divorce and church denominations

“God hates divorce.”  Five or so years before my divorce, I was comfortable with this scripture.  Smug, even.  I recall lecturing righteously to my kids about it as we drove somewhere in the car, filled with superior gladness that I was a stable, responsible person who would never break that vow made before God, never put my own needs so much on the front burner that I’d inflict pain and chaos on others around me.  Divorce was for flaky people.  Selfish people.  People who couldn’t get their shit together.  (And on rare occasion, it was for ladies and were rightly fleeing physically abusive situations – even at the worst of my arrogance, I understood THAT part.)

Divorce was for people who were not like me.

It wasn’t long after that my marriage began its slow, awful crumble, with plenty of fault to go around.  There were stages and much struggle over a period of several years – this was no sudden decision – and then a couple of years of getting through the actual legal severing once we’d determined that the marriage simply would not be saved.

It was the hardest, ugliest thing I’ve ever been through.  Here’s the thing I learned:  when you make a marriage vow, you create a holy, living thing.  Divorce is the deliberate murder of that living thing.  No matter how hard you work on being civilized and cooperative, it is a death…and not a natural one.  The pain level for me and for him was intense – shocking.  We each felt at different points that we might not survive the process.

That was to be expected, right?  Divorce hurts.

What I DIDN’T expect was the level of pain it would cause others.  The kids, yes, of course that would hurt – that was the hardest part of making that decision.  Lots of people, including counselors, told me that “kids are resilient” and I shouldn’t base any choice on the question of “what about the kids.”  I didn’t buy for a minute that it would be anything less than excruciating for them – the only reason I was able to push forward was that it seemed staying was going to damage them even more.   So, I didn’t leave *for* the kids, but as I did what I needed to at the time, I understood the choice as “the least bad option” available to me, where it came to their well-being.  What I believed then and still believe, right or wrong, is that we (BOTH of us) had broken things irrevocably, and we only knew how to be unhealthy with one another.  Not a good legacy to pass on to kids.

But the pain wasn’t limited to those in our little 4-person family.  It splashed around.  It hurt extended family.  It hurt friends.  It intruded into the workplace.  It was an ugly gift that just kept on giving.  I hadn’t seen that coming.

Even today, when I talk with anyone who is struggling in a marriage, I am quick to let them know:  don’t think divorce is an easy out.  It is ugly and difficult beyond any words I know how to use.  Pursue all other avenues.  In most cases, take divorce off the table as even a thought – even CONSIDERING it is harmful to a marriage.  Don’t go there, as long as you can find any other option at all.  Keep trying.  Keep praying.  Keep working on yourself.  There is no easy escape hatch.

I thought of all that this morning in church, as our guest pastor paused amidst his message for a sidebar.  “Denominations,” he said, “are not of God.”  He told us there are FORTY THOUSAND denominations inside of Christianity…”each birthed from divorce.”

Ugh.

In my final year as a junior high Sunday School teacher, I did a “survey of the faith” segment with my class.  We started with Judaism, and studied the rise of the Christian church, the split between Catholic and Protestant, the various denominational differences, etc…for the better part of a year.  We visited Jewish synagogues to start out (from orthodox to messianic in nature).  We checked out a catholic church with a Latin mass (though the priest fell ill and didn’t show up for service, so we never actually heard the Latin).  We attended services at all sorts of different denominations within protestant Christianity, trying to learn a little first about each and then go in respectfully, collecting impressions to discuss later.

My class was a FANTASTIC group of kids and in some ways the exercise was great fun and highly educational.

In the end, though, I regretted doing the “survey of the church” segment with them…because of how much hope it sucked out of ME…and how much I worried that I’d damaged their ability to trust the church by looking so closely at it.

Because today’s guest pastor was right:  every denomination has been birthed by divorce.  Every new church was started because someone decided they weren’t satisfied where they were, things were not being done “right,” they were going to do it “better,” and for whatever reason they couldn’t just work out their differences where they were.  Bring on the split, and the split, and the split and the split, starting more and more churches, many too focused on their difference from the others and not enough on loving one another, all of them filled with messy people doing it imperfectly.

If you haven’t been to the church wars, maybe you don’t know the level of pain and chaos and awfulness therein.  I have.  I know.  While I was an awful combatant the first time I went there, the second time I felt like a child of divorce.  I wasn’t on either “side” of the war.  I liked and loved people on both sides.  I just wanted them to play nicely together – to humble themselves, to fix the mess.  The fix came eventually, I guess, but it took people out of that congregation and it left a big scar.  It was a divorce.

God hates divorce.  Once upon a time, in the middle of ending that marriage, those words felt like a giant finger of condemnation pointed at me.  Like a judgment.  Like a measure of my failure.

A little further down the road, I don’t see it that way AT ALL.  Does God hate divorce?  Sure.  Not because someone is “failing,” but because of that pain that splashes around, that ugly gift that just keeps on giving.  He hates divorce because of the harm it does to the people He loves.  If divorce has happened in your household, or in your church, maybe you know what I’m saying here.

We’re not going to go back and fix this – the endless denominations exist, and this side of heaven we’re not going to lay that all down, undoing our different labels and nuanced theology.

But we’d do well to consider this business of being birthed by divorce…and working on healing the wounds inflicted therein.

We can do that, with God’s help.  He’s all about it.

 

 

 

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integrity and the race conversation

When I was in high school learning about one historical clash after another, I often wondered how I would have responded, had I lived in those times.  Would I have protested the Vietnam War?  Where would I have stood, what would I have been doing when Martin Luther King Jr. was giving his “I Have a Dream” speech, or when Rosa Parks made her very calculated and fully supported move to stand her ground regarding a bus seat?  What would I have been saying when the battle to desegregate our schools happened?  Would I have spoken out against having separate bathrooms and drinking fountains for “colored folks”?  If a lynch mob had happened in my town, how would I have reacted?  What if I had been in Germany when the Jews had to start wearing stars and receiving second-class citizen treatment?  Would I have hidden Jews from Hitler’s people?  Would I have been silent while my loved ones owned and abused slaves, here in my country?  Would I have hidden slaves from those in authority?

In other words:  would I have had integrity to the point of being endangered by it, or would I have offered my complicit silence and hidden behind what was “legal” in those times and places?  Would I have maybe even believed in/agreed with what I now see as “the wrong side” of history?  A younger me was sure I’d have been a firebrand for truth.  Middle-aged me is not so sure about that.  Everyone wants to think they’d do the “right” thing, looking back on various points in history, even if we disagree on what thing is actually right.  I suspect that the number of us who would ACTUALLY be bold and uncompromising in our integrity is far smaller than the number of who suppose we would.  We human beings are better at theory and intellectual exercise than reality, for the most part.  I’m not at all certain that if I had lived through any of those difficult passages, I’d have acted in a way that would make “today Karen” proud and filled with approval.  Not at all certain.

Let’s segue from “high school Karen” and “historical supposing” to today.  Here and now, August 2017, with Charlotteville, Virginia in the news.  I wondered aloud to my daughter yesterday about the counter-protesters there on that scene.  I tried to decide, was it wise to be there?  Should they have skipped it, knowing it might go the way it did?  Was there value in going to interrupt a racist rally?

While I am a Jesus-follower, an active leader in my church and committed to my faith in my own highly imperfect way, wading into scripture daily and working always on that business of “praying without ceasing”… I am also quite liberal in my political leanings.  I gladly embrace the epithet “wild-eyed liberal” thrown by people who don’t feel the same.  (Surprise!  It is possible to be both of those things!)  After the 2016 presidential election, as I was reeling and horrified and fearful and angry, I got engaged in “resistance” activities.  I had to – it felt like the world was ending, and I couldn’t just sit in my living room while it all burned down.

A Trump rally was scheduled in my area.  My resistance group held a discussion:  what should we do?  While some wanted to protest the rally, the larger consensus was that this had potential for violence and little to no potential for changing hearts and minds…so we opted instead to do some positive activities in other areas on that same day at the same time.  At that time, I felt like the decision was wisdom.

So yesterday, I pondered:  should the counter-protesters in Charlotteville have taken that approach as well?  Should they have just done something positive somewhere nearby, but not on site?  Would that have been wisdom?

And then I thought about what was at stake – the agenda of the alt-right rally.

I thought about how we view the people who were actively involved in slave trading – and even how we view the folks who simply didn’t offer resistance while it all went down.

I thought about the Jews saved in Germany by those who risked terrible consequences, breaking the law even…and how we feel about them, as compared to how we feel about those who knew damned well and good what that smell was emanating in the neighborhood when Jews were being burned up in furnaces.

I thought about how much easier desegregation could have been for those poor kids who took so much abuse, if only people had chosen to address evil directly, rather than talking around it or being too afraid of their racist neighbors and family to actually speak out.

We can’t always carefully craft our words so that they will land softly – doing so, in some cases, is a direct injustice, an act of cowardice or worse.

Calling out racism can’t be the *only* strategy we have, or it’s not a strategy at all – that’s just useless talk, on its own.  We have to be looking for active ways to be part of the solution, to address the problem, to give of OURSELVES, our money, our time, our “rights.”  And I confess:  I have a really hard time finding those active ways.  I try, but it’s not often self-evident to me.

But that doesn’t mean we should not be calling out racism.  What if the Germans had called out Hitler’s regime often, early, and boldly?  What if when slaves on ships had started showing up on American shores, people would have said, “Oh, HELL no,” and backed it up with might?  Our only strategy can’t be just shaking our heads and muttering quietly to others who won’t be mad at us for our opinion.

So…not that anyone in Charlotteville needs MY blessing…but I’ve concluded that their presence at the rally was integrity.  I hope I’d have the clarity of vision to be similarly willing, in their shoes.  My interpretation of my faith demands that I stand up for oppressed people, and that I resist evil.  I don’t see it as optional.

Truly, no part of me is excited at the prospect that this race conversation is far from over…that I might get my chance to make such a decision, somewhere down the road.

If so, I hope – I PRAY – my integrity holds.

naked affection

In August 2011, after nine glorious months living in intentional Christian community in Chicago (understood perhaps more simply by the word “commune”), I moved back to the Quad Cities and returned to my previous job.  This wasn’t MY idea…my intention and favorite plan was to stay in that community for the rest of my days here on earth.  The return to the QC happened because my boss at the previous job asked me to pray about coming back, and I said I would, so then I had to actually pray (I figure God has a dim view of folks saying, “I’ll pray about that” and then not doing so)…and those prayers eventually led to a clear call for the move.  I’ve been back with that boss ever since; it turned out to be a good plan, despite feeling at the time like the cancellation of a many-years-long dream for my life.

The first six months after the move back were hard.  I lived alone in an apartment at the senior housing facility where I was (and am) employed.  The end of the day meant retiring to my own space, without another human being in it, to eat supper by myself and find ways to fill the hours before sleeping, and then to climb into my great big bed in my too-quiet bedroom (none of the sirens and screams I’d grown accustomed to in the Chicago nights) and wait for sleep to kindly eat up the hours.

In my intentional community, I always had the option to choose sufficient “alone time” to satisfy my introverted ways, though sometimes that required creativity…but I also always had the option to have as much company as I wanted.  In my room, in my hall, on my floor, across the entire building were other people with a vision at least somewhat similar to mine.  Everywhere I looked were folks who were weird in at least some of the same ways as me.  I congregated with friends in the little kitchen on our floor, in the big dining room downstairs, in various living rooms on various floors, outside in the “side yard,” at my job at the homeless shelter run by the community, and out on adventures all across the Chicago area.  We got together for tea or coffee.  We ate meals together.  We went for walks.  We talked and laughed and were quiet together.  We had deep conversations about real things that mattered, not just small talk, which I loathe, largely because I can’t do it.  We went to music shows.  We did community service projects together.  We did Bible studies together.  We had an exercise class.  We met for “bardic circles” to tell stories and jokes and sing songs and read poems.  We had house meetings.  Our church was inside our community, though people from outside also joined us.  That intentional community was home to me before I got there, while I lived in its midst, and really in some ways will always be home to me – I feel a strong longing as I write about it, though I love my life here and feel no need to fight against being where God has placed me.

Every evening at home alone in my nice apartment was hard.  I played on my computer while I ate, to distract myself from the deep loneliness.  I was meeting with a couple of my female friends, which filled maybe two evenings a week, and I visited my parents and my prayer partner on another night,  and met with some friends for Bible study yet another night.  That sounds like a full week, and today it really would be, but at that time, the other days – the ones with no plans outside my lonely apartment – got long.

I spent too much money on unneeded things, trying to fill up the aching space in my life.

I rode my bike a lot to fill the hours.

I talked too much about Chicago when I was around others, yearning to be back where life had made so much sense and been so comfortable.

And on Sundays I shopped around for a church to call my own – a task that got harder and harder as each Sunday went by.  I got weary of being the new person, weary of pasting a smile on my face, worn out from trying to figure out the “elevator speech” to give about myself upon introduction in order to give folks some idea who I really was.  I got sick of the discomfort of being new to the ways and routines of each new church I visited.  I just wanted to BE somewhere, to BELONG somewhere, to be known and to know others and to have an idea of my role and to be able to contribute something.

I visited a church with a warm, friendly greeter.  She was interesting and interested.  We shared common values and interests.  She lavished me with her undivided attention before church, and then invited me out with her and some other ladies the next week when I saw her.  Lonely Karen soaked that up.  I had gotten used to the naked expression of affection at the intentional community – friends who were openly overjoyed to see me, actively interested in what I had to say, downright gushy in their expression of fondness on a regular basis.  After leaving the community, I’d been struggling to be more chill, more distant, more cautious like everyone else around me seemed to be, and I was missing my community friends HARD.  This greeter unknowingly pushed all those buttons with her warmth and attention; I found myself gushing to her on email that I was so glad to know her, so glad to have found a potential real friend, looking so forward to spending more time with her.

Cue the crickets.

Looking back, I’m pretty sure it was mostly just that she was a career woman and a wife with a very full life and plenty on her plate already.  And maybe she was feeling cautious about me as I probably read as a needy woman.  (There is also the distinct possibility that she just wasn’t really “an email person” – I can’t understand that, but it’s true about a lot of people.  Maybe she never even got around to reading my lavish message.)

At the time, the silence in response to my extended affection was devastating.  It felt like a corrective slap.  I pulled back, re-calibrated, reminded myself that outside my intentional community, people didn’t do naked affection so much.  I was embarrassed at my display of strong affection and open need – the silent response made me feel like I’d been childish and inappropriate.  I worked to “suck it up” when I saw her after that, playing it friendly but cool, asking for nothing, not striving to cement a friendship.  Don’t be a leech, Karen.

I didn’t hold it against her at the time, nor do I now.  Who knows…maybe I was just being weird.  Certainly I am gifted in social awkwardness.  It was a time of massive adjustment for me, and everything felt “off” in the process.  It has left me careful ever since, trying not to press myself excessively on others, not to demand more than people might want to give.  And also careful not to inadvertently put someone else in a position of feeling rejected.  I guess in the long run it has made me a slightly more distant person, when it comes to new people in my life.

I’m still a fan of naked affection, though I don’t know how to lead others into it – I only know how to respond when others extend it to me (THANK YOU, people who love loudly and boldly!)  I love visiting my intentional community friends, who are still as naked as ever in their gladness when we meet again.  I have a couple of friends here in the QC who love with the same unashamed abandon – I revel in the mutual gushing that happens whenever I get to see them.  I know that level of emotion and affection aren’t comfortable for everyone – but I’m really glad to have some people who are all about it.

May you know naked affection from someone in your life, even if you never choose to go and immerse yourself in it via intentional community.  It’s a beautiful, life-giving thing.

 

Audio Feed report, part 2

A coworker asked today about my Audio Feed vacation – “You went to a concert, right?”  This presents the dilemma:  trying to explain what the festival is.  I didn’t even try to explain today, as we both had a lot of work to do.  When people asked about Cornerstone festival, I generally called it “a Christian Woodstock,” but that didn’t do it justice.  To my knowledge, Woodstock had no educational element, nor any worship element – just the music and, I don’t know, maybe it had merch?  I just felt like comparing it to Woodstock was pointing to the music and the openness that I was encountering.

I won’t be able to capture all of Audio Feed in a few blogs, and if I tried to keep writing until I’d painted the whole picture, I think I would just kill the magic.  Rather than trying to explain every detail, how about I just share about some of my favorite highlights?

• Jewish stuff – this is something I don’t recall experiencing at Cornerstone, but there was Messianic Jewish programming available daily.  Thursday night, G and I went to “Rabbi Rock:  A Chanukah Experience,” which was a lot of music and some worship (this was part of the “Goth Family Christmas” occurring in the Asylum tent).  I could’ve stayed for straight-up worship after that, but it was midnight and I have my limits.  Friday morning, I attended a communion service there led by a rabbi whose main message was just because you’re still living in consequences does not mean you’re not forgiven, and included a note that orthodoxy is built to help pilgrims on the path, not to build the institution of the church.  That last bit is one I’ve been chewing on quite a bit – while I wouldn’t call myself “orthodox,” that explanation gives me a new appreciation of and interest in understanding orthodoxy.  Saturday and Sunday I stopped in for bits of other Jewish music or worship.   Having Jewish things to choose from seemed to me the perfect and logical next step for me, having married G and trying to learn the “Jewish wife” routine ever since.  I felt like it was pretty nice of God to arrange this.   The ministry team behind these events was interesting, as well (ministry to subculture folks – that’s my stuff!)
• Great goth music – Leper played the best show I’ve seen them do yet, concluding with a worship song that took me (and others around me) to that stepping-into-another-dimension place that leaves me always longing for more.
• Psalters was always a tribal what-the-heck-was-THAT highlight of Cornerstone festival for me; Bird and Herd came closest to that flavor for Audio Feed.  Anastasia Bird’s voice is an addictive substance for me, the poetic essays read at the top of each song were material I wanted to collect in my notebook, and she was well-backed by her “herd.”  I’m sorry I only made it to one of her two shows.
• Fun music – if you’ve seen Destroy Nate Allen, described by Nate’s other half, Tessa as “rag doll anarchist music,” then you know the joy of that ridiculous party.  This time it included a devil pinata body-surfing the crowd before being stomped to smithereens in the pit, a song about staying out of the “booby bars” for the sake of one’s relationship, and the culmination was my favorite of all their songs, “Jesus Keep Us Safe from the Cops,” which is not about our sad current state of racial affairs but is instead just a giggling poke at what it’s like to be a touring band followed by local cops in every town.
• More fun music – Spoken Nerd had a hilarious song called something like, “Being a Big Guy Isn’t All that Bad,” a song about big beards, and a lot of other silly stuff…but also an ironic song that plays over and over in my head with a serious point about the Christian culture wars and our general thought that we can be “good enough.”
• Still more fun music – John Reuben came out after five years without a show, and many of us knew most of his lyrics (hey, he only knew *most* of his lyrics too, LOL).
• Blow-your-mind music:  Scott Knies, otherwise known as Brother Red Squirrel.  This dude doesn’t PLAY music, he IS music.  He can pick up literally any instrument and caress songs and sounds out of it like no one I have ever seen.  I don’t know how his body and mind bear the brightness of carrying so much talent around in the world.  His show was my other “high holy worship” session, transported across the permeable surface between us and heaven.  I couldn’t know he was playing and then not be there.
• So much more music.  I saw part of an extreme metal show by Colombian band Exegesis (it’s not my music, but it’s fun once a year), a couple of highly emotional bands that were fun (here and here), a lovely hour of classical/Spanish guitar, and more that I saw, and more that I wanted to see but just couldn’t be two places at the same time.
• Great teaching on spiritual warfare by Jesus Outsider Ministries.  A class on “Spiritual Warfare through Creative Expression” by Flatfoot 56 lead singer Tobin Bawinkel, with stories about things God had done that made me weep in awe.  A class called “Christ and the Dark Night of the Soil,” that addressed the war going on between various elements of agriculture today.  “Beauty Will Save the World – Art vs. Propaganda,” which ended up being less agreeable to me than I expected, but still has me thinking.  And more seminars of varying quality.

There was more.  SO MUCH MORE, as far as programming.  On top of that, I caught up with friends from JPUSA everywhere I went.  Sadly I did not find a lot of my old Cornerstone subculture ministries tent folks, but maybe that’ll be another year.

Maybe all of that gives you a little glimpse of what I mean when I say Audio Feed.  May you enjoy clicking the links!

Audio Feed – initial report

When I loaded up my car and got in to leave the very last Cornerstone festival, I cried.  First it was a few little dignified tears but quickly I was sobbing.  How could it be over?  I relived years and years of the festival – shows, friends made, seminars, roundtables, people-watching.  This thing changed my life.  It changed who I became.  It changed my mindset.  It freed me from the need to assimilate.  It pointed me down a path that I’d never have imagined.  My people were here – meeting with them annually was my recharge time that got me through the rest of the year.  How could it be over?

Quickly others who felt the terrible yawning chasm left in Cornerstone’s demise decided to do something about it; the first Audio Feed festival followed the next summer.  I was still grieving and didn’t want to even talk about Audio Feed, much less attend it.  After all, there are endless Christian music festivals out there.  If I just wanted “another fest,” I already had choices.  I didn’t want just another fest.  I didn’t want to show up to find a bunch of music I could hear every day on my radio.  I didn’t want to wander through all the things that gross me out about superiority-complex ridden Christian mainstream culture.  I had no interest in more of the same bland stuff I can find every day, everywhere.  My daughter had tried out Ichthus festival while her husband was in seminary; she had called me, indignant.  “Khaki pants and polo shirts everywhere!  It’s so mainstream!”  Cornerstone, with its rich diversity of all things alternative, had wrecked her for vanilla world just as it had me.  I didn’t need an experience like hers to taint my Cornerstone memories.  No thanks.

By the next year, I was hearing that my Cornerstone people were gathering again at Audio Feed.  I was interested, though still worried it might not live up to all that I had loved about Cornerstone (my main concern by this point:  what if it was only music and no seminars?)  It didn’t matter, it turned out.  G and I started volunteering that year serving abused and neglected foster kids at Royal Family Kids Camp, which fell during Audio Feed.  Oh well.  Maybe that was saving me from disappointment.

More years, more reports – it seemed like Audio Feed might be good, after all (and no, never at any point was I interested in learning about the other fests.)  We couldn’t choose vacation over foster kids, though, so no point in meditating on that.  I limited how much I read about Audio Feed each summer, so I wouldn’t be sad that I couldn’t at least try it out.

Then last year at camp, an announcement:  camp would be moved to a different slot at the end of July.  We were in the “snack shack,” a kind of staff break room, when the announcement came out – several of us faithful Cornerstone attenders broke into cheers instantly.  We get to go to Audio Feed!  

We got back last night from our first Audio Feed experience, having left before it was over due to the misfortune of not expecting the festival would run through this morning and thus not asking for the correct number of days off work for G, who needed to show up at 6:30 this morning for his role in feeding the seniors.  This meant we missed the Flatfoot 56 show and also a second Leper show, which is a true bummer, but we will bravely press on somehow.

People:  CORNERSTONE IS NOT DEAD.  Audio Feed is a new iteration.  It is smaller, and it is different in some ways, but the spirit is very much there.  My people (read: those who are over the value of artistic and ideological conformity) are there.  Being there was coming home again.  Next year we will read the schedule carefully before filling out our PTO sheets at work so that we don’t have to miss even a moment of it.

My mind is full of images and phrases and my notebook is full of details from the last four days of fun, and maybe I’ll write more about it after today (let’s be realistic:  I’ll write more than most of you want to read about it!) but no set of words can capture the collage.  Of course I couldn’t do/see everything that I wanted, because so much happens simultaneously – that’s part of the sweet agony of it all:  who will I choose to see this hour?

The big theme I heard across my many experiences there was a call for all of us from church world:  stop focusing on our differences and disagreements – we can’t afford to waste time and energy on that.  Ours is a rescue mission – abandon the culture wars and get back on mission.  A rescue mission is about others; culture wars are self-focused.  

Here’s how I know it is possible for us to follow that important directive:  my own Audio Feed experience.  I’m a seminar junkie; I sit in more classes/discussions than music shows because I like it that way.  The teachers I listened to were not all perfectly lined up with my ideologies and philosophies.  People said stuff that made me nod my head affirmatively and mutter amen, but also people said stuff that made me uncomfortable.  Stuff that I didn’t like.  Stuff with which I firmly do not agree.  Some teachers were so inspirational I was ready to leap out of my chair and charge into battle beside them; some were so boring that I stepped out to get coffee to keep me awake (all the nights were late and all the mornings, early) before returning to hear the rest.  Some of it was meaty stuff I’ll be chewing on for months to come.  Speakers ranged from way more fundamentalist than I am to way more liberal than me.  Some sharing did silly little things that pushed my buttons, making it hard for me to pay attention (the funniest:  the lady who took a giant bite of an apple in the midst of making an introduction, and then spoke carefully into the mic while chewing, practically sending me into convulsions), while others were riveting.  Mostly, no politics could be smelled around there, but occasionally I caught enough to know that the person speaking likely voted in a way that makes my hair stand on end. In the end:  I got something of value from every single one of these people (and I’m not foolish enough to suppose that “I hold the correct view” everywhere that I disagreed).  I am refreshed and revived and inspired because of what they willingly brought to the table.

Being called to follow Christ does not come with a manual that brings us all into conformity, item by item, so that we are the same.  But we do have the same Holy Spirit, and if we’re listening, we can play well together and actually get good things done and not act like asses.  IT CAN BE DONE.  I experienced it over and over there, just as I do in my everyday life, interacting with coworkers, friends and family who are all over the spectrum of ideas and worldviews that never perfectly match mine.

I’m grateful for the reminder in this theme.  It’s easy to lose that thread in today’s culture here in the USA, Christian or otherwise.  If I can pick it up and spread it around generously, I’ll have done what I should – no doubt about that.

A big THANK YOU to all who make Audio Feed happen.  What you are doing is important, and I know it is more work than most of us begin to imagine.  I promise to do a better job this year of holding you up in prayer as you pull it together again.  SEE YOU NEXT YEAR!

unloading a used bed: manners matter

Team Buchanan is currently on a mission to reclaim our garage.  It’s a tiny thing, old, with a saggy roof and one wall being slowly bowed by the white oak growing at its corner.  It desperately needs a new roof and a paint job; we have plans for both, hopefully before winter.  It is juuuuust barely big enough for our car and a few other items placed neatly and carefully. But it hasn’t been neat at all for some time.

We first displaced our car with a used bed we’d gotten for a friend who was amidst a move.  The friend’s situation changed, and the bed sat there on sawhorses, wrapped carefully in tarps to keep the wet out, waiting to be claimed by someone…anyone.

Then there was the small, dirty mattress we got with the house, propped up against the back of the garage.  And the big box springs we brought from our previous residence, but couldn’t fit up the attic stairs – we propped it back there too.  That was fine until the City made a sweep and wrote us warning of an impending ticket; G hastily hauled both into the garage.

There was the old tire we got with the house, that we kept moving around.  Can’t put those out with the garbage, and I was pretty sure we were going to have to pay to get it out of our lives.

We hadn’t figured out how to get rid of all these things, so we parked on the street for most of winter, working the business of defrosting the car into our morning routine.  Parking outside in inclement weather is a violation of my personal laziness policy, but we somehow survived. Friends had mentioned that the City would do a pick-up, but they intimated it would cost, and as I calculated the value of a truck and two workers, I supposed that expense would be prohibitive, so for 10 months I did nothing about it.  Finally, I decided to do a little research; within 10 minutes I had learned that our city provides one free pick-up per year, and had called to set it up; they’re coming next week to get rid of the junk.  They also do free tire pick-ups; that’s already complete.

That still left us with a perfectly good bed, the mattress and box springs pristine in the canvas.  I didn’t have the heart to just throw such a useful thing out.  I advertised it repeatedly on my local Facebook buy and sell page, first for sale and then for free, without a single bite.  Complaining at a party (yeah, I’m a fun gal who complains at parties), I was advised to give Craigslist a try.  Yesterday morning, I finally got around to composing my ad there, promising myself that if the bed wasn’t gone by pick-up day, it would just have to go then.

If you ever want to give something away for free, do it on Craigslist.  I posted the ad, complete with a photo and clarification that the bed showed some wear and tear but was solid and the mattress in good condition, and within an hour had half a dozen inquiries, a firm appointment, and a waiting list of people who wanted it if those above them on the list did not.  The first asker seemed enthusiastic and earnest on her texts; we agreed that she’d come by when we got off work.

I worried that the crappy little mattress and the big box springs that had sat outside so much might freak out potential takers, so G and I took the time to haul the good bed out of the garage and shut the door.  We waited.  And waited.  Twenty minutes past appointment time, the couple rolled up in their big fancy truck, hopped out, and started inspecting the bed.  We rushed out of the house, smiling and greeting them enthusiastically.  They did not respond.  The hostile body language of the wife was unsettling.

Still, we made nice while they inspected the bed, unsmiling, unspeaking, unintroduced, pushing up some kind of unspoken barrier that seemed to forbid us to speak.  The woman finally indicated they wouldn’t be taking it, grousing that, “Even for free, there is too much wrong with it.”  With nary a smile nor a single pleasant word, they got back in their fancy truck and drove away while we stood there with our jaws hitting the ground.  The impulse to make a rude comment as they left was powerful even for non-confrontational little old me, but I stifled it.

Still, their rudeness left a residue even after they were gone.  We were offended.  We told each other the story and asked each other the questions and shook our heads over and over.  My stomach was a nasty pit.  I imagined creative things I could’ve said.  I noted aloud to G that it wasn’t so much that they didn’t take the bed – they didn’t owe us that.  It was that they couldn’t do basic civility.  That they treated us like we were trying to hustle them with our free bed.   I stayed mad clear to bedtime, despite coaching myself continually not to take offense about people whose problem was clearly their own and had nothing to do with me.

In the end, though we fantasized about crappy ways we could have acted in response to their crappiness, we agreed that we were glad we hadn’t.  What if the couple shows up at our church some day?  What if they bring a parent to tour our (senior housing) workplace at some point?  We represent both of those organizations, like it or not.  We were glad that God’s grace had enabled us to not return yuck for yuck.  We won’t need to be embarrassed or ashamed if we encounter these uncivil people in another setting.  That’s a good gift.

All this to say:  people, manners matter.  It’s easy to forget that in the heat of a moment.  It’s easy to be so much about what we want or are trying to get that we forget the niceties of introductions, smiles, and saying thank you.  When I am on a mission to get a task done, I all too easily forget to stop and make people feel noticed along the way.  THAT MATTERS.

You and I get a choice every day, over and over, to leave a residue of peace and encouragement or a residue of offense.  This little episode was a great reminder to me that I have to be intentional about it all the time – I’m just as able to be uncivil as our visitors were.  We often think changing the world has to be a huge, epic, expensive, difficult thing.  But I submit that we change the world every day all day, as we choose to interact with people in affirming, life-giving ways.  I’ve been reminded.  Consider yourself reminded as well.

And if you’re wondering:  the second person on the list did come, and did take the bed, and remembered more about graciousness.  The world has not gone completely to hell in a hand basket, no matter how many people try to say that it has.

Today, may you and I be spreaders of joy.

here comes Audiofeed!

G and I are doing the preliminary work to prepare for our first time attending Audiofeed Festival later this summer.  While the festival has been going for several years, we’ve been busy with Royal Family Kids Camp at festival time the past three summers, and as much as we wanted to do the festival, choosing between serving those foster kids or indulging ourselves was kind of a no-brainer.

The year before we started serving at that camp, G had suggested Audiofeed, but I was having no part of it.  Like G, I had been attending and/or serving at Cornerstone Music Festival for many years before it was discontinued.  I was still in deep mourning (this is not artistic exaggeration) about Cornerstone ending; when G suggested the trip to Audiofeed, I had the perfect analogy to explain my refusal.  “Let’s say you died tomorrow.  And then my friends came to me in a few months and said, ‘We’ve got a really great guy we want you to meet.  We think the two of you would be a great couple.’  My answer would be I DON’T WANT TO MEET THE GUY.  It doesn’t matter how nice he is.  My G just died.  Give me time to grieve properly.”

True fact:  just now while I was looking up the link above that shares about the end of Cornerstone Festival, I spontaneously started to weep as the page opened, surprising myself.  Cornerstone changed my life in about a thousand ways.  It opened my perspective.  It shaped my faith.  It brought me friends just as misfit and odd and Jesus-crazy as me.  It eventually led me to live at JPUSA, one of the greatest experiences of my life, and some real forever friendships with the folks there, which in the long run delivered me my very own husband, made just for me, the amazing G.  I am STILL crushed that it is over.

But I’ve had enough time to grieve now, and it happens that we moved the week that Royal Family Kids camp happens, so we are available for Audiofeed.  We (and some of our friends) did a major happy dance last year upon learning that this scheduling conflict was finally untangling itself.  I CAN’T WAIT!

Along the way, though, I’ve gotten rid of all of my camping stuff.  Before moving to JPUSA, I had given away most of what I had.  The little 2-man tent I used when moving back to the Quad Cities made me crazy, so when we picked up a couple of travelers and their dogs one time on the way home from a Kentucky trip and drove them across several states, we made sure to send them off the next day with our little tent in hand.  They were headed to the next best spot to hop a train – I figured a way to get out of the rain would be good for them, and they wouldn’t mind so much how scrunched the thing was.

So I had written down in my planner:  buy a tent for Audiofeed.  Just needed a budget for that.  While waiting to work that out, I went a couple of weeks ago to yard sales with my family; I bought a 3-room tent for $10 in someone’s back yard.

It’s a gamble, buying a used tent in a bag.  Will all of the pieces be there?  Will the zippers work?  Will there be instructions, and if not, will I be able to figure out how to set it up?  Did it get put away wet – will it be moldy?  So many questions. But $10 is a pretty good gamble, so I brought it home.

Tonight we tried to do a test run, setting it up.  If bad news was coming, I wanted it sooner rather than later.  It only had 1 stake left, but fortunately we had enough on hand for that problem.  It isn’t moldy, and the zippers seem to work.  We couldn’t quite set it up, though, as 3 sections of the two longest fiberglass poles are shattered.

Thank God for the internet.  I’ve been Googling and YouTubing and shopping Amazon and everything I need to fix this problem is now in the mail – it’ll be here Wednesday.  I’m about to become an expert in tent pole repair (one more item for my grab-bag of things about which I like to call myself a badass for knowing.)  Within the week, if the weather cooperates, we will do a test run to make sure we can set the thing up.

ADVENTURE!  I love it.  Now, if God wants to drop some camp cooking equipment in my lap, I’ll cheer aloud about that one and tell that story too.  He KNOWS I like to brag on how He delights to supply my needs.  I just know He’s tickled with and for me as our plans come together.

Going to Audiofeed?  TELL ME!  Let’s look each other up!