The Bloggess just totally made my morning:
I think she speaks for bloggers everywhere.
Friends
More Changes, Part 2
Last week when the kids and I were up on Mt. Rubidoux, I chatted for a little while with an artist guy who was up there shooting video of the Friendship Tower. He was going to use it in a Christmas greeting on YouTube this year instead of mailing out cards. I thought it was a wonderful idea, and it brought into clearer focus a conviction that’s been forming in my heart over the past few weeks. (But that’s another post.) As he handed me his business card and we went our separate ways, I got to thinking about a series of Sunday night services Pastor Bill gave recently on the subject of how the modern church could be doing a better job of reaching out to post-modern cultures. I’ve never been able to attend the Sunday night services, but I like to download the mp3s online and listen to them at home, and this particular series was very enlightening for me.
It was intended to help church people who may have a hard time understanding post-modern perspectives, but as a fairly post-modern type myself (can one be a post-modern cave-dweller?) I found it to be a fascinating look into the social perspectives of church people.
In the first sermon of this series, the Pastor gave his listeners an assignment for the following week: to make friendly eye contact with strangers that they passed in public, and smile if they felt up to it. The second week’s assignment was to actually offer a hello or some other verbal greeting to at least one or two passing strangers. By the third week he’d given up on these kinds of assignments, because…hardly anyone in his Sunday evening congregation could bring themselves to even manage the eye contact part, much less SPEAK to people they didn’t know. It was simply beyond them.
I was astonished. This was a huge revelation to me, and the first real insight I had into the Church Person Perspective. I’ve always thought that smiling at folks in stores or wherever was a basic part of how people interact. They almost always smile back at me, and occasionally there are friendly greetings exchanged, or even a chat if we happen to be standing in the same space, so I can’t be the only one who thinks this way.
One of my warmest memories from the Road Trip Of ’07 is of an evening in Shreveport, Louisiana, in a little Creole café. We’d checked into our hotel very late and should have eaten quickly and gone straight to bed, but the waiter was so much fun to talk to that we ended up stretching the conversation out until the café closed for the night. We were the only customers in there that late, so the waiter and the hostess basically hung out at our table and regaled us with stories, observations, questions and Southern mythology. It was wonderful. (Weeks later when I was back home in Anza, I got a card in the mail from the chef there, discounting my next meal at Guillaumes’ if I should ever find myself back in Shreveport.)
These are the intersections that connect us to one another. I can’t imagine not seeking out these moments of genuine human contact wherever I find the opportunity. I may be solitary in my day-to-day habits, but that’s mostly because I haven’t found my tribe yet; these chance interactions with friendly strangers always leave me feeling energized and optimistic and connected to something much bigger than my own small life.
Pastor Bill’s “Post-Modern Man” series gave me my first big flash of insight into why the average church person doesn’t feel comfortable around someone of my personality type. I LIKE people. I treat strangers — Louisiana waiters, wandering artists, fellow grocery shoppers — the way I like to be treated: as if we were friends who just haven’t met yet. This is, I believe, a very basic tenet of the teachings of Jesus. And yet somewhere along the way the modern church culture has apparently become disconnected from the actual daily practice of social love for mankind in general.
Once I understood that, it didn’t take me long to figure out the rest of it.
More to come!
Categories: Christianity, Friends, Life, Road trip
21 Comments
More Changes, Part 1
I almost decided not to post this one to my public blog, but it’s about a fairly large change in my life so this seems like the right place for it.
I’ve decided to take a break from church. In the past eight months or so there’s been an almost complete turnover in ministry leaders and staff, and the goals and methods and priorities of the new folks don’t really resonate with what I thought this little fellowship was supposed to be about. This is becoming more and more the case as time goes on — and they seem to be even more uncomfortable with me than I am with them.
Silver and gold have I none, and such as I have seems to be of no value to these new leaders. They’ve made that painfully clear in a multitude of ways that bear pretty much no resemblance to Christian love.
Sorry if I sound bitter. Maybe I am, a little. I’ll get over it.
For a long time I kept going to church anyway; partly because I felt loyal to Pastor Bill and really enjoyed his sermons, partly because I do still have friends there that I will miss visiting with every week, partly because Luke and Elizabeth enjoyed attending the Children’s Church and have friends of their own there, but mostly because I could not for the life of me figure out why these people do not like me. Unfinished lessons have a way of following you around from one situation to the next until you learn them, so I really wanted to know what the problem was before I moved on.
I don’t drink, smoke, gamble (unless the occasional game of bunco counts), sleep around or use drugs. I have mostly broken the profanity habit I picked up during my marriage. I am kind and friendly to people. I am not competitive or malicious or dishonest. I was very willing and eager to offer my time and energy to the various ministries until the people running them put all that effort into making me feel so unwelcome there. But such relentless alienation has to have SOME reason behind it, and I was determined to stick it out until I’d unraveled the mystery.
Which I finally have.
But that’s another post.
Categories: Christianity, Family, Friends, kids, Life
10 Comments
Life And Stuff
We’ve been having some glorious sunsets lately. This is also the kids’ favorite time of day to play on the rope swing, when it’s not so hot outside.
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Wednesday we went to the Ingalls* homestead for a playdate. They live pretty close to us, a ten-minute drive away, so I was hoping the kids would have lots of fun and we could start doing that more often, at least until school starts. (The homeschooling idea was nipped in the bud by Steve; I think my mistake was telling him that I know the Ingalls from church.)
Luke had a blast at the playdate. He and the two boys closest to his age spent hours playing manly games with forts and such, and every time I asked him if he was ready to go home yet he responded with a definite “No!” I never get tired of watching him frolic happily with his own kind, after spending the first seven years of his life so distrustful of other people in general and males in particular.
Elizabeth was a little off that day. At our urging she hung out here and there with various Ingalls children, but she kept gravitating back to a half-grown black kitten, one of two litters there, and when it was time to go she got very adamant about bringing it home with us. I sympathized, because her own black cat disappeared last May (the attrition rate to owls and coyotes is very high around here), but we need another kitten like we need an outbreak of swine flu, and I told her so. It turned into a Whole Thing, and when we left without the kitten she was Vexed and Sulky. I suspect that we’re rolling into that adolescent phase everyone’s been warning me about, because Elizabeth’s temperament swings between “Affectionate and Agreeable,” “Distant and Secretive” and “Vexed and Sulky” like a three-way metronome these days.
*Not their real name; they’ve asked that I give them an Internet pseudonym.
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Friday I captured photographic proof that while childhood is temporary, immaturity is forever.
(Yes, that’s the male “kitten” of Stripes’ litter.)
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Saturday there was a party at Oceanside Beach in honor of Geoff’s girlfriend’s daughter’s birthday, and most of the worship team went to that. It was a lot of fun.
The ocean was very warm this time; nothing like the icy waters of last fall. I guess that means a warmer winter this year. I can totally live with that.
There was another near-death experience on the same jetty that Elizabeth nearly met her demise on last October, but at least it wasn’t one of my kids this time. The worst part was that I saw it coming and got there too late to avert it but just in time to see a giant wave slap down on a group of boys and actually wash one of them off the rock he was clinging to. He snagged on another rock on his way down though, so no fatalities. But the four of them had actually had to walk past a “Jetty Closed Today” sign to get out there, so while I was very glad that the kid hadn’t died, I considered the big scrape on his leg to be a useful reminder about respecting warning signs in the future.
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Since that last hearing three weeks ago Steve has been more courteous and friendly to me in our brief interactions than he has ever been before at any point in our entire relationship. I’m sure it’s some sort of ruse to lull me into a false sense of safety or somesuch, but whatever. It’s easier than dealing with Hostile Steve. Pretty much my only complaint on that front is that Elizabeth has started coughing all night after visits with him, because Steve and the woman that’s moved in with him smoke in the house. That is irksome.
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I’ve gotten a few fall crops planted in the garden. I’ve discovered that some stuff actually does better here in the fall and winter than in the heat of summer, but the trick is to plant them early enough that they really hit their growth stride before the first frost when everything slows way down. So far I’ve planted snap peas, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce and radishes. I’ve also started digging up garlic bulbs and replanting the cloves in new beds, because for once I actually planted enough to have a surplus this summer. I’ll need to do the same with my shallots and bunching onions soon, but I’m running out of garden beds to transplant into. The perennial section of my garden needs to be enlarged, but alas, I’m having a hard time finding the motivation to do that since I’m just waiting for the chance to move out anyway. And there are signs of that all over: the weeds are running rampant in the orchard and my house hasn’t had a really good cleaning in weeks. I have lost my desire to tend to this place. I really want to move on, but this is apparently where I’m supposed to be for now, because events keep conspiring to keep me right here. I can accept that, and even plant a fall garden to prepare for another winter here, but I can’t CARE about this property anymore, and it shows.
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There are other things that I’d like to write about, but I can’t. Those of you who have been reading here for a while may be astonished to learn that there are people in this town who Do Not Mean Me Well (I know, hard to believe, right?) and I think some of them read this blog. There have been too many times that I’ve posted about some plan or prospect or new friendship only to have it fall apart within days after hitting the blogosphere. I think I might need to fire up a new private, password-protected blog for journaling all that stuff so I can keep my venting outlet without compromising my security.
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School starts in less than two weeks; I can hardly believe the summer’s gone already. Elizabeth will be starting middle school this year and I think she’s looking forward to being on a different campus than Luke. The events of the past few weeks have had the side effect of making him cling tightly to her as the one stable feature in an everchanging landscape, the one person who’s always with him no matter whose house he’s in or who else he’s with. I understand that and sympathize, but now it’s time for him to start developing his own inner strength to sustain him when she’s not around. And frankly, Elizabeth needs a break from the little barnacle.
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I think that’s everything bloggable. The heat wave has broken and the air feels like autumn, at least for a little while. I wish it could be just like this until November or so, except with some rain thrown in. And as long as I’m putting in requests, I wouldn’t mind meeting some nice heterosexual single guy who likes kids, has mastered basic communication and relationship skills, and lives at least a few miles away from Silkotchland.
That would be swell.
Categories: Birthdays, Christianity, Family, food, Friends, frugality, Gardening, kids, Life, Love, Self-Sufficiency, Uncategorized
6 Comments
An Invincible Summer 