Leaks

It is no longer raining.

This is a LEAK.

Someone call the Landlord.

Tell Mother Nature to call her plumber.

Fix the caulk. Stop the LEAK.

Rain is a DRIP.

Turn the faucet to stop the

d

r

i

p

In that joint where sky meets earth

the rain carved a crevice.

The LEAK entered earth.

Poured out all over the place.

Poured out for you and for many.

Carve a crevice for GRACE.

Not a DRIP we seek.

But a LEAK.

A downpour.

A huge crevice in that joint

where heaven meets earth.

Someone call the Landlord--

Tell the Goddess

We're Thirsty.

Crevice, please?
--krr, 6.28.07

Reality: TV

Disclaimer: Troy and I do not have human children so at the outset, I acknowledge that sometimes you have to do whatever you have to do to get by as a parent. Is this one of those times, though?

It's difficult to write today's blog post--I'm just not sure quite what to say. Maybe I don't have to say anything. This picture tells it all. While having dinner tonight, a few tables away from us sat a mother, father, possibly a grandparent and a child. With curiosity and amazement, we watched a child who was watching Elmo on a portable DVD player as the adults had dinner and "talked." Every so often, they stopped and smiled at how cute the kid looked watching television.

Is this the picture of how our society does life together? It's no longer "Reality TV" that's our problem; our problem IS the reality that TV has become the good, pacifying, nurturing parent. And the bad cop-parent is the real adult who tells the kid that it's time to turn the tv off. But how can parents tell the kids to turn the tv off when we are the ones turning the TV on to be the babysitter at the dinner table?

This past Sunday, the senior pastor at my church spoke on how Jesus loved the children and because Jesus loved the children, we are called to love them too. He lamented the loss of the family who eats dinner together. He pointed out that families sit mindlessly in front of the television; all in the same room without saying a word to each other. He described the glow and flickering of the campfire in generations past where families shared stories and children learned who they were by sitting among the elders and listening to the family history. And now this flicking light is replaced by a different kind of light--that of the HD television screen that is mounted on the wall and flickers bright into the late night. ---Look at this kid's face? His face is lit up by the light of this television screen.

As Troy and I wondered out loud about what this means, trying not to pass judgement because that is another place where our society falls short, we thought of reasons why these parents chose to have their child sit in front of a television screen while the adults talked at dinner. Maybe they were with their child all day playing interactive games and telling stories and making puzzles and playing with toys and this is the only 1.5 hours of the day the child watches tv...maybe the child began having a tantrum right after they placed their meal...maybe they both worked all day and were tired, exhausted and all they needed was just a little of what they would call normalcy.

Or maybe, just maybe, our collective memory has forgotten how to be in relationship. We have forgotten that our kids, no matter how articulate or not articulate they are because of age, they are learning from us what will be their habits for communication and engagement. And maybe we have forgotten the commitment we make as adults when we bring children into this world and the sacrifices we have to make in our "adult" ways so that we can raise these kids to be who they were made to be in this world.

Like I said, I'm having trouble with this blog post. I don't want to pass judgement on this particular family or other families who will be reading this blog and would choose to do the same thing. I just want to hold up this slice of life and ask, "Can we as a society do better?" And to make this slice of life more tangled, our waitress tonight was a classmate of mine from Rider High School in Wichita Falls. She was bussed to my school under the desegregation act in the 1970s that even in the late 1980s Wichita Falls was still violating. She is now married, has a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old, and works 2, sometimes 3, jobs to help better her family. This summer, she will take custody and guardianship of her cousin's two kids, age 15 and 16, after her cousin died suddenly. She loves her cousin's kids and feels so thankful that she can help them through their grief. She's glad to have them come live with her. As she talked, with the flickering light of the DVD player in the background, my heart broke for her knowing how hard she must work to keep it all together.

I guess these parents did one thing right--They tried not to let the kid sit too close to the screen, lest the kid hurts his vision. At least that's what my mom told me if I sat too close to the television screen--it will hurt your vision. What we witnessed tonight hurts more than just physical vision; I can't help but to wonder what kind of hurt vision we have as a society because we have forgotten the sacred contracts we hold in the embodiment of our children. These are not our children; they are God's. Are we holding up our end of the contract with God? Time for a reality check?

The Dog Days of Summer

Sarah, the Catahoula-Pointer Cutie, shines in her "Dog Days of Summer" video. Enjoy the sunshine!

If a Plymouth voyager can make a statement, so can I

I don't want to pretend that I'm smarter than sociological demographers who planned suburbia in the 1950s but I'm guessing that they didn't account for the 1-2 hours of life people would trade to live in suburbia and work in downtown. Or, maybe they saw that day far, far in the future when people would trade 1-2 hours of their life EVERYDAY for sitting in a car so they created a side company making bumper stickers so that people could at least feel like even in their car, they can make a statement and "be somebody" and somehow feel like even though they live in the land of lost-identity, they, at least their car, still takes a stand.

The person who drives a 1990s Plymouth Voyager mini-van with the above two bumper stickers really took a stand. I'm not sure what they are standing on, perhaps a pile of dung, but they took a stand. Good for them.

As I drove behind this person today on Pearl Street in downtown Dallas in the rain, I thought about the different statements I was making and specifically considered the statements I'm making about UrbanLife, my new ministry at First Church. Am I making a statement about what I'm going to do or how I'm going to do it? Keep in mind, mainline denominations have been failing for more than 30 years simply because they haven't figured out how to be the church for the 22-35 demographic. (Anyone want odds on my success?)

A colleague asked me today, "What are you going to do, Kathryn?" and without thinking, this came out of my mouth: "I want UrbanLife to create community and deepen spirituality among urban professionals while helping them achieve their highest God-vision for their careers, finances, relationships and self-development." He replied, "Wow, that's good." And I said, "Give me a pen. Let me write that one down."

Maybe this is part of the mixture. I'm not sure what the right ingredients will be to give me 2-1 odds of winning this race. I even learned today that the Dean of my Divinity School now calls this demographic an "endangered species" in mainlines churches.

I like that...maybe I should change my job title to "Minister of Endangered Species."

Go live that life

Today was my second Sunday at First Church and words cannot express how thankful Troy and I feel about serving and being a part of this congregation. The church has given us such a warm welcome and we are finding our way around the place.
Theme today: Life is life and it will be what it is. It is how you handle, or maybe not handle, all that life is that makes life worth living. My favorite theologian, Kenny Rogers, expressed it well on the first 8-track I listened to in 1980: "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run."
Today's slice of life is worth this blog post: I had a 2-hour window of time late this afternoon. Because I'm feeling a need to have my office "together" as if somehow my office is being graded by my worst internal critic, I thought I should squeeze in a trip to IKEA, now 45-minutes from where I work and live. Even as I got ready to leave home, something in me didn't want to drive to Frisco to walk around a pre-planned store that views its customers as cattle which need to be led through stalls and gates.
When I unlocked my car in my parking spot, I found my journal in my hand. That's strange--I can't imagine some profound insight worthy of journaling to come in the middle of IKEA.
The profound insight came way before I made it to Frisco. Didn't even get out of the neighborhood before God put the big stop sign in my way (no, it wasn't the Texas "DQ" stop sign). It was the message board out front of a little neighborhood Presbyterian church that read, "Taize Service in Courtyard: 6:30 pm June 24." I knew that's where I needed to be.
So I stopped, pulled into the parking lot of the park next to the church, spent 45 minutes sitting on this old, large tree that is made for climbing and journal-ed. That's why I needed my journal....God is funny in how things like this get planned. I shared with God and the tree the story of my first week. And at 6:25, I walked over to the church and sat through 45 minutes of music and prayer that kindled in my soul the flames of being a child of God that so easily burn away the distractions of who or what I think I need to be.
The service wasn't flashy; they were Presbyterians. And it is easy to believe in predestination when you see how much Presbyterians look like each other, almost like God said, "I'm going to make a special group of people who will never be on the cover of Vogue but they will be my people and I will be there God and I will call them Presbyterians."
We sat in folding chairs, in the church's courtyard, a mixed-group of people who were so excited to have a visitor and then so sad to hear that I work on Sunday mornings--we sat and we sang and we listened and for a tiny moment, I heard the kingdom of God.
My 2-hours that could have been hurried chronos time rushing to IKEA became simple kairos time that took my mind and reminded me that inside me is a soul wanted to be embodied. "Go live that life," God said.

Wishing for What We Think Should Be

Life doesn't always work like out like the ending of "When Harry Met Sally" or "Cinderella." I wonder about that craving deep down inside that wants this kind-of-perfect-ending for life's situations. Where is that craving located in our bodies and souls? I think for me it is located around the corner from my spleen and down the hall from my liver in the Office of Fake-Reality-that-Really-Should-Be Real. You know Mr. Jones?--He heads up that office.

Certain life rituals put this particular Office into frantic overtime trying to produce as much energy as possible to override reality's particulars and instead paint a picture of what this office would prefer the eyes to see. Weddings are one of those big work orders. A friend's stepdaughter is getting married soon and even though this family has blended itself in several different ways, the tension between what this young bride always wanted--the "ideal" life story--and the reality of what is--stepparents et al--this tension is playing itself out in the traditional question of "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?"

It would be easy enough to answer the traditional, storybook way, "Her mother and I do," and yet, there are more people than just her biological mother and father who give this daughter away. In not wanting to make any one person in the family examine foundation-level feelings, the temptation is just to gloss it over and pretend like we are one big happy traditional family. Office of Fake Reality, job well done. You pulled another one out.

As I begin UrbanLife at First Church, the squeaky question that is spoken of with raised eyebrows, is this: What is church for the urban young professional with career as priority one in life? What is church and are we willing to suspend what we think is church and pretend that someone outside the church might offer insight into our question that scares us like the monster who hides under the bed.

Where in the church does tension get played out between the "ideal" church story and the reality of what church is? What would it mean to acknowledge and breathe through those tensions instead of glossing over the question and simply answering, "Her mother and I do?"

"The smarter a person is the more he needs God to
protect him from thinking he knows everything."

-- Native American
proverb

5 months and 19 days

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

My dad is a civil engineer and worked for the state of Texas his entire career, beginning at the age of 20 as an intern, and in 2 years, will retire at the age of 62. The last 30 years have even been in the same office. One benefit of being a state employee is you get about 100 different, odd "holidays." Growing up, it seemed like at least once a month dad had a day off because it was "Celebrate the Honey Bee" day or something similar.

One of those holidays for state employees was (and I believe still is) today, "Juneteenth." Whether or not this is accurate, this is how Wichita Falls explained this day to me: This is the day that the slaves in Texas received word of the Emancipation Proclamation. In other words, this is the day they heard they were free.

So for 5 months and 19 days, people kept working as slaves even though they had been set free. The delivery of this news then is about as efficient as today's delivery of corporate strategies through the company's ranks.

I thought about this as I walked to yoga this morning. Just around the corner from my condo is my yoga studio that wakes me up and gets me moving every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Today, as I walked to yoga in my flip-flops, I must admit I was a little grumbly, wishing for just a little more sleep simply because my brain cells are working on overload assimilating my new job and church.

As I turned the corner to the studio, right in front of the studio, was an old-run down Ford Thunderbird, painted "primer" color, hubcaps missing, windows rolled down and seats reclined cradling two people, most likely in their 30s but aged by their living well into their 40s and 50s. They had not arrived early for yoga and decided to grab a little shut-eye; they slept there all night. I didn't want to stare and I didn't want them to wake-up and ask me for money either. Here I am, ready to claim my inner peace, and the reality of homelessness, hunger and poverty sits right in front of my yoga studio.

When the first car pulled into the parking lot, the driver woke-up, got his senses to him, started his car and he and his friend drove away. They never asked me for anything. They didn't even say hello or good morning. Of course, why would they, I didn't say anything to them either. Maybe they didn't want to talk to me as much as I didn't want to talk to them.

I believe our society is living in the very-long age of "5 months and 19 days." The truth has been announced and yet we haven't heard it. So we keep living in our own personal slaveries, we keep enslaving others and in so doing, enslaving ourselves. These two lives have been labeled and they are in a spiral that most likely is stronger than their ability to calm the storm. Who knows where they drove to after they left. And who knows where their car is parked tonight.

What truth has been announced that you have not heard? God has made a proclamation and the truth will set you free. Do you hear it?