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.

Does the church have to change?

I just read two articles which represent (at least in my clouded mind) two halves of a conversation that isn't happening in the church.

The first is an article that my father forwarded to me (though I would have found it eventually if I could get through the stack of Christian Century magazines that I have on my nightstand....biweekly publications are hard to keep up with!). The article, by hipster alterna-minister Adam Copeland, was titled "Reaching Out to Young Adults Will Screw Up Your Church." The basic premise, one so frequently put forth by the young-ish hip crowd of internet saavy ministers probably funded by the Lily Endowment that I'm surprised it's even news anymore, was that average churches are too stiff to actually welcome young adults given the cultural change such youth would inevitably bring. Rather, such churches love the idea of young adults and the vitality they could contribute, a desire which is not accompanied by a willingness to adapt to their wishes. But it should be, says Copeland.

The other article is an op-ed by NYT genius commentator David Brooks. I had read it when it first came out last year, but it was sent to me again recently by a friend and I was glad to re-read it. Its premise is that we, as a culture, have created a generation of young people for whom self-discovery, individual fulfillment and person satisfaction are at the core of the vocational compass that directs their life. These youngsters are, in a sad way, ill-prepared for entering the world of adulthood which will require of them diligence, interdependence and patience. From Brooks,"Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly."

In a completely non-visionary moment that likely betrays my generation of ministers, I wonder what these two viewpoints have to say to each other. What does it mean, for instance, that the church (and with it Copeland), in response to the exodus of young people from the pews in the last few decades, is desperately trying to get them back by reinforcing the same cultural messages that Brooks claims have ill-prepared them for real life and community, namely, by playing only to their personal needs and preferences?

I work in a church of most elderly folks that in some ways fits the description of Copeland's imagined antagonist.  It is, of course, a church that longs for young people among its number, and that regularly fantasizes about which changes might bring such a windfall about. (Shall we dispense with singing our favorite old hymns? Put up a screen for the song lyrics? Paint the nursery? Rename the craft group? Offer childcare?). In a way, the lack of younger faces here is sad to me because, as their pastor and as a young person, I recognize that they have so much they could offer friends and pew-mates in my generation: wisdom, character, a model of self-sacrificing compassion, and a sense of tradition and decorum that seems sorely lacking in so many of today's social interactions. My question then is, how far away should they stray from who they are in order to placate a (currently) non-existant crowd of young people who may never show up? How much should we ask an older generation to abandon the spiritual traditions that have sustained them in order to meet the demands of a younger one that won't show up unless everything is their way?

This is likely not a very popular viewpoint. And if I click "Publish" on the blogger dashboard above this text, I'll pretty much be assuring that I will never get a book deal* to write a treatise on how to save the church. But the church has existed for 2,000 years believing that it is in community that we decide what God is calling us to do and be. That we each, young and old, have gifts to contribute. Is is possible to develop a more balanced view? Is it possible for the church to say, sure, we'll come to your non-churchy, hipster, coffee shop book group of Atheists and hear what you have to say, but we'd love for you to come by on Sunday, too....we'll teach you some of our favorite old hymns."?



*Lily Endowment, if you are reading this, I am still open to your support. Of course, if this offends you, I didn't mean any of it.

An update on some other things that are relatively inconsequential.

Gardening: Yay! Things are growing and thriving. We just spied our first strawberry, first snow pea and first cherry tomato (still green!). Artichoke is still alive, despite the snails' ongoing death campaign. Corn is sprouting as are the radishes. Yum!

Worst strawberry picture ever.

See that beauty?

Hang on little tomato!

Will those little buds on our olive tree become olives? I have no idea!

Coffee roasting: Not yay. For some reason, though the elements are relatively simple, I'm having trouble getting this one down. My last batch tasted like a cross between burnt dirt and vinegar.

Other homesteading projects: homemade granola (yum!) and knitting (not the relaxing, TV time pastime your grandmother made it seem!) I'm 4" into a fairly ugly prayer shawl and am having a great time.