my name is jen and….
This weekend I finished reading Lit, Mary Karr’s memoir about her relationship with her husband, her addiction and her God.
Every page was a poem—no wonder the book appeared on dozens of “best of 2009″ lists last month. But what struck me most was her experience in Alcoholics Anonymous. As she gets sober and commits to daily meetings, Karr encounters a corps of unlikely comrades: a well-known musician who brings homemade cookies. A black man with tattoos from the Khe Sanh Combat Base in Vietnam. A classics professor. Hookers and bankers. Rich women in Chanel suits and mechanics picking at the grease under their fingernails and still-drunk lawyers and a young man with schizophrenia who once attended a meeting wearing a helmet made of tinfoil.
Karr joined the group after hitting bottom—ending a professional appearance by drinking martinis and wine and chartreuse until blacking out, then trying to drive home until a concrete road divider stops her progress and shoots her out of the moving car.
“A moment of deep self-loathing makes not drinking seem your only conceivable option,” she writes. “But I know that day how swiftly such moments pass, how cunning, baffling, and powerful my own logic can be….for the first time, the disease idea isn’t just metaphorical.”
Although every person at AA can tell a similar—or much worse—story, each one is welcomed, valued, listened to. Jack, the schizophrenic, created his tinfoil hat because he was “convinced his girlfriend was beaming messages to him through the radio,” Karr writes. “It’s a tribute to the radical equality of the room that I never overheard anybody challenge the reasoning.”
This radical equality permeates the group because everyone acknowledges their lives “have become unmanageable” and they cannot successfully and sanely live life without help from each other and a Higher Power. There is no pretense about being more together or less sick than anyone else. The meetings and the community and the prayer save their lives.
And so I was deeply moved by Karr’s experience and deeply convicted about the different experience to be found in many churches—places that, after all, should have the corner on the Higher Power.
We do not admit our lives are unmanageable; in fact we usually find our faults both manageable and excusable. We do not pray and admit our past wrongs and make amends with the desperation of an addict out of better options. We do not find it impossible to go on without submitting our will in complete humility.
Because most of us have not hit bottom in our addiction to sin.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe your church accepts anger and skepticism and even hostility toward the Higher Power. Maybe your members regularly take a moral inventory and confess “the exact nature of their wrongs” and “defects of character” to one another. Maybe they daily help each other fight the disease of our fallen natures. Maybe Jack and his aluminum helmet would fit right in.
If so, I haven’t been to your church. But I’d like to, because my name’s Jen, and I’m a sinaholic.
new to you friday–watch it
Last week Jon Acuff wrote about his new book Stuff Christians Like on his blog of the same name. In the comments, several of us launched a side conversation about the passive-aggressive book purchase—buying a book for someone, ostensibly as a gift, but really as a way to communicate your opinion about some facet of their life. (My favorite comment: I had some friends that gave their whole family Christian self-help books custom tailored to each of their specific glaring issues. They look back on it as “the quietest Christmas ever.”)
Most Christians are guilty of this; with every good intention we give our skeptic friend a book on theology or apologetics and believe it will change his mind. I’ve done it.
These books serve a purpose, but only at the right time and only after earning the right to share your perspective. And that can take months or years of showing up and shutting up and simply loving the person without strings attached.
Whether or not you watch the two movies discussed below, consider some ways you can listen instead of lecture in your relationships with unbelievers. One of my non-negotiables is I won’t foist a book on someone without first offering to read and discuss one of her choosing—in effect, giving the other person first dibs at the “here’s your problem” interaction. The results are always interesting……
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The God Who Wasn’t There, a new documentary directed by a former Christian, “irreverently lays out the case that Jesus Christ never existed” says Newsweek. The film includes interviews with Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and many others.
You’re probably more aware of this one; Entertainment Weekly called comedian Bill Maher’s Religulous “a blasphemous detonation of all things holy and scriptural.”
A few friendly wagers:
While watching these trailers, at least ten of you inwardly bristled and began running through your mental filing cabinet of apologetic arguments. (Bonus points if “liar, lunatic or Lord” crossed your mind.)
At least seven of you thought something like, “Maher protests too much about the foolishness of religion. It’s like he’s trying to push away what he knows in his heart must be true.”
Most of you felt angry, offended, or embarrassed.
None of you rushed to add these films to your Netflix queue.
I’m really not picking on you—after a long day of work who wants to watch two hours of someone mocking your most cherished beliefs? Even though Maher does occasionally make me laugh out loud (“no one powerful enough to cause nuclear war should be overly eager for the Rapture”), neither movie will offer a relaxing and fun experience for those of us who believe in Christ.
But we need to watch them anyway. Because here’s another bet: at some point you have purchased a Christian book—The Case for Christ, perhaps, or Mere Christianity, or Keller’s Reason for God—and foisted it on your skeptic friend/neighbor/coworker/relative. You knew if they would just read it with an open heart it would change everything. You imagined them studying it, maybe with a highlighter, and coming to realize the foolishness of their doubts and disbelief. You glowed with the thrill of evangelism.
Did you ever consider how your friend or family member felt about that book?
My guess is they read part of it (if they opened it at all) or skimmed a few chapters so they could fake their way through a conversation with you later. They may have considered buying you a copy of The God Delusion. Despite your good intentions, they probably resented your gift as much as you resent Religulous.
Which is ironic, because ultimately the movie is less an attack on God than “the vain, deluded things human beings say and do in His name,” EW writes. American evangelicals’ tendency to stubbornly lecture instead of calmly listen invites the very critiques in these movies. Watching one of them won’t immediately change that, but thoughtfully attempting to understand the frustrations and doubts of unbelievers can. There are worse places to start than an open DVD drive and a closed mouth.
new to you friday–a promise
I hadn’t been blogging very long when I posted this one, and it got more comments than almost anything I’d written to that point. Apparently people have very strong feelings about this issue; several wrote amens to my post while others urged more grace toward parents doing their best.
I get that it’s easy for someone without kids to be judgmental, but really I’m not forming opinions about your parenting. Raise your child as you see fit…..but when Junior throws a fit, please remove him quickly from the auditorium.
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No matter how much I want to be there, and no matter how convinced I am that the rest of the world adores my three children ages two through five, I will never bring them to a Good Friday service and allow them to cry, talk, and loudly announce they “have to potty” while the minister dramatically reads Matthew 26.
There are just some things you don’t get to do if you have small children, and I promise to remember that after mine arrive, even if every other parent in this country does not.
I will not take them to movie theaters to see anything that is not animated (and maybe not even those until they’re school-aged), I will not lug them to Disneyland and force them to miss their naptime and then punish them for being cranky in the Happiest Place on Earth, all while annoying hundreds of other people by running my stroller into their ankles, and I will not take them to weddings since there is at least a 50% chance the bride and groom will only do this once and do not want the primary memory to be a baby crying.
If there is a nursery, I will review the safety practices in place and then leave my child there during the church service, as hard as it might be to accept that the tot will be able to handle an entire hour out of my presence (and might even enjoy it). If for some reason I must keep the child with me during the service, I will step outside the instant the inevitable crying/ whining/ whimpering/ screeching/ squealing starts, rather than expecting the kid to suddenly be quiet because I look at him sternly or move him from one side of my lap to the other.
This is my promise to you all.
forgiveness’ sake
A chance (?) conversation last week re-opened some old wounds, scars which I thought had long since healed.
Not completely.
The conversation was actually encouraging and its initiator is not to blame—but I spent most of Thursday thinking back over the last decade and the choices I’ve made.
And the time I wasted. No one’s ever accused me of raging optimism, so not surprisingly I focused on the negative—the relationships I stayed in too long, the one I wish had worked out, the things I might have changed. The huge amount of physical and emotional energy I invested into my work and the microscopic difference it made. The things I wish I had said, hadn’t said, had said another way.
It was a great day.
On Friday, during my drive to the airport, by chance (?) one of my favorite songs shuffled up on my iPod—“The Heart of the Matter” by Don Henley.
“I’ve been trying to get down
to the heart of the matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it’s about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if you don’t love me anymore.”
The old pop hit talks about letting go of old pain, old loves, the people in your life “who’ve come and gone.” It’s about forgiving them so the anger against them doesn’t ruin you.
I’ve listened to this song at least 200 times, but for the first time I realized I don’t need to forgive that (handsome, arrogant) boyfriend. I don’t need to forgive the various people at that (bureaucratic, dysfunctional) workplace.
I need to forgive myself.
The truth is, I did the best I could. If I knew then what I know now, things would look very different, but I couldn’t know those things at age 25. Unfortunately, in life we usually learn the lessons after we need them.
And then on Saturday, by chance (?) I remembered Isaiah 43: “Look, I am doing a new thing! Don’t you see it?”
And it clicked.
For good or for bad, my twenties are over. (And then some.) I can’t change them, but God’s not living there and he doesn’t want me to, either. In the words of Mason Cooley, regret for wasted time is just more wasted time. I can’t change the past but I can stop beating myself up for how I handled it—and focus on what God is doing now.
new to you friday–leading women
Here’s a fun one…….something I hate to admit and still don’t completely understand. Ladies, do you agree with me? What can we do about it?
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So far in my career, I’ve worked for half a dozen men, many of them hard-driving and lacking the warm fuzzy gene. In volunteer and freelance assignments I’ve worked with at least a dozen more. I’ve gotten along famously with all of them.
In that same time span, I’ve worked directly for one woman and alongside a couple others. These relationships are the only serious professional conflicts I’ve experienced.
Sometimes only a member of the group is permitted to generalize about its members or talk honestly about its failures, so I’ll share something a man would be tarred and feathered for saying—women in leadership do not play well together.
I’m not sure why. Does the salary disparity and glass ceiling still experienced by modern career women allow only the most politically-skilled or aggressive to find success—and then inevitably cause conflict when they start managing others?
Is it generational? I’m sure the women before me had more to prove than my friends and I do today. It could be threatening, infuriating, or both to see my generation climbing the ladder without quite as many male feet stomping us back down.
Or is it culturally learned behavior? For millennia women without muscle or means have been taught to find our power more covertly, from the relatively innocuous (“Honey, just let him think it was his idea”) to the more damaging (you remember Delilah, right?). Although the workplace’s job descriptions and more blatant power structure theoretically eliminate the need for such power games, do we still play them instinctively?
Or is it the mothering instinct? My experiences with women in leadership over me were positive as long as they could be framed as adult/child relationships, with these women teaching me or directing my work. When I wanted to relate as adult/adult—still respecting their authority, but with my own strengths and ideas—things took a turn for the worse.
Or maybe it’s just me—I am, after all, the constant among these situations, so perhaps the log in my own eye is divisiveness and insubordination. Except that no one else seems to think so, and a lot of other women I know—when pressed—will admit to having the same experiences.
In fact, when the guys are in another room, my girlfriends and I discuss these issues. In a way, we’re searching for answers to determine our own options. If only the pushy or manipulative woman can succeed in corporate America (or the corporate megachurch), that means we can either achieve our goals or like who we are. It seems an unnecessary choice.
There are wonderful women leading out there, too, several of whom I consider friends as well as colleagues. But it is interesting that my heartburn and headaches can all be traced back to women. Ladies, this is bad branding for all of us. Our mothers and grandmothers worked hard for appreciation and respect in the workplace. We can’t blow it now that we have some corner offices.
things I don’t understand, part 7
Appetizers for cats.
Civil war reenacting.
Life insurance for babies. (The point of life insurance is to replace lost income. Unless your child stars on “Toddlers and Tiaras,” they are not adding to your bottom line. And if they are on that show, your life choices alone constitute an entire “things I don’t understand” list.)
Why it takes scissors and a paring knife to open DVD packaging. I thought DVDs were indestructible. Can’t we just put them in cardboard sleeves and call it good?
Taxidermy.
Why there must be pop music playing in every public space.
The question, “Cold enough for you?”
Voluntarily listening to the “Delilah” radio show.
Owning a pit bull.
Not writing thank you notes for wedding gifts. It takes 90 seconds per note! Write one or you don’t get a baby gift from me.
Why Marc Summers, host of the Food Network show “Unwrapped,” pauses for dramatic effect three words before the end……………….of every sentence.
(Previous installments, plus the SkyMall edition.)
new to you friday–”dog” show
This post discusses India, but definitely applies to Haiti, as well—even before the earthquake.
The original post received several thoughtful comments, and I’d love to hear your thoughts, too. More important, you know you can give to the Red Cross, Compassion, and many more; IDES and FAME are two other organizations that will use your donations with integrity in Haiti.
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I finally saw Slumdog Millionaire today; several critics (like this one and this one) are predicting big wins for the movie at tomorrow’s Academy Awards. From the great “acting” of the little boys (they aren’t actors, just poor Indian kids recruited for the roles) to the triumphant love story, it’s a wonderful movie. One review said, “The prospect of an uneducated orphan from the slums of Mumbai winning a pot of gold on a game show that hinges on worldly knowledge is, of course, the stuff of purest fairy tales.” Yes, it’s almost impossible to believe it could actually happen—then again, Slumdog’s own cast finds it hard to believe the movie is now a front-runner for major prizes tomorrow night. It just might win Best Picture, and I hope it does.
But what struck me while watching the film was not the acting, the cinematography, or even the irresistible music—it was the poverty. As my dad said on the drive home, the filth and disease of those Indian slums are replicated in every major city throughout the 2/3 world. A billion people around the globe scavenge for food, drink dirty water and wash their clothes in it, and accept lives of crime and prostitution just to get by.
That’s not news—you’ve heard all the statistics. Like me, maybe you even sponsor a child or write a check at the end of the year to help out in a small way and assuage your guilt over everything you can’t or don’t do. And like me, perhaps you watched this movie and wondered why you won the cosmic spin of the wheel and so many others didn’t.
I’m no smarter, more talented, or more worthy than the young women in Mumbai, Uganda, or Lima. I don’t deserve overpriced junk food anymore than they deserve to live off garbage. Why was I placed among riches when so many others beg for pennies? Why do I get an easy life when so many others suffer? Or as Paul Williams wrote (and took a beating for) in one of his Christian Standard columns, “Would someone please help me locate the Scripture that defines such inequity as acceptable?”
The only answer I ever come back to is Luke 12. “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded,” Jesus says, “and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”
I can’t fix global poverty by myself anymore than an Indian “slumdog” can win a zillion rupees—both are the illusion of feel-good movies. But my daily life seems like a fairy tale to much of the world, and the marching orders are clear. It’s time to get busy.
connect 4
My friend David is teaching a class at church on contemplative spirituality, and kicked it off with a discussion of the four main ways to relate to God. (He discovered this model in “Gospel-Centered Spirituality” by Allan Sager; you can buy used copies at Amazon here.)
Here’s the chart:
Here’s what it means:
People tend to gravitate to either an emotional (heart) or rational (mind) understanding of God. That’s the vertical line. They also tend to believe God is either more mysterious or more knowable (the horizontal line). The combination determines the way a person prefers to connect with God.
Like any such quadrant-based chart, you can be closer to or farther away from the center based on the strength of your identification with the variables. For instance, you may have a strong preference for relating to God with your mind, but your take on whether God can actually be known is pretty neutral. Your preferred avenues to connecting with God will look different from someone who shares your affinity for the rational but believes strongly that God can, in fact, be known and understood.
The coolest thing, I think, is the connection to Mark 12:30, where we’re told to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. It’s easy to match each of those areas with one of these quadrants.
Here were some additional insights from our class:
—Because of the connection to this verse, we cannot choose to live in only one or two quadrants. Although we all have a natural affinity toward one, we are commanded to love God with all four parts of our being, and therefore should make an effort to connect with God in each way.
—It’s easy to think your preferred quadrant is the superior one. We can probably all give examples of people who promote social justice, prayer and meditation, a personal emotional experience or right doctrine as the highest expression of faith.
—Each of the four can be healthy, but taken to an extreme each one can also be toxic.
—Because these preferences are so ingrained, I think they can affect our theology. For example, I’d say my quadrant is the inner life. But if I spend all my time in centering prayer and silence and lectio divina I’ll miss the many attributes of God that legitimately find expression in service, worship and study. It’s that old “if you just have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” thing. Again, balance is the goal.
What do you think? Does this chart have merit? What is your preferred way to connect with God?
new to you friday–why worship team auditions are a good idea
We’ve done a lot of thinking about important stuff this week, so today I leave you with one of my all-time favorite YouTube videos. Here’s hoping this guy isn’t on your church’s stage this weekend.
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Jennifer Taylor
My Other Sites
Twittering @seejenwrite- seejenwrite: Considering what, if anything, I'll give up for Lent. Big issue not what but why: pure motive of seeking God, not legalism.
- seejenwrite: @bryanallain I swear by TurboTax, and just use the online version. Self-emplyed,qurtrly taxes, tons of deductions,and it always does great.
- seejenwrite: Looking through list of local dentists--there's actually 1 named "Dr. Smiley."
- seejenwrite: "There is no pretense about being more together or less sick than anyone else." Why I wish the church was more like AA: http://bit.ly/cQ56l4
