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.