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by Emily Maynard

“Do you want champagne? I’ll open the champagne! It’s delicious!” My friend hopped up eagerly to get the bottle and glasses.

I had driven all day to see them. We were lounging in the living room after a late dinner, catching up on the last few weeks of activity. I heard him pop the cork in the kitchen.

“We’ve been saving this bottle to drink with you, because we know you like good champagne, and,” she took a deep breath, “we have something to ask you.”

He sat down on the couch again and poured champagne for us. I made a joke about how I wasn’t interested in being a Sister Wife, but I was very flattered. We all giggled.

We toasted bravery and truth.

DS Strollers *jude*

Then she leaned forward, holding her glass. “So, with everything that’s happened with our family recently, we’re updating our will, and we’re wondering if you would take care of our children if something ever happened to us.”

I took a gulp of champagne.He put his arm around her. “We know you don’t want kids, but we love you and want you to be our kids’ guardian if we ever aren’t around.”

…

When I was growing up, they had all the mothers stand up in church on Mother’s Day.

We would applaud them as someone walked the aisles with a bucket and handed them each a rose. My mom would take it graciously, because she is gracious, and pass it up and down the row so we could all smell it. That’s what polite young ladies do, of course: they sniff the rose and murmur, “Oh, very nice,” and pass it on.

The rose would sit carefully on the edge of the purple pew for the rest of the service.

Even then, I didn’t want to get a rose like that.

…

“How was your trip?” she asked.

I started gushing. “Absolutely amazing! My niece turned one and she’s just the most darling thing! She just started walking and she’s so smart. She’s funny and adorable. It was so good to see her!”

I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through the pictures of a bright eyed little girl eating her birthday cupcake.

“She’s so sweet,” she said, looking up at me earnestly. “You must be so sad you don’t have one yet.”

I couldn’t contain the sputter of laughter. “Oh, no. I love kids and I love being an Aunt, but I don’t want to have kids.”

I might as well have told her I was a terrorist. I could tell instantly that my admission was unacceptable.

“Of course you want kids, right? You’d be such a great mom! You have to have kids.” She was insistent and I knew backpedaling and dishonesty would be easier for all of us.

“Oh, well, I guess, um, I meant that I haven’t met anyone yet who I’d want to raise children with.” The singleness card is good for a few things.

She nodded sympathetically and then pointed to the crowd behind her. “There’re some good looking, godly men over there.”

…

“Is it because of your old church culture? Is that why it scares you?” She asked, flipping over the paper for a clean sheet.

“Probably,” I answered, slouching back into the fluffy couch. This stuff was so hard to talk about; it was all tangled up. We’d done so much unraveling already, but it seemed like every time I made progress, there was just another messy knot. I guess that’s the point of therapy.

“That’s part of it,” I continued. “Motherhood was the ultimate form of femininity. They talked about how to have as many babies as possible as quickly as possible.  It felt like it was something I should want desperately, and I was bad if I didn’t. I didn’t know that there were other options. I didn’t want to question people following God. It just wasn’t okay to say I didn’t want kids; it would mean I didn’t love God.”

“Mmmhmmm,” she made an encouraging noise as more truth came roaring out.

“It’s like they couldn’t see that kids are people. I heard over and over that babies were “God’s Blessings,” but all I saw was using children as a status symbol. I saw neglect, because once there was a new baby, the older ones just had to fend for themselves. It was normal.”

“I can see how that could happen. What else are you afraid of?” She was writing in straight lines across her paper, even with all of my chaos.

“I’m afraid that I’m not a real woman because I don’t want to have kids. I’m afraid that people will always see me as lesser and pity me. I hate when they tease that my biological clock hasn’t kicked in, and imply that I’m selfish, or that I just don’t understand the beauty of motherly sacrifice. I do! It’s beautiful for some people, but I want to be me, not a walking womb. I want to sacrifice in other ways. I want to take care of the people who are already in the world, not just make new ones!”

“And you can, Emily. That’s so important, too.”

…

“Hey, I’ve thought about it a lot, but I knew my answer back when you guys first asked me. I would absolutely raise your kids, because I love them, but also, you shouldn’t die.”

I sent back my answer in a text message, which now that I think about it, is probably more flippant than the decision required. But the point is, I choose to be a guardian for those precious young humans.

I don’t believe that sacrifice and joy are unique to motherhood. I see it in all sorts of spaces in my life. It’s in the interactions I have with friends online, mentoring college students, my career, and speaking up about the truth of my life. All of this is challenging and exhausting, and all of it is good.

It takes a team to raise young humans. I see that more and more, as my friends bring them into the world and gather them up into their families. I see the struggle of growing and nurturing and transitioning and loving children. I see the exhaustion of daily emotional output and physical care. I see the beauty of God’s blessings in all sorts of creative acts. I see the delight in teaching new wonders to eager people. I see it as I made the choice to be the back-up-plan guardian for children I know and admire.

I don’t want kids, but I am learning to love the whole world.

photo: *jude*

May 21, 2013 in Story with 0 Comments

The Full Circle

by Andrea Levendusky

{This is the final piece in a three-part series:
I. When I Called God a Cheat and Ran Off with a Married Man
II. Living a Life on the Run }

 

I remember leaving the family counselor’s office. I remember the fake flowers in a pot, and the window slightly open to an early spring breeze. I remember tucking my hands between my legs, my heart pounding in my chest, and hearing him say the words,

“I will never be faithful to you.”

I felt a mix of pity, anger and fear.
Something like a light turning on in the middle of a very, messy room.
Like trying to breathe in a coal mine, searching for the canary.

I sat stiff. He stepped out. The counselor leaned in on the edge of her seat, took my hands and said these simple words…
“It’s ok to let go. You can’t change a man. You can let go.”

I knew about the girl he was seeing at the time.
I knew about the other women along the way.
And the wedding band on my left finger branded me as a fool.
I walked quietly out of that building, climbed into my SUV, cranked up Lucinda Williams’ “Joy” and let the ring silently slip off my finger onto the floorboards of the dusty Mazda.

——-

That was a year after the first discovery. A year after reading text messages by dawn. A year after heartbreak, his and mine. A year after us trying to make something work. A year of fighting and screaming on a back porch, counseling and prayer, more affairs, more tears, and more ultimatums at dawn. And after a year, he asked me for a divorce and I signed my name.

——-

I couldn’t change him, I knew this. I couldn’t fix our home, I knew this too. I couldn’t make him to want to be the father my daughter needed. Or make sense of the mess we had unraveled out of our own hearts over the previous five years. I couldn’t fix any of it.

——-

Andrea-DS-part3

A month before our divorce was finalized, on a dusty road in Uganda, near the roots of a Jackfruit tree, I heard the voice I knew I had known my whole life. Whether it was the absence of noise, or the crucible of my heart, it was the dust of a Ugandan road that brought me back to the scriptures I was running from. Grace and the Gospel became a safe house for my storm-battered soul. In a slow, deep moving breath, I found that not only was the Father running toward me, but he was on the other side of the path I had traveled so far down. My God was not the accuser nor was he some head-nodding, it’s-about-time guy who made me feel embarrassed about the road I was on. In fact, I found more joy and confidence in finally being able to admit that I was incapable of making everything right.

And under a tree I wept. By twisted wood, and in a broken heart, I found that maybe Grace was more amazing than I could ever imagine. By the shadow of branches that hung heavy with fruit, I found the message of the Cross again. Covering me, hanging low with ripe fruit for the ones who find themselves crawling in the dirt, barely able to stand, parched, hungry, desperate.

——-

Have you ever been a prodigal coming home? It’s an amazing thing to me. As one who indulged in my own way, and found that it only left a bitter aftertaste, the journey of repentance left no time to analyze anyone else’s sin. The things I thought would condemn me and scar me were the very things that carried me to understanding the Gospel. Repenting and asking for forgiveness even from people who did me wrong felt a lot like freedom. When I stopped expecting other people to “do me right”, and instead realized that Jesus did it right, and in Him my joy was complete, it was a lot easier to weep, write, ask, let go, walk away and find the birds singing again.

So I wrote letters.
I made phone calls.
I burned letters and closed doors,
and thanked God that somehow he could make all things new.
I sobbed snot and tears with my brothers in foreign cities and at kitchen tables.
I sat silently with my sister and we navigated the things we cannot change by words of grace and love.

And I let the story come full circle. I sat with my hands shaking and my heart pounding outside the doors of The Village Church. It was the last place I could remember feeling the sharp fork in the road of the choice between what I needed to do and what I actually did. I walked through their front doors, four years later, sick to my stomach. I awaited a meeting I was afraid to meet scoldings, finger-wagging, and full of “we told you so”s. Instead I was met with the love of brothers who cried with me, held my bleeding heart in their hands, and reminded me that the Grace of God cannot be outrun.

And then, with the curly-haired, now two-year-old daughter singing in the backseat, we headed north.
To the towns where my name was whispered with rumors, some true, some not. The places where I would be sure to run into those who knew my story and demanded an explanation.

And I still feel the ache. Eight years of feeling jagged, dirty, used. I feel the shame. The stigmas. The labels. The assumptions.

Adulteress.
Divorcee.
Single mom.

When my daughter longs for a father, I see again everything I cannot fix. When old friendships still wince at my name, I know that some wounds may not ever heal as I wish they would. When conversations happen and rejection is poured into my lap, I feel all over again that what was once desirable in me is now crumpled up and easily tossed aside.

And here is where I land with you today, my dear Deeper Story friends. Here is where I stand with shoulders back, chin quivering and say, God holds. God redeems. God rescues. And sometimes, when it all feels like too much, He bends low and draws near and sweeps close. I look in my daughter’s green-gold eyes, my heart bursts with joy and I know, even now, that the grace I’ve been given is unmerited, immeasurable, undeserved.

When parts still feel shattered and sharp, I remember the jackfruit tree. I remember the tree that held the twisted man. I find comfort in the dust and remember that after the worst of the worst, and all of the beauty withered away, He didn’t say — Now comes the hard part.

He said, It Is Finished.

 

May 17, 2013 in Story with 46 Comments

The Problem Of Evil Is Hanging In Your Closet

by Zack Hunt

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In the midst of all the scandalous news surrounding the IRS, Benghazi, and AP phone records, chances are you’ve already forgotten about the clothing factory collapse in Bangladesh. Between a 24-hour news cycles and our natural penchant for news that directly affects our lives, it’s really no surprise this story has all but disappeared from the news cycle.

But therein lies the problem.

That clothing factory collapse on the other side of the world is actually more directly connected to your life and my life than any of those other high profile American-centric stories.

Why?

Because the clothing factory in Bangladesh collapsed because of what is hanging in our closets.

On April 24th near the city of Dharka a nine-story building which housed a clothing factory and all its employees suddenly collapsed killing over 1,110 people and trapping hundreds of others under the rubble. Outrage over the terrible working conditions inside the factory and apparent poor quality of building construction quickly erupted around the world. And rightly so. After all, how could anyone allow people to work is such dangerous and ultimately deadly conditions?

While blame certainly rests at the feet of the company who operated the factory and failed to maintain safe working conditions, they are not the only party with blood on their hands. In fact, the web of responsibility is much more complex than that, so much so that it extends all the way across the ocean and into our closets.

The reason there was a clothing factory in Bangladesh in the first place is because Bangladesh offers cheap labor to clothing manufacturers. How cheap? About 24 cents an hour.

So, why not just pay these workers more money and bring their factories “up to code?”

Because higher wages mean more expensive goods and customers don’t want to pay higher prices. While it would make for a simpler narrative, companies like Walmart, Gap, and H&M that have operations in Bangladesh outsource the making of their clothing lines overseas not simply because they want to exploit people on the other side of the world, but because we their customers all but force them to do it. While most of us would be appalled if we saw the working conditions and knew the wages of the people that make the clothes we wear and would no doubt shout our anger from the roof tops, our wallets tell a different story. Our wallets, or more specifically our spending habits reveal the cold hard reality that most of us just don’t give a shit about where we get our clothes, so long as we get them for cheap.

Worse yet, as Tony Campolo would say, most of us in the church care more about fact that I just said “shit” than the fact that countless men, women, and children suffer and die everyday as a direct result of our lust for low, low prices.

Which is why the problem of evil is hanging in our closets.

You see, the problem of evil is not exhausted by things like robbery, rape, or murder. Nor does it only involve the people directly perpetrating the evil. Things like exploitation and oppression are also forms of evil and they are just as insidious as the evil we hear about on the local news, if not more so as they have far more victims and infinitely more perpetrators. In theology this is called systemic evil. It’s the form of evil that arises through the systems that make our modern world go ’round, systems like the global economy.

Itself morally neutral, a global economy connects people across vast oceans who otherwise would never be connected. While new opportunities and new riches are created, so are new problems and new tragedies. An interconnected world allows a company in the United States to search virtually anywhere for the cheapest place to produce their product in order to meet the insatiable demand of their customers for ever cheaper prices.

This rabid pursuit of low cost and higher profits pushes companies to cut corners to keep costs down and encourages their customers to look the other way and not ask questions about how the things they buy could be so cheap. Ultimately, it creates a fantasy world in which low cost goods stop being a blessing and instead are seen as an inalienable right. This mixture of cheap supply and insatiable demand is, of course, a recipe for disaster – a disaster exactly like we just witnessed in Bangladesh.

While you and I may not have directly caused the disaster, the clothes that hang in our closets and the low prices we demand for them make us complicity guilty in this web of evil whether we want to admit it or not.

So what can we do about it?

It certainly won’t be easy or simple, but we can begin by taking our heads out of the sands of entitlement, unbridled consumption, self-centeredness, and vanity and accept our share of the blame. We also have to open our eyes to the reality that cheap goods almost always come at the expense of cheap labor. Now, I’m not saying we all need to start buying $300 jeans and $80 t-shirts, but as Christians charged with caring for “the least of these” we have a responsibility for making sure we are not a part of oppression and injustice, that we are not actively contributing to the problem of evil.

Which means at the very least we can seek to purchase fair trade goods whenever possible. Are those goods more expensive? Of course, but before we start complaining about that higher cost, we should keep in mind it is that very complaint that put us in this situation to begin with.

The problem also isn’t solved buy simply “buying American.” Aside from the difficulty of actually doing so as only 2% of clothes sold in the U.S. are actually made in the U.S., the sad truth is that terrible though those wages in Bangladesh are, they are wages nonetheless. Take away those jobs and the wages along with everything they go to pay for goes with them. Sure, we need jobs in America, but they need jobs in places like Bangladesh too, often much more than we do. So, if we are going to do business with companies that outsource their work overseas, then as responsible consumers we can and should hold them accountable for fair wages and safe working conditions.

You can, of course, search the web and find countless other ideas, but the truth is, there is no easy solution to systematic problems like this. Sure, we could throw the CEO of some clothing company in jail or even pass new laws in an attempt to hold companies accountable, but that would not end the basic problem. Why not? Because this is a problem of greed and selfishness and there is no law that can put an end to those sorts of things.

Which means the “solution” to this evil problem will not be found in Congress or in the courtroom. It will be found within each of us. It will come when we accept the fact that in a globalized economy our decisions have far reaching consequences. It will come when we decide that slave wages and life threatening work conditions are unacceptable prices to pay for a cheap pair of jeans.

It will be come when you and I start loving our neighbors more than we love low prices.

 

Grace and peace,

Zack Hunt

 

May 15, 2013 in Story with 41 Comments

When He Met Me at the Mailbox

by Tamara

'Mailbox Peak - Sunset 1' photo (c) 2009, laffertyryan - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

I was walking down the long driveway to the mailbox– long enough to feel the discomfort of his presence, not long enough to get away. When I was almost there, he broke the heavy silence.

“Let me hold you,” he said, but it was an entreaty, not a demand.

“I can’t.” I turned my face.

“Why not?” But we both knew the answer– the space between us was filled with too much shame.

“I’ve ignored you.” I reached for the black metal box.

“I know. It’s not between us.” He came a little closer.

“I’ve run from you.” I grabbed the junk mail.

“I know. It’s not between us.” He came a little closer.

“I’ve loved someone else.” I faltered my step.

“I know. It’s not between us.” He came a little closer.

I burst. “But I’m not who I thought I was, who I wanted to be, and it’s all wrong, I’m all wrong, and you could never love me like this, and I can never be anything but this, and so you can never really love me– and there is no way we can ever be together.”

He closed the space. “There is nothing between us.”

And right there at the mailbox, I let him hold me.

Silence fell again softly, but it was a different sort. I turned back up the drive, the small stack of envelopes in my hand, and I was glad for the long walk ahead.

 

May 14, 2013 in Story with 21 Comments

Beyond Black and White: Yellow Fever and Letting Go of Shame

by Mihee Kim-Kort

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Yellow Fever:

1. An infectuous tropical disease carried by mosquitoes.

2. A term usually applied to white males who have a clear sexual preference for women of Asian descent.

[From Urban Dictionary]

3. Feeling shame about one’s asianness. (My definition)

||

A friend of mine lamented that his girlfriend did not know who Emmet Till was when it came up in conversation. Something about TMZ and Lil Wayne. I have no clue. He told me he could barely pick his face up off the floor – much less his jaw – when he tried to explain that the story of this little black boy is a huge part of American history, and how could you not know him???

But. Would people say that about … Vincent Chin? If I were to ask you to name 5 Asian Americans that have made a significant impact on American consciousness and identity could you name someone besides Jeremy Lin or Lucy Liu?

For the longest time I struggled with racial identity. Actually, that’s not accurate. I avoided it. I ignored the contradictions I felt in and around me. I pretended nothing was wrong. People often express surprise when I share this piece of my story.

“But, you’re Asian! It’s not like your Black or Hispanic.” (Wow. Not even sure where to begin…)
“Asians are rich and successful!” (Have you heard of the model minority myth?”)
“I don’t see you as Asian. I see you as American.”(That isn’t really helpful.)
“Your English is so good. There’s not a trace of an accent. What’s the problem?” (Sigh.)

||

Pearl of the Orient. Whore. Geisha. Concubine. Whore. Hostess. Bar Girl. Mamasan. Whore. China Doll. Tokyo Rose. Whore. Butterfly. Whore. Miss Saigon. Whore. Dragon Lady. Lotus Blossom. Gook. Whore. Yellow Peril. Whore. Bangkok Bombshell. Whore. Hospitality Girl. Whore. Comfort Woman. Whore. Savage. Whore. Sultry. Whore. Faceless. Whore. Porcelain. Whore. Demure. Whore. Virgin. Whore. Mute. Whore. Model Minority. Whore. Victim. Whore. Woman Warrior. Whore. Mail- Order Bride. Whore. Mother. Wife. Lover. Daughter. Sister.

-Jessica Hagedorn, “Asian Women in Film: No Joy, No Luck”

And for the longest time perhaps the most difficult piece for me to acknowledge was how church – ie. white, conservative, middle-class, evangelical Christianity – perpetuated this feeling of being less. Trying to put language to this less-ness was next to impossible, and there certainly was no space in Christianity to put flesh and blood on it because the illegitimization of it was so subtle and insidious I had internalized it. I was ashamed of my Asianness because it not only made me less of a human being, but a second-class Christian. And if I brought up anything contrary to the nice, neat narrative of white, evangelical Christianity then that was a sin.

||

The Gospel and I discovered each other in the least likely of places. In critical race theory, in feminism, in post-modernism, post-colonialism, post-structuralism, in the social histories of marginalized peoples, in liberation theologies.

Woman Warrior
We are unbinding our feet
We are women who write
We are women who work
We are women who love
Our presence in this world

-The Unbound Feet 1979 Performance at the San Francisco Art Museum

I remember how it felt to read about the internment of Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese (because they all look the same) during World War II. To read about Korean women brought over by US American soldiers after the Korean War and being abandoned by their American husbands, abandoned by the US government who saw those marriages as invalid, abandoned by the South Korean government who saw them as used goods. To read about the LA Riots and the scapegoating and pitting of African Americans against Koreans. To read about how those sorts of riots happened also in Brooklyn and Detroit. To read about Vincent Chin’s brutal murder and the injustice that surfaced in the community. People actually blamed him for his own death. People sided with the murderers. People didn’t care about the family he left behind or that his fiancé would never know “happily ever after.”

In the same way this event catalyzed a movement and mobilized Asian Americans in huge ways all across the country I felt the first time I read these stories jump start my own heart, and shape my desire to articulate why experiences of racism towards Asian Americans are unique – they don’t fit the black-white paradigm of race – and most of all, how church needs to work toward reconciliation with all those who are the Other.

||

I became angry. Tears-of-rage and tantrumy angry. All the memories of how I was belittled and silenced while my family was ridiculed and stripped of dignity and agency flooded my waking moments. What seemed innocuous and innocent was painful. But what hurt most was when I didn’t say anything. Eventually during seminary I was able to work through that anger, which incidentally was a process that occurred during my first year of … marriage. To a white man. To another minister like me. To a recent seminary graduate. To a white man. I do not recommend this scenario or timing. But eventually I started to embrace. And celebrate. And remember. This month is Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage month. But for the sake of my children, my little Hapas, every month is AAPI Heritage month. I want them to know themselves. I want them to love themselves. And I want them to face and counter injustice in all its forms.

I’ve been healed of my yellow fever – being ashamed and allowing myself to be shamed by the dominant culture. That happened and continues to be nurtured by God, my creator, redeemer, and sustainer even as I struggle with social and political realities of faith being co-opted by the dominant culture and used as a vehicle of power.

My hope is that yellow fever isn’t hereditary, and that my little ones will never have to go through a process of letting go of it. There’s too much good to advocate for in them, and not a second needs to or should be wasted on what’s destructive, ugly, and mean. Rather I want us to pour our lives and love into following and trusting that the one called God-With-Us knows in his bones what it means to be rejected as the foreigner (he certainly was from waaaaaaay out of town), stranger, and Other. Because that story matters the most and as long as it is the one they carry in their bodies they’re going to be stellar.

“[Neighbor is] not he whom I find in my path, but rather he in whose path I place myself, he whom I approach and actively seek.” ― Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation

For more on this, please check out Making Paper Cranes: Toward an Asian American Feminist Theology.

May 9, 2013 in Story with 27 Comments

Loving everything whether its hot or not

by Troy Bronsink

Why did the hipster burn her mouth on the pizza?  Because she ate it before it was cool.

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For 10+ years I mingled amidst mustaches, irony, and earnest activism in Innercity Atlanta.  I identified with hipsters- thrift-store t-shirts, pre-pop music that is self effacing and experiemental, suspicion of “suburban” things outside Atlanta’s perimeter, of institutions or artists that had moved past the start up stage.   Many “pure” hipsters were gracious with me over those years allowing me to self identify as “one of their own”, but I was never as hard core as it may have appeared.  One Atlantan who had grown up in Ohio warned me that in less than a year in Ohio, a person would start wearing socks with sandals. The safety I found in irony and skepticism was the air I breathed.

And then we traded all that to move into a midwestern first ring suburb.

If there were an analogous pizza joke about where we live now, it might be: Why didn’t the Midwesterner reheat the leftover pizza the next morning? Because it’s less of a hassle to just eat it straight from the fridge.

Truth is, I love both- being the first to discover the Italian foodie pizza joint in Atlanta’s midtown, and taking the leftover La Rossa’s pizza (a Cincinnati favorite) out of the fridge for breakfast.

But the real struggle about my new context is the invisibility of the other.  When we moved into the innercity back in 2004, into a community 66% in foreclosure, our African American neighbors acknowledged us.  In spite of our race, our white family could make fast friends. Our Obama stickers gave us street cred. My wife, who is in education, could connect with teachers and families quickly because it was all hands on deck, and we all realized the urgency of the issues.  Even church was different- it was easy to find soul-mates who were not looking for church as a “place to be fed” but as a place to integrate their activist self with the good news of New Creation in Christ.

Eight years later, we’re living in a community where most have lived for a generation remembering when it was a place people wanted to be.  Few admit how much less ‘sought after’ our community is.  My wife and I, both, have had awkward conversation when meeting a coworker or bystander who, when they learn we’ve moved from Atlanta ask, “Why would you move here? Everyone is trying to get out!”

Here the schools have been changing more gradually and most urgency has focused on getting one’s kids into “good schools” before the current one goes to pot. Here we’re just one more white family with a minivan. But our Obama sticker did not give us any cred. Here the schools and churches were homogeneous for so long that most urgency it is focused on preventing being “pulled down” by issues like domestic violence, unemployment, transitional residents, so-called “secular” family values… you name it. Churches struggle to break loose of home-team thinking- a weekly reinforcing of my style, my values, my God in a world where the comfort of homogeneity is otherwise eroding.

In the fast paced metropolitan culture of Atlanta many were quick to encounter someone different (I can only imagine how much more this is the case in NYC or LA). Though Cincinnati is 42% African American, it can feel like the Midwestern suburbs are so far behind on the interaction between racial cultures. And its not just about ethnicity. In communities like ours people live in separateness and find comfort in sameness.

Mark Twain famously wrote “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Cincinnati because it’s always twenty years behind the times.”  I sometimes wonder which comes first: the dissolution with the past or the vision for the future. I suppose it could happen either way.  But if Cincinnati suburbanites are too slow for the future, it may also be that Atlantan hipsters are too fast for the past.

I notice in myself a bit of both.  I love living in the future with the speed of communication, learning, and open-sourcing of innovation and artful life. Sometimes that prevents me from being in the present. I also find myself tempted to define life from past experiences when I’ve been hurt, to write off people who no longer appear to me to be part of the solution, to rule out types of music and prayer as obsolete.

My family is thriving in this move. And as time slows down here I’m also able to notice my mindfulness increasing.  I’m even being challenged to see life through aesthetics of those who don’t move as fast. No, not the romantic Wendell Berry approach, just the simple Americana of people who go to work, tuck their kids in at night, and enjoy the same beer as their dad.

As a hipster I had grown accustomed to considering him who is behind as the “other.” The “late adopter” was the hardest for me to accept and to learn from.  I’m discovering that I even rejected my own past, the “other” who remains in me (not just because I wore yellow Crocks with socks to the Kroger last week). Its interesting how much of our life in Atlanta was free of reminders of my childhood- few people like my parents, few schools and churches like I’d grown up with, few restaurants or weekend games like I had known. I had unwittingly cut myself off from my own past.

I am hopeful that in spite of our life in suburban Cincy that we can stay in touch with those aesthetic cutting edges. I’m hopeful that the community here can learn to embrace the new diverse pluralistic reality that is happening around them.  And while its only been 11 months, I’m also beginning to realize the value of this place rubbing off on me, just a little. If nothing else I’m risking letting go of that my snobbish hipster embrace of “the other” which had, in part, “othered” the past. I’m hopeful that I’ll learn as Dostoyevsky once wrote, “If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.” I’m hopeful that I can love things (and people) long after their cool as much as I do before they get cool.

But please call me immediately if you hear of a new brick-oven Italian pizzeria in Cincy, and for God’s sake please tackle me if you see me in the store with socks and sandals.

May 9, 2013 in Story with 5 Comments

Wherever it Rises

by Jen Hatmaker

 

This thing has happened lately, and every single time it leaves me bumbling and fumbling and overwhelmed. A male pastor, in his 60s at least, attends a conference I’m teaching at, finds me afterward, and says something like:

“I am so moved by what you said. Will you pray for me?”

“I read a book you wrote, and it has changed our entire church because it changed me.”

“What do you think I should do about _______? How should I lead?”

Then, normally pretty composed, I get choked up and awkward and over-emote and act weirdly inappropriate like try to hold their hands or put my head on their shoulders. Not at all creepy.

I cannot explain how this moves me. First of all, the girl thing. These leaders are from a generation where women did not preach or speak at pastors’ conferences or advise men spiritually or write books they read. Men were at the helm, and women simply didn’t have a seat at the table. This paradigm comprised the majority of their ministry careers, unlike the young bucks who are more accustomed to leading alongside women.

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The humble nature of these men my dad’s age, offering me gracious respect with teachable spirits just leaves me undone. I am so challenged by their humility and can’t help but contrast my fire and flash. This deference to the kingdom, treasuring it through whomever it rises, resisting the instinct to elevate an authority dispute, has changed me. Ironically, it hasn’t made me power drunk and proud like the fear rhetoric suggests but more tender, softer, bowed by humility, committed to imitating my brothers in Christ. (It also makes me want to hold their hands evidently. I don’t know. Thank you for understanding.)

In the spirit of these pastors, to the groups, coalitions, denominations, movements, those who practice dissimilar theology or understand God in unfamiliar ways or follow Jesus differently than I do: Please forgive me for prioritizing your labels over your value. That is polarizing and tends to make a straw man out of the extreme factions of any given ideology. We are more nuanced than our most vocal representatives make our tribes out to be. I am overly compassionate to the spiritually disoriented and unfairly critical of those under the steeples. We needn’t be unanimous in the Body of Christ when we’re all redeemed by the same mercy. I might not agree with your every position, but neither must I disagree simply to mark my own territory.

May I, too, celebrate the gospel wherever it rises. None of us will get all this right; better to herald the common places and extend the benefit of the doubt. God’s fingerprint is everywhere; none of us own the rights to His endorsement. If a believer on the opposite end of the ideological spectrum says something good and true, may I say without hesitation, “Amen.” I’m often afraid to identify with certain people lest I be labeled with their brand, but that is foolishness. The gospel is always beautiful, and I am not in singular possession of its power. That is so arrogant. May I bend my knee to Jesus wherever and in whomever He reigns.

Secondly, I lean hard on the church because I love her. My generation and those after me are walking away, so I bang the drum, wave my arms, jump up and down with wild eyes and constantly push. I stand in front of these men and trot out sobering statistics and urge us to reimagine old forms and beg us to stop doing a bunch of crappy stuff we do. I’m not gentle like John; I’m abrasive like Isaiah. It must be a nightmare for these people. I’m like the least favorite speaker on the docket, and hearing how the church is losing ground is painful for men who’ve logged the last 30 years in the pulpit.

So to hear these pastors my dad’s age tell me they are listening and how their congregation gave their shoes away on Easter and cancelled stale programs and altered their entire trajectory toward serving their community… I.just.cannot.even. Here is where words fail me. Reimaging the kingdom after this long is nothing short of heroic. Will I stand in front of an aggressive teacher half my age challenging long-held values and pushing on my role one day and still be teachable? Can I even do that now? Or have I burrowed so deeply into my pet perspectives that I cannot be led anew?

I can only imagine how the next few generations will evaluate the church we are leading one day. We don’t even know what we don’t know. We are doing the best with what we know, exactly like all the leaders who came before us. Plenty of our practices will come under scrutiny one day, as well they should. Culture will continue to shift and our wineskins will become brittle, though they were once new. And despite the changing methods, Jesus will remain, and these brothers have led me toward humility, to treasure the kingdom over the constructs, not just 30 years from now but also this very day.

Love for the truth can so easily become arrogance. It is shockingly simple to lose the thread. For times I’ve disparaged old forms without honoring the faithful Christ-followers who shouldered the church in their generation, please forgive me. Your leadership raised me to love Jesus. I will certainly get a dose of my own medicine one day, and if I am half as humble and tender as you are, it will be a miracle. Oh that your wisdom would leach down into my fiery, zealous heart.

Yes, you know I value prophecy and believe the church needs to acknowledge some cold hard facts. Yes, courageous truth-speakers are ever needed and the state of the Bride requires urgent boldness. But perhaps what will transform the Body most is an influx of humility, reaching across party lines and gender barriers and denominational affiliations and theological debates and generations and preferences, and lock hands with one another, celebrating the gospel wherever it rises.

And if you’re a 63-year-old pastor who tells me you’ve read a book of mine and are reupping for the kingdom, don’t be alarmed if I grab your hand and sob on your shoulder. I’m just a passionate 38-year-old woman who hasn’t mastered her emotions yet. One day, Lord willing, I’ll be an incredible as you.

 

May 8, 2013 in Story with 53 Comments

Parenting and Passions and Making Nerds of Your Children

by Jason Boyett

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“Dad? Can we listen to Fun?”

One of my most significant life developments over the past couple of years is that my kids have progressed from mostly consuming Disney Channel music (read: High School Musical soundtracks) to enjoying the same kind of music I like. Even better, they skipped right past the transitional Taylor Swift/Selena Gomez/Justin Bieber pop-zone in order to arrive at this glorious place of shared fandom. For instance:

• Owen and I drive to school most mornings singing Matisyahu (“One Day” is a favorite) or The Swell Season’s “Falling Slowly” at the top of our lungs.

• Ellie finally gave into our family-wide insistence that she listen to Mumford & Sons, admitted that “I Will Wait” was a pretty great song, and has now embraced folk rock.

• Four heads immediately start bobbing during our family card games when The Script shows up on Pandora, when we pull up The Lone Bellow on Spotify, or when Imagine Dragons rotates up on a shuffled playlist.

I am delighted at our arrival at this strange destination. Maybe I’m too culturally conditioned by the you-kids-turn-that-crap-down cliché of film and television, but this multi-generational musical overlap isn’t always the case, is it?

This got me thinking last week about the musical tastes of my own parents—namely that I’m not certain what theirs were. I do know they showed zero interest in the music I loved during my teen years (U2, REM, rap).

My inability to pinpoint their musical passions is strange, because our family has always been a musical one. My dad plays the violin. One of his sisters played the cello in our local symphony. Another sister teaches flute. Meanwhile, my mom plays piano and her sister plays the viola.

We have actually had family gatherings during which we all stood around a piano and sang together. (No, we did not all wear clothing our governess fashioned from drapes.)

I play a smattering of instruments, too. Musical ability is a big part of my family’s strong musical heritage. But, still, I keep running into a gap in that legacy: Despite their love for playing and singing music—and despite nearly four decades in each others’ proximity—I have no idea what kind of music they listen to.

Do they have a favorite band or album? My dad has been a casual fan of Mannheim Steamroller for at least a couple of decades, but I haven’t heard him listen to much but talk radio since I was in high school. While he owned the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, he never spoke of it with the typical Baby Boomer reverence.

My primary musical memory with my Dad involved rolling down the windows and removing the T-tops from his 1984 Nissan 300 ZX and speeding down the highway while blasting the Rocky soundtrack theme song. “Gonna fly now! / Flying high now!” (Yes, he was a cool dad, but I’m not convinced he’s got a robust “classic American sports anthems” playlist in his iTunes.)

And my mom? She has taught deaf preschoolers for thirty-plus years, and spends her days singing songs for three-year-olds. Many of these songs she made up herself. I feel like a horrible son, but other than simple songs about flags, ladybugs, and busses, her musical tastes are a total mystery to me.

I asked my brother and sister for help. Micha recalled that Mom, who spent her late teen years in Southern California, had once been a Beach Boys fan. Brooks remembered long car rides filled with the music of Dallas Holm and Sandi Patty (yes, looooooong rides) and recalled that our parents once saw Elvis in concert at Texas Tech in the early 1970s.

(This was news to me, so I asked my parents for a review of the Elvis show. Mom: “We sat far away and Elvis was very small.” Dad: “Binoculars only proved he had a white jumpsuit on and threw scarves to the audience.”)

My parents played music, but the evidence suggests they weren’t really into music.

So how is it that the Venn diagrams of my kids’ favorite music and my own favorite music contain so much overlap? I think the only reason is because my wife and I have tried to pass along a passion for listening to music. I regularly bring up music in my podcast. We’re always trying to introduce new songs and artists to the kids. We have music playing constantly.

Along with exercise, reading, writing, art, and the virtues of lying in a hammock on a spring day, a love for popular music is one of those cultural batons we want to hand off to the next generation of Boyetts. It’s a priority.

It wasn’t necessarily my parents’ priority, and that’s just fine. Instead of music, Dad taught us all to flyfish. He took us camping often, where I learned to build a fire, read a topographical map, and clean a trout. Mom took us jogging at six in the morning, involved us in her lifetime of work with the disabled, and instilled in us the virtues of books, words, and reading.

Our parents introduced us to their passions, and that kind of cultural heredity changes from one family to another. My foodie brother-in-law feeds expensive cheeses to my preschool-aged nephews. My screenwriting and podcasting friend Rob uses Toy Story to teach his girls about character arcs and story structure.

In a wonderfully ad-libbed answer to an audience question at the Calgary Comic Expo, actor/writer/cultural ambassador Wil Wheaton explained in a much-shared YouTube clip about why it’s “awesome” to be a nerd. He declared that the defining characteristic of being a nerd was loving things. It’s not what we love, he said, but how we love: with passion. That passion makes us nerds.

Ours is a world that often seems cynical, detached, and passionless. Ours is a world that needs more nerds. And we need more parents to pass along their nerdery to their kids. I can think of few things more life-giving than saying, “this is something I love and I want you to love it, too.” Maybe it’s music. Maybe it’s backpacking. Maybe it’s cheese.

Doesn’t matter the subject. What matters is the passion.

What kind of nerd are you?

May 7, 2013 in Story with 12 Comments

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