The urgent long view

My current conundrum is that we don't know how many days on earth we get. I was remembering my friend Brian this morning. He has no more days; I have no more days with him. I still find that deeply saddening.

If I knew I had only 30 more days in my life, I would feel a deep sense of urgency to call some of my best friends and tell them, "I have 30 more days and beyond that my hope is in Jesus Christ, beyond that I believe I will experience beauty and majesty that we only get a taste of in this life, beyond that I will be in eternity with God. You too can experience hope, beauty, and majesty in this life and the next because of who Jesus is and what he has done."

But I don't know that. I may well have 30 + 30 years left in my life. And how sweet would be it be to have all those years with these friends and new friends? When I take the long view, I feel I mustn't force my hand, mustn't try and run ahead, mustn't try and rush things. Instead, I should live and enjoy each moment for what it is. Not rushing relationships to me means being a normal friend, not being a weird religious freak who is acquainted with someone. But that means that it might be year 8 in a relationship before someone says, "Will you pray for me and my family;" something that happened just last week. Year 8! In the urgent world, who has time for year 8? But in light of eternity, what is 8 years? Nothing.

In any event, I feel kind of stuck. So there it is, the problem of the urgent long view.

Sweet memories

I recently made a ginger vinaigrette dressing and the tangy flavors reminded me of eating crab with my mother.

Living by the Chesapeake Bay, it was easy to get a bushel of live Atlantic blue crab. Sometimes mom would go out and buy the crab, sometimes we would catch them ourselves, and sometimes friends would give them to us. When the crab made it to our kitchen my mom would steam them, clean them, and then pile them on the newspaper-covered table. We would each get a little bowl of vinegar with ginger slivers and a plate to throw the shells onto. I loved breaking into the hot shells and picking out the gleaming white pieces of sweet crab meat. A quick dunk in the bowl, a morsel in the mouth, and the hunt was on. As time went on, it seemed like it became a mom and me thing. The guys either weren't around or didn't have the patience for it.

This has to be one of my favorite summer memories from my childhood, in the kitchen with my mom. I hope L one day gets to have fresh crab with her own little bowl of vinegar and ginger.

The gospel of peace

What would have happened if Abby Sunderland completed her voyage and successfully become the youngest person to circumnavigate the world? I often wonder what happens to people who achieve record success in their teens. What is there to live for?

But here I am, recently thirty-oned. In the past 400 odd days, I had my first kid, completed my doctorate, my husband found a new job that fits him really well, we moved to a town we both like, bought a house, and are making friends. In checking off so many life goals, I am also faced with the same question, "What else is there to live for?" As far as life goals go, I don't think there are really many more tangible milestones. I might go into academia, but I don't feel like I have to do that. We'll probably have more kids and hopefully they'll grow up living exuberant God-lives and outlive us by many years. But their milestones don't have to be our milestones. So what do we do with the rest of our lives? What is God-life in middle class, suburbia for two introverts?Well, perhaps we can have this ambition--to live a quiet life.

¹¹Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, ¹²so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

~Paul's first letter to believers in Thessalonica, chpt 4

I first encountered this verse as a college freshman and it was the opposite of everything I was hearing. I went to Duke on scholarship, and it always weighed on me that I was expected to make a splash in this world and bring fame and glory to the school. I was learning a lot from the Navigators, a Christian fellowship, and one of their themes was leaving a legacy of reproducing believers. Again, making a splash, just this one would be a kingdom splash. So in the midst of that, wasn't "lead[ing] a quiet life" the antithesis of all the ways I was supposed to make a splash? How could this be an instruction by the Apostle Paul?

As time has rolled by, the verse had made more and more sense. The fact of the matter is that across race, gender, and class, people live with and in a lot of turmoil. Some of the turmoil is really obvious--Haiti, the Gulf Coast, Sudan, Isreal/Gaza, Greece, Iceland, Krygyzstan, and the list goes on. But you know why one of the yards on my block is so beautiful? Because that's how one wife worked out her fear and stress during her husband's cancer treatment. One of the wealthiest people I personally know is buying another beautiful house in an expensive neighborhood because she's getting divorced and has arthritis and the first house she bought has steps she can't manage. Two houses, millions of dollars, and a boatload of loneliness and pain. The quiet life is good news in places of turmoil.

First, the quiet life is hope-full. It's the opposite of desperate and chaotic. Paul says this will "win the respect of outsiders." Second, the quiet life is resource-full. The quiet life isn't "dependent on anybody," instead, it has the time, emotional and physical energy, and material resources to be available to people around. This is graceful living in the guts of life. This gospel of peace is good news in a world of turmoil. So what else is their to live for--the quiet life as kingdom living.

Apropos a lot of things

Another poem from F. Ohler's collection Better Than Nice and Other Unconventional Prayers

Life Is God-Sized

We bring our idols;

You are God.

We come with our theologies;

You are "God only wise."

We keep trying to reduce life to size

with our theology

our biology

our psychology

with all our ologies...

and

You elude our logic

You burst our boxes.

For that we praise You

and rejoice

that life is God-sized

never fully understood

drenched in mysteries

more startling than all our systems.

Humble us all

lest we shrink Your world to what WE know

or can handle.

Help us each

to let it be as unruly

wild

and grace-full

as it is.

Loosen us

to dance with joy

and to wail with sorrow

to laugh to cry to celebrate to grieve.

Help us

not only to be caught by the exceptional

but to be stunned by the ordinary

to marvel at what we call "common"--

sparrow

the people

sense

touch

and all the small and daily blessings.

My God

how incredible that we are here (and not a million OTHER places)

that we are together

that we are alive

that we are at all.

Keep us

young expectant unsure open

nervous sensitive

and alive...

at whatever age

amen.

Remembering Brian Ellis, 1978-2010

A graduate school trench-mate died this past weekend in a tragic accident.

I first encountered Brian in 2004 in a class on the neurobiology of sociality. He was an anthropology student at the time. I don't know that I actually met him, but he was the tall guy with a long blonde pony tail and eventually, I matched him to interesting questions on our class discussion board.

In 2005, we met finally in Alan Fiske's office as we were presented an opportunity to collect some interesting research observations in families coping with frontotemporal dementia (FTD). That summer Brian, Lisa, and I faced the byzantine labyrinth that is the UCLA IRB process so that we would have institutional approval to conduct this research. Brian did most of the heavy lifting, and then he left grad school to go to France.

When he came back about a year later, he joined my department, applied linguistics and also returned to the FTD project. Alan asked Lisa and I if we were okay with his return. I guess the thought was that so much work had been done in his absence would we be willing to share those results with him. For me, it would have been impossible to think of denying him a position on the team. The IRB process was brutal and he took on so much of that; I always felt like I owed him alot. In fact, as the editors of Lang, Int, and FTD were discussing who to invite to contribute chapters, Brian was an immediate, easy pick. (He ultimately decided to pursue other interests.) Shortly after he came back to the program, I began the being-on--campus-less-and-less phase, and I saw him less and less until my last year when we met again on a schizophrenia project.

One of the best things about Brian is that he had his passions. Rock climbing and the outdoors was a huge passion for him. He made it a priority to be out and about and enjoy what he enjoyed. I remember visiting his apartment years ago and it had a piano in it. I always liked that he made the effort to have that in his life since I too played the piano and never bothered. Intellectually, if he got interested in something, he read deeply and thought deeply. As a friend and colleague, Brian's priorities could cause intense frustration when they didn't match my own. After he came back from France, he seemed to have a chronic inability to stay on top of emails and show up on time to scheduled meetings. And rock climbing trips on weekends made him inaccessible when the rest of us were slaving away and might want his input on something. But honestly, you've got to admit that flickering computer screens don't hold a candle to the sweeping vistas of California national parks.

The Byrd's song Turn, Turn, Turn is taken from the book of wisdom, Ecclesiates, attributed to King Solomon. Taking up from where the song ends, the author continues by saying "[God] has also set eternity in the hearts of men." When I think of all the beauty that Brian encountered in his life, I think he understood eternity. One thing Brian always brought to our research was the persistent reminder of the humanity of our subjects. The nature of our work brought us face to face with the little everyday tragedies of living with a diseased mind. Whenever we put up too much defensive distance, Brian would call us back to people as people. In this too, I think he was sensitive to the eternal in each of us.

But this notion of eternity is also what makes his death feel unacceptable. There are no more days for Brian. He's not going to pet his bunnies, climb another pitch, love on his girl, or tickle and teach the kids he never had. Death thumbs its nose at eternity. Our hearts cry out and say, "There is more to life than what we can see and hold." And death says, "Oh yea?"

I don't have any grand finale conclusion about things. I had hoped to hear of many more Brian adventures over the years. Mostly, I think I'm just in shock still. I'll just leave off with the rest of that bit from Ecclesiastes.

9 What does the worker gain from his toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on men. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live. 13 That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
~Ecclesiastes, chpt 3

Source material for the Byrd's song

Why do you believe in God?

Her father had committed suicide over a decade ago, when she was a teenager. Shortly after that, her grandmother had a stroke and was placed in a nursing home. That was the last time the young woman had seen her. Today that changed. After more than ten years, she had driven several hours to visit and finally face all the emotions, now rising up and choking her like fine dust from the place she had tamped them down for so long.

She asked me a little more about myself, and my ministry. Then, these words: “I don’t mean to offend you, but may I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I said.

Looking me directly in the eyes, she asked the most basic question, “Why do you believe in God?”

~From Chaplain Mike on The Internet Monk

I read this today and I did a gut check, asking myself how I would answer this question if I was standing eyeball to eyeball with this woman. And my answer would be, "Because I have faced death and God has given me life."

Whew. That took my breath away and took me by surprise. It's a little dramatic. But it's actually true. There was a time in my early twenties when I was suicidal. I was depressed and thought about ways to kill myself. It's hard to remember that time not because it's painful to remember it but because it is so far from my current reality. At that time, I could never have imagined the fullness of life that I have now. In grade school, I learned a verse that says,

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I [Jesus] have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

~The Good News According to John, chpt 10

When you boil it down, I guess I believe in God because I see the truth of Jesus in my life. I have seen how the thief (Satan) comes to steal and kill and destroy. But I am currently experiencing the full life that Jesus promised. And this is true even though I struggle in my new role as a mom.

My daughter took her first steps yesterday. I thought my heart was going to burst out of my chest; I was so stinkin' proud of her. She's on her way to exploring the world in a whole new way. (Watch out, World!)

The road out of depression was long and hard. I won't deny it. But I wonder if God felt similarly as I took those first shaky steps toward a new and different life.

If you believe in God, why do you believe in God?

Motherhood: The never ending New Year's resolution

I don't know why anyone else might have a kid; I imagine there are many reasons possible, but I had a kid because it was a "good idea" or more to the point, I believed it to be part and parcel of "being married" which I was at the time and still am. This feels remarkably like the reasoning behind many New Year's resolutions; losing weight, exercising more, procrastinating less, drinking 8 glasses of water a day. All these are "good ideas", and only a contrarian would dispute that these resolutions genearlly fall under "being a better person".

New Year's resolutions in December are shiny and full of possibility as one looks forward to the payoffs of new habits and behaviors. In February, however, they have generally been discarded as the stresses of life squeeze out exercise and make mindless time wasting and mass quantities of bacon ever more appealing.

While the whale-like state of 38+ weeks of pregnancy and any weeks of nausea and vomiting are admittedly uncomfortable, any fetal cries for help are well hidden and frankly impossible for anyone to do much about. The newborn infant is but a soft idea of cuddly cuteness. About 4-6 weeks after the wriggling mass arrives, this idea is well buried beneath chronic sleep deprivation as the new mother struggles to hold on to the last vestiges of her sanity. Unfortunately for her, there is no socially approved wink for giving up on her child, but luckily about this time her baby will likely learn to smile and her breasts will decide that maybe they don't need to explode off her chest. This improves things quite a bit.

I was talking with some friends about how fear is frequently more motivating than grace and trying to figure out why this was. The more I think about this the more I think about how we--as in all people but particularly, Christians--behave as if we constantly need to justify ourselves. I don't really mean this in the theological justification sense, but partly. We're constantly trying to prove that we're ok with our bosses, with our co-workers, with our friends, with our spouses, and so on. We fear missing a deadline because of various social and financial consequences. And deep down we believe that if we only do X, Y, and Z, we'll solve the rubix cube and our lives will be ordered and ok.

Motherhood has been the New Year's resolution that I'm not allowed to give up. No matter how tired, grouchy, and entitled I feel, I'm going to change a lot of diapers and I'm going to feed and hug my baby (who's really on the cusp of being a toddler, but I'm not ready for that). And in these most tired, most grouchy, most selfish moments I am faced with my failings that are unjustified and unjustifiable. Am I really mad because my kid didn't poo in her potty? Seriously? Yes, seriously, I am mad. Wow. How revealing.

I have not always been an awesome wife, but it's not that hard to rationalize and hide behind something the husband has done or not done. But being a mother, I've lost a lot to hide behind. Who or what can I blame for being impatient or angry or unkind to my child? Nothing rational. And I see ever more vividly my need for grace. When grace isn't motivating enough for us, I think it's because we don't know what grace is to us. Grace is why I haven't been zapped off the face of the earth for my impatience, anger, and unkindness. Grace is what justifies me and my life and allows me to stop doing mental contortions to justify not being a star academic blazing trails for future generations of women in academia. Grace is what will make being a mother possible, endurable, and vibrant.