Take a moment and relive the little bit of joy known as the Serenity blooper reel.
SO GREAT, right? The cast is funny, and they obviously enjoy each other's company and their work. But there's something else here that tugs at my heart and my imagination. To me, this is our future. This is a picture of heaven. (And not just because Nathan Fillion is there, although, duh.)
Our lives are full of intensity and anguish. We yell and scream, we run about frantically, we fight our enemies. We fight our friends. We are tortured. We are killed. And then, suddenly, without warning or fanfare...we are laughing. Our pain vanishes as if it were never quite real to begin with, and our faces change. The people we were just locked in fierce combat with grin at us. We shake our heads and marvel for a brief moment at how foolish, how inconsequential, how pretend all our striving against each other was just now.
We are revealed.
(And then what? Have I just metaphored myself into scoring a point for reincarnation? Hm.)
Monday, February 27, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
I don't want to be right
"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." -- 1 Corinthians 8:1
This week I'm going to try something new. I'm going to see if I can make it through a whole week without telling anybody that they are wrong.
This will be an extraordinary challenge for me. I am a naturally analytical thinker. When I am presented with an idea or a situation or a request, my first instinct is to start testing it to see how sound it is. Are there holes in this theory? What obstacles might stand in our way? Are any of the details inaccurate or contradictory? My mind immediately tries to find what might be wrong, so that it can be fixed, and we can all move forward together in the best possible way.
At least, I think that's why I do it. It is probably mostly why I do it, but if I examine my own mind in those moments, I realize there is another force at work within me. I NEED TO BE RIGHT. I need to be more right than you. I need to be the most rightest person in the room. I need you, my dear friend or colleague, to understand that I have the power in this conversation because of how very right I am. I'm so right that I immediately noticed several problems with what you were just saying to me. No big, though--I'll just casually drop my corrections into our conversation in this light, casual tone, and walk away knowing that we both know that I win because I'm right.
I know that I do this. I hate that I do this. I especially hate it when it is being done to me. I'm proud of what my mind is capable of, but I'm not proud of how often my insecurity overrides my intellect to use as a weapon in imaginary power struggles with the people closest to me. So this week, the cycle of one-upsmanship stops with me. I'm cutting myself off. Except in cases of extreme need or professional obligation, I will tell nobody that they are wrong. I will not edit them or correct them. I will not smirk behind anyone's back about innocent errors or missteps. I will try to be a person that people feel safe approaching and feel safe walking away from. I'll let you know how it goes.
This week I'm going to try something new. I'm going to see if I can make it through a whole week without telling anybody that they are wrong.
This will be an extraordinary challenge for me. I am a naturally analytical thinker. When I am presented with an idea or a situation or a request, my first instinct is to start testing it to see how sound it is. Are there holes in this theory? What obstacles might stand in our way? Are any of the details inaccurate or contradictory? My mind immediately tries to find what might be wrong, so that it can be fixed, and we can all move forward together in the best possible way.
At least, I think that's why I do it. It is probably mostly why I do it, but if I examine my own mind in those moments, I realize there is another force at work within me. I NEED TO BE RIGHT. I need to be more right than you. I need to be the most rightest person in the room. I need you, my dear friend or colleague, to understand that I have the power in this conversation because of how very right I am. I'm so right that I immediately noticed several problems with what you were just saying to me. No big, though--I'll just casually drop my corrections into our conversation in this light, casual tone, and walk away knowing that we both know that I win because I'm right.
I know that I do this. I hate that I do this. I especially hate it when it is being done to me. I'm proud of what my mind is capable of, but I'm not proud of how often my insecurity overrides my intellect to use as a weapon in imaginary power struggles with the people closest to me. So this week, the cycle of one-upsmanship stops with me. I'm cutting myself off. Except in cases of extreme need or professional obligation, I will tell nobody that they are wrong. I will not edit them or correct them. I will not smirk behind anyone's back about innocent errors or missteps. I will try to be a person that people feel safe approaching and feel safe walking away from. I'll let you know how it goes.
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Pour some sugar on me
Yesterday as I was waiting for Fringe to come on, I saw, with the sound off, the tail end of Kitchen Nightmares. This is pretty much all I've ever seen of Kitchen Nightmares, so I don't really know what the show is about, but I think it's more about the personality of Gordon Ramsay than actual cooking. Yes? Anyway, it got me thinking about the huge amounts of food-related programming that is on now. I used to enjoy watching The Frugal Gourmet on PBS as a kid because Jeff Smith was so darn avuncular and his kitchen looked prettier than ours. But I never dreamed there would one day be so many celebrity chefs, cooking competitions, whole channels dedicated to food.
I never dreamed it, but C. S. Lewis did.
"Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? ... One critic said that if he found a country in which such striptease acts with food were popular, he would conclude that the people of that country were starving.... Starving men may think much about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations." -- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
He uses this imaginary fixation on food as an extreme example to make a point about the state of sexuality, as if to say, "If we were as obsessed with food as we are with sex, look at the kind of nonsense we'd be getting up to!" And now it seems that we kind of are as obsessed with food as we are with sex, and we have complicated relationships with both. Pleasure and shame and biological drive and societal pressures get all mixed up with each other, and we hide certain choices and flaunt others, and all the while, we're not getting any healthier. I hesitate to say that if we all just obeyed the commands of God that our lives would be automatically better--because that's getting into some tricky prosperity gospel territory, about which I will no doubt blog at a later date--but I do think that there might be something askew in a society that has a dozen television shows about cake.
On the other hand, I've never known anybody who gave up sex for Lent, so I guess food still has a ways to go before we consider it REALLY important.
I never dreamed it, but C. S. Lewis did.
"Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? ... One critic said that if he found a country in which such striptease acts with food were popular, he would conclude that the people of that country were starving.... Starving men may think much about food, but so do gluttons; the gorged, as well as the famished, like titillations." -- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
He uses this imaginary fixation on food as an extreme example to make a point about the state of sexuality, as if to say, "If we were as obsessed with food as we are with sex, look at the kind of nonsense we'd be getting up to!" And now it seems that we kind of are as obsessed with food as we are with sex, and we have complicated relationships with both. Pleasure and shame and biological drive and societal pressures get all mixed up with each other, and we hide certain choices and flaunt others, and all the while, we're not getting any healthier. I hesitate to say that if we all just obeyed the commands of God that our lives would be automatically better--because that's getting into some tricky prosperity gospel territory, about which I will no doubt blog at a later date--but I do think that there might be something askew in a society that has a dozen television shows about cake.
On the other hand, I've never known anybody who gave up sex for Lent, so I guess food still has a ways to go before we consider it REALLY important.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Because of their many words
Today I reflected on the Scripture reading from last night's service, an excerpt of Matthew 6 where Jesus appears to admonish his listeners to keep their religion to themselves. It's just one of the many, many things in the Bible that makes me do a double-take whenever I hear it. In a way, I get what he's saying. You shouldn't be looking for extra credit for acts of charity, kindness and repentance. As Pastor Don Draper would say, "THAT'S WHAT THE SALVATION IS FOR." Plus, I'm sure any one of us could come up with a painfully long list of vituperative asshats who claim the saving grace of Christ in one breath and then insult entire communities of fellow travelers in the next. Better that they keep their mouths shut and appear stupid than open them and make the world think that I'm an asshat, too, simply because we share a creed.
But how can I tell the difference between living in a spotlight for the sake of the spotlight and living there for the sake of the Gospel? Take this blog, for instance. It's partly for me, as a way to sort through some Lent-related thoughts and brush up my writing, which is always way harder than I think it will be. (I am constantly dismayed that being good at tweeting does not translate into more useful skills.) But it's also, if I'm being honest, something of an evangelism tool. I say evangelism, although I don't actually expect anybody to convert because of my scribblings here. It's more like me feeling that I have a responsibility to put some positive stuff out into the world with regard to Christianity. Hopefully stuff that is loving and thoughtful and genuine, since so many of Christ's most notable banner-carriers today are coming across as anything but. And I think that all people have the same responsibility, to be ambassadors for the things they believe in, so that even if we can't always agree, we can at least respect each other.
So, if it's okay with Jesus, I'll keep writing this blog. But maybe I won't tell many people about it.
But how can I tell the difference between living in a spotlight for the sake of the spotlight and living there for the sake of the Gospel? Take this blog, for instance. It's partly for me, as a way to sort through some Lent-related thoughts and brush up my writing, which is always way harder than I think it will be. (I am constantly dismayed that being good at tweeting does not translate into more useful skills.) But it's also, if I'm being honest, something of an evangelism tool. I say evangelism, although I don't actually expect anybody to convert because of my scribblings here. It's more like me feeling that I have a responsibility to put some positive stuff out into the world with regard to Christianity. Hopefully stuff that is loving and thoughtful and genuine, since so many of Christ's most notable banner-carriers today are coming across as anything but. And I think that all people have the same responsibility, to be ambassadors for the things they believe in, so that even if we can't always agree, we can at least respect each other.
So, if it's okay with Jesus, I'll keep writing this blog. But maybe I won't tell many people about it.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Accompany me on a journey with me
I got ashed tonight for the first time in several years. I've never been very faithful about observing Ash Wednesday and Lent. For one thing, it's hard for me to get excited about it. I feel like I already spend a pretty significant portion of my inner life obsessing over my mortality, my weakness and my guilt. Do I personally need to spend 40 days really honing my religious neuroses? For another, I have a tendency to overthink the discipline part of Lent. I worry about what I should give up, and whether I'm giving up enough or too much, and am I giving up things that really take the place of God in my life or am I just aiming for some self-improvement, and what if I set too high a goal and fail at it, but wouldn't God be more pleased if I really sacrificed one of my emotional crutches even if I end up falling back on it later, but Christianity isn't about success or failure, and should I also be adding in things like daily Scripture reading and prayer, but shouldn't I be doing those anyway, and oh look, I seem to have hurled myself out a window.
Oh, I hate Lent. And by Lent, I mean my brain.
But I'm doing Lent this year. In the years when I have opted not to pick up the burdens of Lenten observance and live in the freedom I'm told I have in Christ, I have found that Holy Week and Easter are much less meaningful. I've tried to cram 40 days of mindful preparation into a few, and the journey to the cross and the grave has felt, maybe unsurprisingly, rushed and shallow and weightless. And I don't like that. I want more. I want to feel the creeping dread as Jesus approaches Jerusalem. I want to hang my head in shame in front of a church full of waving palm branches because I know that in a few days, we will be demanding to see blood and punishment. I want to cringe when Jesus touches the hand of his beloved Judas. I want to weep when the flesh is being ripped from Jesus' body by whips and nails. I want to fall silent when the veil covering the Holy of Holies in the temple is torn. I want to cry and sing and flail my hands in joy and wonder when Mary gets to hold her son again, once dead and now more alive than anything that has ever lived. And I'm pretty sure that it is Lent, that difficult season of self-denial and self-examination, that will bring all of this into focus. I've tried and failed to shortcut it before. I'm not doing that again this year.
Of course, I also have to wonder that if I'm just doing this to have a more meaningful Easter experience, isn't that pretty self-centered and might God prefer if I--O HAI OPEN WINDOW.
Oh, I hate Lent. And by Lent, I mean my brain.
But I'm doing Lent this year. In the years when I have opted not to pick up the burdens of Lenten observance and live in the freedom I'm told I have in Christ, I have found that Holy Week and Easter are much less meaningful. I've tried to cram 40 days of mindful preparation into a few, and the journey to the cross and the grave has felt, maybe unsurprisingly, rushed and shallow and weightless. And I don't like that. I want more. I want to feel the creeping dread as Jesus approaches Jerusalem. I want to hang my head in shame in front of a church full of waving palm branches because I know that in a few days, we will be demanding to see blood and punishment. I want to cringe when Jesus touches the hand of his beloved Judas. I want to weep when the flesh is being ripped from Jesus' body by whips and nails. I want to fall silent when the veil covering the Holy of Holies in the temple is torn. I want to cry and sing and flail my hands in joy and wonder when Mary gets to hold her son again, once dead and now more alive than anything that has ever lived. And I'm pretty sure that it is Lent, that difficult season of self-denial and self-examination, that will bring all of this into focus. I've tried and failed to shortcut it before. I'm not doing that again this year.
Of course, I also have to wonder that if I'm just doing this to have a more meaningful Easter experience, isn't that pretty self-centered and might God prefer if I--O HAI OPEN WINDOW.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Come, let us reason together
My name is not Martha, but Martha is who I am.
Pretty soon I'm going to speak.
I hope someone is listening.
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