Joyous Christmas Eve

Do you give someone a gift that's practical, or impractical? On this Christmas Eve, I hope you might receive both.

As for the practical:

Put yourself in the position of Joseph on the night Jesus was born. Every once in a while we hear about someone giving birth in a shopping mall, or a taxicab. This was the first-century equivalent of a taxicab delivery.

After the long journey, the labor pains, the anxiety of finding a delivery room and settling instead for a back room, we might imagine Mary – after giving birth – to be exhausted and resting. Maybe even gone to sleep.

Joseph is sitting there – dazed and confused, as are most new fathers – too tired to make sense of what has just happened. Mary has been telling him all sorts of unbelievable things about this baby for months now. Including that he will be a king.

Joseph, a laborer, a commoner, not of noble or royal blood, asks himself, “How do you raise a king?”

Well, I’ll raise him to be a carpenter, he says. That’s what I know how to do. He’ll be a hard worker, he’ll learn a trade, he’ll get calluses on his hands. By his hard work, the boy will grow up to serve his neighbor.

That’s the first gift, the practical one. Jesus, born this night, won’t grow up to be a professionally religious person, a bishop, or a minister with an advanced degree. He won’t look for people to fill the church or to be churchy people. He’ll look for carpenters, and farmers, and teachers, and accountants, and nurses …

Better yet, he’ll look for people whose identity isn’t defined by their job or their career, but for those who are willing to follow his call to be compassionate, kind, gentle, patient – people who will forgive each other and value the really valuable things in life.

That’s the most practical gift of all because that means the one born this night came for you, whoever you are, whatever you do (or whatever you’ve done). He won’t necessarily ask you to change your occupation or your avocation in order to follow him. He might ask you to change your heart, but you don’t have to stop being you. You don’t have to fit a cookie-cutter mold. You’re human. Jesus was human.

It’s not about how much you know that matters. It’s about how much you trust – how much you trust this Jesus.

As for the second gift, the impractical one, the one you can't hold or put your arms around …

Why is this night different from all others? The Scriptures tell us that it was a star that cast a different light in the sky. You know what we would do today with that star? We'd use our scientific minds to figure it out. There's a theory the Star of Bethlehem was actually Jupiter appearing in the constellation of Aries about the time of a lunar eclipse.

This isn’t a knock against science. I loved my college astronomy course. But there’s a time for facts, and there’s a time when facts can’t explain mystery. That's the second gift I hope you receive tonight: the sense of mystery.

Tonight isn’t just December 24, 2009. It is a night that is connected to all the Christmas Eves we’ve ever known. Christ’s birth was the night the world changed.

Our Christmas memories go back to our childhood, maybe our parents or grandparents. But we serve a Mystery that neither you nor your father’s father or mother’s mother began. The laughter and the tears that accompany this night are not born of our own traditions, as precious and wonderful as they may be. They are reflections of the Mystery of God, written across the stars in a sky of luminous brilliance. A million million times we can stare into that sky, and it will still remain a mystery.

Christmas Eve is the night we are invited to stand together, elbow to elbow, parka to parka, shivering knees to shivering knees, and gaze into that infinite sky, beyond all the things we know and understand, to contemplate what we don't know or understand. And God says it is good. It is mystery, and it is holy.

Merry Christmas!

Thanks to Jerry Camery-Hoggatt and William C. Martin

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com

John Wesley was a blogger

Well, of sorts.

John Wesley, founder of Methodism, kept a journal -- the contents of which are in the public domain. Cedric Poole of Cape Town, South Africa, blogs a daily journal entry of Wesley's, keyed to today's date. (For example, today's entry would be from Wesley's journal dated Dec. 12, although the year will vary.)

Poole and I agree on this, in his words: "I am a firm believer in the relevance of John Wesley's teachings and theology for the postmodern era that we live in. My goal with this project is to bring the man described as a 'Plain man for plain people' to as many plain people as possible."

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com

Bedside table

I just crossed another one off my reading list: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love. The author (Augustine) hasn't written much lately, but his books have staying power.

So I asked the question you probably would. What's an "enchiridion?" Turns out it's Greek for "handbook" or "manual." So it's essentially a handbook on Christianity, written in the fifth century.

If you wanted a contemporary "Handbook on (fill in your faith tradition)," what would you want it to include? That is, if you kept a book about your faith on the bedside table, what questions would you want it to answer? Which topics covered? Which terms defined? Which mysteries uncovered?

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com

A preacher, reporter and teacher walk into a bar ...

I couldn't remember who said it: a preacher should carry a Bible under one arm and a newspaper under the other. Turns out the quote is probably apocryphal but most often attributed to 20th century German theologian Karl Barth.

I'm willing to invoke Barth's support of the two arenas in which I've spent most of my life, the newspaper business and the church. It appears there's another advocate,* none other than Ben Franklin. In a letter to the Ministry of France in March 1778, Franklin reportedly wrote:

"A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district -all studied and appreciated as they merit -are the principal support of virtue, morality, and civil liberty."

Old Ben apparently saw that a thriving society looked something like the three-cornered hat resting upon his head, with faith, a free press and education making up the three. May your Bible be tattered with use, your newspaper subscription never lapse, and your local school a source of pride.

* In addition to the First Amendment, which had something fairly important to say about religion and the press.

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com

If Jesus had a Twitter account ...

None of what follows is mine, nor is the provocative title above -- "If Jesus had a Twitter account, what would his 160-character bio say?"

The question was posed by Susan Hogan, with whom I once was honored to share the title of "colleague" in the fraternity/sorority of daily newspaper religion writers. Her latest venture is Pretty Good Lutherans, in which she tells stories of faith so that their messages may become "tools of spiritual transformation."

Last week, she asked the above question.

Among the responses were several by Randy Schatz, whom I do not know and know nothing about (except that his Facebook bio identifies him as an "ELCA Lutheran in an ecumenical sort of way.")

His responses to "what Jesus' Twitter account would say" are the best summation of the Gospel I've read in a long time. Here they are:

"No time to tweet 2nite! Got a dinner date with some prostitutes, then to a movie with a gay freind. Peace! JC"
Wed at 8:43pm

"Meeting some dancers @ Ihop after they get off work. Like 3AM. Join us?"
Wed at 9:39pm

"Can you take the 3AM Ihop? I gotta stay up with a teen cutter in the psyc ward...step dad was messing with her. I sit with him in court 2morrow. JC."
Wed at 10:16pm

"On my way to Starbucks 2 meet college freshman started class yesterday...and found out she is pregnant...deciding what to choose."
Thu at 7:19am

Just passed churchy protesters with signs that say "God Hates Fags!". WTF?!?
Thu at 7:19am

@LarryKing & @Pope want to interview me. Maybee tomorrow, kinda busy 2day.
Thu at 7:20am

"Cutter made it through the night OK. Hanging w mom after step-dad's court thing...mom has tons of guilt. Gonna b a long day."
Thu at 7:22am

"Court is done. Heading 2 homeless shelter 2 start dinner. MEATLOAF =) Swing in if U R free. JC"
Thu at 1:26pm

"Volunteers had dinner started-thanx. Gotta go visit college gal's BF, he's got a ton of shame going. Maybe I'll give the M.N. Twins a little miracle 2night, just for fun =). JC"
Thu at 2:07pm

"Change of plans. Going 2 JV football game of a freind. Dad drinks the grocery money, mom has a black eye. Twins will have 2 win on their own. JC"
Thu at 2:38pm

"OK, so that field-goal was a miracle, what are you trying to say? Sat by that goofy dad. Nice guy, but seems lonely. His kid was the kicker.JC"
Thu at 3:03pm

"I find great humor in my followers who have GoodWill pick up the rubish sale left-overs. What part of 'first-fruits' is hard to understand? I'm just saying. JC"
Thu at 3:16pm

"Rejoycing with an industrial strength sinner who finally gave me a call. I had been hoping to hear from him soon. JC"
Thu at 4:32pm

Thank you Randy, Susan and Jesus.

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com

Haiku

I'm attending a spirituality conference in Plymouth, Mich. (where I am supposed to be in quiet contemplation so as to not be aware of things such as the Cubs losing on a bottom-of-the-ninth-inning home run last night out on the West Coast).

Anyway, one of our exercises was to respond to our learning utilizing some art or literary form "outside our comfort zone." Hence, my attempts at Haiku:

~

Breathing stale cave air.
Trapt in Plato's dark shadows.
Freed to turn and see.

~

Canopies of pine.
Green haven, sanctuary.
Risk the desert's call.

~

Do no harm. Do good.
Gather at the table long.
Stay in love with God.

~

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com/

Born again

Former NBC news anchor John Chancellor brought two phenomena to the fore during the 1976 presidential campaign. He was the first to coin "red state" and "blue state" as descriptors for how states voted in a presidential election. He also introduced the American public to what it meant to be "born again." As in "born-again Christian."

Actually, it was born-again candidate Jimmy Carter who brought evangelicals out of the political underbrush and "born agains" into the light of day. But it was Chancellor, in a nationally televised interview with Carter, who elevated the term into public discourse by asking what much of Middle America wanted to know: What exactly is this business of being "born again?"

(Ever the intrepid journalist, Chancellor prefaced his questioning with the reportorial assurance: "We've looked up born again, and it is nothing new." Columnist Cal Thomas wrote years later, "The term wasn't invented by Jimmy Carter, though the one who coined it had the same initials.")

It seems a silly question now. For nearly 30 years, abetted by the success of Carter's successor Ronald Reagan and his political operatives, evangelicals became major players in U.S. politics. Born again was no longer a foreign-sounding phrase.

But like so many religious concepts made into sound bytes, "born again" has been caricatured and delimited until it seems only to define a demographic with a penchant toward conservative politics.

Deep religious truths don't fare well when they become slogans, especially when appropriated for political reasons. It was refreshing, then, to come across these lines this week from Diary of an Old Soul, by George MacDonald:

"But we who would be born again indeed,
Must wake our souls unnumbered times a day."

Being born again is nothing less than committing one's self, day by day, moment by moment even, to being in conscious awareness of God. That is a deeply spiritual exercise. Once engaged, we may or may not say we are born again. But we can always say we hope to be.

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com

The Julie/Julia Project

Something about the movie has stayed with me, like the richness of coq o vin that lingers on the palate. Julia Child was little more to me than an easy voice to impersonate until I watched the film. (I've not attempted French cooking, personally, although Chicago's now-closed Ambria made me a fan.)

But it's Julie's story as much as Julia's that intrigues me. Is it because Julie Powell wrote herself out of a cubicle job into fame as a writer? Perhaps. But I think it's more because she connected with her passion, followed it, believed in it even when she questioned it, and somehow – perhaps most miraculously – brought those she loved along with her.

Here’s Julie Powell’s original blog:

http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html

And here’s her current blog, What Could Happen?

http://juliepowell.blogspot.com/

Bonne lecture!

Photo of Julie Powell by Salon.com

A pearl in a gold mine

I go looking for gold and instead find a pearl. So it goes every week as I craft a sermon.

You've done it, too, although maybe not sermonizing. You know, you're looking for a missing earring underneath the dresser, and instead you find a $5 bill.

Sidney Harris, a syndicated journalist, used to write an occasional column called "Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things." He also found pearls while he was looking for gold.

So this week's find -- while I was researching Christian unity (or disunity) -- was this bit of wisdom about the church's willingness to change.

It's from the Alban Institute's Daniel P. Smith and Mary K. Sellon, authors of Pathway to Renewal: Practical Steps for Congregations (courtesy of Homiletics Online):

“Your congregation is what it is today not because of what a bad pastor did to it, or because the neighborhood has changed or because our culture is going to hell in a handbasket. Although those occurrences and many others have had an impact, your congregation is what it is today because of how it responded, or failed to respond, to the realities it faced.

"What your congregation will be in the future is up to you and the other members and how you work together to create something new from the realities you face. What you do or don’t do now will make the difference. Your actions will either reinforce the patterns that have become established in your congregation or start to counter and shift them. The leadership provided by your pastor can help or hinder, but it cannot make your congregation succeed or keep it from ultimately achieving the goals you set for yourselves.”

If you're part of a church, that's food for thought. If you're not, and you've read this far, maybe there's a congregation nearby whose newly discovered reality includes you.

Original posts at http://wrigleypreacher.blogspot.com
Image by NaturalyPure

Purls of Wisdom

Today's entry on my wife's knitting desk calendar reads:

"Knitters are frequently accused of being obsessed with the process and the stuff we use to do it with. I think that sounds sort of negative. Instead of describing myself as 'obsessed with knitting,' I prefer to think of my lifestyle as exquisitely focused in a very narrow direction."

Knitting, baseball, God ... fill in the blank. It works.

High school reunion

Beverly Clark sits on the end of a bed, confessing to an acquaintance her fear of losing her husband. Her deepest lament? “We need a witness to our lives,” says Clark, played by Susan Sarandon in Shall We Dance. “There's a billion people on the planet … I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things ... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying, ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness.’ ”

Some of us have been blessed by spouses or partners. Others have led lives as single people. Others have been married, then not, then maybe partnered anew. Which really isn’t the point here.

The point is, who are the witnesses to our life?

Our class is having its 30th high school reunion this weekend. We’ll blow three decades of dust off memories that have accumulated like so many old record albums in some closet of our brain. What is the allure of going back, metaphorically if not literally?

For some, I suppose it’s to be reminded of the days when life seemed simpler. Or of how little we’ve changed. Or of how much we have.

But these friends really are unique witnesses to our lives.

Beverly Clark feared losing her husband because he came home late, night after night. Ultimately, her fears were unfounded. He (Richard Gere) had been out taking dancing lessons in hopes of rekindling their relationship.

Those of us who spent years together through high school and then went our separate ways – we’ve been out learning lessons, too, dancing or otherwise. After being gone so long, we’ll come back home to remind ourselves that in a world of relative anonymity, we are rare witnesses to the long spans of our respective lives.

Photo courtesy of Helen Bryan

Paint it Blue

Photo © Phil Velasquez/Chicago Tribune

A ball falls between three Cubs fielders in a Friday afternoon loss to the St. Louis Cardinals at Wrigley Field.

Not that it's taken me 38 years of being a Cubs fan to figure this out, but the obvious became moreso this weekend: the reason one remains a Cubs fan is that when they win, Wrigley Field is more fun than any ballpark in America. When they lose, none is more blue.

So it's for the former that I stick it out. I've just got to work on my timing.

Friday, we're in the 10th row, directly behind home plate. The Cubs implode in the 6th inning and lose 8-3 to St. Louis.

Today, we're listening to the car radio on the way home, and the fading crackle of AM-720 is barely audible as the Cubs beat those same Cardinals 5-2. And Wrigley is singing again.

So, we went the wrong day. But that is a long-established corollary of my life as a Cub fan, two others being primary among them:

• The outcome of the game is inversely proportional to the quality of my seats. (I've seen a lot of victories from the upper deck and watched a lot of losses from the box seats.)


• Never get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the game; the other team will hit a home run. (Friday: top of the 5th, I go to the men's room and Albert Pujols parks a fastball in the center field bleachers. Sixth straight game that's happened. Next time, I'm not even drinking water on game days.)

Road trip

What do you take on a two-day road trip? I mean, packing light is sort of the point of a road trip, isn't it? If you have to pack at all? Jump in the car (preferably a convertible), some cash in your wallet, a baseball cap, and you're off. It's not like a vacation, where you need different pairs of shoes, clothes for changing weather, several pairs of socks, toiletries beyond your toothbrush, a lint brush if your hosts have a cat ...

Because I essentially live in two places nine months of the year, I've become an obsessively minimalist traveler. I don't even like lugging my laptop anymore. With cargo shorts, a good pair of walking shoes and two pair of tech-fabric travel underwear, you can be pretty minimalist. At least for five months out of the year.

Don't have a convertible, but I'm heading out anyway.

Madison, Evanston, the El, Wrigley Field, Milwaukee, 48 hours. Begins now.

Why major in journalism?

Those of us who did (30 years ago) found plenty of reasons. But it was always a question worth asking. For example, would it be better to study politics, science, sociology, economics, philosophy, etc., and learn "the trade" as you go?

It's an even more pressing question today, in light of journalism's rapidly changing economics (i.e. who's hiring?!).

University of Florida journalism prof Mindy McAdams tackles the question in her blog about online journalism.

Image: Senthil Kumaran

There are no coincidences

"Mt. Shuksan stands a mile above the Mt. Baker Highway." (Photo: University of Washington Libraries)

Annie Dillard is best known for writing Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, in which she explores the intersection of human, divine and nature in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia's Roanoke Valley.

This morning, two weeks after returning from the Pacific Northwest, I unwittingly discovered this passage from another of her writings:

"I came here to study hard things -- rock mountain and salt sea -- and to temper my spirit on their edges. ' Teach me thy ways, O Lord ' is, like all prayers, a rash one, and one I cannot but recommend. These mountains -- Mount Baker and the Sisters and Shuksan, the Canadian Coastal Range and the Olympics on the peninsula -- are surely the edge of the known and comprehended world ... That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them, as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious by their very visibility and absence of secrecy."

(Taken from A Spiritual Field Guide: Meditations for the Outdoors, by Bernard Brady and Mark Neuzil.)

Seattle/Bellingham

Seattle skyline from the ferry deck at Bainbridge Island ... sps

Car show off Bellingham Bay ... sps

Chief coffee fetcher ... sps

Always look over your shoulder ... jmt

An hour on Mount Baker

These images taken within an hour of each other while driving up Mount Baker (Wash.) on a day in May. [Photos by steve 5.25.09]

Pentecost in the age of spirituality

It’s remarkable to me, sometimes, that so many choose to live the Christian life. Not because it’s too demanding. In fact, the modern church has probably packaged Christianity in ways less demanding than at any time in its history.

Rather, it’s remarkable people choose to live the Christian life because there are so many vocabulary words!

Think about the words we casually throw around in the church: Salvation … revelation … Epiphany … trinity … sacrament … atonement. And they’re not always big words. Sin. There’s a 5-cent word with a 10-dollar definition.

Learning the faith is often like studying a language that’s foreign to so many people. Even our weekly bulletins assume that worshipers have a working definition of such “common” terms as confession, assurance, tithe, offering and Eucharist.

I think that might be one reason why many people have dropped “organized religion” in favor of “spirituality.”

“Religion” is so many words, which translates into so many rules, which translates into too much work, or so the thinking seems to be.

“Religion” seems to have gone the way of gas-guzzling cars. Spirituality is “in.” It’s the new hybrid. Spirituality is the religious equivalent of “going green.” It even sounds better.

“Are you religious?” “No, but I’m spiritual.”

My sense is that spirituality appeals to some people because it seems safer, less demanding, and less confusing. Spirituality doesn’t remind them of the nun who used to break rulers over the back of their hands, or of the boring preacher who droned on and on Sunday after Sunday about who knows what. So people become bored or confused or tired, and they give up on the church. They leave their religious home and they declare themselves spiritual nomads.

I am quite certain that at least part of the appeal of being “spiritual” is that its seems freer than being religious. Spirituality seems liberating to those for whom the vocabulary of religion seems not only wooden, but perhaps disconcerting, even threatening. If being religious imposes an enormous weight upon a person, then spirituality might beckon them to trade in their heavy emotional baggage for a comfortable, lightweight new backpack.

I don’t intend to be critical of “spirituality.” To the contrary. But I see an irony in how we embrace the concept of being “spiritual” without being “religious.”

It’s not being religious that I wish to defend. I think Jesus wouldn’t often be very impressed with our religion and would call us out on how we use our religion to exclude those who are different from us, those whom we don’t like, those with whom we disagree, those whom it’s not convenient to be around.

When our religion divides us – and we have to admit it has – we can retreat to spirituality because it breaks the tension, it frees us to go our own way.

So where is the irony?

“When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. Without warning there was a sound … like a strong wind, gale force—no one could tell where it came from. Then, like a wildfire, the Holy Spirit spread through their ranks. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.” (From the 2nd chapter of Acts)

The irony is that the Holy Spirit – spirituality – has never been seen as a retreat from the rest of the Christian life but has been at the very heart of it.

When words fail us – or worse, when they confound us – the Holy Spirit is present to us and allows us to hang in.

The curiosity of our day shouldn’t be those who claim to be spiritual but not religious. The curiosity of our day should be religion devoid of spirituality.

God has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit – which we celebrate on this Pentecost – because our faith can’t always be about our rational thinking, our words, our vocabulary. And that takes a lot for a preacher to admit.

A belated Happy Victoria Day

A former newsroom colleague, Bob McIntosh, was known frequently to say, "That's it, I'm moving to Canada." Unlike most Americans who issue the idle threat, he and his wife actually did. She wrote a great column about the experience for Minnesota Law & Politics magazine, and now Bob has begun a blog, The New Canadian: Stuff Americans should know about Canada ... and vice versa, I guess.

Pine away.

Debtors prison

Image © Anne Taintor, Inc.

"We weren’t always a nation of big debts and low savings: in the 1970s Americans saved almost 10 percent of their income, slightly more than in the 1960s. It was only after the Reagan deregulation that thrift gradually disappeared from the American way of life ...

"Household debt was only 60 percent of income when Reagan took office, about the same as it was during the Kennedy administration. By 2007 it was up to 119 percent.

"All this, we were assured, was a good thing: sure, Americans were piling up debt, and they weren’t putting aside any of their income, but their finances looked fine once you took into account the rising values of their houses and their stock portfolios. Oops."

Excerpted from yesterday's New York Times op-ed piece by Paul Krugman, which you can read here.

Another small press

I've previously mentioned a few of my favorite publishing houses: Arcadia Publishing, Phaidon, and Oxford's Very Short Introductions imprint.

I've come across another: Princeton Architectural Press. It publishes intriguing titles like The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places. This helps to answer the important existential questions: Where am I? What can I do here? Where can I go from here? How do I get out of here?

I used one of my quirky little finds, You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, as the creative template for my final project in an Old Testament class.

Princeton Architectural Press majors in "fine books on architecture, design, photography, landscape and visual culture."

Of frogs and crickets

I tell people I live in a farmhouse, partly because it sounds romantic and bucolic, partly because it’s true. As for the romantic, a chorus of frogs is undulating in the key of A-flat as I write this, and the crickets are singing an antiphon over the top of them. The neighbor says coyotes have made a den on the far side of the field. It’s too early in the season to know whether the 20 acres will be corn or soybeans this year. Neither I nor the landowner actually works the soil; it’s leased to a nearby farmer. The landowner lives in the main house. My abode is a former granary, painted red with a metal roof and an interior made of knotty barn wood.

I’m sitting inside at a table with a lamp, and an old shortwave radio across the room is playing NPR. There’s a loft upstairs with a bed. The kitchen has a table and running water. Actually, it’s not quite as sparse as all that sounds, but it feels that way. The lamplight is dim. There’s no distraction of cable television. (There is a DVD player, on which to watch old episodes of Northern Exposure.) The mail never brings bad news, only advertising flyers and the county recycling newsletter. There’s nothing to demand my attention here except whatever book I’ve brought along.

I live here only part-time now. It’s a place whose purpose – and appeal – has modulated through stages of the nomadic existence of my 40s: first as a transitional home-away-from-home, then as a permanent home, then as a place to stay while I’m attending school over in the city. It has been a getaway for Ann and me. It has been a place for Jack and me to call home, a ground of stability to counter the instability in which we have occasionally lived.

I’m nostalgic about it all because our microeconomic downturn – not the country’s, but our family’s, during my current state of underemployment – may jeopardize our squatting rights here for the next year. The plan was to stay til the spring of ’10, when Jack and I each are done with school. It would be a fine place to hold a combined high school and seminary graduation party.

Who knows which way the wind may blow in days to come? Until it becomes clear, I’ll savor each measure of the amphibian symphony, each pitch of the crickets’ fury, each long shadow stretching across tilled dirt as the sun sets beyond the barn, giving way to the languishing chill of a spring evening and a luminous fresco of stars.

The way to end an argument

The more you learn, the more you come back to basic wisdom. Last year I came up with the seven standard answers that will get you through seminary (or, with minor adusting, probably most higher education). You can see the original post here.

I've discovered an addendum, the all-purpose conclusion to any detailed paper, the quintessential way to bring a detailed and thoughtful conversation to its close:

"These things must indeed always be beyond our comprehension, and yet the endeavor to understand them is the endless task of [fill in the blank]." (e.g. history, theology, science, etc.) *

So here's the updated list:

The Seven Answers (and a conclusion) to Get You Through Seminary
Context matters.
It's our eschatalogical hope.
We need a new paradigm.
That's evidence of our postmodern mileau.
We need to create space for ambiguity.
Everything is an interpretation.
It's not an either/or but a both/and.
These things must indeed always be beyond our comprehension, and yet the endeavor to understand them is our endless task.

* This was the final sentence in a broad, wide-ranging and complex Christological discussion in God Was In Christ, by D.M. Baillie.

Hard to say so long

I am sitting in what will soon be another relic of the economic downturn of '09: the Starbucks in Stillwater. It's frequently been called one of the most attractive Starbucks anywhere: large windows overlooking a historic main street, ornamental cornices and friezes around ceilings inlaid with latticed glass, five distinct gathering places (six in summer, when the brick-paved patio is filled with tables). In architectural terms, this isn't Coffee House Modern. It's more New Urbanist. To wit: this Starbucks is the first venture that has thrived in this downtown venue (aka the Grand Garage, an old filling station) for years.

Now I suppose it seems superficial to mourn the evinesence of a chain coffee house (this Starbucks location is to close Feb. 27), when friends -- including some of my own -- are being laid off. But everytime I walk in here I remember reading "The Great Good Place," a 1991 book by Ray Oldenburg. He sung the praises of third places, or "great good places," as the public places on neutral ground where people can gather and interact. In contrast to first places (home) and second places (work), third places allow people to put aside their concerns and simply enjoy the company and conversation around them. [Description courtesy of the Project for Public Spaces]

When I read Oldenburg's book 18 years ago, I lamented the U.S. had a dearth of third places, which had been so revered in Europe. Regardless of their corporate success in capitalizing on caffeine as the drug of choice for the millenial generation, Starbucks tapped into this sociological need. Certainly the coffee house is as much, or more, about civility and connection as it is about coffee.

Admittedly, I boycotted Starbucks' arrival in historic Stillwater. I was an aficionado of the locally owned Daily Grind (and fond of the late Dreamcoat Cafe, as well). Eventually, I succumbed. Perhaps it was the Tazo chai tea lattes. But it might be, too, that this became an office/living room/front porch away from home, inhabited by fellow travelers across an egalitarian spectrum (i.e. moms of preschoolers in the morning, city council members and downtown merchants at noon, students and preachers and writers in the afternoon, the young after school, and, yes, tourists on weekends.)

Rumor has it the lack of a drive-through at this location has doomed it to become a victim of Starbucks' latest recession. How fitting: a place that retains its civility precisely because it invites people to walk in and linger in shared, public space is excised from the corporate landscape because it can't cater to the moribund isolation of the suburbanized, American commuter.

Despite my personal whining about losing this small space of downtown Stillwater, which I admit reeks of the poutiness of privilege in the midst of real economic struggle, I do believe a societal loss is in the winds, be it at a coffee shop or any other place where the nourishment of the human soul is measured by profit margin.

That loss occurs at exactly the time we need it to be preserved, as the urban sociologist Oldenburg presciently observed:

“In the absence of informal public life, living becomes more expensive. Where the means and facilities for relaxation and leisure are not publicly shared, they become the objects of private ownership and consumption.”

And:

“What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably -- a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile.”

Church offers prayers for the jobless

Or, as the Church of England calls it, those deemed "redundant."

What will happen in the new year?

There's no telling, for sure. Certainly not with the economy. But some things will happen this year. Some highlights:

January: The Czech Republic assumes the presidency of the European Union; Barack Obama assumes the presidency of the American union.

February: Awards month (Writers Guild of America, 7th; Grammy Awards, 8th; NAACP Image Awards, 12th; Academy Awards, 22nd).

March: Madness.

April: Baseball's Opening Day (6th).

May: The new wing opens at the Art Institute of Chicago.

June: Milwaukee's Summerfest begins (27th).

July: John Calvin's 500th birthday (10th).

August: Most of Europe takes a monthlong holiday. Let's follow suit.

September: The UN General Assembly meets in New York.

October: The International Olympic Committee announces the host of the 2016 Summer Games (2nd). In the running: Chicago, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo.

November: The UN Climate Change Conference, seeking to reach a new agreement on cutting greenhouse gases, opens in Copenhagen (30th).

December: The largest cruise ship ever built, the Finnish-made Oasis of the Seas, takes its maiden voyage with 5,400 passengers.

SOURCES: The Economist and the International Herald Tribune.