IVP - Strangely Dim - September 2007 Archives

Blizzardous

Not sure what happened, but some fifteen minutes after I closed comments on an old Strangely Dim post, the screen went blank. Maybe it's a glitch in the system, maybe it's the most ill-conceived terrorist attack to date: robbing the world of Strangely Dim may sneaky and underhanded, but it will not bring the U.S. culturo-politico-economy to a grinding halt.

Or perhaps it's a prank designed to wake me and Lisa up to the fact that neither of us has posted anything for a couple of weeks. So sorry--there's more to publishing than blogging, I'm afraid, and we've both been too busy. The IVP-geeks out there might be tempted to respond with a snappy retort along the lines of "Too busy not to blog?!?" but don't bother: that joke is already out of the saltshaker and into the world.

Anyway, sorry for the long silence. Coming soon, rabbits aplenty.

Which Way, Right Away, Is the Wrong Way

After three years of coleading the same small group of girls my church's high school youth group, I now have less than one year to face the fact that next fall they'll be spreading out to different colleges to pursue and discover different interests and dreams and vocations.

They're facing the fact sooner than I am. It's college application season, so many of them are in the throes of filling out forms and writing down their life in one hundred words or less. Most of them, in the midst of that, are naturally wrestling with all the decisions that need to be made: Where should I apply? Big school or small? Christian or non-Christian? Near or far? Should I attend a community college for a year? What am I interested in? They, like many other Christian seniors, are experiencing a particularly strong desire for discernment--speedy discernment, if possible.

The longing for discernment only grows more intense as we get older, as significant decisions arise with surprising frequency and take on more complexity. We long for discernment about where to work and live, about relationships with our friends and spouse and kids, about how to order our lives and where to go to church. Choices are hard; we understand the significance choices hold in shaping us.

I'm hoping to attend graduate school in the next few years. The choices--what school, when to go, how much to spend, whether to go part-time or full-time--are many. And I, like my girls, want to make the right choice, the one that will stretch me and grow me and allow me to use my gifts and passions to broaden God's kingdom on earth.

In her Likewise book Flirting with Monasticism, Karen Sloan recounts a year in her own life of exploring monastic practices, set alongside the journey of a novice class of men preparing to join a Dominican order. Their yearlong novitiate is a time of transition, of learning to live in a whole new way. The purpose of the novitiate is to help men discern whether or not they are truly called to the Dominican way of life.

As I read the book I couldn't help thinking that this is the way discernment is supposed to work: a specific, significant amount of time, saturated with prayer, walked in community with friends and mentors, marked by ceremonies and celebrations. It's a significant discernment process, because it's a significant decision: a lifelong commitment to live in community with other Dominicans and follow their Rule of Life.

I'd love to have a year free of commitments to pray and explore and talk with others about significant decisions I'm making. But most of the time, I don't have that much time. Most times I quickly pray ("God, I’m totally open to knowing which way you want me to go. I just need to know now. Thanks.") and then hope someone in the grocery store will walk up to me and tell me what I should do. Really anything as clear and quick as that will do.

Approaching discernment that way, my spiritual director reminds me, is missing the point. Discernment is not making a decision. Discernment is a process, a whole way of living, paying attention to God, whether or not we're facing a big decision. In Bird by Bird Anne Lamott writes about "discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony." I may think I need the discernment for the decisions that come, but really I need the process of learning to discern.

I don't know where next year will land me or the girls in my small group. I don't know what next month will look like, for that matter. But I hope we all land in a place of paying attention to God's Spirit more closely, of knowing and responding to his voice. A place that will only be reached by walking through today and next week and next month paying attention to the God who spoke, who still speaks, "This is the way; walk in it" (Isaiah 20:21).

Facebook Fever

Likewise Books has Facebook fever. Ever since Facebook--the social networking utility that has linked college students online for years--opened itself to noncollege students, growing numbers of InterVarsity Press employees and Likewise authors have opened accounts and are keeping tabs on one another there.

One of Facebook's standard features is an online poll, updated daily and limited to one thousand responders. I must say some of the polling questions are among the lamest I've encountered online: my favorite so far is "Do you have good taste in music?" But some of them offer interesting insights into what goes on in the Facebooking mind.

Today's poll is "Is the glass half-empty or half-full?" Fully 76 percent of the respondents are, apparently, optimists. (Don't ask me why, because I'm decidedly among the minority. As my beloved daddy regularly reminds me, "An optimist can never be pleasantly surprised.")

There's no negligible difference in outlook between men and women; women may be slightly more optimistic than men, or they may be slightly more inclined to respond to online polls--who can say? The least optimistic age group--only 74 percent of them--are ages 18 to 24, probably because they're just now back in school, trudging into 8 a.m. astronomy class after a summer of sleeping till noon.

The other polling question that caught my eye earlier this summer was the simple, even simplistic, "Are you religious?" The consensus was "No" by a similar margin: 70 percent over 30 percent. I can't decide if I'm surprised by these results or not. I'm also not sure how to interpret them, especially taken together: if three-fourths of the Facebook community are irreligious and generally upbeat, what do you suppose they want to talk about? What do you suppose they want to read about?