Celebrity Makeover

Right before Christmas, I received a celebrity makeover. "Yay!" you're thinking. But no. Not "yay" at all.

I should be clear from the get-go that I hate getting my hair cut, which is why I only do it about twice a year when things get really unfortunate looking. I feel the same way about getting my haircut that I imagine many people feel about going to the dentist: uncertainty, fear, suspicion.

It usually starts off badly when the stylist begins with the dreaded question, "So what do you want to do this time?" a query which I find myself completely incapable of answering in a way that elicits any approximation of what I believe I've described, as if English words and phrases such as "take it in here" or "layers" or "lighten up" take on some coded meaning inside the hair salon, the cipher for which no one has ever bothered to teach me.*

Also, as a type-A person, I feel suspicious of any scenario in which I must release complete creative control to someone I don't know personally in a familial or lived-through-some-period-of-great-joy-or-trauma kind of way. The hairdresser's chair, as most women are likely aware, is the home of dangerous hierarchy: violate the unspoken code that her opinion is paramount and you may find yourself in a world of hurt.

My most recent beauty trauma started with a conversation that went something like this:

Me: So my hair grew out too much and now I need to get it cut.
HD: Great. So what are you wanting to do?
Me: Well, I'd like to get rid of this shaggy part in the back here where it looks like I just woke up all the time...
HD: Oh no, see I really like that part. It's just that it doesn't make sense with what's going on in the front. 
(This is where the wheels begin to fall off, because I'm not quite sure what about hair could make sense or not make sense. However, if forced, I would put sheep-like shag in the "doesn't make sense" category, which is what I was trying to say, but I don't want to appear completely ignorant or go against her opinion so I say...)
Me: Mmmhmmm....
HD:  See we could take this up a bit...
Me: Mmmmhmm....
HD: without losing too much length.
(They always seem to say this, "not losing too much length" even if you really are, some sort of beauty reverse psychology, I think.)
Me: Mmmmhmmmm...
(And then she goes in for the kill.....)
HD: Something like, you know, Jennifer Aniston.

 (Now, you show me a woman in this country that does not dream of looking like Jennifer Aniston and I'll show you a liar, which is why this is a really evil trick. Because I start thinking that I just might end up looking like Jennifer Aniston if I go with this "not too much length loss, leave the shag in the back" plan. And maybe it wouldn't matter that I would also have to lose about half my body weight, get daily spray tanning, plastic surgery and a make-up artist to make this possible. A new life suddenly seems possible. And so I say that which I will regret for the next 4-6 months:)
Me: Um. Okay.

And the snipping begins. And I am fantasizing about my new look and how it will probably change everything about my life, when I realize something totally inexplicable and somewhat terrifying is happening with the scissors that doesn't seem right, even to me, the hairdo-know-nothing. I try to keep my fear in check and say nothing, as the snipping continues, but I can feel the panic rising in my throat. I try to go back to picturing my new life as Jennifer Aniston Doppleganger when, all of the sudden in a flash, it comes to me: we're talking about two different Jennifer Anistons. The stylist was imagining the Friends, innocent-looking, pre-Brad Pitt, 90s version Jennifer Aniston, back when she was still Rachel Green:

who of course was still very beautiful, if not quite as hot as the angry-sexy-post-Brad-breakup-woman-in-her-40s that she is today. If I had known this was in the stylist's mind, however, I would have warned her that I do not have the same type of hair texture as the 90s Jennifer had. What I do happen to have is thick, puffy hair and incredibly strange sideburns that pouf out, making even this late 90s do an impossibility. But it was too late to turn back. So I waited and watched, and tried not to scream or cry or in any other way let on my despair.

When all was said and done, I did get a celebrity haircut. Unfortunately, it did not resemble Jennifer Aniston of any era, but instead ended as a close approximation of a do made popular by another 80s/90s star:

Yes. My haircut was and is a precise imitation of Jon Bon Jovi. Just look at the photos and see how easy this mistake could be. In answer to your lingering questions, no, I am not kidding. and yes I was filled with shame and fled the salon afterward and cried all the way home, vowing that I would never cut my hair again, and hoping that the sweeping bangs which look so good on this rocker but rather silly on me, will grow back soon enough.

Until then, I think it's hairbands, hats, and the avoidance of US Weekly for a while. Why, oh why do I get douped every time?!


*I tend to have this same sensation whenever I go wine tasting where the use of phrases such as "chewy" and "fruity in the nose" and "full-bodied" are mostly meaningless to me and give me the giggles.

Beach Rules

Mr. L and I just returned from a very-much-needed-post-Advent/Christmas vacation at the Oregon coast. My grandfather built a cabin there in 1950 and it has always been a special retreat for our family. It is a bit rustic (at least compared to the multi-million dollar homes that have cropped up all around it in the past 60 years), but I believe that aspect only serves to reinforce what I see as the inviolable rules of beach cabin vacations:

#1 No less than 70% of one's time at the beach cabin shall be taken up with the following three activities: reading, eating, and napping. The other 30% may be spent: watching cable (after 3pm only), playing board games/assembling puzzles, staring at the ocean.

#2 Walks on the beach are encouraged. All other type of physical activity is to be kept to an absolute minimum. Jogging or other types of fitness nonsense are forbidden.

#3 Delicious meals are to prepared at any time one chooses, and unhealthful snacks of all varieties shall be accessible at all times throughout the day.

#4 The consumption of libations may begin any time after 12:01 pm and should be mainly in service to making more naps possible per day.


#5 Going to bed at 8 pm is completely reasonable as is getting up after 10.

#6 Daily showering is considered optional.  

#7 The first person up in the morning in winter is responsible for starting the woodstove. Those who wake after this are responsible for refilling the wood bin. 

#8 The wearing of various types of pajamas throughout the day is completely acceptable.

#9 Trips into town to survey coastal souvenirs such as sand dollars and "Life is Good" t-shirts are acceptable, though an extra afternoon nap may be required afterwards.

#10 All parties--spouses, pets, visitors--are required to abide by these rules while at the Beach Cabin. The only exceptions are children under 10.

And follow them we did!

Top Five Reasons Not to Adopt Cats at Christmas

This is Lena.

 When we arrived at Petsmart the week before Christmas innocently seeking food for the LIOLI hound, we were greeted by an unexpected holiday morality play: a wall of homeless kittens. Their cages were all stacked right at the entrance so that one could not pass into the bowels of pet supplies without directly confronting their furry little faces peeking out and silently screaming for you to free them from their misery. The cats were surrounded by the saavy volunteers of the coastal humane society from whence they came, workers who had apparently received special expert training in the arts of manipulating the soul, spotting the suckers and separating them from the pack of other holiday shoppers. These volunteers, I'm sure, are part of some sort of pet adoption ninja order that trains them to lure you in with casual conversation and then nonchalantly take the kittens out of the cage so you can pet them. The secret is that the cage is actually a Pandora's box; the kittens can never go back in it. Once you've met them and realized that while your favorite dog will receive a candy-cane shaped bone for Christmas these little sleepy, fuzzy critters will receive a one way ticket to the gas chamber, you are forced to act, unless of course, you have no soul. (Thinking about it now, I think I will go down to the humane society and sign up for said ninja-training which would prove quite useful in my recruitment of church volunteers. But I digress.)

Needless to say, we left the store with the dog food...and two three month old kittens.

I should stop at this point and say that I have never had a cat before. I am mildly allergic and really am a dog person at heart. Thus being completely naive, I had no idea that adopting a cat--or two for that matter--at Christmas may be the worst idea ever. Why, you say? I'll tell you why.

#1 Christmas Trees. Christmas trees are to cats as Las Vegas is to those with substance abuse issues: tempting, dangerous, maddeningly omnipresent. Apparently, cats love nothing more than to tear around underneath Christmas trees, chewing the needles, pulling down the strings of lights, and creating a constant clanging from the ornaments placed thereon banging into one another. This is cute of course unless you would like to a) get anything in your life accomplished during the Christmas season, b) have your Christmas ornaments remain intact and/or c) prevent your cats from being electrocuted. I estimate that I spent about 46% of my time over the following two weeks crawling under the tree to haul them back out, given that my chosen punishment method, the spray bottle, was useless against the defense of greenery naturally provided by our Noble Fir.

#2 Wrapping and Ribbon. If trees are like Las Vegas for cats, ribbon is like meth. Its bouncy nature gives them so much pleasure, hours of kitty delight. But, like methamphetamines, eating ribbon can lead to serious and irreversible internal damage for cats. Allegedly, it can wrap its way around their tiny intestines...no good. So instead of having our presents under the tree, they ended up stacked 5 high on the washer/dryer in the laundry room until the moment of Christmas arrived.

#3 Decorations of the table-top variety. As I indicated previously, this was the Christmas in which we went hog wild with decorating the LIOLI home, expressing our pent-up-from-city-living-holiday passions,   meaning most flat surfaces in our home were adorned with some sort of yuletide trinket: silver angels, illuminated snowmen, Santa statues carved from driftwood. This seemed like a great pre-cat idea. But in a post-catpocalyptic world, it turned out to be most unwise. Apparently a really fun game for cats is to climb on top of things--tables, shelves, dressers--and then push items of all kinds off the edge. (I'm not blaming them...that sounds kind of fun actually.) The practical side-effect of this feline extra-curricular was that every 3 hours or so, a crash-bang could be heard throughout the house and we would come running to find--fill in the blank--a Christmas angel, a painted Russian Christmas egg, or a mantle-top stocking holder, forced form its perch and was now lying on the floor, hopefully still in one piece.

This is Loomis.

#4 Poinsettias. Poinsettias, as you are likely aware, are beautiful plants whose gorgeous foliage does wonders for your holiday decorating.* We bought 6 of them and spread them throughout the house to help brighten up our living space for holiday parties. Poinsettias are also, apparently, deadly to cats. So what do cats do? They try to eat them all day long. So into the laundry room the poinsettias also went, making that space look like a holiday episode of hoarders.

#5 Holiday Entertaining Speaking of holiday parties, we had a few. The cats were not invited, because they are furry escapist devils whose bones do not appeared to be connected to one another. You grab for them as they streak by you out the door and you might as well be trying to grasp smoke. They are tiny pinballs running amuck amidst guests feet and acting out gladiator battles on the dining room table. Ultimately, they had to be quarantined into the guest bedroom which has left a mild odor of cat litter and mischief there.

The good news, if there is any, is that these two are finding a place in our home and hearts now that Christmas is done, and it seems the primary animal member of our home is adjusting fine to their presence. Next time though, I'll aim for a mid-summer adoption program and remember to steer clear of the pet store during December.

*I just read on Wikipedia that the star-shaped leaves of the poinsettia symbolize the Star of Bethlehem while the red color represents the blood sacrifice through the crucifixion of Jesus. Now that is some BS if I ever heard any, though a genius use of religious propaganda to boost sales. Cats, though, I think are very religious. They seem to constantly be chasing demons, or so I've chosen to see their periodic inexplicable outbursts during which they chase invisible things and punch at the air.

**KK, if you are reading this, greetings to Simon and Fiona, our cat sibling role models!

Following Suit

When I was in seminary, being marginalized was really in. If you were part of a marginalized group, it was as if you had some sort of unspoken prestige in the community of religious studies. Unfortunately, I wasn't very marginalized at that time, except one incident involving a crowd, a poem and a very famous biblical scholar. But that is a story for another time.

I almost forgot all about being marginalized until I recently went to a big department store, walked through the men's section--in which I observed 3,000 suits hanging on racks there--and then asked about the women's suit section. I was led by a distracted employee to a rack with approximately 3 suits on it: one white in size 2, one brown with ruffled edges in size 16 and a few black separates. And then I thought, "Why the hell is the fashion industry marginalizing me right now?!?"

But really, men of the world, do you realize how easy you have it? Your suit section has suits of every color and style, in every size imaginable, adjustable for measurements as specific as the SIZE OF YOUR NECK, available all year round. And we have a size 2, a 16 and ruffles. Women have been in the work force for what, 50 years now? Why the hell hasn't fashion caught up?

I'm going to start a women's suit revolution: every style in every size, all year round. And maybe a few more colorful sweaters for men, too. Fair's fair, right?

I could go online, I guess, where I would find gems like this (perfect for Sunday service, don't you think?):

Christmas These Days

What's this? A complete Dickens Village with tiny people in a tiny carriage? Yes. Yes it is.

When Mr. L woke up the day after Thanksgiving and proclaimed "I can't wait to put up the Christmas lights" I knew that the shred of our city lifestyle to which I had believed I was clinging had officially slipped from my grip. We are in suburbia. It feels good just to admit it. Again, perhaps. "I am LIOLI. And I live in the suburbs." (Not sure why this didn't occur to me 6 months ago when we tried to go out for dinner after 9pm and found the only thing open in the entire city was Dairy Queen, but what gives?)

Last year at this time, we were enjoying the last of the big city's exploits: having cocktails at wood-paneled steak house lounges, traipsing through the giant ice-sculpture garden in the city park...this year, we're doing Christmas suburban style. We've hung Christmas lights (enough, certainly, for our house to be considered as a landing strip for any passing Alien vessels), we put up a tree*, we dusted off boxes of ornaments that had been in storage, and we set up all the random accoutrements of the season (advent calendars, flying elves, table-top santas and yes, a complete Dickens village replete with tiny people, some of whom are even skating with their tiny skates on a tiny ice-skating rink, a set-up which I feel compelled to point out came from Mr. L's side of the family.)

And I have to admit--though I am really more of an Advent type girl**--that all this stuff is pretty delightful. Maybe it's just that absence makes the heart grow fonder and next year all this will feel like a big pain in the ass and we'll go on a tropical vacation instead. But for now, I'm ready for Christmas. Wreaths and angels and things that smell like cinnamon in a kind of nauseating way...for all its consumerist undertones, it still feels pretty special.

Why is this? What is it about lights and trees and stockings and elves that sit on shelves that make you feel like a kid again? I've been thinking a lot recently about how it is exactly that we choose the life we want. And I realize I could choose to be disappointed that we traded in our urban jet-setting for a 60s ranch in a sea of 60s ranches and some strings of icicles.  But the gift I'm giving myself for Christmas is trying to love the life I have; to pour myself some eggnog, kick back, try not to think about our January electric bill and enjoy my little patch of Christmas in suburbia.***


*I wanted to go to a you-cut lot and fulfill my family tradition of wandering around in the cold for hours vetoing each other's suggestions until we all hate each other and ride home in silence with the tree we had to lay on the cold ground for an hour to cut down.....but Mr. L didn't believe that was a family tradition we needed to take on. Yet.....
**Yes, I am that type of pastor that would prefer not to have a Christmas carol pass my lips until Christmas Eve (as you will note Jesus has not yet born, yet we want to have shepherds visiting him as early as December 2? A theologically untenable position, at best.), but we all learn to compromise, right?
***Would some country artist please get started working on this song right now? Christmas in Suburbia?

Christmas as Clergy

I especially like the impression here that Joseph, Mary and Jesus may have halos or may be getting struck by lightening. Difficult to say.

There are many things that I would do if I had more time and didn't have so many episodes of Rules of Engagement to watch. One of them would be creating some religious Christmas cards that do not make me throw up in my mouth.

As a clergyperson, I always begin the season believing that I should show my integrity as a Christian person by sending Christmas cards that at least tangentially reference the spiritual foundation of the holiday which we are celebrating. But then I go to the store and notice that, yet again, absolutely every single religious Christmas card is either a) hideously ugly, like a colorized version of a poorly animated Children's bible or b) theologically inappropriate or ambiguous or c) HILARIOUS but not appropriate for all audiences.*

Is there not a single theologically aware Hallmark employee in the world who might provide us with something better than the cheeseball crap currently available at our country's finest retailers?



*This one made me chuckle aloud:

Yum.

Enough about death, though. Let's talk food. Thankgiving is by far one of my favorite holidays, because it doesn't involve last minute, anxiety inducing gift buying trips to Target but instead involves eating foods that don't make sense in any other context, like stuffing which, to be honest, who the hell eats stuffing except for at Thanksgiving.

This year we had the culinary joy of having two thanksgivings: a traditional feast with all the fixins' with Mr. L's family on Thanksgiving day and a non-traditional gastronomic festival at our home for my family on Black Friday. We decided to forgo all the traditional eats for our second meal--we thought everyone would already have overdoxed on tryptophan--and instead went for an Italian spread. On the menu:
Pear-Rosemary Cocktails
Roquefort Grapes
Peppered Pecans
Raw Tuscan Kale Salad
Spinach Salad with Candied Pecans, Pears and Gorgonzola
Pumpkin Manicotti
Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Brow Butter and Pine Nuts
Parmesean Twists
Chocolate Hazelnut Torte with Sea Salt
Zucotto with Raspberry Sauce (from my favorite cookbook of ALL TIME: Cooking with Spirit.)
and Pumpkin Pie (okay, it's not Italian, but you really couldn't have thanksgiving without it, could you?)

Somehow, we managed to fit 12 around our dining table and didn't get up for hours.A wonderful feast.

Death, Decay and Giving Thanks

I marched into the kitchen about three weeks ago and made the following proclamation to Mr. L: "My entire life right now has become about decay and death." To which he responded, without missing a beat: "I'm really sorry to hear that."

This short snippet from our life of domestic bliss is both a) proof that Mr. L is the best husband in the world and b) an explanation of why I haven't found much time or energy to write on here recently. 

Death has been playing a huge part in my life of late. Our congregation has experienced a number of deaths, which has meant my days have been taken up visiting those who are about to die, meeting with the families of the recently deceased and mourning with those who are newly adjusting to life without a loved one. As you might imagine, this constant barrage of life-end situations has taken a huge toll on my reserves of mental and physical energy. Each day for the last month or so, when I have finally arrived home, I have had stamina for little else except take out, a few hours of mindless television (Drop Dead Diva being my mental junk food of choice these days) and a night of restless sleep.

And death in my work was reflected at my homestead as well. I look out my window at the luscious garden beds and boxes to which I have lovingly tended all summer and see them fading into decay. The hours I've had to spare these past few weeks have been dedicated to tearing out plants at the end of their life: slumping corn stalks, yellowing tomato plants, shriveled pumpkin vines: our yard debris can like a hearse carrying away the remains of a fruitful harvest.

All this to say I've spent most of the last month being tired. And drained. And sad. But I've also been strangely thankful. As has become clear to me lately, many people in this culture do not have an opportunity to face death very often. And it is overwhelming and terrifying and crushing as a pastor so as for anyone. But it is also, I now believe, one of the greatest privileges of being a minister: to journey with people out of this life. It is an honor which I now face with much more humility. It is also, I now understand, a juncture for absorbing some of life's most important lessons. 

Most of the people I've sat with recently who have faced death were not on a whirlwind journey of the world trying to finish off the last items on their bucket list. At their death bed, they were not thinking they should have climbed Mt. Everest or rafted the Amazon or been elected President; they were trying to spend their last meaningful moments with their friends and family. Most of them had no regrets, except that the time they had to spend with those they love was now limited.

And so when I came to the thanksgiving table last week, to sit down for the first time in six years and as many holidays with my family--cousins and aunts, sisters and parents and nephews--I realized in a new way that they are the most valuable thing. And I was more thankful than perhaps I could have ever otherwise been that I was alive and that I had been given this time to spend with them. At our thanksgiving table, all their idiosyncrasies were more loveable, the stories I've heard a million times more hilarious, the recipes we've shared for decades a bit more rich for knowing what a simple but invaluable blessing they are.

So despite the death that has followed me everywhere, a life of gratitude has taken root here in the land of the LIOLIs. And in that spirit I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving.

I Quit Halloween

Thanks to squidoo.com for the capturing my feelings so well!

Last weekend, when the jack-o-latern I had carved at our church's fall festival molded--not like a few little white specs but full on green and white fuzzy mold puffing out its eyes--and then became the hottest new hangout for every snail within a 3 mile radius of our home, and even more so when Mr. L went to throw it away and found it had also become a vacation home for a frog and a lizard, I decided to quit Halloween. Like forever. Which is fine because I actually--if you can't admit it here*, where can you?--kind of hated Halloween already what with all the crappy candy**, the costumes that betray our deepest societal dysfunction and fears around sex and death*** and the kids that ring my doorbell and make my dog go crazy every two seconds for what feels like days.

But you know what is awesome about Halloween? Friggin' pumpkins.**** I love pumpkins. Not the jack-o-lantern variety, but just plain old pumpkins, 10 of which I grew this year, 8 of which I processed last night into pureed pumpkin to be frozen for future baking delicacies and two of which I put on my porch to welcome children to this not very hallo-tastic house of ours.*****

How did pumpkins become associated with Halloween, you ask? Well, let me tell you. (And by that I mean, let me pretend to have known this when actually I just looked it up on Wikipedia.) Pumpkins, it turns out, were easier to carve than the original go-to vegetable for jack-o-lanterns in antiquity: turnips. When immigrants from Ireland brought their Celtic celebration of Samhain to North America and found the turnips here inadequate for anti-demon lantern creation, the carved pumpkin was born.

So happy day-of-the-pumpkin to all you readers out there. Even though I quit Halloween, I hope you lovers of this death-oriented day of diabetic comas are donning right at this moment some killer costumes and headed out for a spooky-good time.




*If I were really terrifying, I could join this facebook group of whack-job evangelicals who think Halloween is all about devil worship.
**I'm kind of a 70% cacao kind of girl.
***In just a quick google search, I was able to find a costume that would allow me to dress as a sexy construction zone flagger. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? See my thoughts here.
****Fat toddlers dressed as pumpkins are also pretty awesome.
*****At least we didn't go this far. But I did laugh aloud when I saw this and considered it for 2 seconds.

Proof

I've been wrong about many things, and most of the time able to graciously admit my mistake. (For instance, one time I tried to convince my friends DRJ and EDJ that fried ice cream isn't really fried. Guess what? It is.* But I digress.) But all of this doesn't mean that I don't enjoy a little confirmation of my rightness when it comes my way.

In the not too distant past, I posted here a note about my impressions of hipsters upsetting the social heirarchy by suggesting that what is uncool is now cool. This has been by far my most popular post ever, with nearly 2,000 hits. No, I'm not kidding; two thousand people give more of a shit about hipsters than about anything else I've pretty much ever said combined. No, I'm not bitter.. Anyhow, I wanted to share some follow up which has confirmed my suspicions.

Upon entering a small and funky antique store on my way to class the other evening, a skinny-jean clad, big-chunky-non-prescription glasses wearing, 30-something woman said to me the following:

"Your color palate is just so.......dweeby right now! I'm so jealous."

And I thus entered the crushing uncertainty that only the hipster social unheaval could create: was it a compliment or not? how to tell?

I settled on feeling good that I had pegged the hipsters right. And vowed to try for more muted pinks and browns next time.


*But how is this possible, you ask? It's, like, super-frozen first. Strange, I know.

Day Four

Here are four days that I revisit in my work life approximately every 4-6 weeks with Groundhog-Day-esque regularity:

One: the day on which I have completely and utterly run dry my stores of compassion and can no longer bring myself to care at all about any person or problem that comes through my door. From missing silver spoons to sick spouses to broken printers to "we-never-sing-the-good-old-hymns-anymore" to "I've been having a really tough time lately," all of them are undeserved annoyances rather than opportunities for ministry.  Should a serious pastoral issue arise on this day, I must run on the back-up generator of emergency active listening skills which I learned long ago under the tutelage of a terrifying and manipulative German woman. "Mmhmmm," I say regularly. "Yes," I throw in. "That sounds overwhelming," I conclude, as I pray that the fumes of empathy on which I am depending in that moment will not run dry. I run home as soon as I am able and plot to go into some wing of denominational leadership that requires no interpersonal engagement.

Two: the day on which I conclude that the church has, inevitably, become completely and utterly irrelevant and that it is, in its entirety, a meaningless and pointless endeavor, a sham on which I am wasting my gifts and my life, and, sadly, into which I am also inviting others, which I am sure will lead to some sort of eternal punishment, except for the fact that I no longer have faith in the eternal. Why are we even here? is the question of this day, though no answer comes. It is on day two that I can see nothing of the importance of the songs we will sing or the words I will say on Sunday, and thus I spend a good part of the day hiding in my office pretending to write my sermon, but actually searching the internet for late admission law school programs, or public policy programs, or MFA programs or, in the darkest times, jobs in the food industry.

Three: The day on which I become convinced that it is not the church which is the problem, but rather me, devoid as I am of any skill or relevant talent that could provide meaningful care and leadership to this little community of wayfarers. It is on this day that I am absolutely sure that if I had any business being in the ministry at all I would have already led the church through an astonishing and energizing process of growth and transformation, a moderate Protestant version of the evangelical fervor of the 90s, the envy of church consultants' everywhere. On this day, the decline of Christendom is somehow my own personal failing, a shameful truth which will likely soon be exposed. This is the day on which my administrator thinks it strange that I have decided to take on making copies and rearranging the pens in the supply cabinet, and vacuuming the fellowship hall, scrambling, as I am, for some sense of having accomplished anything at all.

Four: the day on which these other three days seem impossible. This is the day on which for some unknown reason the sun comes up shining a little brighter, which for some unknown reason I am able to interpret as a sure sign that things are as they should be or at least that there is a purpose to the way things are. On this day, as I sit beside those who mourn, as I offer prayers at the bedside of the dying, as I write and sing and yes, search for missing silver spoons, I am certain I am just where I should be.

I don't know how or why these four days follow me so faithfully. I don't know if they are par for the course of ministry or if they are simply my own idiosyncratic reaction to this unique calling. What I know is that they keep coming around. I am learning that when I find myself on day one or two or three, when I am composing aloud in the car my law school admissions essay or my impassioned letter of resignation from the denomination or even selections from my memoir about my failure as a minister, I stop, take a breathe, and live into the hope that day four will come.

Friends

And another thing....why didn't anyone tell me it would be nearly impossible to make friends after age 28? It all seemed so easy up to that point, surrounded such as I was until that time with built-in systems of friend production: school, college, "leadership" opportunities and conferences, structured post-college employment experiences, graduate school.....But then it was off the edge of the cliff into the real world where friend making becomes a gauntlet almost as formidable as internet dating. Real life, it tuns out, presents numerous obstacles to profound friendship creation including, but not limited to:
a) a vast majority of one's time spent actually working rather than engaged in some form of thinly masked socializing such as "studying" or "team-building."
b) the reality that relationships with others at work, even if one finds those others amicable and not aggrevating, are inevitably complicated by hierarchical concerns and questions of appropriateness
c) the growing sense that everyone else has already settled into their friend patterns and that there seems to be growing rigidity around accepting new additions.
d) the truth that making friends takes time, which is a commodity in shorter supply when one actually lives in the real world where such concerns as financial well-being, professional achievement, intimate relationships and family building, homemaking and maintenance take up the lion's share of one's time and mental energy, leaving little room for the unending social marathons of youth. 

Ah, to be 20 again, completely self-absorbed and full of unlimited potential, new friends raining down left and right like so many apples from the trees in fall! A dream, now, no?

When I Grow Up

School is back in session, which transforms the landscape of this college town fairly significantly and by that I mean there is no place to park anymore.*

Truthfully, it is a bit strange to live as an adult in the same town where one went to college. The nodes of my life, as you might imagine, are slightly different these days than they were a decade ago.

For instance, I very rarely attend large, drunken parties now.** But I was remembering the other day a party I once attended at a bowling alley not far from where we now live. The theme of said party was "When I Grow Up I Want to Be A....." The thoughtfulness and painful honesty put into costume selection for that particular affair was remarkable. Several education majors dressed as teachers with aprons and handed out crayons. The bio-chemistry majors wore long white coats over their party dresses. One woman unabashedly dressed as a trophy wife, replete with a leopard print golf outfit and clubs with matching golf club covers.***

I dressed as a priest.**** At the time, I felt very clever for having things all figured out. That was until I grew up and realized that "what you want to do when you grow up" is about 10,000 times more complicated than figuring out what you want to wear to a fraternity party when you're 20.

Today, I wish that I had been invited to subsequent social events during that period of my life that would have alerted me to the future complexities I would face as a professional person. I imagine those events could have had themes such as:
"My second choice of career would be..."
"If I can't make a living doing the thing I want, I will..."
"If I happen to find a partner with whom I'd like to share my life, this is how we will cope if we both can't find fulling work in the same place at the same time...."
"I will know I am  making appropriate progress in my career because..." 
"I will balance strenuousness/fulfillment of work with quality of life outside work by....."

Perhaps our young minds could never have grasped these realities, so full of potential we felt, but it would have been fun shopping at Goodwill for these goods, no?



*But to be honest, there are many benefits to living in a University town, the best among them being football, an abundance of used books and cheap food specials. 
** In fact, I go to bed long before those things begin. 
***There was also a young man there who everyone knew as the perpetual student--he was in his eighth year at the college--who dressed as Tigger the Tiger. It's amazing how much truth comes out in such simple affairs, isn't it?
****And may I say that buying a black button-up dress shirt and cutting out a white piece of cardstock and sticking in the neck was not a bad solution for the procurement of a clergy shirt. I've paid loads more for products on womenspirit.com and not felt nearly as satisfied.

Liberal Fundamentalism

I'll tell you one reason I'm pretty excited for the fall. And it's not Pumpkin Spice Lattes (though I do typically allow myself one per season...they are just so gross/unnatural/addictively delicious, are they not?). Anyway what I'm really pumped about is the return of Greek Bible Study.

Last spring, through a strangely serendipitous chain of events, I was invited to attend a study of the Greek New Testament with some VERY conservative, evangelical seminary students. And I decided that my desire to geek out about New Testament Greek trumped my desire to remain at all times within my tiny liberal Protestant Christian bubble. So I went. And it was fairly awesome.

Now this is a group of people whose faith and training has led them to drastically different conclusions about the bible and its meaning than mine have and whose lives are based on some radically different assumptions than my own. (For instance, the idea that there is a devil who is actively involved in nefarious campaigns to thwart our best intentions and ruin our progress toward global Christian domination is not something we discuss regularly in Presbyterian circles. But who knows? Maybe we should!)

Over the course of my involvement in this group, as we discussed a broad range of topics from scriptural authority to women's leadership in the church to the validity of pentecostal experiences, I learned many things. Most prominent among them was the realization that many conservatives are not nearly as unthinking, callous and irrational as liberals often make them out to be. Rather, they are curiously ordinary and well-intentioned people living their lives as best they are able based on a certain set of assumptions about the world. And though I might disagree with those fundamental assumptions, I have learned to recognize that my life is also predicated on a set of assumptions with which they disagree just as heartily.

And so as I prepare to enter the fray of biblical literalism once again this fall, I present here a David Letterman-esque guide to recognizing one's own fundamentalist tendencies, in hopes that it might create not only a few laughs but a softening of our partisan hearts.

How to Tell If You're a Liberal Fundamentalist*

10) If you audibly sigh, curl your lip, or breathe in sharply at any mention of Walmart, you may be a liberal fundamentalist.
9)  If you rely on NPR as your exclusive news source--especially if you refer to its hosts with familiarity ("You know Tom Ashbrook says...")--but judge the partisan bias of Fox News, you might be a liberal fundamentalist.
8) If you live more than 1000 miles from the equator, claim to prioritize purchasing local products but begin each day with a cup of coffee--a crop grown nearly exclusively in equatorial regions--you might be a liberal fundamentalist.
7) If you find yourself even the slightest bit judgy about a woman staying home to raise children, but think it the ultimate statement of liberation, equality and progressive values if a man chooses to do so, you might be a liberal fundamentalist.
6) If you drive a Prius, but mow your lawn with a gas-powered mower, dry your clothes with a gas-powered dryer and regularly travel by fossil-fuel powered airplanes without reflection or hesitation, you might be a liberal fundamentalist.
5) If you have ever considered purchasing a product as ridiculous as organic honey, you might be a liberal fundamentalist. (How can they tell where the bees have been?)
4) If you count yourself as part of the 99% of this nation, but are unwilling to recognize your status as a member of the global 1% (and are likewise unwilling to take steps to equalize your life setting with that of, say, someone living in a hut in Namibia), you may be a liberal fundamentalist.
3) If you think big corporations are ruining America, but have your retirement savings invested in the dividend paying, growth-oriented stocks of big corporations, you might be a liberal fundamentalist.
2) If you think tolerance is the most important value, but are loathe to tolerate Republicans, Libertarians, people who believe God created the earth, people who own guns, people who attend mega-churches, or anyone who read Sarah Palin's biography Going Rogue, you might be a liberal fundamentalist.
1) If an Obama victory is more important to you than Christ's return, you might be a liberal fundamentalist.




*I should be clear, these are not judgments really, but confessions; I am guilty of nearly all of these. 
**I really wanted to include this image as a cover shot, but figured it was a little too much. Hilarious, though, no? I really do love America.

Already....and Not Yet

Look at this craaaaaazy diagram. Does this diagram help you to understand salvation? Me neither. Isn't fundamentalism so terrifying/fascinating at the same time?

One other thing I did this summer was to read a lot of books. Some were good and some were terrible. (And speaking of, I need to come up with some sort of book rating system for my booklist side bar. As it stands, it is just a list of what I happen to be reading and is not intended as an endorsement of any kind. But after some feedback from blog readers who read books listed there and hated them--MFT, I still feel profoundly sorry that you read Midwives while pregnant with your child which probably traumatized you forever. Not sure how to remedy that, but sorry--I realize I need to make that more clear. Until such time as I figure out a system and get motivated to implement, please refer to amazon.com or some reliable source for legitimate reviews of anything you see here.) ANYWAY, one of the books I read this summer was particularly terrible, but nonetheless caused me to have an existential crisis. Its basic premise is that you can fix your life in 10 easy steps (and by easy, I mean: Let go of your baggage! Stop being angry! Make new priorities! Celebrate yourself! As if those were actually easy tasks, which I can tell you after some serious therapeutic experience, they are NOT.)

But one part of the book did jump out at me and no it wasn't the suggestion that I "have a party with friends that treat [me] like a diamond and put thirteen candles on the cake that represent the divine [me]."* That part just made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. What struck me was this:

"I find many people expected their lives to be extraordinary, yet they wind up feeling really ordinary. In our dreams, we are the best. We will not just be a doctor, we will cure cancer. We will not just be an entrepreneur, we will found the next Microsoft. We will not just have children, we will have children who are angels. Except in real life, getting into medical school is near impossible. Bill Gates would not even hire us. And the devil is no match for our children."

My thought process while reading this paragraph went something like this: 
Wait, OTHER PEOPLE feel this way?
No!
Noooo!!!
But maybe.....
DAMN IT.

I have previously admitted that I had, early in my life, harbored a premonition that I would be "one of the greats" and that I have experienced great disappointment at that prediction's failure to come to fruition. In fact, quite often when I read of folks my age or younger doing outrageously great things--such as the 24 year old Michael Wear who was hired to direct the Obama campaign's outreach to religious groups--I think, "that could have been me!"**

But now that I have reached adulthood--when does middle age begin, by the way?--how am I to know what to do with those expectations? Which ones should I hold onto and which should I release as the wildly irrational expectations of youth? That is the conundrum that I am currently trying to solve in my life, though not in any direct or productive fashion.***

The Already and Not Yet is a witty little quip coined to satisfy Christian churchgoers who dare to ask how it is that Jesus came to fix everything, conquer sin and beat death, but who notice that we still have some broken shit, are pretty sinful and still die. To that question, many a charismatic clergyperson has said, "We're living in the already...and in the not yet." and hoped that little rhetorical flourish would throw the inquisitors off the trail of the fact that really we have no idea why everything is still screwed even after Jesus.

All that to say, I really think I'm in an "already and not yet" phase at present, figuring out where to go from here. Any ideas from the vast readership here are more than welcome.


FYI: The book was We Plan, God Laughs by Sherre Hirsch, so you can avoid it if you ever come across it.


*When I read this to Mr. L, his response was, "I can't tell what is funnier: that suggestion being so stupid or you reading it in such a stupid voice to make it sound more stupid and prove your point."
**Okay, but let's be honest...what I actually think is "That could have been me!" and "I probably would have done a WAY better job than that guy." OR "He probably just has a rich family!" I'm such a jerk.
*** Which I'm sure makes you very jealous of Mr. L who he gets to hear all about it all the time but not offer solutions.

Wow! How Time Flies...

If asked what I did this summer, I could either answer "not too much" or "tons," depending on how one assesses the relative importance of summer activities.

I did not take any epic summer vacations. But I did make it around Crater Lake on my bicycle....

...and across all 10 bridges in Portland, OR. 

 I did not make any new friends. But I did reconnect with some old ones...

  ...and got to know the frog who lives in the plant next to our barbecue.

 I did not eat at many fancy restaurants. But I did learn to grow delicious things....

....and to preserve the things I grew.

I did not write on this blog. But I did write. In fact, I went to the place where they made this...

....and discovered that writing is a greater passion of mine than I had ever imagined when I started this blog.

And now I am in the process of figuring out what that means, what role writing will play in my life as I go forward, and how this blog will fit into that. I can imagine that like my summer it could either be "not much" or "a lot" both at the same time. 

What My Ministry is Worth

Last year at about this time, I received the following email:

At our [regional] meeting on Monday, there will be official notice to the [regional body] that you are this year's recipient of the annual [rich benefactor name here] award. This award recognizes pastoral ministry without great compensation. In past years when the stock market was in better health the award also included a reasonably sized token check.  Things are not so good this year, and [treasurer] tells me that the check will be really really small this time.  So this is a heads-up, with regret that your presbytery can't do more.

This may have seemed an odd warning and I would have thought more about its strange tone, but unfortunately, as a devout and life-long recognition junky and over-achiever, the nuances of this message were lost to me on first read, because what I saw was this: 

At our [regional] meeting on Monday, there will be official notice to the [regional body] that you are this year's recipient of the annual [rich benefactor name here] AWARD. This AWARD recognizes pastoral ministry without great compensation. In past years when the stock market was in better health the AWARD also included a reasonably sized token check.  Things are not so good this year, and [treasurer] tells me that the check will be really really small this time.  So this is a heads-up, with regret that your presbytery can't do more.

My accomplishment-oriented mind was pre-programmed to ignore the more salient details of the message such as the completely absent congratulatory sentiment and also the mention of the "really really small check." Oblivious to these insights, I continued in an elevated mood the rest of the day feeling justified in having finally received some glory for my diligent work. However, when I "nonchalantly" mentioned this to my colleague (with casual elegance and appropriate, if feigned, humility, of course. Something like:  "Are you going to the meeting on Monday? I guess I have to go....I'm getting some award." Brush hair to the side.), my bubble was instantly burst. "Oh yeah!!" he replied. "The lowest paid minister in the region award! I got that a few years ago."

Let's stop for a minute and reflect on a few things. First, Jesus, it was clear, was not into wealth AT ALL. If you don't believe me, just read the bible. Jesus regularly condemned the rich* and fervently preached their nearly categorical exclusion from heaven**. (Despite what prosperity gospel preachers might have you believe, this is a fact.) In a way, then, receiving any compensation at all for leading people to follow Jesus is somewhat of an irony. However, the church has not always done and does not always do what Jesus did, a reality which clearly explains such strangely non-Christ-like events such as the Crusades and having a church in the Mall of America. One must embrace the tradition of professionalized ministry as a reality.

The question becomes, then, how does one receive such an "award"? As a badge of honor for true, self-sacrificial service? Or as the real-world ego-deflating blow it actually is? (This is where I begin to understand more completely our Catholic brethren's insistence that religious servants take a vow of poverty. At least they're clear from the beginning what one is getting oneself into.) But seriously, how does one address the irony of a value system which says "Blessed are the poor" whose leaders must operate within a broader culture that believes compensation is the truest expression of successful and valued work?

I immediately began researching non-religion related degree programs online in a symbolic flip-of-the-bird to The Divine for this slight. But before I had time to fill out the online brochure request form for the paralegal program down the road, the ultimate death-blow of this experience was dealt. A check arrived in the mail.

A check for $11.39

Really?! REALLY!??! What kind of award is this?!??

Apparently, the Christian kind. 



*See Luke 6:24 for starters: "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.‘Woe to you who are full now for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now for you will mourn and weep." Strange how this part of the beatitudes is usually left off the needlepoint display in the church parlor. 
**How about Luke 18: 24-25? "Jesus looked at him and said, ‘How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.'" ZING!!! 
*** In case I become rich and famous one day and the content of this blog endures long into the inflation climbing future. Here are a few things one can buy at this moment for $11.39: 

Craptastic Scooby Doo Nintendo Game!

Car Outlet Heated Travel Mug!

Cleaning Spray for Your Gun!

Hibiscus Sunglasses! Guaranteed to break on first use!

Dog Vortex

I do not feel at all ashamed to admit that I have absolutely no idea how prayer works....the physics of it, I mean. But I can say with some degree of confidence that if it has anything to do with radio frequency, I am experiencing some serious static feedback.

I have recently been diligently praying for my church to grow. Having had no other relevant training in church transformation at either my seminary or the church which I had previously been hired to transform, I thought prayer represented a reasonable first step. "Send us visitors, dear Lord, who can be nurtured, cared for and taught the faith within these walls." "Help us to welcome those who find their way into our midst." "Inspire us to reach out to others." Blah, blah, blah.

I'm pretty sure God did hear my prayer. But I think it got muddled up somewhere in the transmission. Because the only ones showing up are dogs.

Seriously, I think my church is some sort of lost dog vortex. It's as if we exist inside a Star Trek-esque magnetic anomaly that attracts any and all lost dogs, who romp over here in their newly found freedom with a canine abandon usually reserved for things covered in bacon grease.

In the last three weeks, eight lost dogs have found their way here. Small and large, mangy and well-tended, there they are, running through the grass, in several cases, playing with other lost dogs who have found their way to our yard. In fact, just today, I watched from my office as three TINY dogs ran across our property about 5 minutes apart. (I think they were making a run for the Mormon church across the street....way better fellowship food over there, I hear.)

Sometimes I go out and try to get them (and then kick myself as I know the church experts would tell me that to transform a church one must spend one's time doing important things other than chasing stray dogs) and sometimes when I can't go get them (say I'm on the phone with someone or in a meeting), I say a little prayer for their survival as I watch them trot off toward the busy road on which our church sits.

If I were a church transoformation visionary, I would find a way to turn this reality into an outreach ministry. But really, all I can think is, seriously? More dogs? How about some young, attractive, financially stable families with young, well-behaved children? Can you hear my God? Maybe we should switch channels.....

Singing the Good News: Cows in the Corn

Thanks to the Center for Progressive Renewal for this gem!

An Actual Conversation

ring, ring, ring.

Me: ."Hello, _______ Presbyterian Church. This is LIOLI. How can I help you?"
Random woman: "Hi there. I'm thinking about coming to visit your church, but before I do I have some theological questions I'd like to speak to the pastor about."
Me: "Okay."
Random woman: "Well, I'd like to speak with the pastor. Can I speak with the pastor?"
Me: "You are speaking to her right now. How can I help you?
.....pause.....
Random woman: "Well, one of my questions was whether or not you believe in ordaining women."
Me: "Well, yes, in the Presby.....

click.

Life, Triple Spaced

Now

Before

People keep asking me what life is like since the move and how the transition is going. It's difficult to figure out how to respond, except to say that I feel as though my life has become triple-spaced.

In Massachusetts, everything felt tightly packed. I was packing two jobs into one seven day week, all of our things were packed into a tiny apartment, our car tightly packed into its space. It was like a single spaced page where everything fit together, barely. But "Out West," it feels as though all of the sudden, everything is triple spaced. I only have one job--an easier one in some ways--to fill my weeks. We have gone from three rooms to eight: meaning our things and ourselves are spread out a bit more thinly in our home.* And even the drivers here like to "leave plenty of space."** It seems I have more time, more room, more, well, space.

And just as adjusting to new spacing while reading takes time***, I think adjusting to much more space in living takes time as well. Not bad, just different.

One thing that is going really well though is being close to come people that I haven't lived near for a really long time.....including my family! On Saturday, Mr. L and I had our first shot at babysitting our 3 year old nephew**** I'm happy to say that all went quite smoothly (I don't know if I was imagining a trip to the ER or something for our first go-round, but was surprised all went so well!). We did 4 puzzles, discussed various varieties of dinosaurs, reviewed the alphabet up to M and watched half of Charlotte's Web***** and then went to sleep with only a few tears about mommy and daddy not being there. A pretty amazingly cool experience for a triple-spaced life!
 





*Mr. L keeps getting very frustrated that I try to talk to him while he is at the other end of the house: an non-existent problem in our last place (there was no other end) but a serious one here (he can't hear anything I'm saying).
**For a hilarious and terrifyingly accurate reflection on Oregon drivers, see here. If you think this is an exagerration, you've never been to Oregon.
*** A colleague of mine once accidentally double instead of triple spaced his sermon (he was used to triple...old man!), and totally bombed it because he couldn't get the timing of the page turning right. Yikes!
**** I know, I know...we're terrible aunts and uncles for not babysitting him before this, but we lived 3,000 miles away!
***** Does anyone else worry Charlotte's Web is a little bit traumatic for youngsters? I mean the whole problem is that Wilbur is about to get slaughtered for Bacon!???! Just sayin'..... It's like how my Dad always said Pinocchio should be R-rated because they send bad children to an island, turn them into donkeys and make them perform slave labor. Also not great meta-messages for our young folk, I think. But what do I know? Nephew didn't seem at all troubled by these realities.

God: The Closer

It would be difficult to describe in this short caption how NOT informed about sports I am, even as a former Bostonian. But this is Jonathan Papelbon who, miraculously,  I have actually heard of. Thanks forbes.com!

One of the great things about being a minister and believing in an omnipotent, omniscient, interventionist God at the same time is that you don't have to worry to much about preaching to people's specific circumstances. Because they're not listening to you, they're listening to God, right? Pretty sweet. How many other professions are there in which you can do a reasonably good job and then sit back and wait for God to bring it home? Can attorneys do that? No. Doctors? Hopefully not. Firefighters? I don't think so.

For instance, last Sunday I gave a sermon about finding God's desire for our lives and someone came up to me afterward and said, "You know, you're so right. My children do know what's best for me." I actually went back to see if I had said something along those lines....I hadn't. Nice one, God!

Another time, I gave a sermon about the sacraments (communion, baptism, etc.) and someone shook my hand in line and said, "Thanks for giving a sermon about doubt. I really needed it know it was okay to doubt." I actually do thing doubt is a good and important thing, but I didn't say anything about it in my sermon at all. Sweet.

Most people would say this is people hearing what they need to hear. I'd prefer to think of it as God as the Great Closer*, whose got my back.

And while we're on the topic of preaching, let me close with a little translation primer I've come up with for decoding things people say to you as they leave church:
"Nice sermon." (Read: Your sermon was nothing special but was not deeply offensive to me in any way.)
"Nice service." (Read: Your sermon sucked. But I think you seem nice and I liked the hymns.)
"That sermon was interesting." (Read: I disagree with everything you said.)
"I'd like to talk to you at some point bout that sermon." (Read: I disagree with you and everything you stand for.)
"That's such a nice stole.*" (Read: I'm probably never coming back to this church!)



*While searching for images for this post, I put "closer" into google images and in the first page got pics of Natalie Portman, Josh Groban, Ne-Yo, Ralph Nadal, President Barak Obama, and Pope Benedict. I think we should get all these folks in a room and ask how God helps them with their jobs!
*This is a joke actually. People really do like my stoles. Although I recently conducted a written survey about worship on a Sunday morning and when I got the surveys back, I noticed one of them in the "What did you most like about the service?" section said, "That is a beautiful stole that Liz had on." Amazing! Also, Mom, thanks for the stole!

Ode to the Best Berry

Thanks to thelunacafe.com, a fellow Oregonian, for the image.

Okay, but have you ever had an Oregon berry? They might actually be the best thing in the entire world. Far sweeter and full of flavor than their gargantuan Californian counterparts, Oregon berries taste like summer and joy. They come in flats (12 pints, that is), still dirty from the field. They are never categorically conical, like those beauties in the plastic clam shell at the store, but are instead, a panoply of strange forms: some small and round, some huge and triangle shaped, some like heart-shaped conjoined twins* where two berries have grown together, all ranging in color from dark purple to light orange. And they are amazing. And the season just started. And I ready to confess here and now that I am planning to eat enough of them in the next three weeks to horrify any advocate of balanced nutrition. Why else did I move here for Christ's sake?*


*This is not a swear. I literally did more here for Jesus, or more accurately, a job in his church.

There is just so much amazingly awesome stuff on the Internet

Including this new site "Hey, Christian Girl." Amazing.

Hipsters and Hippies: A Primer for the Uninitiated

One element which I didn't anticipate would be part of my transition West was reentry into two worlds from which I felt relatively removed in my last setting: Hipsters and Hippies.

Many will agree that Portland, OR is a hipster mecca. I know this is true because when I was last there I saw both a man wearing a brown corduroy tuxedo with tails plus a fedora and also a boutique shop dedicated exclusively to exotic salts. Many will also agree that Eugene, OR, has long been a cultural center for hippies. I know this is true because many of the children here look as though they've just escaped the set of the latest production of Peter Pan and also because there are entire booths at the community market here dedicated to selling small glass jars in which to store your marijuana.

Anyhow, for those of you who live outside these two places, I thought a short primer based on my own experience might be helpful in case you are ever forced to engage with these subcultures in the future.

HIPSTERS

Thanks to talknerdytome.org for this great image of ironic suckage.

UrbanDictionary.com defines hipsters thus: "Hipsters are a subculture of men and women typically in their 20's and 30's that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity, intelligence, and witty banter. Although "hipsterism" is really a state of mind,it is also often intertwined with distinct fashion sensibilities. Hipsters reject the culturally-ignorant attitudes of mainstream consumers, and are often be seen wearing vintage and thrift store inspired fashions, tight-fitting jeans, old-school sneakers, and sometimes thick rimmed glasses. Both hipster men and women sport similar androgynous hair styles that include combinations of messy shag cuts and asymmetric side-swept bangs. The "effortless cool" urban bohemian look of a hipster is exemplified in Urban Outfitters and American Apparel ads which cater towards the hipster demographic....." And it goes on and on like that advocating the many wonderfully enlightened attitudes of hipsters around fashion, education, gender-norms, consumerism, etc. and critiquing with great joy those who have failed to join the hipster movement. Perhaps my favorite part of the article was this, "A lot of anti-hipster sentiment evidently comes from culturally-clueless suburban frat boy types who feel that the more sensitive, intelligent, and culturally aware hipster ideal threatens their insecure sense of masculinity. Anti-hipster sentiment often comes from people who simply can't keep up with social change and are envious of those who can." Wow.

But let me provide a simpler and more direct definition: Hipsters are people who are ironically into things that suck. The irony part of hipster-dom is perhaps the most genius social development of the last decade. Hipsters have basically proclaimed a socially radical paradox: "Anything that is not cool is cool." They have thus elevated geekdom to a new level of social control and fundamentally overturned the traditional coolness hierarchy. Because now you have to be uncool to be cool. It's a whole new world. In case all this sounds too abstract to you, here are some examples of things that hipsters are into ironically, that you will likely agree suck: skinny jeans, plaid shirts, those sunglasses from the 80s with the neon rims, ripped clothing, man purses, looking slightly bored and aloof all the time, shaggy Beiber-esque haircuts. Being into all these things ironcially makes you a hispter.


A warning, though: don't go looking for hipsters to test out this hypothesis. Because the first rule of hipsterdom is don't talk about hipsterdom. That is to say, no one will ever admit to being a hipster. That would be trying to be cool and you will remember that our goal in hipster world is to be uncool and thus emerge, ironcially, into coolness. In researching for this post, I found a number of blog posts that were basic self-defensive apologies for appearing hipster-like, but reassuring readers that the authors were not, in fact, hipsters. Some of them were wearing fidoras in their profile pictures.* But you can seek out hipsters in a more clandestine fashion by downloading this hipster bingo game.

HIPPIES

See centrefashion.com. It's making a comeback!

Hippies are a wholly different matter. Hippies are just into things that suck without irony. Dreadlocks, patchouli oil, just smelling bad generally, drum circles, not wearing bras. There is no trace of irony in the hippies' love for such things. In fact, most hippies are too stoned to be ironic and so therefore will likely never ascend into hipsterdom.

Interestingly, hippies have done a much better job implementing some of the social-equality-idealism that hipsters claim to support. But the hippies don't care about being cool and so have not launched a PR campaign about the coolness of their accomplishments.




So there you have it. Hip/ster/ie Primer. I know you've always wondered. To sign up for a real life Safari of Hip/ster/ie life, email me to reserve a room at the LIOLI Homestead. We have openings all summer.



*Wearing a fidora does not necessarily make you a hipster, although it's a good warning sign. If your child owns a fidora, though, you're definitely a hipster.