IVP - Strangely Dim

Saying Goodbye

I have never been good at saying goodbye. Part of the reason is probably because my family is very rooted—I grew up in the house that my grandparents built, that my father grew up in, and that I hope my own children will live in (or at least visit). I attended the same elementary and high schools as my grandmother and my father, and my friends remained the same for the first eighteen years of my life. As you can probably imagine, I don’t like change. I like stability. I appreciate rootedness.

But I am in my twenties and very little is certain right now. A year ago, I married my best friend, and Michael and I are still unraveling how to live life as partners, as a team. Friendships continue to morph as our friends accept new jobs or get accepted into new schools and trek across the country to pursue their respective dreams. Job opportunities open and close, and relationships there must be pursued or ended, released or revisited.

And that is why I am writing today. I will be taking a different job in August, and today is my last day at InterVarsity Press. The decision to leave was a difficult one, and my tendency to shy away from change made it even more difficult to choose to go. I love the vision of the company and the ministry that flows from the work that we do in this office. Above all else, I love the people in this publishing house—there are wonderful souls within these walls. The Press has become a home for me, steady in the midst of all of the other changes I have been experiencing in this last year.

But change comes, and I am trying to embrace this one. The job that I am taking in August will simplify my life—instead of a twenty-five minute commute to and from work, I will be walking three minutes to my new office. This job will also give me the opportunity to work on the same campus where my husband and my sister attend school, deepening my relationships with them. I am sad to leave InterVarsity Press, but I am trusting that the Lord has opened this door and will enable me to walk through it well.

I know that it is only one of many changes I have yet to experience in my life, but I also know that there is one source of rootedness in my life that cannot be moved: Christ himself. He is unchanging, immovable, unshakable. He is the cornerstone that cannot be removed, he is the vine that will never be uprooted, his is the kingdom that cannot be shaken. Christ is the constant that I cling to as I move into these changes, the one who leads me through that which is easily shaken in this world.

So wherever you are in life, and whatever change you are inevitably experiencing, God’s peace to you. I would receive the same blessing from you as we move forward into the change that must come. May we cling closely to Christ as we embrace whatever he brings our way.

Make New Music and Keep the Old . . .

For my birthday this year I got a bunch of new music from an eclectic bunch of musicians: from Arcade Fire to Crowded House, from Andrew Bird to Paul McCartney. Being a music snob, I set out immediately to pick apart and pass judgment on these albums. But right around the same time, my hard drive here at the office crashed, and I lost all the music I've been storing on my office computer. (Don't tell my boss.) I wrote about that experience over at my other blog, Loud Time, but the gist of it was that my music snobbery now had a higher purpose: I had to decide again what music merits sharing with my coworkers.

My reputation is at stake, of course: we are known increasingly by our iPods. Politicians will even hire consultants to load the most poll-responsive music onto their portable listening devices and then leak the playlists, hoping in the process to win, for example, the Nickelback vote. Then they steel themselves for the inevitable aesthetic backlash: "Let me make this perfectly clear: I did not have musical relations with that band . . . Nickelback."

So I consider passing judgment on musicians an act of self-preservation. But the mix of artists I'm currently judging is giving me trouble.

On the one hand you have Andrew Bird, a consummate songcrafter with a great experimental vision, both lyrically and musically. Armchair Apocrypha is a deeper, more somber collection than I've become accustomed to in my limited exposure to his music. Next to him on the shelf is Arcade Fire, who have convinced me that they're the next U2, the next anthemically brilliant band to galvanize the energies of their generation--they will be, I think, what ColdPlay expected to be. Their Neon Bible wears their influences in its arrangements, and I already have a short list of songs from the album that will never leave my head.

But then I come to Paul McCartney and Crowded House. I've long been convinced that Sir Paul and CH lead singer Neil Finn are two of the greatest pop songwriters who have ever graced the airwaves. Paul too often doesn't get his due; his clever and nuanced lyrics have coupled with brilliant melodies and chord structures for decades now, but he lacked the visceral edge of John Lennon and so is regularly dismissed as the vacuous Beatle. Neil Finn, on the flip side, is a victim of his own success: his breakout "Don't Dream It's Over" was too good too soon, and so two decades before his beautiful "Gentle Hum" was even written, consumers decided he'd sung all he had to sing.

That being said, both McCartney's new solo album and Finn's revived Crowded House are playing to type on their new records: each has a signature style that reflects the worldview of professional musicians and songwriters who long ago left behind the notion that their music would change the world (in the case of Paul, it did) and now content themselves to write songs that they find personally meaningful and enjoyable. Their creative instincts are such that what they enjoy and resonate with translates well to a broader audience, and so despite the absence of grand innovations that are present with Arcade Fire and Andrew Bird, the music of Crowded House and Paul McCartney is still worth hearing, still worth sharing.

Books are more like music than we often give them credit for. Well-crafted books, like well-crafted music, marry the present to the progression of history, so that books that were new in 1967, if they were crafted well and with the right vision, still speak in 2007. InterVarsity Press publishes a lot of authors whose writing careers stretch across the decades precisely because they wrote of things that were resonant in their day and which still ring true today.

But time marches on and brings with it the rise of new generations--and with them new dilemmas and expectations. These new times demand new thoughts, which require new thinkers. The best of those new thinkers not only familiarize themselves with the progression of thought that predates them, but they recognize their debt to their forebears. Without the Beatles, there would be no U2, and consequently no Arcade Fire. Without Paul McCartney, there would be no Neil Finn, and consequently no Andrew Bird.

So as a reader I celebrate the news that important voices such as Lew Smedes and Robert Webber have become InterVarsity Press authors even after their death. But I also keep an ear open for the new voices--people such as Don Everts, Brian Sanders and Rick James--who continue to offer us a new resonance.

Sing It if You Know It . . .

Happy birthday to Lisa . . .
Happy birthday to Lisa . . .
Happy birthday to Lisaaaaaaa . . .
Happy birthday to Lisa!

A Short Reflection on a Little Cicada

Last night was so lovely that I couldn’t stay inside, so I took a walk around the suburban neighborhood that I live in. Families were eating outside, dogs were roaming their respective yards, and joggers and fellow walkers were everywhere. It was, uncharacteristically, a quiet night.

Except for the quiet flap-flap-flapping I heard as I walked down Washington street. Over the voices of a father talking with his two sons, I heard a sound that has become too familiar to me over the past month—the flapping was coming from a cicada that had fallen on its back and could not turn over. The more frustrated the cicadas become, the harder they flap their veined wings in an attempt to right themselves. But because of the cicada infestation that we have had in our area, I have become immune to the sound of their struggle. Most dead cicadas I see on the sidewalks are on their backs, and you begin to realize that death, whether it comes as a shock or a frustrated struggle, comes to all of these creatures eventually. It is, to be honest, a great relief. I was afraid they would go on infesting our town forever.

But yesterday evening, a strange sense of pity came over me when I heard the flap-flapping of the cicada on Washington Street. The bug had, apparently, fallen out of the overhanging tree into the middle of the street, and I knew that he would not survive long on the playground floor of suburbia. I tried to ignore my emotions and continued walking, telling myself that it was one cicada out of thousands that died every day. Still, once I ventured far enough to be free of the incessant flapping noise, I felt—how else do I explain it?—I felt sad. I know it sounds sappy (and I am not a bug person), but I knew that I was probably the only person in the entire world who even thought about that particular cicada and the ominous death awaiting it on Washington Street.

So I turned around, walked back to the flapping bug, and gently rolled it over with my sandal. The cicada immediately quieted itself and began crawling, still in the middle of the street. While I didn’t know if it would live, I knew I had offered the creature what I could.

And then, as I watched the bug move, I began thinking about God, about how he never even thinks about leaving me flapping in the middle of the street. He is always gently overturning my life, righting me even when I fail to realize it.

So even cicadas can sometimes remind us of God’s goodness. And somehow, his unfailing presence with us. Flap.

Stick a Fork in the Fortnight

The cliches have been multiplying like rabbits, but today our fortnight comes to an end. Back to the grindstone, everybody!

By the way, my friend Dan tried to rabbit me yesterday by cell phone, but thanks to the miracle of caller ID I got him instead. Congratulations, however, to Lisa for winning the in-house contest yet again.