I been vowing to do that?), but we wouldn't want to take that approach with our bank accounts. If we have used up the money alloted for one thing, we wouldn't want to just start using the money alloted for food or rent to cover the excess. I think my Grandmother must have spent at least ten months out of the year on Christmas, and with ten children and 28 grandchildren, no one can fault her for it. But I don't come close to having that kind of excuse for my over indulgence. Two months for Christmas is too much. Something's gotta give!

The problem is that I feel strapped to a horse that will never tire (to quote Sting).

I'm a Christmas junkie.

I've bought into the storybook version of Christmas lock, stock and barrel, and I try to recreate it every year. It captures my imagination like no other holiday, maybe because it involves many of my favorite things: paper, candles, ivy, wreaths, pretty things, yummy smells, chocolate, and “brown paper packages tied up with string.” Maybe it is an addiction to Anticipation itself, a feeling of something better is yet to come, the tension that builds and presses against the rib cages until you feel that your whole chest cavity will burst. Maybe it is some childhood deficiency (what in my life isn’t motivated by my childhood deficiency?), zeroing in on this particular season to gorge itself on the fancy and illusion that all will be well if i am just able to bake enough cookies to feed the 100+ kids and parents divided among my three children’s classes and sport clubs, and still have enough left over for Christmas day, the relatives, the neighbors and new years eve; write cards to every significant individual that has come and gone in my biography; get the right Christmas tree (very high on my priorities); don’t disappoint anyone at the gift opening ceremony; take the turkey out of the oven on time and make a good gravy. This year i decided to test my bionic powers* and “supervised” the kids, who made more than several sophisticated Christmas presents for their Grandparents and aunts. I had myself going there for a while, but I am now convinced that I have not even one bionic part in me!(my kids, on the other hand, are all machine!)

I bet this is exhausting just reading about all this! I’m sorry to put you through it, but I wanted to go public with my addiction. It’s the best thing for us junkies to do, so that others can steer clear of any kind of co-dependency behavior. I’ve already begun forming a rehabilitation strategy for next year:

finish the christmas poem i started a few years ago, which explores the dilemma of Mary’s pregnancy from 3 different angles.

celebrate advent as a family (we totally missed it this year) once a week (every night, as we have done some years is quite ambitious for someone just climbing onto the wagon), by naming and informing ourselves about one particular form of darkness (injustice, suffering) in our world each week.

Ask ourselves: what does, “I bring tidings of peace on earth and good will toward man!” mean to the people in those respective “dark” situations?

Ask ourselves if there is anyone in our lives toward whom we need to take a creative first step of reconciliation

(to be prepared well in advance)Find out if there is anyone, whose “world” we, as a family, can enter incarnationally to offer comfort, compassion and companionship.

These are just a few rough ideas I’ve had so far. Doing this well might cut into my baking time, squeeze out a few of my shopping trips, and limit the number of new decorations i make next Christmas, and even then I’m not sure I’ll fit it all into one month. Come to think of it, it might just take me all year to prepare for Christmas this way.

Incase I fall off the wagon, you know your part: don’t eat my cookies, send back any Christmas cards I might have sent (unless there is a poem about Mary and her obnoxious neighbors in it) and don’t remark about how delightfully seasonal my house looks. The tree is still a “non- negotiable.”

* i know that this reference dates me as being just shy of prehistoric, but the Bionic Woman/Man shows were far better than Superman/woman, and I am not ashamed to admit it!

Can We Talk About This Like Family?

2008-11-01T12:22:00.008+01:00

I know that my relatives don’t usually talk about politics within the family, and this is because we all know that probably most of us fall on one side or the other of either political extreme, and those kinds of discussions don’t make the family reunion week at the beach any more fun. So, at the risk of making a loud shattering sound as I disregard clear taboo warnings, I am venturing to write something regarding the political dilemma I find myself in. Please keep in mind that I in no way consider myself politically savvy, politically engaged, or even very politically informed, but none the less, I am being asked, in the all too near future, to make a political contribution. In just a few days, my vote will be counted for the highest political office in our land, and this, I believe, is worthy of at least some conversation even, no - especially, among family.

In my efforts to garner facts about each of the candidates and draw an informed opinion as to their competency, character, and policies, I find myself, presumably along with every one else, caught in a cross fire of facts, fiction, opinions, character assassinations, heated debates, ploys to divert attention, stone throwing, name calling, labeling, bared teeth and clenched fists. With every new spray of arsenal, the issues become more obscured, our language becomes more aggressive and alienating, and people are moving to even more extreme positions, trying to give as much leverage to their side of the seesaw as possible in the hope that it will teeter back in their favor. Quite honestly, I’m a little seasick, and come Nov. 4th I might even have my head over a bucket. But for the moment, I am still tuned into this political teeter-totter, and this morning, after reading several exchanges, I started daydreaming about what this conversation could possibly look like within a family who loves and cherishes each other. How would such a family engage each other in peaceful dialogue about issues close to their heart and close to the fabric of their lives, rather than choose to just keep the peace by avoiding the conversation altogether? How would such a family position itself on this age old playground contraption, the seesaw?

There happened to be one at the beach, where we were vacationing this summer on the island of Spiekeroog. When the kids weren’t swimming or digging their way to China, they were trying to devise new ways of keeping each other “up in the air” on this long hinged log. Great fun for them, but how many of life’s conflicts are carried out with just this objective and with very similar methods to the ones my kids used? My guess is far too many. At first, our son Jonathan had the edge over Charis, our middle daughter, until Christa added her weight to that of her sisters. Then our oldest would try to regain his advantage by scooting as far out on the beam as he could and then leaning even further out. This worked just long enough until the girls caught on that they could do the same. One might imagine what could happen if the log was very, very long. I suppose there would be no end to the scooting. But, knowing my kids, they would tire of the distance they had put between them, each feeling isolated way out there alone on their end of the log, and would finally run off to play on the swings together.

Unfortunately, we grownups aren’t as easily exhausted by this endless game. We keep trying to weigh our side down with arguments and justifications, by getting the experts and celebrities on board, and of course by scooting to the very extreme end of our position and then even leaning out beyond that. The result being that every four years our country descends into a verbal Civil war. If I go by what I read on the internet, it seems as though the whole country becomes completely preoccupied with hating the other half of its citizens. Shame on us!

And shame on me, too, for I have my spot on the seesaw along with everyone else. I find myself supporting, for many reasons, the candidate who is purported by his opponents as being the most staunchly pro-choice candidate ever. Supporting Obama although he outright endorses Roe v. Wade, while I believe all life is precious and should be cherished and protected puts me in an awkward position on this political teeter-totter, to say the least, and at times I feel quite “up in the air.” I feel especially high-ended, when I realize how many of my relatives and old Bible school friends are sitting on the other end of this presidential seesaw, and how strongly opposed they are to Obama as a candidate, precisely because they are against abortion. It is even more disconcerting to see how, though I in no way endorse abortion, my present political position has apparently put a deep relational distance between myself and some family members whom I love and admire. Is there anyway to escape this alienating “game” of seesaw?

I believe there is, but it would mean changing the objectives of the game altogether. Of course doing so for the actual playground equipment, would rob it of the exhilarating purpose of its existence, and that would be silly; there is usually no harm done in an honest go at the seesaw. However, that is not the case with the political, theological or ideological version of this sport, which is all too often carried out for just such a thrill, only with a much higher casualty rate. Instead of pursuing the stimulating objective of proving the superiority and rightness of our respective positions with its intoxicating kick-back, indignation, couldn’t we strive for what the latest management books call a “Win-Win” solution? Would it be at all thinkable, that even with the issue of abortion, there might be ways to “scoot” toward each other on the seesaw, finding a stable position in the center, which leaves no one “up in the air,” and for which no one must compromise the values most precious to them? A way that leads toward relationship instead of away from it? Would it be possible to re-evaluate and redefine what the actual core problems are, and perhaps begin to think out of the box, discovering a whole realm of solutions hither to veiled from our limited perception. Surely if there is, it will entail a bit of detox from our old poisonous methods of combat.

Since I began voting, I have been held hostage, along with many others, to the party who has loudly promised a pro-life ticket, feeling bribed into turning a blind eye to the unethical, immoral and bad political policies for which this party is also responsible. And after too many years of their talking “small town values” but catering instead to “big pocket corporations,” with little to no visible dent in the liberal abortion policies, I began to wonder if it was time to change my strategy and escape my captives. I’ll have to admit, it was easy to do once I started to tune into Obama. He is the first candidate to capture my political interest ever. Having listened to and read a few of his speeches, I began to sense, that this candidate is in a higher league than any of our choices have been the last couple of decades. My growing excitement was dampered, however, by the mounting criticism over his support for Roe v. Wade and his vote against the Born Alive Act. Certainly discouraging revelations for me. What to do? Return to captivity to the Republican party, with its Bush clone for a candidate, simply because he knows how to push the Pro-Life button? I won’t be had again.

So having been on the one side of the seesaw for many years, I now find myself, if not at the other far end of it, certainly somewhere left of many of my friends and family, with the big ugly issue of abortion still to contend with. As one might expect, it has been the weight and noise at their end of the seesaw, which began to reveal my own ignorance of the immense scale of the problem of abortion. Despite my instincts to shield off the condemning or extreme language of some of these voices, I have chosen instead to “scoot” down in their direction and be educated by them. Without naming any specific statistics or studies, my uncle, for example, wrote the following in an email to me a few months ago, “the bloodshed of one year of abortion around the world absolutely dwarfs the bloodshed of Nazi Germany and the Allies firebombing of Dresden and all deaths in Iraq and every other nation in the earth where conflict is going on right now. And it dwarfs it each year. EACH YEAR!”

If this is true, statistically, or even nearly true actually, it should serve as a wake up call, at least, to what in any other instance would be called an epidemic. For my part, I admit to having been asleep and must make a confession. Through all the twenty something years of being a Pro-Lifer, about the only thing I have consciously done to try and turn the tide of abortion, save for private conversations, was to vote for a conservative president. And that I did largely unaware of any of the facts, figures or larger issues intrinsically connected with this world wide affliction. I voted a pro-life slogan and went on with life as usual, believing my moral obligation to be fulfilled. I realize now, that it was just enough to keep up a pious apathy and avoid facing the hard issues at the core of what I now believe to be a symptom of a disease, not the disease itself.

But still not being satisfied that the only way to be Pro-Life with a clear conscious is to vote Republican, I have since looked where I can for reliable information regarding both world wide statistics and legislative information on abortion as well as what effect the policies of the democratic ticket would have on abortion reduction, despite its party line to uphold Roe v. Wade. This is when my own prejudices and ignorance really became apparent. Up until recently, I have assumed that abortion has been protected as a last resort birth control for women of the decadent Industrial nations who are pursuing careers instead of families. I am embarrassed now for being so clueless and so judgmental.

Following several links, I came upon two studies which have shown me that I couldn’t have been further from the truth. One is from the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and called, Reducing Abortion in America: The Effect of Economic and Social Supports. Wright & Bailey (http://www.catholicsinalliance.org/files/CACG_Final.pdf). The conclusions of the fifteen page article are briefly summarized straight off, but the breakdown of the numbers and statistical findings are documented and elaborated in the rest of the document. Wright & Bailey conclude in their Executive Summary, “Family, social and economic supports reduce abortions. Recent research ﬁnds that the abortion rate among women living below the poverty level is more than four times that of women above 300% of the poverty level. This study of all U.S. states from 1982-2000 ﬁnds that social and economic supports such as beneﬁts for pregnant women and mothers and economic assistance to low-income families have contributed signiﬁcantly to reducing the number of abortions in the United States over the past twenty years.” Also...

“Elected ofﬁcials can use socioeconomic public policy to reduce abortions.

The ﬁndings in this study suggest that elected ofﬁcials can utilize effective and appropriate socioeconomic public policies to reduce abortions. These include: increasing beneﬁts for pregnant women and mothers with children under ﬁve; promoting policies that increase male employment; providing funding for child care for working women; increasing economic assistance to low-income families and removing the “family cap” on economic assistance. Legislation aimed at these goals can effectively reduce abortion in America.”

This report also quotes the Allan Guttmacher Institute (http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_IAW.html), which among several sobering facts, reports these findings, “The lowest abortion rate in the world is in Western Europe (12 per 1,000 women aged 15–44). The rate is 17 in Northern Europe and 21 in Northern America (Canada and the United States of America).[1]” and “Legal restrictions on abortion do not affect its incidence. For example, the abortion rate is 29 in Africa, where abortion is illegal in many circumstances in most countries, and it is 28 in Europe (this number is including eastern Europe, whose rates are the highest), where abortion is generally permitted on broad grounds. The lowest rates in the world are in Western and Northern Europe, where abortion is accessible with few restrictions. [1]

And from the Matthew 25 web page, (http://www.prolifeproobama.com/plpo_abortionfacts.htm)

“Nearly half of all abortions in the world are performed in countries that have made abortion illegal.

The lowest abortion rates in the world - less than 10 per 1,000 women of reproductive age - are in Europe, where abortion is legal and available.

By contrast, in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, where abortion law is most restrictive, the regional rates are 29 and 31 per 1,000 women, respectively.

These countries are also much poorer than the U.S. and provide fewer social services; and a larger proportion of their population lives in poverty.

In Western European countries, in contrast, where more social services are provided and fewer women live in poverty, the abortion rates are consistently the lowest rates in the world.”

After reading these and other articles, I couldn’t help but feel that the Pro-Life movement has been storming the wrong side of the castle. Not only is there a more vulnerable entry on the other side, but there is even a bridge leading over the mote directly into the heart of the actual problem: Women and children in poverty!

The conservative right has persistently combated the abortion issue under the banner of the sanctity of life, painting those on the other side of the legislative wall as cold, self - seeking and murderous. Thus, much ammunition has been spent in defining where life begins, assigning the unborn - in all of its stages- the highest possible value tag, trying to impose that value tag on others, and condemning those who even dare hint at the possibility of a relative value of life. For several reasons, I am beginning to wonder if this is ammunition ill spent.

It was as we were in Papua New Guinea, that it first began to dawn on me, that life, in fact, does have a relative felt value. Over the course of our four years in that country, we were confronted again and again with situations, where communities, families, and parents did not consider the life of one of their children to be worth a trip to the doctor, the couple of Kina (monetary unit in PNG) for antibiotics, or even a sack of coffee. I was often horrified to encounter children who suffered scabies, prolonged ear infections or malaria who were left untreated because the clinic was a long walk across town, or it was too much effort to administer prolonged, consistent treatment. Villages whose only transport to the outside world was by plane, would sometimes pay to have their coffee flown out to be sold instead of flying a critically sick child to the hospital. Their reasoning being that the child would most likely die anyway and then they would have nothing. The coffee would at least bring a profit. For me it seemed a grotesque trade off, a sack of coffee for the life of a child.

I could fill pages with such encounters, and as much as it grieved me, no amount of campaign slogans, letters to the editor, or marches for life was going to change the felt value of life for those people. Centuries of conditioning that life is short, painful and of little consequence was not going to give way to any of my attempts at imposing a higher price tag to it. When people live under the constant reality, that life (ones own or that of loved ones) can be snatched from them at any moment, perhaps they learn to hold it less tightly, and when living conditions are relentlessly hard and mean, maybe some are want to regard life as something precious.

Even in the West, I dare suggest, even among the most conservative pro-life groups, the value of life is relative. I cannot deny the fact that the lives of my children are more precious to me than the lives of other children. Judging from our foreign politics, the lives of Americans are more valuable to us than the lives of people in... well, any developing nation, and judging by our national policies, the well being of our corporations and our bank accounts is more valuable to us than the lives of the poorest among us. Could it be possible, that while our editorials, protest banners, and campaign slogans loudly proclaim Pro-Life values even for the unborn, our actual life-styles and nation wide disposition toward the poor suggests that we really only value life if we can enjoy its comforts and security? And isn’t that just the thing which makes it so hard to share!

It is my understanding, that it is impossible to impose a value on anything. We cannot say to anyone, “such and such should be of greater value to you than it is, or than this other thing. You should be willing to pay a much greater price for it.” We cannot coerce people or bully people or rationalize people into seeing an inherent or objective value in the life of an unborn child, even though this objective value may exist. We cannot expect that women in desperate circumstances should value the new life in their body as more precious than the welfare of their other children, a better standard of living, opportunities for their own future, or even their very own life, just because we, who are able to enjoy all of those things simultaneously, say it is more precious than those things. Values don’t work that way. We cannot prescribe values either for individuals or for a nation.

What we can do, however, is to demonstrate how valuable something is by being willing ourselves to pay a high price for it. We can demonstrate how precious these unborn lives are to us, and to God, by making room at our table of affluence for the women and children who live in the dehumanizing poverty which breeds abortion. We can validate the true worth of every human being, whether born or unborn, by cashing in our decadence and luxury, maybe even a portion of our comfort, which has come to mean so much to us, for the policies and programs which will move those most vulnerable to our side of the poverty line. We can reveal how priceless each new life is, by offering mothers the support, health care and financial assistance needed, so they can feel they have a choice to carry that new life to full term - even if this might cost us the cherry on top of our sundae.

When I stop to think about it, God has done this very thing. He has demonstrated how valuable we are to Him by giving that which was most precious to Him in exchange. He traded the costly life of Christ for relationship with us. Where the law - legislature - failed to cure us from our moral poverty or convince us of our true identity as beloved children of God, God Himself cashed in His luxury to validate our true worth and move us to His side of the (spiritual) poverty line.

It is much easier to raise a moral finger and read someone their rights, to get out the law and the threat of consequence, especially for behavior and choices we don’t understand. But I can’t in good conscience sell that any longer as my contribution to the Pro-Life cause. To be truly pro-life will ask a much, much greater sacrifice of me. It asks nothing short of following the divine example, the example of the Author and Redeemer of life itself. And to be honest, it is yet to be seen if I have it in me to do so. What I do know is that I will no longer hide my apathy behind the pious, political mask of simply voting a pro-life slogan, or skirt around the real problems by trying to get the symptoms outlawed.

In fact sometimes I wonder if Roe v. Wade were over turned, and we had strict prohibitions in place in every state, how long the interest would last in the issue of abortion, or in the plight of women who feel they have no other alternative.

Wouldn’t it be ironic, if when we finally chose to give up scaling the seemingly impenetrable legislative wall at the back of the stronghold of abortion and came around to the front gate offering instead to share our wealth and resources with those who are besieged by poverty, we stumbled upon our pro-choice adversaries already making much greater headway into the fortress with their battering ram of new jobs, pre and post-natal care, a comprehensive healthcare plan, family financial assistance, reproductive education, housing assistance, food and clean water?

I know that it must seem to you that I am “scooting” away from where you are sitting on the seesaw politically, you may feel, even morally, and that I must have lost the sense of the heinousness of abortion, but in fact, my understanding of and concern for the plight of the unborn has actually grown. It may seem to you that I am moving away from a commitment to eradicating abortion, but I am actually moving toward a commitment to preserving, protecting and investing in life, especially the lives of those who have no voice of their own and who have been excluded from the great American pie. I have no illusions that Senator Obama is some messianic figure without fault or flaw. I imagine he has an array of political tricks up his sleeve, and has ambitiously maneuvered himself to the position he is in today. But I do not believe he is the cold-blooded, self-seeking and murderous person you might have come to think he is, because he is not out back with us trying to bring down the towering legislative wall which protects women choosing to terminate their pregnancy. I believe that he is trying to fight against this epidemic, not by poisoning the rats, but by beginning to remove the garbage which draws them and breeds them. It is a strategy which will mean more sacrifice from all of us, and of course that makes it much less attractive, but I believe it is one where the least in America, and in the world, will finally be given a greater pallet of choices than the dismal ones they have now. And I firmly believe that when we demonstrate the true and precious value of all life by giving what is costly to us, we will do more to save the perishing than by continuing to fight a moral and legal battle.

So, even though it may be too late to ask you to reconsider where you make your mark on the presidential ballot this election, I am asking you to “scoot” down toward the middle of the seesaw, where we can work on the real problems together, without getting seasick from the odious up and down extreme positions are instigating. I am asking you to move toward relationship and conversation, and trust that you, or the principles dear to you, will not be left up in the air if you do. I am hoping that when we “scoot” toward each other, we can get the creative engines of redemption churning and discover a stockpile of more intriguing and subversive tactics available to overcome the strong hold of death and poverty. I am hoping that we can throw our weight into actually solving the problems, instead of using it simply to leverage the teeter-totter toward our principled strategy. I am hoping that we can both ignore family taboos and remove any relational distance that might have recently crept in, and talk about this like family, like a family that loves and cherishes each other, like the family we are.

http://www.prolifeproobama.com/plpo_abortionfacts.htm

http://www.prolifeproobama.com/plpo_willdo.htm

http://www.democratsforlife.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=45

http://www.prolifeproobama.com/plpo_resources.htm

http://www.sojo.net/blog/godspolitics/?p=3166

The Deadly Box

2008-10-13T15:34:00.001+02:00

The Deadly Box

It’s kind of cramped in here

I guess it wouldn’t be a bad spot

for a game of Hide and Seek

...a short game

But I can’t stretch my legs

My head is here between my knees

my elbow is jabbed into my leg

Hey, this box is very UNCOMFORTABLE

I don’t really want to be in here for too long

I mean, how am I supposed to eat?

Take in new nourishment?

Or go to the bathroom!?

You know, getting rid of all that stuff

that has been processed and

has no more growth value

There certainly is no room for

GROWING in here!

Not in any direction!

I can’t even change my position,

turn on the other side

or even lift my head

from between my knees

And I definitely don’t want anyone

to see me this way!

I’m not in a very flattering position

My better sides don’t come to light

not in this place

I’m over due for a shower

Oh how nice that would be...

a warm shower

to take away all the dirt and sweat,

which is a part of life,

whether one is in a box or not,

Ah, to feel fresh and clean again

It’s beginning to smell!

What with no bathroom,

no shower

no fresh air...

Fresh air!

Yes, air (breathing)

I’m getting rather short of air

(breathing harder)

I’m afraid I can’t get enough to breath

(gasping for breath)

I’m running out of...

Hey, you,

don’t go away!

(gasping)

I can’t breath!

(gasping faster)

Come back!

(desperate)

Don’t leave me here to....

(desperately gasping)

Please...

(faintly gasping)

LET ME OUT OF THIS BOX!!

“You have heard that the law of Moses says, “Do not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.” But I say, if you are angry with someone, you are subject to judgement! If you put someone in a box and label it “idiot,” you are in danger of being (tried for murder). And if you label someone “fool,” you are in danger of facing the ultimate judgement yourself”

- Jesus

World of Wierdos

2008-10-04T13:44:00.006+02:00

Charis has always had a lot to talk about when she comes home from school. Barely through the front door downstairs and it all starts pouring out. Usually it has been about her teachers or the other kids in class. Now Charis has a whole new topic to tell about: Weirdos on the Bus!

Coming into the 5th grade this year, puts Charis at a “High” school (Gymnasium is what it is called here) which is no longer in walking distance, so she takes the #22 bus to the #1 Tram and gets off directly in front of her school. After a couple of days of taking the route with her, she was on her own and feeling pretty confident. (I’m so glad she is adjusting well to her entirely new school situation.)

Now my gregarious daughter (don’t even think that thought! She has it from BOTH of us!) comes home and says things like this: “Mama, today this guy got on the bus and one of his eyes had skin grown over it. He had a blind stick, but I think he could see a little bit from one eye. I gave him my seat.” Or, “Today the tram was really full, and I had no place to put my feet. Every time the tram jerked, I accidently stepped on this woman’s feet. I said I was sorry, but she scolded me!” Or, “Today it was so full and when I wanted to get off, there were too many people in front of me, I had to wait for them first. Then this man behind me rudely pushed me aside and told me to get out of his way, so he could get off the bus” Or “There was this guy who looked pretty shabby and he smelled so bad, the bus was so full, that he kept squashing me up against the side. I got off a stop earlier than i had to, just to get some fresh air.”(Charis is particularly offended by "icky things", such as body oder, bad breath, saliva. Rules out kissing or any kind of body contact.)

So then I tell her about when I had to take the bus to school. At about her age, I took the #42 bus down to Dupont Circle and then switched to the D2, which took us to Hardy Middle school. Mostly we kids dominated the bus scene once we were on it, and we found any number of “targets” for our curiosity and amusement. I was a rare white face in the back of the bus with a loud and boisterous group of black and Hispanic friends fighting for the good seats next to the windows. In DC there was no shortage of smelly passengers, and the ones who smelled most like liquor and urine were also the most eager to engage us in some surreal conversation. Jan and I had the opportunity to experience just such a social encounter together many years ago in a subway in NY. In fact we stole the line our fellow commuter kept repeating, and we still use it for a laugh, and for when we want to signal that one of us is getting too close to the edge of our sanity.

I told Charis about the guy who got on my bus once when it was particularly crowded, who had no nose. It wasn’t grown over or anything; there was just this big, gaping hole, where his nose should have been! Wow, not everybody gets to see something like that! But our favorite characters were the Big Hair Ladies. I’m not talking beehive hairdos from the 60’s either. I’m talking big monster hairdos. Dinosaur hairdos. Scary hairdos! They had large cardboard signs with them with pictures of burns on their bodies, which they said were caused by the government doing chemical testing on them. It had also made their hair grow like crazy. I guess I pretty much believed them, but I didn’t really know what to do about it. I just thought, "wow, that’s scary". One day though, I saw one of these women take her big hairdo off. That was eye opening. I still don’t let the government do any testing on me though.

I guess I’ll save all the stories about almost getting frost bite while waiting for the bus for hours in sub-zero temperatures in my Nikes, my wet hair frozen to icicles by the time I got to class, for when she starts bugging me to give her a ride to school in winter.

Well, sorry for ranting on about all that. Charis just reminded me again of all those people we miss while we drive around in our SUV’s and our mini-vans. Her little reports made me realize that she is venturing out of a pretty protected circle and discovering that this world is full of wackos! So, if you ever think you are a wee bit too snuggly in your comfort zone, just start taking the bus, and you'll be reminded what a weird world we really live in.

Summer on the North Shore

2008-09-30T16:43:00.004+02:00

Finally a vacation that really felt like a vacation. In my opinion, going to the seaside is the only way to make that happen. We were on one of the small islands off the shore of northern Germany for 10 days with only the rhythmic sound of the waves as background noise. Quite a welcome change to the loud and never ceasing traffic of the main avenue visible from our house in Augsburg. The only automobiles on Spiekeroog are small elektric "trucks," which transport lugguge and packages. Even bicycles were hardly a dominant presence on the island where everyone walks along the wider pedestrian paths. Wide beaches with lots of space, time to just chill out and read, evening family games, afternoons at charming cafe's, and lots of walking and exploring made the 10 hour drive well worth it. The pictures which say it all can be linked to from either the title of this blog entry or from the list of links with the title pictures.

Bad Liberal Europe

2008-09-14T10:32:00.003+02:00

The following is a response to a posting on facebook : Understanding the heart of Conservitism by Graham Dennis.

Hi there, it is me writing over here in "liberal Europe!" I can't quite share your enthusiasm about this piece by Graham Dennis. I've been living outside the states for 17 years now (not including the year in 88') and for most of that time in Europe (including England, Germany and Sweden). And tho I must admit, that there are sooo many things that I have pulled my hair out about as a Christian and an American, I did find myself needing to come to Europe's defense (wow, this is a first!) while reading this. The most striking incongruence is the statement he reiterates in point 4 (having said the same in point 2). about universal health care. "Once a government run health care system is put in place, the ideological promise of equal care... becomes impossible to deliver on. It becomes a “noble lie." First of all, not all European countries have a governmental health care. Germany does not. The health care systems and policies vary significantly from country to country. Second, these countries with a comprehensive health care management may not meet a perfect egalitarian record of treatment for all classes, races etc, but people are getting the care they need...I have never heard of ANYONE not being treated for an illness, not being able to afford medicine, being turned away because they are not insured or not being able to care for their children. Having experienced first hand the contrast of not being able to afford medical treatment because I was not covered to that of not having to worry about it AT ALL, I cannot express enough the importance of this issue to national politics. So I might not always get a private room in a hospital, but at least I get a room. There is so much propaganda out there about the inequality, bad service, lack of individual choice of doctors, etc, etc in “European” health care, which is simply not true. What is true is that people are not having to sell their homes to pay for cancer treatment, nor are they prematurely released from the hospital and left helpless. The “Europeans” I know gasp at the horror stories that come out of the states. And no one would want to trade!! On this issue, the States should exercise humility and take notes. Then it should do what it is good at: stealing an idea (like pizza or Tacos) from another country and making it even better!!

It is also ill-advised to lump all of Europe (and I assume Scandinavia and Great Britain and Canada?) into one bag. Each of these countries has answered the healthcare issue differently, and of course struggles to overcome or counter the pitfalls or draw backs inherent within their own system, which, I agree, are partially the result of unlimited availability and an increasingly geriatric population. Yes, Germany has a declining national birthrate, but that is certainly not true of every European country. My husband just called over to me that he recently read, that in fact, the french are quite out doing us here! (France has a birthrate of 2,1 % to germany 1,34 %) Not to mention the countries that your brother also named, Poland, Ireland, Spain. (and wouldn't the numbers in the states look as dismal if it weren't for the large hispanic and immigrant population?) And, yes, this too puts a strain on our health care system (and would do us in a lot sooner if it weren’t for our own immigrant population).

But also to fault for the growing burden of health care, are the extremely high costs of more advanced diagnostic and treatment technologies. I have had 3 MRT’s in the last half year...that might not have been possible even 10 years ago. So of course that brings with it enormous ethical questions: how much care and for whom? While I am getting 3 MRT’s here at an astronomical cost, young children are dying of illnesses in Africa which could be treated for a few dollars. In addition, the prenatal care, hospital stay (5-10 days), and required postnatal care (including postnatal house visits by the midwives) covered by German insurance companies are costs which fall away with a declining birthrate. Anyway, I think it is an over-simplification to say that “European health care needs have derived largely from it being a “stagnating population.”

Surely France and Germany loose many of their top experts abroad. However, this is occurring across the board and is not a phenomena limited to medical researchers. Sometime ago Time ran an article just on this subject. The basic tenor of the article was that most brilliant researchers in Europe get bogged down in bureaucracies, which slow up funding, suffocate “free thinking” and can douse the motivation of even the most determined minds. Whether in sports, astronomy, physics, archeology, engineering, theater, supermodels, even Cornelia Funke moved to California!! But not until she could afford to pay her hospital bills herself! No, having lived here in Germany almost as long as I have lived in the states, I have experienced first hand the mind set which can and does again and again stifle creative, innovative and adventuresome pursuits. I think I can safely say, it is not a result of universal health care, nor necessarily the social conscience that gave rise to it, nor strictly of Liberal Humanistic thought. It is much, much too easy to duck our own social-political responsibility to care for our neighbor and dismiss those, who are in some respects doing a better job of it than we are, by nailing them in a coffin with this label on it.

I can’t really follow the logic in his argumentation contrasting the “intellectuals in Europe” who were “smitten with the path of revolution” with “our founders deep and prudent reflection upon the limits of the political,” Our founders were revolutionists!! They also understood the limits of “religion” and sought to ensure that this sword could in future not so easily be wielded as an instrument of intimidation and domination. Granted, they seemed to have more successfully “let out the bath water, while retaining the baby” by removing the administration of religious profession and practice from the Governmental body, but keeping it as a matter of personal and communal profession and practice. The “French” revolutionaries seemed to be sick of the whole dirty lot of it, and could no longer make the distinction between religious tyranny and the kingdom of God. But who can fault them for it? They now must live with the dirty bath water of their own making. And for trying to get them to take the baby back? I think America has long since sullied her own diapers and lost any position of moral authority it may have at any point had.

“Part of the limitation of the city of man is that it cannot eradicate the natural selfishness of man. To create an ideological place-holder for common interest (the state or the government) is to assume something about the state that I don’t assume. This is what scares me about Obama. He, like the French and many other Europeans, doesn’t understand how self-interest works vis-à-vis the city of man. It’s not that self-interest should be turned into a religious principle, but rather than the state herself is incapable or eradicating it. Only the city of God can perfectly eradicate self-interest. This creates the need for a check upon the government (the principle established by our founders). That check is, in part, self-interest. The Pollyanna hope that it could be eradicated by the “common interest” of the state, is a very French (humanist), progressive European political ideal. I think it is extremely dangerous.”

I am sorry, but i find this quote to be... completely nonsensical. ...”but rather the state herself is incapable of eradicating Self-interest.“ But isn’t that exactly what conservative Christians want, when they clamor for Government to legislate pro traditional family values, against abortion, gay marriage, etc, etc.? From my view over here, it seems like there are a lot of very loud conservatives, who believe just that; that the state can eradicate the self-interest of mothers choosing a “better” life over the life of their child, and of Gays choosing a same sex partner instead of a fruitful heterosexual one. And isn’t that exactly what Obama has been saying? “There are limits to how the State can prohibit our Self-interest choices? Especially in those areas, which are extremely difficult to enforce. I think it is precisely the false “hope” of the conservative base in state legislation, which has paralyzed and preoccupied them, keeping them from exploring more creative and effective ways of bearing witness to the sanctity of life. Obama has again and again maintained that he will focus on those areas where State not only has an obligation to litigate, but also a fighting chance at success in its implementation.

And “(Obama), like the French and many other Europeans, doesn’t know how self-interest works vis a vis the city of man.” Is this for real???? I don’t think there is a person alive in the developed countries, who doesn’t know how self interest works!! There is a much shorter term for “self-interest vis a vis the city of man”; it’s called capitalism! And because America has proven to be the heavy weight in all things capitalistic, honing its “self-interest” skills to a sharp edge, does not automatically send all of Europe to the far corner of socialism. If America has been good at exporting any values at all on the greater community, especially the European neighborhood, than it is the value of Capitalistic self-Interest. And hasn’t that been the mantra of republicans since yea and yea, that any perceived economic or social slack in the country be met with more self-interest? I am sure it is not the objective of any candidate to “eradicate self-interest.” My suspicion is that the republicans want to continue to fan the self-interest flame much in the strain of Adam Smith, who proposed that the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what is best for himself (which America as a case study has proven does not work for a gross majority of the country or for the larger community of which America is also a part). Nash’s mathematically substantiated theory of governing dynamics has overthrown Smith’s, however, proposing that the best result will come by everyone doing what is best for himself AND for the group (or participants in the group). And isn’t that exactly what Jesus told us to do? “Love your neighbor AS yourself”? We are not to love our neighbor to the neglect and denial of self interest nor are we to love ourselves to the exclusion of our neighbor. May I suggest that the former smacks of the communist ideal and the latter of the renegade capitalist ideal? I think each country in Europe has tried in its own way, with its own resources to find this equilibrium in its governing capacity, to lesser or greater success.

“Lastly, this tendency to think of the state as the “family” has also led to a profound denigration of the family. Why? Because the family is suspiciously viewed as an arena of “private interest.” Normalizing people to the infrastructure of the state, then, becomes one of the central goals of liberal humanism. This is why public schooling is so important.” I wish i could just let this slide by, because it is late and I have already spent way too long on this, but the oversimplification just nags at me. I am wondering which European country he is referring to? Yes, we are constantly trying to defend the value and sanctity of the family (and not just the cell family, but the extended family as well) and feel the tug and pull in so many directions to abandon it. But your brother is shooting at the wrong enemy, or indeed aiming too high. I do not believe that there is a liberal humanistic conspiracy to rot out the “private interest” of the family, at least not here in Germany. I do believe that the state more often than not cooperates with the forces at work in the world, which undermine the strengths of the family, but those forces are even more base than liberal humanism.

I believe this force to be as ancient as history itself, and to be the only real counter philosophy that Jesus ever named (by the way, to put Jesus in a list of conservatives is silly; Jesus took pitches from both sides of the field and hit all the balls out of the park. Didn’t he say something like, “a good teacher uses both old and new stuff” (ok, i can’t find the quote right now, but it is really one of my favorites). A shorter verse that i am able to remember (not one of my favorites): “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” Consumerism, the number one leading religion in our world. It infiltrates any philosophical, political or religious system and morphs it into an instrument of consumerism. Consumerism (Mammon) can make a currency out of anything. So a communist country, with the high ideals to pursue the good of the community, quickly becomes a country of consumerists who use Communism as a commodity to pursue self interest. And a christian country (group, church) with the high ideals to love God and their neighbor as themselves, quickly becomes a consumerist country using their religiosity, religious symbols and piety to pursue personal gain.

It’s an old story, dating back long before the French revolution. The church got their first and only spanking in the book of Acts for this very thing. Ananias and Saphira were using the pious, “selfless” act of selling their home and “giving” to the community as a commodity, as a means of “gaining” something: the regard of the community. They were trying to “sell” themselves to the church. So whatever one means exactly by throwing around the term “liberal humanism,” have no fear, I am sure, this threatening philosophy has long been morphed away into our ancient enemy, much like the bad guy in The Matrix. And whatever is left of it in Europe is being rapidly shoved aside by capitalism. I would suggest then that we recognize our true enemy and stick to fighting him at our own address. (Didn’t Jesus say something like that, about sticks and stones...ah, splinters and beams!). After all, america has the staggering murder count: America uses most of the worlds resources; America has citizens living in 3rd world squaller, obesity, higher infant mortality rates, by far more people in prisons, a disreputable primary and secondary education system, and if I understood Graham correctly, it sounds like America (not the liberal humanists) has the most liberal abortion laws. Way to go for the sobering effects of self-interest. just wanting to keep the straw men from the table, lee

P.S. on Internet Communications

2008-08-01T12:26:00.002+02:00

Just read this article about a phenomena I had never heard of before: Trolling. Very interesting! Brings up important ethical questions about freedom of speech. Here are some excerpts from the end of the article.

"Does free speech tend to move toward the truth or away from it? When does it evolve into a better collective understanding? When does it collapse into the Babel of trolling, the pointless and eristic game of talking the other guy into crying “uncle”? Is the effort to control what’s said always a form of censorship, or might certain rules be compatible with our notions of free speech?

One promising answer comes from the computer scientist Jon Postel, now known as “god of the Internet” for the influence he exercised over the emerging network. In 1981, he formulated what’s known as Postel’s Law: “Be conservative in what you do; be liberal in what you accept from others.” Originally intended to foster “interoperability,” the ability of multiple computer systems to understand one another, Postel’s Law is now recognized as having wider applications. To build a robust global network with no central authority, engineers were encouraged to write code that could “speak” as clearly as possible yet “listen” to the widest possible range of other speakers, including those who do not conform perfectly to the rules of the road. The human equivalent of this robustness is a combination of eloquence and tolerance — the spirit of good conversation. Trolls embody the opposite principle. They are liberal in what they do and conservative in what they construe as acceptable behavior from others. You, the troll says, are not worthy of my understanding; I, therefore, will do everything I can to confound you."

(Wow! This is exactly the attitude of some Christian leaders I know!! In fact, a Christian pastor recently expressed in estonishingly similar language the very same intentions!)

"Of course, none of these methods will be fail-safe as long as individuals like Fortuny construe human welfare the way they do. As we discussed the epilepsy hack, I asked Fortuny whether a person is obliged to give food to a starving stranger. No, Fortuny argued; no one is entitled to our sympathy or empathy. We can choose to give or withhold them as we see fit. “I can’t push you into the fire,” he explained, “but I can look at you while you’re burning in the fire and not be required to help.” Weeks later, after talking to his friend Zach, Fortuny began considering the deeper emotional forces that drove him to troll. The theory of the green hair, he said, “allows me to find people who do stupid things and turn them around. Zach asked if I thought I could turn my parents around. I almost broke down. The idea of them learning from their mistakes and becoming people that I could actually be proud of . . . it was overwhelming.” He continued: “It’s not that I do this because I hate them. I do this because I’m trying to save them.”

(Talking about the ends justifying the means! It is scary to think that exactly the same intention, "to save people," motivates not only these destructive and dangerous internet hackers (you can read in the article of their malicious methods), but also the punitive and bullying voice of the Christian right!")

Anyway, this is just a "p.s." to my post "I take it back", so I am not going to comment further. If you are at all interested in this topic, do read the whole article, which is linked up above. I'd really be interested in your comments to the subject.

Mozart's City of Birth Presenting...

2008-07-30T12:37:00.003+02:00

Mozart's father that is. And this recital took place this past Sunday on the same street where both he and his son have given concerts.

Enough boring history! We were proud as peacocks of our Christa. Granted she is just a beginner, but aaaiiihhh, what talent, what beauty, what potential. We are going on tour to play for the queen of England, Spain, France etc. and have booked time at Abbey Road Recording studios.... in jest, in jest. No, we don't want Christa to meet with the same fate as the young Mozart: Genius, but dead.

Fun aside, it is such a joy for me to see my children's talent unfold. To see them prosper and flourish. To see them explore and create. The kids are growing into fine young people. it is such a beautiful process to be a part of and an honor. I am especially touched and awed by how they seem to gulp down life in huge swallows. "Bring it on!" is just natural for them, especially Christa. I was so different. Life became such a scary thing at such an early age, that I feel like I've spent the better years just learning to sip from the cup. What a fun discovery that God has given us this big trampoline to jump and do flips on, that it is elastic rather than unyielding, stoney or brittle, so that we can have a blast... living deeply and reaching high: life to the full. This is what we can have. This is what has been promised to us... and that is what my children are teaching me. Go kids!!!

I Take It Back!

2008-07-21T20:33:00.003+02:00

I don’t love it so much.

I feel like someone who has been shut up in a bomb shelter throughout the war, and on finally coming out, is glad to see so many of her friends alive on the one hand, but stricken to see the toll taken and how much has been destroyed on the other. Google, You Tube, the Internet...my new discovery is also shocking: rampant slander! And Christians often leading the way through the mud!

It strikes many people we come in contact with as odd that we don’t have cable t.v. or any t.v. at all. I‘ve been living outside the states since ’92 and beside the occasional sitcom I’ve seen on airplanes, the movies I hand pick to watch, and the Oscar Awards (which are a must), I have been pretty much shut off from American media, and thus American culture. Until recently that is. With my new Macbook, the possibilities have soared, and I feel that America is just a finger tip away: the America I’ve missed, and the America I haven’t missed. A part of the States that I have not missed, with which I am now again confronted, is the culture’s keen ability in using sarcasm to ridicule others; especially if those others, don’t line up with ones own views on a matter.

Now, just recently, a Christian tried to get me to believe, that as a pastor he had Biblical permission to use sarcasm and put downs and whatever else he might need in order to expose heresy. And as noble an agenda as this might be, I simply cannot find the Biblical support for the kind of things I’ve been seeing in blogs, especially his blog, and on You tube of late. If anything at all, sarcasm and this critical irony, is an American thing. Americans have perfected it, bathe in it night and day, and wield it to great effect and detriment at their enemies. Not even in England do they come anywhere close to the Americans in using sarcasm and irony (satire maybe, but not sarcasm). And in the parts of the world where I have lived, it is virtually absent altogether.

But just to be safe, I looked it up (sweet and easy on my little computer dictionary) to double check if I even knew what I was talking about. And this is what I found: “Sarcasm[A] is stating the opposite of an intended meaning especially in order to sneeringly, slyly, jest or mock a person, situation or thing. For example, ridicule is an important aspect of sarcasm, but not verbal irony in general. By this account, sarcasm is a particular kind of personal criticism leveled against a person or group of persons that incorporates verbal irony.”

Yup, that’s just what I thought it was. I cringe every time I hear/read Christians, or others who are important to me, using this kind of language to bully or mock in any way another person, no matter how "right" they might be on content! In addition, I highly doubt it’s effectiveness in winning the hearts and minds of those who disagree with us. Let me illustrate:

It was a long and trying road to finally find the right sports club for Jonathan. He of course wanted to play soccer like everybody else here in Germany, so we sent him to the nearest soccer club. This was a good few years ago now. Anyway, the coach was over the top. He had suffered from Polio as a child, so never played himself (maybe that explains his behavior, i don't know). The kids would win by huge margins, but this guy was never happy. He would yell and scream (and i don't mean the way all coaches just yell and get hyper) and berate and belittle the players. He would even let his tirades out on the parents, if they asked the wrong question or somehow did something "stupid" in his eyes. He shamed people, and of course he was always “right”. Jonathan was terrified of him, so much so, that he wouldn't really go after the ball for fear he would be shamed and belittled for loosing it again. Here is the catch: the coach never once yelled at Jonathan the entire time he was on the team (which wasn't long i assure you)! It was enough that he saw the others being publicly shamed. The thing is, it didn't lead to obedience!! It led to personal shame and retreat. Jonathan froze inwardly, did not develop love or respect for his coach and did not long to please him. He certainly didn't have any fun playing soccer. He acted only out of fear of doing the wrong thing. When people resort to character assassination, stinging sarcasm, malicious mocking and caustic ridicule, it scares me, even if I am not the target. I know how easily I could make just such a false "play," so I freeze inwardly. I unconsciously feel shame and retreat away from the person wielding the hatchet. Instead of concentrating on the "ball" and giving myself up to playing as well as I can to win "the game", I find I am too concerned with where that hatchet might come down next.

Let’s be honest, is anyone really ever won over by these tactics? Of course I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. It might be possible to slice and dice the Bible and piece together a permission slip for this style of communication, but I would wager to bet we Christian bloggers and You Tubers are just swimming with our American culture on this one. I know what has won me over in the past and what still gets my attention today is the respectful, intelligent and personal witness of humble and authentic people. People who are not threatened by my honest questions, sincere doubts or even my differing perspective on a particular issue. The chances that I might be won over to a given idea are far greater, when I feel safe with someone, knowing that that person will preserve my dignity and can value my individual human worth, despite the fact that I might not yet be completely on board with them about even subjects of the utmost significance. This leaves a back door open for me to go through at some other time, when perhaps through different circumstances, life experience, or the Holy Spirit’s leading, I am able to see things in a new light. Wouldn’t it just be heavenly, if our internet conversations were laced with this kind of love? I hope you hold me to this on my blog and in my conversations with you. Thanx.

Exposure

2008-06-26T21:28:00.006+02:00

I love the internet! I love google! and facebook, myspace too! It has been a blast getting back in touch with people from my past. I'm talkin' waaaaay back! I've reconnected with my best friend from high school; we hadn't seen each other for about 25 years! we still only have virtual contact, but it's a start. She is doing what she always dreamed of doing: acting and teaching others the art, whether at University or at their non-profit community children's theater. Then Eric was a guy i worked with in my waitressing days. My girlfriends and I were big fans of B-Time, his band back then. Thanks to google, I found Eric now as a full time musician in Nashville, gone totally country and cranking out albums with the band Last Train Home. Our contact is also still just digital, but I'm hoping to be back dancing in front of his stage like in the good old days, when they return to Germany (maybe next year?). Cara Luft already had a guitar growing out of her belly when she was a student at Holsby in Sweden, where i was on staff, so it is not too big of a surprise to find out that she is making her mark on the Canadian Folk scene. I love her new album, and am nuts over the trio The Wailin' Jennys, which she started, but left recently to pursue her solo career. And it IS a small world! She is dating a guy who is in the Celtic rock band, Spirit of the West. One of their guys is also in my favorite band the Paperboys!! So, I'm told, my chances of getting to meet them are pretty good next time they role around!! Another student from Holsby days has blossomed into a vibrant and radiant artist. Kelly is painting, doing art installations, photography and hopefully will get around to illustrating an awesome new kids book for me. She has also started her own company, Messy Monkeys, which does team building for corporations through very out of the box, artsy play. Lothar Schöneck is a graphic artist, who also does installation art. He is a long time friend of Jan's and is also one of my favorite people.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because I want you to check out their links on my blog under "Check it Out." The artists, the musicians, the "out-of-the-box" thinkers are just so valuable for our societies, for culture AND YES for our faith communities! Unfortunately I have witnessed and experienced that it is just these forward, out-of-the box thinkers who get run out of institutional religion. And perhaps nowhere more so than here in Germany. (as an aside, I believe that WW2 left a gaping deficit of creative and intuitive people, which is eerily tangible in many aspects of the culture even today). This is a tragedy! It is as if we are deliberately plugging up the holes where the light and fresh air come in. Isn't that what they call suicide?

Of course i know that not everyone shares my taste, but that is not the point. Expose yourself to something new!!