Don’t flay the sheep.

Dear 8 lb, 6 oz Baby Jesus…

First, a few disclaimers:

1. I am not a car racing fan (although I did stop by the Indy Race Track to see time trials with a group of ministers earlier this year…)
2. The movie I’m referring to below, which shall go unnamed, is not a movie that I am advocating. It’s PG-13 and deserves that rating (and maybe a bit more). Sometimes, as a minister, I wonder if I’m supposed to bewatching things that qualify more as high-brow, edifying cultural acheivements. But, I suspect some of my pastoral charges are watching this, and last night, I was in no mood for intellectual enhancement. After finding out that the baby is taking her sweet time getting ready to be born, I needed some endorphins. Running is out, and chocolate is giving me heartburn of late, so deep belly laughs for two hours were my best option.

And with that–

Erik and I went out on a date last night after a doctor’s appointment, and saw a movie which shall go unnamed. If you follow movies, it’s the current comedy spoofing NASCAR culture, starring a certain Saturday Night Live alum.

The main character rises to the top of NASCAR racing. In a scene meant to show what his life as a star is like, he and his family are sitting down to dinner the night before a big race. Sitting at the head of a table loaded down with fast food takeout bags, surrounded by his racing-babe wife, two kids, father-in-law, and best friend, he begins to pray, “Dear Baby Jesus…” He gives thanks for the money rolling in from endorsements, his hot wife, his car, and his children, and he prays for future success. But the prayer is interrupted when wife and father-in-law take him to task for always praying to baby Jesus, rather than adult Jesus, or teenage Jesus. “Christmas Jesus is the one I like best, so that’s who I pray to…”

A few scenes later, the same character, in a moment of crisis, is running around wildly praying to any god who might listen. The list includes Jesus, “Jewish God”, and even Tom Cruise.

So, in the middle of a movie spoofing American culture, here we have two big questions about prayer: What do we pray for? And, even bigger, who do we pray to?

I wish I didn’t spend the majority of my prayer time praying when it’s convenient for me, and when I conveniently want something.

And as for the who I pray to question, I wonder how much better I am than the character in this movie. I don’t think I’m so different from other North American Christians in this respect. I pray to God as I like to picture God at the moment. Is that really so different from only praying to “8 lb, 6 oz Baby Jesus” or from the character’s actions when, in a panic, he prays to any God he can think of? I do manage to keep it within the Trinity when I pray, but I wonder if my choices about how I pray are really any better thought out than the choices of the guy who prays to any god who will listen.

 

 

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It’s August?

Back in December, when Erik and I told my parents we were having a baby in August, my Dad’s immediate reaction was “This August?” And that is my reaction over the last few days. It’s already this August, the one when the baby arrives. As in, any time now. And I’m getting to the point where I wouldn’t mind–my stomach feels like it’s about to stretch and fall right off. (The doctor promised me this morning that this would not happen.)

With less than a month behind me at the new church, here I am trying already to tie together the loose ends for maternity leave, and I’m realizing that the loose ends are more of a fringe than a few random strings. If I go into labor within the next two days, I’ll probably have to stop at the office on the way to the hopsital.

Meanwhile, it is too hot to do anything outside, and we’re still trying to organize our new apartment.

All of that adds up to no time or energy for me to indulge in any sort of nesting instinct. Right now, the baby’s choice of where to sleep would be in the carseat, a laundry basket, etc. There is no crib matress yet, my mom is washing little clothes, and my hospital suitcase is only half-packed.

So, hang in there baby! There’s stuff to do before you can show up!

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Moving and stuff…

It’s finally scheduled–moving day is Wednesday. A couple other bloggers who I keep tabs on are also in various states of move. Ron and Debra have too much stuff. Susan and Peter are making a big move and saying goodbye to a beloved urban area. Mary has many books (I’d like to challenge her to a book weigh-in versus me and Erik!), and also a good reminder to be humble about our humanity and accept the generosity offered by others.

We’re blessed with a full-service moving company for this move, packing included, but I am still convinced there are some things that need to be done. Yesterday’s small victory–I made it through four boxes that have been in the back of the closet since we moved here 3 years ago. Among other things, it turns out I did not need the 15 bottles of expired vitamins I found there (don’t ask…). Today, I’d like to attack a few more unorganized swathes of bedroom and try to at least get things into their appropriate rooms before the movers box things up. But I could also make sure all my knitting supplies are in one place, throw out old magazines so that they don’t move with us, box up some clothing, and vacuum the cat hair off the couch. It’s also a really nice day out, and my last Saturday officially living a few blocks from Lake Michigan–time at the beach is tempting, too.
Oh, and then there’s the Sunday sermon to spend a few final hours on…

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Happy Discoveries

Some of the happy discoveries as I sort through my new office:

1. Books I inherited include Peter Spier’s Noah’s Ark and Margaret Wise Brown/Clement Hurd’s The Runaway Bunny. This means I can use clean, un-baby-chewed copies of these for children’s sermons. (I intend to let my baby chew her own copies of these books if that’s the price to pay for starting her out with books early…)
2. There’s a Dairy Queen less than 2 blocks from church!
3. Labyrinth in a can!!!!
4. A partial, but largely complete set of the CRC Publications World Religions curriculum. (And, the enormous Hindu Temple in the west suburbs that I always dreamed of organizing a field trip to when I taught high school religion is not too far away…)
5. A “contemporary” song book from the early seventies with the most psychedelic cover ever to come out of a Christian publishing company. And, some decent songs, too.

Speaking of #2, I think a Dairy Queen run is just what I need to get me through the rest of the junior high file drawer…

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One in a string of goodbyes…

Erik is trying to schedule movers for our relocation from the city to the suburbs. In the meantime, I am commuting much too far to work (it turns out that one and half hours in the car is really uncomfortable if you are 8 months pregnant), and we are saying some fond farewells to life in the city.

We live mere blocks from one of my favorite parts of Chicago, the blocks of Devon Avenue where one is transported from America to South Asia. I know we can come back any time, but it won’t be the same. Last night, after the commute home, I was too tired to go out to eat, and Erik kindly volunteered to pick up a take-out order from our favorite Indian/Pakistani restaurant, Hema’s Kitchen.

Hema has acheived near-legendary status in Chicago for her excellent excellent food. This blogger and her commenters say everything you need to know, although I fall more on the side of people who find the decor charming. The only thing I would add: based on reading some newspaper articles on the walls of the restaurant, Hema
appears to generously support a number of churches in South Asia. So, you can eat with the knowledge that your enjoyment of Hema’s artistry benefits missions!

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Stream of Consciousness

Here is further proof that the after-effects of sermons are often different than the preacher may have intended, and different for the various listeners, and also proof that the Spirit does what it will.

This Sunday’s sermon was by a guest preacher, the Rev. Wil Howie from Living Waters for the World. A wonderful organization (I love their technique of training people and sending them out–sort of the mission version of “If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day; if you teach a man to fish he eats for life.”), and a wonderful sermon.

But the preaching text has been haunting me all week for completely different reasons:

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys; I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water. (Isaiah 41:17-18)

The reason the text hit me square in the text has nothing to do with good exegesis or placing it in a broader context. And it’s very different from what Rev. Howie was using it for in the sermon. I’d spent the last week looking at pictures of the flooding in the towns where I grew up, near Binghamton, NY. Life in these towns is deeply connected to the realities of hills and rivers. To get from one place to another, you have to know where the bridges are. It is nothing like the flat midwest where cities can easily follow a grid pattern. Streets are at odd angles, and there are fewer bridges because bridges, like roads, have to navigate the hills in the area. When a river or creek floods, it makes a huge mess of the houses and roads in its particular valley.

I will open rivers on the bare heights, and fountains in the midst of the valleys. Listen to that verse and then think about pictures of the city of Binghamton covered with water, and of roads in the hills completely washed out by an out-of-control creek turned into a roaring river. It’s such a reminder that water is a source of great good and a source of great evil.

Continuing down this stream of thought, I was also viewing pictures of people looking pretty depserate as they tried to dry out their lives and homes, and some of the pictures were heart-breaking because you knew that this flooding had really taken away all the security these people have. The Binghamton area has been economically depressed for decades, and there is some great poverty in the cities and in the surrounding hills. It’s a beautiful place, but underneath that beauty is a lot of desperation and economic hurt. I wonder how some of the people affected by the flooding will recover. I don’t think I ever understood how much poverty there was until after I moved away. And I feel awful that I didn’t see it until I didn’t live there anymore.

But wait a minute…how often do we miss the reality of poverty in the places where we actually live and work? In downtown Chicago, I learned to ignore the homeless people as much as possible because otherwise I felt overwhlemed. I’m grateful for the lunch times I spent at the last church handing out brown-bags with the fabulous director of the church’s social services center, because it forced me to look at homeless people downtown again (especially since I now recognize some of them from those lunches!).

And what about the new place I’m living in? Just last week, the Chicago Tribune carried this news:

Illinois has about 724,000 residents living in what experts call “deep poverty,” the highest rate in the Midwest, according to a recent report.

Deep poverty is defined as a family of four living on $9,675 or less per year.

The number of people living in deep poverty has spiked in the six-county Chicagoland area since 2000, according to the U.S. Census, the 2004 Community Survey and the 2006 Report on Illinois Poverty by the bipartisan Heartland Alliance.

McHenry County has shown the sharpest increase, up 81.7 percent from 2000 to 2004, followed by Kane County at 77.8 percent.

Though Illinois has the fifth-largest economy in the country, it also has the highest poverty rate in the Midwest. Those living in deep poverty account for 5.8 percent of the state’s population, figures show, followed by 5.5 percent in Michigan and 4.6 percent in Ohio.

Yikes! That’s where I live now!

So what’s the sum of this whole stream of thought? The big question for me: as a Christian, what do I actually do about poverty that is around me, about the command to love neighbor? The world is a big, messy place, but the mess includes the very spot where I actually live, and poverty encompasses people who I actually come into contact with. And what does this mean for ministry? How do I help the kids I am called to work with to recognize the presence of poverty nearby, so that they don’t wind up like me–a bit shocked that they never recognized it when they were younger?

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How much mileage would the Tribune get from that?!

We finished our 2-session, super quick prenatal classes tonight. I’m glad they offer these kind since we are very busy right now, and since we registered really late due to the previa.

Some things that were honestly news to me: how to scrub a baby’s head (appparently they like this); SIDS prevention should include swaddling with the arms out; I’ll get to change floors and rooms at least 3 times during a stay at my hospital; I get four people in my room during labor.

The hospital tour part was probably the most helpful thing. Now I know where all this stuff will happen.

And then there’s the most amusing incident of the class–loading 20 pregnant women and their partners onto elevators for the tour. Crammed into one of the elevators, after an alarm went off (alerting us either that we were too heavy or the door had been open for too long) one partner pointed out that the Tribune could get some huge mileage out of a story about an elevator full of 3rd trimester pregnant women trapped between floors. Mostly, I thought, becuase of the desperate need for restrooms…

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Plumbing the Depths of the Youth Ministry Archive

One afternoon into sorting through the library I inherited, I have a few comments to make:

1. If you are a publisher of youth ministry items, DO NOT put pictures of teenagers in your materials, especially in the handouts. A picture of a guy with a curly mullet wearing tight short shorts circa 1979 will be the source of so much amusement to the teenage audience of 2006 that they will pay no attention to the content, however good it may be.
    
2. Likewise, take care with the use of hip, with-it language. You see, I am not all that old, but I already am out of touch enough that I don’t know what the going slang is (reference my sorry attempt above, or, better yet, my inability two years ago to have any idea what one of my students meant when, in the computer lab, she yelled out, “Ms. Schemper, my computer’s tweakin’!”). I’m convinced that teenagers are not really so interested in the adults in their lives understanding the current slang as they are with someone who will listen to them and take them seriously. They know we adults are older and have our hopelessly uncool moments.
    
3. Do most youth group members really enjoy handouts? That seems like school to me. I’m all for learning in youth group, in Sunday School, but handouts are so often just time-fillers.
    
4. How about more Bible? So many of the resources I looked at today were “contemporary” topics (inevitably becoming dated within a few years) with a little Bible tacked on the end. What if we trusted the intelligence of youth group members enough to hand them a good working knowledge of the Bible and let them do the life-application themselves, rather than starting with the topic and feeding them the applicable verses.
    

And yet, I am a bit scared to get rid of things. What if I need it later? What if I discover that my youth group really wants to do a unit on “What to do if a white supremacist group comes to town”? Maybe I do need to read all three books about building group dynamics through outdoor adventures and ropes courses.
For now, I need a break from the resources. And so I plan to sit on the couch, watch  a few episodes of “Six Feet Under,” and be entertained by the gymnastics that the baby has been doing all evening.

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Sorting

New starts involve sorting. Between a new position, a new apartment, and a new baby, I’ve got a lot of sorting coming my way in the next few weeks. I sorted my limited office at the old church last week before leaving, and felt like I did a pretty good job.

But now I am sorting through what remains in the office I’ve inherited. It is a veritable museum of children’s and youth ministry materials. The big question: what stays and what goes? Can I really use 30-year-old publications with ideas for a new and improved Christmas production? How many books of youth ministry games and ice-breakers do I need? More important, perhaps: will I ever read all of the material I’ve inherited?
And then there’s my closet and my dressers. I’d like to organize those before the movers come in. I’d love to get rid of some things, but none of my normal clothes fit around the watermelon that is my belly, and who knows what will fit this fall after I lose the watermelon and gain a baby? How can I sort and donate if I don’t know what I need?

Oh, and the baby–right now, I have two plastic crates full of baby things that are beginning to accumulate. But until we have a new apartment, I can’t engage in any baby-nursery-nesting.

And, with all this sorting, even though I know this is going be a crazy, stressful month and year, I cannot help but feel like God is at least partly sorting my life out. I have a call, a place to be more permanently, and a growing family.

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Learning to Read

I think I have found my dream-student. Slate.com is carrying a blog by one of its regular writers called “Blogging the Bible.” He’s going through the Torah as a semi-observant, but not completely immersed Jew, admitting his lack of knowledge of the text, and reading it right out and honestly, straight through, not skipping the boring parts, and asking hard questions.
If I could do anything in my ministerial role as teacher of Scripture, it would be to get people to read the Bible like this. (True confession–if I could do anything in my personal devotional life, it would be to get me to read the Bible like this.)

Everyone who loves the Bible, as literature, as spiritual-road map, should be reading this blog. It reminds us how someone might read the Bible coming to it for the first time, but it also reminds us how we ought to come to the Bible, discarding what we think we know, and leaving ourselves open to read what is actually written there.

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