We’re at the zoo and we’ve only made it a few yards before a grandmother-ly type with fading auburn hair stops us.

Oh! Twins! How old? And aren’t they precious? And do you have twins in your family? And …. and … and …

I smile and keep the answers short. I’ve almost gotten used to it by now, really. The stares and whispers and grins and questions. Taking our infant twins anywhere in public invites attention from others, but I don’t really want to fuss with all of that today. We aren’t at the zoo for the babies. We’re there for the big girls.

My sweet big girls, 8 and 5 1/2, they smile at the woman who is captivated by their little brothers. I watch as they search her face, wondering if she’ll notice them. My generous big girls, they never, ever complain about the attention the babies get when we are out. My thoughtful big girls, they just stand there, smile, and nod their head yes when they are asked for the eleventy billioneth time if they are good helpers for Mommy.

My heart hurts for them as they stand there in the shadow of that big rig of a double stroller. When the curious stop us to question and comment, I want to say

But look at my big girls! Aren’t they amazing? Aren’t they lovely and smart and courteous and kind?

Aren’t they so much more than big sisters to twins?

Because they are. They are so much more. And I look at them and I see the ripening fruit of years of tending to seedlings. Hours of prayer stretched across years of parenting and they are the beautiful, brainy rewards for my labor. These two big girls, I know them. I know them so much better than I know the baby dudes. And so when people stop us to talk about the babies, I want to say

Yeah, they’re pretty cool. Do a lot of the eat/sleep/poop routine. But ask my oldest daughter here about Mincraft, and she can lecture you for hours on the intricacies of the game. And did you notice the clever and creative outfit my younger daughter is rocking today? That girl has style in spades.

But, I don’t say any of that. Like the girls, I just ease myself into the shadow of the double stroller and smile and answer the nice lady’s questions and move us along as quickly as I can. I brush off the niggling worry that all the attention for the twins is planting seeds of bitterness in my big girls. I hand over way too much money for Dippin’ Dots, an icy treatment to cool the flames of mama guilt in my chest.

And with a wink and some sticky smiles, we set off down the path again – my big girls, my babies, and me.

image by Hello Turkey Toe

It’s four years ago and I lie in bed again, crying – warm, tortured tears slowly filling my ears with puddles of my worst fears.

“She’s going to hate me one day.”

Drip.

“I’m losing her.”

Drip.

“I’m a terrible mother.”

Drip.

***

It’s a year later and I bring her home from school, for good. She’s eight years old. My silent nighttime anxiety and daytime frustrations have led me to this decision. I can’t connect with her to the degree we both need if she’s gone eight hours a day. I can’t parent in the margins. I need to be selfish with our time. I need to homeschool.

***

It’s two years ago and I read everything I can get my hands on about gentle parenting. I think and ponder and analyze the ways I was parented, the ways I have parented. And I hope it’s not too late to repair the damage.

***

It’s 5 months ago and four of us sit around a table, sipping wine, swapping stories. We’re from nearly four corners of the continent and yet a common thread emerges from our histories and into our presents. Only one of has a rewarding relationship with the woman who carried her. Most of us, we don’t have encouraging things to say about our mothers. She’s a little too this, a lot too that. There’s a disconnect, or there’s flat-out bitterness, or there’s bridges burned to protect from future flames. “Oh God”, I say, “I hope our daughters don’t say these things about us one day.”

***

It’s a month later and I sit across from another friend, sipping another drink, having the same conversation. The exact same conversation.

***

It’s three weeks ago and we sit in a little shop downtown painting pottery, me sipping a latte, her sipping a chai. She’s twelve now.

***

It’s two weeks ago and we’re in the car again, just her and I. We laugh. We laaaaugh – in the car, isolated, unplugged.

***

It’s four days ago and she tells me I look pretty today.

***

It’s two days ago and she comes up behind me and puts her arms around my neck – an intentional act of bravery – we’re not a touchy-feely people.

***

Her days are filled with creativity, freedom, and topped with a dollop of responsibility. She is a dream of a tween and I don’t cry at night anymore. I don’t let my fears flood the darkness. A part of me knows that this could be the calm before the storm; that the often terrifying hurricane of being a teenager is just around the corner. But I don’t worry about it too much.

***

Our relationship isn’t perfect. It won’t ever be. She’ll still have stuff to say about me one day when she gathers around a table with friends, she’ll have her share of stories to swap. But I hope she’s the one, the one out of the four who has miraculously been saved from the grime of humanity permanently staining our connection.

Even though sometimes I’m impatient and sometimes she’s selfish and sometimes I’m lazy and sometimes she has an attitude.

Despite all that I hope we can remain friends. It’s such a rare gift to remain friends with your mother.

***

In the mean time, we take one day at a time.

And we laugh.

But I can’t help but wonder if in actuality my life resembles that of a Pharisee. Not practicing what I preach. Offending ‘outsiders’ with my hypocrisy. Using religious pretense to impress my peers. Following the rules but shirking the heart of the Truth. Dutifully sacrificing a portion yet neglecting a spirit of justice, mercy and faithfulness.

I so want my life to resemble David. Brave, strong, and noble. Patient in waiting for God’s direction. Willing to endure pain and suffering as God continued to shape his character.

But I can’t help but wonder if in actuality my life resembles Saul. Spoiling my gifts with tendencies of pride,  jealousy, and fear. Or Absalom. Entitled. Rooted in bitterness and distrusting of authority.

I so want my life to resemble Christ. Sacrificial. Obedient. Loving. Holy. Graceful.

But I can’t help but wonder if in actuality my life resembles Thomas. Incredulous. Skeptical. Doubtful. Unable to believe without seeing, touching, thrusting my hand into His wounds.

Father, help me as I strive towards that which is True. Give me wisdom and courage as I seek to discern good from evil and light from dark. Continue to reveal where I am easily ensnared. Let me resemble, in actuality, the men and women of the early church, King David, and most importantly, Your precious son. 

I wasn’t sure what to do. Should we celebrate? Mourn? Laugh? Cry? Should we let it pass quietly or make a fancy dinner?

“What was Papaw’s favorite food?” my five year old asked me a couple weeks ago. “I dunno,” I replied. “I guess steak?” “Well, then maybe we should cook a steak.” “Maybe we should,” I said. “Papaw would like that.”

The date arrived at the end of a string of days that felt like walking a path broken glass in bare feet. Sharp. Painful. Necessary. We did not grill steak. We weren’t even all together. We were scattered – my two boys and my husband here at home, my daughter spending the night with my mom, my brother’s family at their home in another state, and me six hours south, sitting in a full sanctuary at another father’s funeral. He was the father and father-in-law of two of my dear college friends, and he passed away suddenly in his home with his wife, five children, five children-in-law, and ten grandchildren in the next room.

His may have been the most inspiring funeral service I’ve ever attended. I did not want inspiration, not that day of all days, but the invisible ones that bring inspiration do not ask permission before entering. They just show up and snap you to attention.

It felt strange but comforting to be reunited with the friends who have known me longest and loved me best at the funeral of another father – one of theirs – on the first anniversary of my own father’s passing. It felt odd but beautiful to sit in a memorial service in a formal sanctuary-turned-circus, its large stage colorfully decorated for Vacation Bible School. A two-story wooden ferris wheel loomed over on the right, a glittery ticket booth stood on the left, a photo-opp clown with a hole cut out for the face standing joyfully in between. A six-foot banner hung vertically in the center of the stage right behind the pulpit, in perfect line with the flower-laden coffin in the front and the large white cross hanging above the baptismal in the back. The banner read in bold carnival letters, “START.”

I suppose death for the believer is the grandest of starts, but it sure hurts like hell for those of us still here.

So there I sat in the makeshift circus, listening to the three oldest sons say what every father hopes their sons will one day say. And there I stood, singing the old familiar hymn, weeping at the images of my daddy conjured up by the last stanza:

And then one day
I’ll cross the river
I’ll fight life’s final war with pain
And then as death
Gives way to victory
I’ll see the lights
Of glory and
I’ll know he lives.

I can’t not see him in his hospital bed, restraints on his tired arms. I can’t not see him in his leather armchair, coming in and out of sleep as grandchildren play at his feet. I can’t not see him in his hospice bed, weary lungs shaking out each breath. I know he lives a new life now, but I can’t stop seeing him die.

We had dinner together Monday night — my four of my oldest, best friends in the world and I. It had been twelve years and twelve babies since we had last seen each other. We ate fried macaroni with the giddiness of children and made margaritas and laughed at the stories that only the five of us know how to tell. It was a balm I did not know my soul desperately needed.

I drove home Tuesday night after the graveside service and listened to Matt Mays on the stereo as the painted sky changed hues of purple and orange. I soaked in the freedom of the straight, empty highway and drank in silence like only a mama away from her babies knows how. I called friends on the phone and talked about my dad, and I listened to track eight of Good Light until it broke me. And then I listened a few times more.

The next day I scooped up my two boys and drove to my mom’s house to pick up my little girl, the largest white balloon I’d ever seen bouncing around the back of the minivan. A friend left it on the porch while I was away with a note that said, “Thought you and your kiddos could tie a knot around a note and send it up to your papa.”

And so we did. We tied drawings and letters with pieces of gold string, kissed the balloon and carried it to the open spot of the backyard between the trees. With a few last hugs and kisses for Papaw, we cut loose the long white lace and watched it soar until our eyes hurt from the sun and the balloon was a tiny star disappearing into blue, until it had sailed away “to his new house,” said the three-year-olds.

There were no tears, no dramatic pauses, no sad sighs. There was no steak. But there were squeals of delight. There were moments of remembering. And though it did not go as planned, it felt just right.

They say that money can’t buy happiness, but that doesn’t keep me from trying.

So I went to college and graduated and got a job where they give me dollars and then I exchanged all those dollars for stuff and now I’m sitting in my house surrounded by piles of stuff with no dollars.

But when I roll out of bed and stumble across piles of stuff strewn around my house, I don’t feel happy. When I watch my boys smear peanut butter on everything I own, I don’t feel happy. When I move boxes and bins from the garage to the closet trying to figure out where to stash it all, I don’t feel happy.

I’ve read those minimalism blogs, about simple living and anti-consumerism and de-cluttering, and that doesn’t make me happy either. Because I don’t want to be a minimalist. I don’t want to get rid of my stuff. My stuff is supposed to make me happy.

We’ve moved a few times since we were married and there are things that have never been unpacked, never used, and never missed. There are clothes in my closet that I never wear, but I keep them just in case. There’s a mountain of stuffed animals in our living room, because somehow cheap teddy bears reproduce and multiply faster than any living creature.

And now I’m beginning to realize that it’s all a lie. The blaring commercials, the glossy oh-so-airbrushed ads hanging larger than life, the whisper in my ear that I must buy more. Lies.

The truth is, the stuff weighs me down. It stresses me out. The truth is, I don’t even really want it. I just love buying stuff.

So everything must go.

The DVD’s that I bought because they were just $5 (but now they’re free on Netflix Instant). The books I thought I’d read a second time, but never have. The jeans that don’t fit right but I paid $10 for. The toys that cover our living room floor every night, the ones that the kids will never miss. The broken electronics stashed in a closet because I might fix them someday.

It’s an acquired taste, a learned freedom. But there’s a certain thrill to piling stuff into boxes and bags and throwing it away or giving it away. That voice still whispers strong in my ear when I walk into WalMart or pass a yard sale: “Buy something, anything. Don’t throw it away. You might need it someday!”

But someday has never come, and I never needed whatever it was I’ve been carrying around in boxes all these years.

You know what I need?

A quiet place to sit and write. Time with my wife and my boys. Good friends. Good food. A few adventures from time to time. Those are the things I don’t keep stashed on shelves in my garage. Those are the things I can’t buy for a handful of change at a yard sale.

Everything else is just stuff.

Everything must go.

[ image: Brett Davis ]

It’s our senior seminar, and it’s easier for me to talk about other people’s theological shortcomings than to deal with the fact that God hasn’t handed me a blueprint.

Our professor, with a beard to rival Gandalf, asks us the best icebreaking question for this group of students:

Which person of the Trinity did you grow up with?

He does not imply the absence of any at a given time, of course.

I know my answer right away: Spirit. It’s always been Spirit,  I think, and maybe that’s why “Holy Ghost” sounds like someone else.

The question itself haunts me.
———————
“The rest of the Bible is good and fine,” she drawls in an accent that gets us Southerners in trouble sometimes, “but the red letters are really all I want. Just give me Jesus.”

The seminary student pauses to stir her drink a little and my eavesdropping friend and I gape to start with.

Just give me Jesus.

Do we really get to pick and choose?
———————
I’m stuffing curried chicken salad into my mouth as he’s telling me about his research with contemporary worship music–the kind that starts out at conferences and revivals and trickles its way down to the Wednesday night worship services of my youth group in darkened rooms and spotlights and smoke machines.

Friends separated by time and place, we talk best with food between us, but he puts down his fork when he gets to the thing that bothers him.

“There is maybe one song in the top 100 of the genre that name the whole Trinity. Maybe one here and there, but for the most part, it’s just generic God. That could be anybody!” he tries to joke, “but my question is, if the liturgy–whatever form it comes in–is largely meant to form us into the image of the Triune God, what are we doing?”
———————
Our universal Christian faith is this, according to one of those really dead guys I like a lot, Athanasius, backed up by a whole lot of tradition–

That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons; nor dividing the Essence…

This part of the creed clicks. Worship, not understand. Thank goodness, because if I’m really honest, I find myself asking, why Three?  all the time. What is it about this mysterious translation of Self that brings us to three in one–Father, Spirit, and Son?  The space to wonder at this mystery frees beyond words.
But there’s more–

And in this Trinity none is before, or after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three Persons are coeternal, and coequal. So that in all things, as aforesaid; the Unity in Trinity, and the Trinity in Unity, is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved, let him thus think of the Trinity.

What are we doing? Do we get to pick and choose?

The question itself haunts me.

The ground meat on the dining room table looked more like a mountain.  Grandma had already added the spices, adding a sandy sheen. My mom, brother, and I washed our hands and then went to our respective places around the table.

I plunged my hands into the meat, my fingers shocked by its coldness. I squeezed meat and seasoning together, kneading for minutes that seemed like hours. The cold stiffened my knuckles but we could not stop until the task was complete.

This was Sausage Making Day.

Grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins worked side by side. We traded stories and told jokes until meat and spices blended perfectly. We washed our hands again and the cousins ran off to play together. Occasionally I’d return to the kitchen and watch Grandpa or an uncle case the meat by machine. Long tubes of plastic transformed into sausage. Into sustenance.

Later the meat would sit in the smokehouse for curing but I never saw this part of the process. Only the tasty result.

That night we gathered around the table and feasted on the last of the previous year’s sausage, potatoes, vegetables from the garden, and one of Grandma’s pies. The sausage would appear at many family gatherings to come. Each time I’d remember the work and the love it required.

***

It’s been years since I helped out on Sausage Making Day. Truth be told, I can’t remember the last time we went. Regardless, the tradition carried on. One late winter or early spring day, we’d arrive at the farm empty handed and leave with packages of encased meat.

When I moved into an apartment after graduate school, I received a few sausages of my own. I couldn’t imagine a better stamp of adulthood.

No matter why my family gathered, no matter what else was served, there would almost always be coins of sausage at the table. On this we could depend.

I’m not sure when the sausage ran out. Maybe 2007 or as late as 2008. We noticed, of course, but who could remedy our lack?

In 2006, members of the family gathered to make sausage one fine day, not imagining it would be the last time. A few months later, my great-aunt Teresa was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Teresa had lived with my grandparents for over 25 years at that point. As Teresa declined, Grandma’s role as caregiver increased.

Teresa outlived her original prognosis and when 2007 rolled around, she’d already been bedbound for a few months. Around the time we should have been making sausage, we were instead making caregiving charts and trying to figure out how to get Grandma to accept more help. Grandma had taken care of other dying loved ones before but she was older now and her back was giving her trouble.

Teresa died that April and two weeks later, Grandma was diagnosed with her own cancer. Not even 2 months later, we said goodbye to her as well.

And with that, all of our family traditions were in a state of flux.

My parents hosted Thanksgiving, an aunt and uncle hosted Christmas, and so on. Grandpa wasn’t ready for the holidays to return to his home and, frankly, neither were we. Even though we had all contributed a side dish or dessert to these meals for years, Grandma was the one making it all come together. She wasn’t just our matriarch, she was the force, the purpose, the glue.

Don’t get me wrong: my family loves spending time together, no matter what. But. When a loved one dies, family dynamics and traditions get shuffled about. We are no longer the same and therefore nothing else is the same.

We’ve now marked 6 years without Aunt Teresa and Grandma. Our traditions continue to evolve. Sometimes Grandpa hosts a holiday, sometimes someone else does.

The last 2 Christmases my cousins and I have tossed around the idea of making sausage. It’s our family sausage and we’re ready for it to return to family meals. At least in theory. Grandpa said he’ll give us the recipe and supervise. Perhaps it’s time for the 3rd generation to rise.

It may be time for me to take charge, matriarch-in-training that I am. Even from out of state. To wrangle everyone’s schedules and choose a date next year and hold us all to it.

It’s time for sausage to be a part of family gatherings again. It’s time to remember the work and love it requires.

The twins are fighting over the latest coveted object. This time the earbuds for my Iphone.

I pause.

Watching them in this bizarre, passionate tug-of-war: Dezzo with his mouth a rectangle full of teeth, face tomato-red, and eyes full of the most forlorn tears I almost want to laugh at the absurdity and pick him up right away to comfort him while Anna is on her tippy toes caterwauling in an ungodly way, face also a hellish red, and every fiber in her body so tense she is vibrating while she pulls indignantly. I look around. There are remnants of raisins and Goldfish crackers, and Ellis, our poor Boxer dog, who has been relegated to the bottom of the totem pole for years now, is scrounging for those crumbs. Oz is in his bouncy seat cooing loudly, sweetly, but also, annoying in this moment.  All I want to do is to take a torch and burn up all the Legos and Little People cars, all the miniature farm animals and dinosaurs on the floor so I don’t have to clean them up, and then go into the kitchen to make a huge chocolate cake and eat it over the sink with my bare hands like a rat.

I ask myself again: How did I get here?

I didn’t sign up for this, whatever this is, pseudo-insane-asylum. I graduated from college. I went to graduate school. Twice. I was supposed to get a PhD. I am an ordained minister, for God’s sake. What the hell is my world right now? 

I wake up for a moment and run over to the twins and snatch up the earbuds before they go the way of Solomon’s sage advice to the women fighting over the baby and become two strands of useless, dead wire. And now they are screaming at me. I guess that’s a better alternative.

How did I get here???

||

Vocation is a funny word. It’s surprisingly not so far off from the word, “vacation.” But, I digress, pointlessly. Or not so pointlessly? In my mind, I keep on turning over and over the words of one of my mentors, “Vocation should be about flourishing and thriving in your passion.” Flourishing. Thriving. I am doing neither of those right now. Perhaps I would if I had some kind of a vacation. That is all-inclusive. With fruity, diluted alcoholic drinks with pretty umbrellas, and where I can swim up to the bar to refill my glass as many times as humanly possible. An opportunity to breathe and to break from it all. No doubt then, vocation and vacation seem to go hand-in-hand. To flourish requires some kind of fracture in the day to day routine, temporary but thorough and extreme.

But both vocation and vacation undergo a major transformation in marriage and family. Back in the day when it was just Andy and me, vacations were actually stressful before we could do them together. It took us a long time to realize that we both had very different ways of relaxing and enjoying a city. I longed to be a tourist first and to see everything, soak up museums, parks, and churches, while Andy prioritized reading a good book in coffee shops and bars. Granted, we both wanted the same thing but the order was off. We eventually got it.

Likewise, the first time we came up to my parents’ home for “vacation,” with just the twins who were 6 months old, we thought we could immediately hand them off and looked forward to going out for wings and beer. 10 minutes after we got our beers and started to get into the Cubs-Pirates game we got a call from my dad. Both babies were screaming in the background. We got our wings boxed up and left to go back. Now, we look forward to this time so we can go out to breakfast or lunch without the kids or sit in a Starbucks to read and write or take the kids to the zoo. That’s vacation.

I have my moments. When I really love this whatever. Love being at home with the kids. Love watching them do everything for the first time. Love experiencing everything with them. Love their laughter, their songs, their eyes when they wake up from a nap.

But, I have my other moments, too. And I can’t help but say, “WTH is this life?”

||

I got stuck. Writing this out. And someone posted Momastery’s latest blog by a lady named Lisa-Jo, I’ve never heard of her but feel like I should know her, and wish I could grab coffee or better yet, a hard, pre-prohibition drink and hear her talk more about these dog days:

Ain’t no shame in those days, friends.

Nope, I think those are the holy days. The scars-worn-bravely days.

So, on those days, dear ones, dish up an extra bowl of ice cream and repeat after me:

I am stretched and tired and fearful.
I am wild and brave and broken.
But this one life is on purpose and it’s not by accident where I woke up this morning.

…

These are the good days, the glory days, the slow-as-molasses days. These are the fast years, the wonder years, the how-do-I-find-words years.

But we do. They usually start with “help” and end with “thank you” and the middle?

The middle is a thick layer of reliable wonder sometimes whispered, often shouted, always answered.

The middle is me. The middle is you. The middle is just this one, sacred, take-off-your-shoes-worthy syllable,

“mom.”

I read this and I can’t think of a better way to describe this vocation. To make me stand a little taller because of this calling. To go to sleep for a few hours feeling satisfied and fulfilled in unexpected ways. To wake up looking forward to what is around the corner, and how these little ones will continue to call me forward. Sure, I vacillate constantly between being faithful to my feminist priorities by bucking against cultural pressures to be the perfect and willing stay-at-home mom…or embracing this as an opportunity to experience and live into a new kind of faithfulness trusting in God’s timing and gifts. Yes, I was judgy when I was pregnant and looked down on all sorts of stay-at-home moms, suburban moms, homeschooling moms, and now I see them as incredible expressions of survival and vocation…and calling. I was ordained in 2005 to ministry, but I was ordained to something bigger when the twins first laid hands on me and I never let go, and then Oswald surprised us, and it was like I was being baptized all over again.

Do you remember the trays we all used to eat off of in our elementary school cafeterias?

I usually had to bring my lunch from home, ‘cause $1.80 was apparently too pricey, but when I did get to buy my lunch at school I loved the trays we got to use.

Why?

Because those nice, neat little sections they were divided up into kept my food from touching.

And as any elementary school kid will tell you, there’s nothing worse in life than having your food touch. Although, I have to admit. Even as an adult, I sometimes have to agree with them.

Look, if God wanted my corn to be in my mashed potatoes God would have made corn potatoes. But He didn’t. Because clearly God doesn’t like His food to touch either.

As adults we may not use those wonderful gifts of gastronomic separation anymore, but many of us live our lives like we’re still in the school cafeteria.

We love to keep our lives nice and neat. We separate and divide everyone and everything into clearly delineated categories that we don’t have to think about and which we treat however we like.

We need to have our good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other. No touching. No mingling. That way we can vilify anyone or anything at the drop of a hat without having to worry about messy things like nuance, complexity, or worst of all – diversity.

Which is why Stephen Colbert is ruining America.

He’s doing everything he can to destroy our cherished cafeteria tray way of life.

For some, he’s just a liberal blowhard.

For others, he’s one of the funniest guys on television.

And for the oblivious, he’s the champion of the Republican cause and the most patriotic American in history.

But what makes Stephen Colbert so frustrating is the quandary he presents, particularly to the church and her relationship to politics.

The modern myth of faith and politics in America tells us that all Christians are Republicans. Fortunately, the last election made some progress in dismantling this myth, but it still holds firm ground in the minds of many. The idea that a person could be a Christian and criticize the Republican Party, or worse, vote for a Democrat is nothing short of heresy for many good, faithful people in the church.

And yet there stands Stephen Colbert – a devoted Catholic, a family man, Sunday School teacher, and unabashed wearer of Lenten ashes who is not afraid to publicly call out his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ (in both parties) when the policies they are advocating stand in stark contrast with the God they claim to be following.

Like the time he called all of us out a few years ago in what, for me, is one of the most stinging (and accurate) critiques of American Christianity ever uttered in the English language,

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

With his brazen public admissions of faith and steadfast refusal to shy away from his Christian faith, Stephen Colbert forces us to rethink our cafeteria tray approach to faith and politics.

Unless we are going to position ourselves (rather than God) as the judge of someone else’s faith, then we have to take Colbert at his word (and deeds) that he is, in fact, a Christian. And if that is true, we must abandon our “us” vs. “them” approach to faith and politics and begin to recognize that sometimes “they” are really “us.”

Now, I’m not saying we can’t disagree. We can. And we should. But the demonization of people in the opposing political party has to stop, particularly since some of those people we are demonizing are our own brothers and sisters in Christ.

On a basic level, the utter ineptitude of our current partisan political climate demonstrates just how impotent this attitude renders our ability to get anything accomplished. But on a deeper level, when we caricature and demonize our fellow Christians (or people in general) on the other side of the aisle, we are denying them their God given identity as people made in the image of God by painting them instead simply as political opponents to be destroyed. When this happens we rip apart the Body we claim to hold dear.

Again, I am by no means denouncing disagreement. We should debate and debate vigorously, but must not demonize.

Demonization requires simplicity. It requires a stripping down, or even contorting, of reality to “basic issues” which replace the people who believe in them, along with the nuance and complexity of life that led them to their beliefs. When people become simply idea, “them,” or worse, the enemy, they become targets we think nothing of destroying at will, and with a sense of righteousness to boot.

However, the issues we are so passionate about are almost never as simple as we make them out to be, nor are the people we debate with as uniform or malicious in their beliefs as we portray them as being.

Faith and politics, life in general is not like an elementary school cafeteria tray. It’s complicated and messy. Boundaries are crossed as people and issues get mixed together in the face of the nuances that shape the reality of our complicated and ever evolving everyday lives. Pretending otherwise, that life is simply about voting “yes” or “no” on certain issues or that faith and politics can be constructively reduced to “us” vs. “them” is not only utterly dishonest, it creates an antagonistic myopathy that keeps us from answering our call to bring the kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven.

We need a new approach to faith and politics, one that is honest about the complexities of life and which honors the humanity of everyone.

Which is why I am so thankful for the witness of Stephen Colbert.

He is ruining the America (and church) of “us” vs. “them.”

And I, for one, am very grateful that he is.

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

The conference was a gathering of the best and brightest in the disciple-making movement. If I were to list the mainstage names you’d know them; if not them you’d recognize book titles. From more than one mouth over the course of two days I heard this statement: Begin with the end in mind. What I didn’t hear over the forty-eight hours was what I believe that end to be, or the very thing it pays to keep in mind.

No, I call you friends, now, because I have told you everything

that I have heard from the Father. ~ John 15:15 (Phillips)

Speaker after speaker after session after session hammered away at the word disciple. But if memory serves up something even half-correct, I never ever heard the word friend.

I hold fast to the belief that words mean things and I’m often more interested in what we don’t say than in what we do. It seems to me that Jesus finally arrived at this beautiful place where he recast the disciples as his friends. The John 15 text relays a hard won intimacy that gives me the impression that friends was the goal, the end Jesus had in mind all along. He shared everything he’d heard up to that point with them, he held nothing back, placing complete and utter trust in their incomplete and utter human frailty. And the only word that fit the Son of Man’s desire was friends.

This is a roll of the dice but my bet is its easier to see another individual as disciple than as friend. You could even use the word apprentice here, it carries that same semiformal feel; namely, someone is the teacher and someone is the student. But friend? That upsets the cart. Now sure, I realize that word has been hijacked by Facebook and now most of us have more friends than we ever did in high school. But for the life of me I can’t see why the people of God wouldn’t risk life and limb to reclaim that divinely inspired word. This doesn’t mean we have to change all our marketing copy or rename our conferences, but I do believe it means from time to time we clearly speak the goal – friends.

Is it possible I’m just doing a semantic-gymnastics routine? Yes, its possible. But its just as possible there is something slightly unconscious going on with the word disciple. That word sounds important and serious and sold-out and looks great on banners and can rouse a crowd while the word friends, well, it just doesn’t have quite the same zip. I mean, as far as words go it feels ordinary, and let’s face it, sorta simple. But I believe its what every single one of us, be we doctors or lawyers or cowgirls, are longing for, and if we don’t keep the word friend in mind I’m willing to wager that in five, ten, maybe fifteen years if we’re lucky, a new generation will still be attending conferences trying to figure out why we’re so lonely and what to do about it.

What would it look like if we were challenged to make friends instead of making disciples? Or is that taking the teeth out of Jesus’ commission? How would the stated goal of be-friending the world change our current conversation? Could it possibly change the way the world sees people of faith? Its hard to know but it just might alter our consciousness every so slightly into that realm of nuance and subtlety where quieter kinds of still, small shifts always seem to make a difference that endures. 

I’m not trying to run the word disciple out on a rail. Its a rich word, yet I believe it stops short in describing our efforts to give ourselves away for this swiftly tilting planet that God so loves. One of these days when I cross over Jordan’s stormy banks, I hope there’s a small gathering of people at a graveside service who can speak a similar refrain through tear-filled eyes about my one harebrained life: John was my friend.

Live with the end in mind.