IVP - Strangely Dim

I Confess

Today is May 27--one day after Memorial Day--and the forecasted high temperature--57--is twelve degrees warmer than the air temperature at lunchtime. This is strange, and my outlook today is correspondingly dim. On such days I am sorely tempted to pray for, rather than against, global warming. I'm also sorely tempted to feel sorry for myself.

I'm privileged, however; I have a home and a car and an office, all of which can easily bounce back and forth from "cool" to "heat" based on my circumstance or whim. Others are not so fortunate--among them the guy in a parka trimming the grass outside my office; the homeless men, women and children who rely on temporary shelters, many of which close between Memorial Day and Labor Day for maintenance or convenience, counting on the warmer weather to make homelessness easier to bear; the folks in Tornado Alley across the Midwest who over the weekend went from being homeowners to being homeless; the people, places and things across the world who suffer from the effects of climate change even as I pray my self-indulgent, tongue-in-cheek prayers for more of it.

I'm reminded in these moments of vague clarity of a prayer I prayed in concert with hundreds of fellow congregants week in, week out throughout my childhood. It's a prayer of confession that morphs gradually into a prayer for transformation. It's a prayer directed not only to God but to God's church, and though I am an avowed Protestant and as such am uncomfortable with the line about Mary, I pray this prayer today as much to you and the great cloud of witnesses that anticipated and yet surround us, as I pray it to God:

I confess to Almighty God
And to you my brothers and sisters,
That I have sinned through my own fault,
In my thoughts and in my words,
In what I have done, and what I have failed to do.
I ask Blessed Mary, ever virgin,
And all the angels and saints,
And you, my brothers and sisters,
To pray for me to the Lord our God.
Amen.

Love Is All We Need

I have a mild confession to make: I like angry music.

I don’t like hateful music--at least not most hateful music--but I do like angry music. I listen to it a fair bit. Who can deny the potency of a line as simple as “We don’t need no education” or “This ain’t my American dream”? These folks are so angry they use contractions; they’re so angry they use bad English.

Something in my upbringing--maybe because despite my surname I'm largely Irish, maybe because I live in post-Watergate America, maybe because I always got picked last for dodgeball--made me predisposed to think that anger is the most efficient path to truth, that no matter how clever they both were, there was something simply more profound about John Lennon singing “Instant Karma’s gonna get you” than Paul McCartney singing “Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs; what’s wrong with that?”

Then again, what is wrong with that?

The bias that’s become so prevalent in our culture is that truth emerges out of anger, that we are most right when we are most outraged, and that we ought to be outraged when we’re right.

I’ve watched enough campaign coverage by now, and 24-hour news channels prior to that, to know that news reported without snarkiness is not really considered news. We’ve been taught, even conditioned, to create truth by speaking our opinions in our outside voices, and to defend truth by escalating our rhetoric. We are, as a culture, cultivating our inner angry musicians.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that such a life is not a life worth living.

It’s that kind of life, in fact, that the apostle Paul was called out of. We first meet Paul in the seventh chapter of Acts, where using the name Saul he joins the religious authorities in Jerusalem as they throw stones at a follower of Jesus until he is dead. Saul apparently doesn’t throw a stone himself; perhaps he has too lofty political aspirations to get his hands so dirty. But we’re told that “the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul . . . and Saul approved of their killing [Stephen]” (Acts 7:58--8:1).

Saul soon after that began going from house to house, dragging Christian men and women to prison simply for being Christian. In fact he was still, in the words of the biblical book of Acts, “breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples” when he heard the voice of God tell him to cut it out, to lighten up and to turn his life around.

Fast forward a couple of decades and we see that this angry young man has done just that. Saul, the best and brightest of the young religious zealots of his day—a kind of Barack Obama on steroids, in traffic, with rabies—has taken the name Paul and written the following beginning to his letter to the Philippians:

Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:1-11 TNIV)

So good riddance, 2007. We don't need no evil, no injustice, no sin, no victimization, no violence, no power plays, no vitriol or calculated rhetoric. In 2008, by the grace of God, all we need is love.

Love is all we need.

Virtual Contemplatives amid Structural Agnosticism, or Something Like That

The book I'm writing has me reading a lot of stuff by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk of the mid-twentieth century. That sounds so exotic that you'd never believe he lived in Kentucky, but there you go. (All respect to Kentucky, of course.)

Where was I? Oh yes, Merton. Though he eventually landed in Kentucky, his life took him all over the world, even from his early youth. After his mother's death, for example, his father took him to France to build a home and paint the days away. They found themselves in the rustic, pungent bourg of St. Antonin. "And . . . the center of it all was the church."

The town was set in a valley and structured so that a cathedral sat in its middle. All other structures, both professional and domestic, and even the view from the hills all around the town, looked toward the church. As if that weren't enough, every so often someone at the church would ring a bell, reminding everyone who couldn't not see it that it was still there, marking the town's time, centering the town's universe.

Oh, what a thing it is to live in a place that is so constructed that you are forced, in spite of yourself, to be at least a virtual contemplative! Where all day long your eyes must turn, again and again, to the House that hides the Sacramental Christ!

A virtual contemplative in a pre-Internet Trappist monastery in Kentucky, reflecting on his childhood experience in rural France. The mind boggles.

Contrast Merton's experience in a rural throwback to medieval France to the contemporary experience of a post-industrial post-Christendom. There's a sense in which we can never recover that medieval centrality of faith: our cities are not built around churches anymore. While sacred spaces in the United States still don't have to pay real estate taxes, neither do they get a pass from local zoning boards, nor do they get the pick of the litter when it comes to prime properties.

Of course, part of the reason for that is that there are so darn many churches gobbling up real estate. The church (in the more abstract sense) is itself decentralized, in a whole variety of ways. The net effect for the church is a shift from the center of a community's culture to some peripheral other point--or points, for that matter. A friend of mine (according to the Facebook understanding of friendship) lists his "religious views" as "I can see 4 churches from my window." Har har.

Nevertheless, a structural reminder of Christ's proper place at the center of the universe has its appeal. I hear from a lot of people that they'd like the future church to link back to the ancient church, and there are ways, I'm sure, of doing that in personal and even communal ways. Merton's way of framing it goes even further, daring to suggest that the whole community--in the church or out of it--benefits from an explicit reminder that its center is not the individual or the family or channels of commerce or politics, but a God who rightly orders the universe he has made.

I'm curious how people who fancy themselves virtual contemplatives these days recover this luxury of having their eyes turned, again and again, in spite of themselves, toward Christ at the center of creation.

Seriously, I'm curious. Please post your suggestions.

The Power of No Power

I'm not sure how the weather is where you all are, but it's been a little wild in Chicago the last few days. If you like water, skip out on Hawaii and come visit us instead. We have plenty. And, if Benny Franklin were still alive, we'd be his favorite city--lightning for hours on end.

What we're a little short on, unfortunately, is electricity, at least on my lovely block and in a few of the nearby suburbs. When my sister and I arrived home at our apartment yesterday, the power was out. And when we got home from Caribou after meeting friends in the evening, the power was out. And when we woke up this morning--the power was out. Thankfully, we like candles. A lot.

I'll admit, not having power is inconvenient. Food in our freezer and fridge could spoil. It also takes longer to do things in the dark. And, of course, there are many things we just can't do at all: cook dinner, iron (though I'm not so upset about that one), read, charge cell phones, watch TV (which usually wouldn't bother us much but is particularly disappointing this week since we happen to be in the middle of season three of Lost . . .)

I'm trying to see it as an "adventure." If you're Erik Weihenmeyer (you know him; he's the one who's blind, who climbed Mt. Everest and reached the top), power outages do not adventure make. But if you're as fond of routine and predictability as I am, just having to take a different way home from work can qualify as an exciting escapade. (You're in awe of how thrilling my life sounds, I know.) So a power outage could definitely fit into the "adventure" category. Or it could just be pure inconvenience and put me in a bad mood. My perspective affects my response, my attitude.

I was reminded of this yesterday as I was sitting in the local Secretary of State's office in the dark, waiting for the power to come back on (it didn't) after driving through a torrential storm to get to the Secretary of State's office before it closed. (Did I mention that power outages are inconvenient?) There was a young girl there with her parents; they were already there when I arrived, so they had obviously been waiting in the dark longer. I wondered, as I watched the girl, if she even noticed that the power was out. She played with the rope designating where lines should form. She chattered. She sang happy birthday. From all appearances, she might have thought this was the "fun family outing" for the day--not an inconvenient power outage that kept her parents waiting in line much longer than they expected. Watching her, you'd wonder what you really do need electricity for after all, since you certainly don't need lights and computers to sing happy birthday.

So, in an effort to gain perspective and stave off the bad mood, here's one comfort I take from her example, and from all weather-related disturbances like Chicago summer storms and winter blizzards that interrupt my normal routine: I'm relieved to discover that I'm not so tied to electricity that I can't make do without, and I'm not so dependent on activity that I can't simply sit in a dark Secretary of State's office, waiting and watching. In our work-driven, frenzy-paced culture, I love that there are forces that make us stop--and there's nothing we can do about it. It does my control-thirsty senses good to remember that really, I never had power, and actually, I'm not in control, and truthfully, right now--without electricity--I still have far, far more than most of the people in the world.

Tonight I may return home to a dark apartment. Is it inconvenient? Yes. Will I vote for the presidential candidate who proposes banning electricity to start paying off the national debt? Probably not.

But is this power outage good for me? Yes. And can I still sing? Yes. And will I have gained some perspective on my life when it's over? Yes. It's so good, in fact, that you should come visit. You can help my sister and me eat up our food, you can sit on our couch and chat with us, or listen to the quiet.

We'll leave a candle on for you.

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.

If the Shoe Fits . . .

In the summer at my church, we have what we call "side-by-side" worship on Sundays, meaning that, in the absence of Sunday school, children and adults of all ages worship together. But we don't just worship together; often children help lead the adults in worship. This past Sunday, a woman leading worship invited children to come up front to help her lead the rest of the congregation in hand motions as we sang. With a little coaxing, a number of children ran forward. But instead of running to the floor space that had been cleared for them, they ran right up on to the platform where she was standing. And, though the kids were at different ages and skill levels, it was clear for some of the songs that they had no idea what the hand motions were. But they tried to follow the lead of the woman the best they could, not minding (or even thinking about it, I'm sure), that you could tell they didn't know what they were doing.

It was, you might say, as beautiful as the day is long. Their authenticity and eagerness challenged my worship after a week of days that were long and full of me trying to make it look like I knew exactly what I was doing on every "song," every task and situation that came up in a day.

Watching children reminds me of the wonder that each day and each event hold. I'm always amazed at the trust children possess, at their delight, at the bigness of their imagination and the possibilities of what can happen in a day. In their eyes, pigs could fly, maybe, and sliced bread (especially with peanut butter and jelly) really is the best thing since, well, sliced bread.

But I'm also amazed by their authenticity, their un-self-consciousness and straightforwardness. They don't try to hide what they're feeling. They will cry over spilled milk if it makes them sad. What's more, they're highly inefficient. They'll never kill two birds with one stone because days are about discovery more than productivity. The tying of the shoes before going to the park and the walk to get to the park should be as leisurely as the walk in the park, because all are new opportunities to see new sights, learn new skills.

My carefree childhood days seem very long ago. And I'm not, of course, getting any younger. In fact, I'm trying to do my best to put up a good front as a "responsible, mature adult," one who is efficient at work, pays her bills on time, serves in ministry, knows how to cook more than macaroni and cheese, gets her oil changed regularly and would never cry over something as trivial as spilled milk because she knows she can go to the fridge and pour another glass (even though she'll have to clean up the mess herself).

But.

One of my goals this summer is to become more like a child. And maybe that points to how far I have to go to get there, the fact that I've made it a Goal. Maybe it can't be a goal. I suspect it starts with something as simple as slowing down to notice a few more details, and wonder about them. Maybe it comes with asking more questions. Maybe it happens by admitting as often as it happens that I don't have a clue what I'm doing.

I like to believe that, even though we lose so many of our childlike qualities--like wonder and imagination and delight--they are still in us, innate in us, part of the image of God we're created in. I imagine that, before they sinned, Adam and Eve were extraordinarily childlike in the way they viewed the world. I think those pieces still exist in us, and can be brought out if we're intentional and willing to be humble enough to learn. Christ, in fact, calls us to come to him as little children, so we must still be able to somehow retain and live out the wonderful qualities children possess, even as adults. I think living out those qualities again is part of becoming more like Christ, part of us fulfilling his image in us.

And, if the shoe fits--take your time tying the laces, and marvel that you know how to do it.

Mix It Up Day

Yesterday, apparently, was Mix It Up Day at InterVarsity Press. (It was also Sarcastic Wednesday, according to Hallmark's Hoops and YoYo.) Yesterday I parked in the parking spot normally taken by the director of production and fulfillment (gasp!). Yesterday the associate editorial director led a meeting normally led by the editorial director (wow!). Yesterday the director of sales and marketing sat in the seat normally occupied by the senior marketing manager (huh?!?). Yesterday the editorial intern took the favorite lunch spot of Craver VII. And yesterday the editorial department cancelled its weekly popcorn meeting in favor of a Thursday bagel meeting. I even switched stalls.

We were all mixin' it up yesterday. This post even mixed it up; I scheduled it to go online yesterday afternoon, but here it is, one day late. We didn't plan Mix It Up Day, but in all sorts of ways we honored it.

It's good, I think, to mix it up on occasion. It's far too easy to settle into habits and routines that once were refreshing and innovative for us but have become regimented, subconscious, automatic.

Some things, of course, lend themselves to becoming regimented, either by their nature or by design: our bodies require regular rhythms of sleeping, eating, whatnot; we discover the most efficient path to a repeated outcome, and we repeat it because to do otherwise would be silly, wasteful. Those things notwithstanding, I think there often comes a time when we need to look squarely at what we've become accustomed to, in order to determine whether we've become enslaved to it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (my favorite Dietrich) gave at least one example in his book Life Together:

"Let him who cannot be alone beware of community."
"Let him who is not in community beware of being alone."

I'm struck by this pairing of statements both because they caution us against the type of settling we're vulnerable to--when we seek out community or solitude by default, we miss out on the benefits and responsibilities of their opposites--and because the paradox itself mixes it up for me. Every time I read these statements together, my initial reaction is "Huh? . . . Wait a minute . . . Huh?"

So for a time at least I get interrupted from my presumptions about what it means to be in community or in solitude, and I revisit my own understandings of what I need from others, and what they need from me. What happens next is unpredictable, which is, I suppose, why we don't often like to mix it up.

Nevertheless, I welcome you to make your own Mix It Up Day. Share your favorite memory of mixing it up (or getting mixed up) here. Then go, as they say, and do likewise.

Product-ivity

This month has, already, been full of many “things to do.” I hear words like this passed between people on a daily basis:

“I’ve got lots of things to do today.”
“I’ve got so much stuff to do this week.”
“If I didn’t have so many things to do, I could get some sleep.”
“There’s not enough time in the day for all of the things I need to do.”

And the like.

A few days ago I had many “things to do,” including a load of reading for grad school and some papers to write. As the night turned out, I never got any of those things done.

I came home from work and helped my husband, Michael, with a paper. It’s finals week for him, and I’m the editor-in-residence in our apartment. Shortly thereafter a friend called me, and we met to have some coffee together. The conversation was great and we were able to pray for one another, which was especially encouraging because we are both heading into some new transitions in our lives. It was a spiritually refreshing and relationally rich time, but not very “productive” in relation to all of the “things to do” in my life.

Not an hour after returning home, one of the people who lives in our apartment complex knocked on the window, and we invited her inside. This woman lives alone and we barely know her, but she obviously needed some other people to connect with. The three of us shared some words, some food and some prayer. By the time she left, I needed to get in bed.

So I accomplished nothing Monday night that was on my “things to do” list. I was not “productive” in the sense that most Americans use the word: I had not accomplished any tangible thing that could prove my worth to the world at large.

But “doing things” and being “productive” are not necessarily spiritual realities. Even the word itself implies that we are creating a product: product-ivity. We have enmeshed Christianity with the American dream and so we find pride in describing ourselves as productive: “I’m productive today!” or “I’m a productive human being!” are phrases commonly praised by others. All too often, we understand our worth in relation to what we produce, sometimes even seeing ourselves as a product to be presented to the world. And yet humans are not products. My fault is in using this language of “product-ivity” to try and craft myself into the very thing I am not designed to be.

Monday night was a reminder that I am not a product. I am a creation of the God who has more on his mind than grad school papers, the God who knows when talking with a neighbor is the most important thing I can do. The papers can wait, the “things to do” and “productivity” can be put on hold. God is in the process of crafting fuller human beings, and if I actually paid attention to the cliché of “being a human being rather than a human doing,” I might lead a life that is a little less hectic and perhaps even less self-focused. I might even begin to see others (and myself) as creations rather than as product-creators or even as products themselves. Wouldn’t that be a lovely thing to do?

If It's Too Personal, You're Too Old

A friend of mine sent me an interesting article from New York magazine ("The magazine that never rests") that offers a surprisingly sympathetic take on personal blogging. While many hoity-toity, high-brow, big-shot wordsmiths deride bloggers as "fame whores" "farting [their] way into the spotlight," and while social psychologists are worried about the longterm effects of putting body and soul on public display, some others are seeing a cultural sea change comparable only to the early days of rock and roll, when accordion players were scandalizing the popular music industry.

Clay Shirky, who teaches new media at New York University, puts the naysayers in their place:

Whenever young people are allowed to indulge in something old people are not allowed to, it makes us bitter. What did we have? The mall and the parking lot of the 7-Eleven? It sucked to grow up when we did! And we're mad about it now.

The residual fear of people who grew up before the Internet is the invasion of privacy--that we will be known and judged by what we leave unguarded. I'm reminded of a lyric by Dar Williams:

If I wrote you, you would know me, . . . and you would not write me again.

You've got to be careful what you say--but once you say it, you've got to stand by it. And the only way to repair it is to continue to talk, to explain myself, to see it through.

Everybody Needs a Theme Song

I’m not ashamed to admit it: I’m a fan of John Mayer. Sure he’s a pretty-boy, sure he dated Jessica Simpson, sure he’s on shuffle on my thirteen-year-old cousin’s I-Pod and on the wall in her room, sure he’s a little smug and self-important. But I’m a fan, for a number of reasons.

For one thing, when he was a kid he liked to dress up as a superhero, and you have to respect that. For another thing, he plays guitar like he invented it. But more than those reasons is the fact that he dares to speak for an entire generation of people. That takes moxie, and I respect moxie.

He’s written about the bitter nostalgia of life after high school, the social awkwardness of relationships, the wonders of sexual intimacy, the perils of vocational uncertainty and the quarter-life crisis. He’s a living, breathing discography of early-adult ennui. And now he’s written what I hereby nominate as the theme song of Generation Me: “Waiting on the World to Change.”

Generation Me, characterized by author and psychologist Jean Twenge as adult survivors of the self-esteem movement, is known for confidence that borders on arrogance and self-importance that borders on narcissism, but also for a profoundly fragile self-image and a low threshold for depression. Twenge argues that where twenty-somethings in the late 1960s were characterized by statements such as “I can change the world!” Generation Me is characterized by statements such as “You can’t beat the system.”

You could spend forever exploring the origins of this pandemic of fatalism among people born after 1970, but thanks to John Mayer, you don’t have to look far to see its impact. In “Waiting on the World to Change” he asserts that “me and all my friends, we're all misunderstood.” He doesn’t try to overcome the misunderstanding, he just embraces the reality. You can’t beat the system. You have to play the hand you’re dealt. Fill in your own cliche here.

The self-esteem movement shows its influence as Mayer claims a critical omniscience—“We see everything that's going wrong”—but he then confesses an inability to address the problems: “We just feel like we don't have the means to rise above and beat it.” You could understand why a person who sees all the bad in the world and yet feels powerless in the face of it would struggle with depression. And why does Generation Me feel powerless to change their world? Because someone else pulls all the strings: “When they own the information, they can bend it all they want.” You can’t trust what you know because you can’t trust the people who put it in your head.

Mayer and his fellow twenty-somethings are often derided as hopelessly apathetic, which is a pretty hopeless and apathetic thing to say about a group of people, if you think about it. In reality, apathy is an understandable response to hopelessness; a defense mechanism, so to speak. Here’s the lyric that jumped out at me more than anything in the song, maybe because it’s such a clever rhyme, maybe because it betrays just a hint of attitude by using the word ain’t: “It's not that we don't care, we just know that the fight ain't fair.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the world we inhabit: a chronic sense of helplessness in the face of an unrelenting onslaught of big problems, combined with an ingrained suspicion of authority born out of scandal after scandal across the spectrum of life experience. Our government and industry leaders, our local and international authorities, our priests and pastors, our parents and teachers, our friends and neighbors, have all fallen short of the glory of God—and we see the impact on ourselves and everything around us. It’s all too much.

Nevertheless, Mayer is able to muster up some meager hope, and that hope may just be enough to tide him and his friends over: “One day our generation is gonna rule the population, so we keep on waiting on the world to change.” There’s plenty of circumspection that needs to take place between now and then—particularly that what we are thinking about everybody else, they are thinking about us—but in the meantime let me share words of encouragement from another cynical yet insightful songwriter, Tom Petty: “You’re all right for now.”

We're Not Gonna Take It! and Other Bad Art

A theater in downstate Illinois has shut down for a few weeks, rather than be forced by the marketplace to subject its community to the best Hollywood has to offer this month: Jackass 2 and Beerfest. Read about it here.

Hey! Come back!

It's not that these movies are morally offensive, per se, that's led to the business owner's boycott. It's that they're just awful. The Chicago Tribune called one of the two films "an insult to sophomoric movies everywhere." The owner, Greg Boardman, has put a lot of money into making his theater a destination point for movie fans--cutting edge tech, roomy seats, fancy carpet. Adding a film that relies on vomit and self-flagellation for laughs is, I suppose, a bit like gilding the lilly--although only a bit.

I'm intrigued by this story because I don't often see people who make money off of mass culture proactively filter content for their customers. The only instance I can recall, in fact, is a music video that MTV restricted temporarily nearly two decades ago. I'm sure there are other cases, but I can't think of any.

I can hardly think of anything else to say, I'm so shocked by this guy's moxie. Hollywood is more Goliath than David, and the private owner of a two-screen theater in a small Illinois town is more David than Goliath, but he certainly took his shot. Maybe the rest of us can be encouraged by my new hero to expect a little more from our entertainment.

By the way, Likewisebooks.com is now up and running. Be sure to check it out.

Hey! Be sure to come back too!

I Grieve

I remember September 11, 2001. I remember how naively I began the day. I remember, having recently read the book Long Wandering Prayer, deciding to begin the habit of taking a morning walk in my new neighborhood. I remember picking up a hollowed-out walnut shell that had the natural markings of a peace sign, and I remember pocketing the walnut shell as a reminder of the tranquility of the morning. I remember deciding not to listen not to the radio on my morning commute, opting instead to listen to "Silly Love Songs" by Paul McCartney, which I had heard live recently and thought poignant. I remember the phone call from my bleary-voiced wife, who woke up to a DJ announcing that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I remember my coworker interrupting our prayers for the victims to announce that the tower was collapsing. I remember clenching my fists.

I remember September 12, 2001. I remember searching for a way to surface the sense of bewilderment, mixed with rage, that I was feeling but couldn't articulate. I found it in a song by Shawn Colvin, "Cry Like an Angel," the lyrics of which remains on the wall of my office: "The streets of my town are not what they were. They are haloed in anger, bitter and hurt. . . . May we all find salvation in professions that heal."

The hollowed-out peace sign remains in my office as well. May God grant us peace, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

Walk Much?

I just walked into a wall. It wasn’t like I had my head in a comic book or was testing to see if I had sonar or anything; I just walked into a wall. My head was somewhere else.

This weekend my eighteen-month old nephew ran into a wall. He was so excited running down the hallway that he turned too early. It was cute because he’s so little, and he's cute when he runs, and he got over it quickly. But I’m not little, I wasn't running, and I’m clearly not over it. Not cute.

I’ve noticed lately that when I get stressed, I start to check out. I don’t listen as well when people talk to me, I don’t notice how people are feeling when I see them or talk to them. And lately it seems like I can’t stop running, like I’m facing wave upon wave of hyperactivity—family visits here, road trips there, writing projects there, special events here. I’m coping by checking out, which is clearly not coping at all, if it means that I’m stepping on toes and walking into walls.

This really should be a time of reflection for me: my birthday is coming up, my annual performance evaluation at work is coming up, and I have a blog--the center of the navel-gazing universe. I should have self-awareness coming out my nose. But I can’t seem to collect my thoughts: it’s like my brains have been rattled from banging my head on too many walls.

It strikes me that a person is much less likely to slam into a wall while walking than while running. At the very least, it’s easier to stop, but walkers are also more likely to be aware of their surroundings--unless, of course, their minds are racing and their heads are somewhere else.

I came across this passage from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, which I think offers a pretty astute analysis of the crisis of pace: We think we have to know everything, even though we cannot, and so we strive continually and thereby gradually and unrelentingly run ourselves down.

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance — which his growth requires — who has so often to use his knowledge?

So I’m going to try to run less and walk more. As soon as I can pry my head out of this wall.

That's No Longer Hot

Apparently, Paris Hilton is tired of saying "That's hot." So I heard on Letterman or Leno or somewhere. She's now moved on to "That's sexy." Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Strangely Dim posts, which you can access here.

But I've been inspired to come up with my own catch phrases. I gave my god-daughter a catch phrase a couple of years ago, almost as soon as she learned to talk: "That's what I'm talking about!" Earlier this year I was drawn to the phrase "How you livin'?" as a conversation-starter. But both of these pale in comparison to the functionality and flow of Paris Hilton's masterful taglines. So I'm inclined to emulate her. What do you think of this for my new catch phrase?

"That's original."

Think you can do better? Post a comment, you're so smart.

Weird Wednesday

My friend Al Hsu made the following observation:

On Wednesday of this week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. That won't ever happen again.

You know why it will never happen again, right? Because seven ate nine!

Ha ha! I love that one!

This Friday Brought to You By . . .

Fridays at InterVarsity Press used to be casual. And in a sense, I suppose, they still are. But ever since we announced our new imprint strategy, Friday has taken on a new look. To celebrate our new identity as a publisher of multiple imprints, InterVarsity Press (never hereafter to be referred to as IVP) has been handing out shirts like there's no tomorrow.

Shirts are a key element of any branding strategy, from the look of things. My brother works for a major corporation, and it seems that every time a senior executive sneezes, tens of thousands of branded t-shirts come shooting out his or her nose. God bless them--after all, who doesn't like a t-shirt? My brother didn't have to go clothes shopping for the first year of his employment there. The employees get free duds, the corporation gets free advertising: everybody's happy.

So it's no surprise that InterVarsity Press would cough up a lot of shirts during the branding year, even though in terms of size, we're small and my brother's company is triple-XL. Really, we're like grasshoppers to them. But now, with all our swanky new shirts, at least we look nice!

On any given Friday, these days, you'll see employees of IVP-I-mean-InterVarsity Press wearing branded t-shirts, long sleeve tees, hoodies, button-downs or oxfords. Beyond clothing, you'll see my coworkers toting branded totebags, slurping coffee out of branded coffee mugs, attaching keys to branded keychains, writing letters on branded paper using branded pens. If I were to attempt to count the number of IVP-I-mean-InterVarsity Press logos decorating my office alone, my heart, soul, mind and strength would all give out on me before I finished.

There are two forces at work here, I suppose. One is the assertion of InterVarsity Press. "We are here!" we proclaim. "Notice us! Embrace our vision! Buy our stuff!" That's a defensible effort for an organization to make: we exist for a particular set of reasons, and those reasons are better fulfilled when we are in view of our audience.

The other force, I think, is the assertion of the employees (and authors and perhaps even our audience): "We are with you! You are with us!" I, for one, draw strength from my associations: I am bolder, for example, in a room full of Alpha males when I can say, "I'm with X" and reasonably expect them to know what "X" is. Similarly, I am more likely to invite someone to my church than tell them about Jesus all by my lonesome.

In a sense, then, it's a shame that my faith tradition doesn't include uniforms. Everybody knows a nun is a nun by looking at her habit, but nobody knows I'm a Christian by looking at my boot-cut jeans and IVP-I-mean-InterVarsity Press hooded sweatshirt.

Nevertheless, we are promised association: "I am with you always." And we are promised identification: "Everyone will recognize that you are my disciples . . . when they see the love you have for each other."

Try to fit that on a t-shirt.

The End of Two Eras

Today marks the end of two eras. My mother-in-law retires today after years of managing the office of a social service agency. She's the first of my parental units to retire--uncharted territory for our family.

Also today, longtime InterVarsity Press employee Andrew Craft leaves to concentrate on the crazy scope of personal projects he's launched over the last few years. Andrew, among other things, designed the InterVarsity Press website and the Strangely Dim weblog. That road sign was his idea.

Eras end with a lot of fanfare. There's a big party today at my office and another big party where my mother-in-law works. There will be shared memories and conversations about what the future holds. There will be jokes and teasing and food and drink and general revelry.

And then tomorrow comes, and with it the beginning of something new, with patterns that have yet to be established and connections that have yet to be made. Officially, the workplace is the place we work, but under the surface it's the place we most frequently gather, the relationships that are most consistent in our lives. What are Andrew and my mother-in-law giving up by moving on? They won't know till Wednesday.

Leaving a job is a scary proposition. I know one person who hopes to die at his desk, in part because he doesn't want to face the music at his retirement party. I'm drawn to the idea because without my job I'm forced to determine for myself who I am apart from what I do. Is the end of an era the end of days or the beginning of something new?

Ben Folds sees the end of an era, in the grand scheme of things, as relatively meaningless:

Today's just a day like the day that he started . . .

Cat Stevens looks at the end with relief:

If I ever lose my hands--lose my plow, lose my land . . . I won't have to work no more.

I'm not moved by the end as meaningless or the end as nothingness; the end as beginning is what appeals to me. Both before and after the end of an era we remain inherently relational people looking for something to do. When Samwise Gamgee parted from the Shire in The Lord of the Rings, he surrendered his comfortable present in order to embrace a new calling. It was hard, and the way forward was hard too, but one day he would hear songs sung about these later days, and he would know that the end of one era had marked the beginning of the next.

***

Read Pete's comment on "The Best Imitation of Myself" at Loud Time to see how the movies separate our workplace selves from our true selves.

I Gotta Question

Hey, everybody, I've got a question. I'm so interested in this question that I'm going to post it here and at my personal blog Loud Time (yo! check me out!):

What would help American Christianity to be more thoughtful?

You can interpret thoughtful in whatever sense you prefer, and you may think about Christianity as one big collection of people or as a demographic of individuals or anywhere in between. My only stipulation, I suppose, is that I'd like you to at least think about how you would answer if "American Christianity" were replaced by "me" or "us." Spread the word, too; I'd like to get a good cross-section of people involved in this.

I don't know the answer, myself, so I choose not to respond but rather to make comments about your responses. So there.

Thanks! Have fun--play nice.

Stalled

May I be frank? If not, click here.

Still with me? Thank you very much. I have a favorite toilet.

Perhaps favorite is too strong a word. But somewhere along the way at work, I realized that whenever I went to the bathroom I gravitated toward the same stall. In fact, I reckon that if you lined my shoes with some kind of ultra-violet ink, and then replaced all the light bulbs at my workplace with black light, you’d notice a remarkable continuity in the path my steps take—even beyond the bathroom.

I’m a creature of habit, I guess. I have a number of routines, from the steps I take in making coffee to the alarm I set for purging my spam. In that respect I could be the poster child for Presbyterianism, where everything worth being done ought to be done “decently and in order.”

For the most part I’m comfortable with a life marked by routine; predictability can be quite comforting. But there’s an opportunity cost to routines in that they are highly resistant to change, and sometimes change is needed.

It’s possible to get stalled in life. I’ve certainly been there, in relationships, in my profession, in the state of my soul. If we are people in process, which I think we are, then stalled is a dangerous condition, which makes routines, for all their day-to-day value, dangerous. My dad often explores new routes when he’s driving to familiar destinations. Sometimes we get a little lost, but only temporarily; when you ask him why he’s taking a different direction, he replies, tongue in cheek, “So the terrorists can’t find us.”

The history of the church can be understood (though probably oversimplified) as a cycle of renewal—followed by routines—interrupted by renewal. We have some experience that spurs new creativity and energy in our self-discovery or our understanding of God and his claims on us. New church movements, from the formation of the Franciscans to the emergence of Emergent, inspire new hope and enthusiasm for the things of God. Gradually these new movements, in order to move from vague enthusiasm to meaningful impact, create systems and routines, even jargon, to empower their day-to-day progress. Over time, these systems and routines can cause a movement to atrophy, until they are interrupted by some kind of renewal.

It happens at the personal level as well. I like to read, and when I started taking my faith seriously my reading life was revolutionized. The things I read and the duration of my reading time were entirely different. But I reached a point where people started telling me I needed to get out of my head and into my body. I had atrophied in my routines. I needed renewal.

I’ve had a hard time getting out of my head and into my body. The routine is incumbent; it’s difficult to unseat. But I know my routines can be changed, because I’ve done it. My favorite toilet for 2005 was not my favorite toilet for 2004. And so far, my favorite toilet for 2006 is one other than the title-holder for 2005.

Changing a routine is difficult, however: I get a bit of vertigo when I remember to change at the last minute, and when I forget I’m tempted to chastise myself. And let’s face it: changing toilets is not going to change the world or the fundamental condition of my soul. But it’s a good occasional reminder that change is possible.

The most meaningful renewal, of course, doesn’t originate with us. Most often we are the objects of renewal—not the subjects. God is in the business of renewing and has been since the second week of the world. Our routines are practiced in response to that renewal, and in the process redemption is taking place. In the words of the psalmist:

These all look to you

to give them their food at the proper time.

When you give it to them,

they gather it up;

when you open your hand,

they are satisfied with good things. . . .

When you send your Spirit,

they are created,

and you renew the face of the earth.

Quantum Phamily

A friend of mine is working on her master's degree, and as she was selecting courses for the coming quarter she was proselytized by an instructor to take her family ministry course. My friend, however, works a full-time job here at IVP and doesn't have time for classes that demand a lot of extra time or don't nicely fit her educational goals: I suppose you might say she's purpose-driven(tm). So my friend asked if she'd be obligated to do family ministry in a local church setting as part of the course. The professor replied, "Not likely; I don't think any churches around here do family ministry."

Now, I have great respect for theoretical studies, but family ministry? Sure, you can do math with imaginary numbers or do quantum physics based on last week's Star Trek, but "family ministry" seems like simple arithmetic: family + ministry. Two great tastes that go great together.

I suppose it's idiots like me that are keeping churches from fully understanding the intersections between family as a social complex and church as a social complex. How your family functions shapes your expectations and your participation in church, and so every local family system directly affects the life of every local church. And how ministry is practiced, because it is intrinsically relational, places obligations on every family touched by it. The bringing together of family and ministry becomes less like math and more like a marriage.

Ah well. I just thought it was funny. Diana Garland's exhaustive Family Ministry: A Comprehensive Guide defines family ministry as

any activity of a church or church representative(s) that directly or indirectly (1) develops faith-families in the congregational community, (2) increases the Christlikeness of the family relationships of Christians and/or (3) equips and supports Christians who use their families as a channel of ministry to others.

I'd be interested in what you think of that definition and how you'd characterize the state of family ministry in your own church. Play nice though, please.

Not Just Anybody

All the mania surrounding The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe notwithstanding (some of which has trampled me underfoot; see yesterday's post), "Narnia Eve" shares a date with another significant milestone: the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of John Lennon.

I've tended to be a Paul McCartney guy, myself, but as a songwriter and founder of the Beatles, Lennon was a force of popular music. You can still hear his influence even on people who don't know they've been influenced by him.

I was ten when John died. I don't remember the moment, but I do remember the aftermath. My family went to the library the next day, where we joined a room of people watching news reports. I acted like a ten year old, running around and goofing off, and I was rebuked and chased away by the gathered crowd. It was a brief foreshadowing for me that the world is not as innocent and playful as we're allowed as children to imagine it.

I was ill-prepared today to commemorate John's passing, but fortunately I was able to borrow the soundtrack to The Royal Tenenbaums, which features a little song by John: "Look at Me." I'd not heard it before, but it's emblematic of some of John's most intimate writing:

Look at me. What am I supposed to be? . . .

Here I am. What am I supposed to do? . . . What can I do for you? . . .

Who am I? Nobody knows but me. . . . Nobody else can see--just you and me.

Maybe he's singing to Yoko or his mom or his dad or the universe or me, but the genius of it is that it sounds like something you whispered just last night to a lover or a parent or the universe. Anyone can sing it to anyone at any given moment. I might sing it to God; God might sing it to me. Either way, it'll occupy my thoughts long after it's sung.

In the wake of these lyrics or these thoughts I'm reminded of my own finiteness and of the grace of God, who comes to us and reveals himself to us and abides with us--a great favor to a world of people who can only comprehend so much. I'm reminded of a quirky little line from St. Augustine I came across in David Benner's book The Gift of Being Yourself:

Grant, Lord, that I may know myself that I may know thee.

Scavenger Culture

For three years now I dutifully woke up early every Monday, Wednesday and Friday (unless I could come up with a decent excuse) to drive to a local gym. For that same three years, whenever I was asked by machine or muscle-bound consultant what my goals are for working out, I replied “Losing weight” or “Burning fat.” And for that same three years I lost no weight and, so far as anyone can tell, burned no fat.

Then, for two weeks, I reluctantly cut carbohydrates and sugars out of my diet. No Oreos, no Nutter Butters. No ice cream, no cream cheese. No instant oatmeal, no sugary cereal. I lost sixteen pounds and found three more holes in my belt.

I share this story reluctantly, in part because I don’t want to be taken as poo-pooing exercise or endorsing a particular diet. But I find it interesting that I so willingly embraced a major lifestyle change—joining a gym and working out regularly—that yielded none of my desired results, while for three years fighting hard against a discipline that ultimately delivered beyond my best hopes.

My best guess is that for me, and I suspect for most Americans and perhaps most humans, it’s easier to take something on than to let something go.

I think it’s fair to say that I live in a scavenger culture. In fact, I scavenge for a living. I do a fair bit of editorial acquisitions, which means I go out looking for books for IVP to publish. In that respect I’m the poster boy for scavenging. My business card shouldn’t say “Editor,” it should say “Book Scavenger.”

We start scavenging for fun when we’re little kids: “Here’s a list of worthless junk; whoever is able to come up with the most junk from the list wins even more junk!” Suggest to me that I should go get something—a portable CD player, for example, or an iPod, or an iPod Nano—and odds are I’ll rearrange my life to fit it in. It works in other ways too: I know of a magazine that markets the simple life through page after page of high-end purchasing opportunities—spend $500 to be more simple, the logic goes. I’ve bought books and videos on working out, step aerobic equipment, dumbells and gym bags, and even a stairmaster in my drive to drop a few pounds. If there’s something we want to happen, chances are there’s something we can acquire to make it happen.

But ask us to forgo something—dessert, perhaps, or political power or 10 percent of our income—and we’re distressed. Saying no is infinitely more challenging than saying yes.

Something supremely self-evident evades the understanding of a scavenger culture: Sometimes scavenging is the enemy of desire. Sometimes what we need is found not in groping after but in letting go.

Jesus saw that in a rich young ruler who had everything but wanted more—assurances that he was on the right track, that when he died he’d go to heaven, that he could have everything and still be a good person. Jesus confronted his consumerism head on: “One thing you still lack,” he said, in language that sets any scavenger to drooling. “Go, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor. Then come, follow me.”

No stuff. No money. No home. Just Jesus. Yikes. I need some comfort food—fast. If anybody needs me, I’ll be hiding out at the gym, eating Nutter Butters and “burning fat.”

***

Next Friday I fly out to Alaska, the land of the rising sun, or something like that. I'll be speaking to a group of high school students, which should be a lot of fun. I seem to be encountering a lot of giants in the field of youth ministry lately--and by giants I mean highly accomplished and creative youth ministers who happen to be big, athletic guys with perfect teeth who could crush my spindly, geeky spine in a heartbeat. Pray for me.

Cafe of the World

I’m about to go on vacation, and my flight is scheduled to land in Florida at about the same moment that Hurricane Wilma is scheduled to land in Florida. I find myself tempted to exploit this coincidence as a metaphor , but hurricane metaphors seem particularly inappropriate this year. The whole country is still standing in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, scratching our heads, trying to make sense of it.

I’ve always loved New Orleans—for all its weirdness, it wears its soul on its sleeve while other cities hide behind masks. One of my favorite places is Café du Monde, a large outdoor café lined by chess tables. Every time I’ve gone to that city I’ve gone to that place. New Orleans without Café du Monde will not be New Orleans for me, but then again, why should I have a say in defining a city I only rarely visit? At my most sympathetic I remain a tourist; the residents of New Orleans can’t afford to indulge my sentimentalities as they come back to themselves.

There’s widespread resolve to rebuild New Orleans, and I find myself imagining what life in that city might be like on the far end of that recovery. I picture an old man lingering around the café on a Sunday afternoon . . .

***

Wanna know something funny? Back in the seventeenth century they called coffee houses “penny universities.” You paid a little money and you got to argue for hours about whatever you want.

Here at the Café du Monde, nobody wants to argue, they just want to play chess over café au lait and beignets. Play the wrong person and you get schooled, though. I’ve seen some folks play two, three games at a time, and they wipe the floor with the tourists.

You can beat a tourist at chess in four moves—four moves! Maybe people just don’t learn chess right up north, but I like to think that some people come to New Orleans to get a little schooling.

Me and Charlie were regulars. Had our own table right here. We’d spend hours on Sunday working the board, talking over this and that. I beat him most times, but he made me work for it.

We met in the service. I taught him chess ‘cause I needed a rival. He grew up out west where chess never got played much, but he took a liking to it. We’d pass time by playing chess, and he’d tell me about his girl back home, and I’d tell him about New Orleans. The more he heard, the more he liked it, so when we got discharged, I hooked him up with a job in the city.

New Orleans is a beautiful town—you hear about wild nights and gators and voodoo, but that’s all just cream and sugar. New Orleans is hot music and spicy food, heart and soul, coffee and chess. Nothing like it anywhere else in the world.

Charlie took up the clarinet for kicks and played with a combo Thursday nights at a little bar down the road from Tulane. Me and Sharon would meet Rachel there every once in a while and just listen to him. After Rachel died, though, Charlie quit playing. His boys would come home over Christmas and beg him to play some Dixieland for the grandkids, but he wouldn’t do it; once you stop playing, you lose your chops.

He never quit playing chess, though. There’s no game like chess: at first it seems you’ve got an infinite number of moves you can make from one turn to the next—you can do anything. But the further you get into the game, the more you realize there’s a method to it. So you try to think five or six moves down the road, and you try to think of all the tricks ole Charlie might pull on you. With a little luck, you pull a few tricks of your own and Charlie buys the next round of café au lait.

You never quite master chess; you just enjoy it. You’re there hovering over the table, watching it unfold like the whole universe is coming into being and then coming to its end. And it just makes sense as you watch it, even if you’re bewildered by it. No matter how hard the game gets, you know each piece has its spot and every ending, even when you lose, is a happy one.

Once I got “retired,” me and Charlie added a Wednesday game. Sharon didn’t seem to mind, and Charlie was kind enough to buy the beignets. Then, of course, the hurricane hit. Wasn’t the first, probably won’t be the last, but Katrina did a number on us in 05. Beat us in one move, like a bunch of tourists! Me and Sharon were able to salvage the house, but once Charlie’s castle came down he just gave up. We all left town, but Charlie never came back.

He’s up in Chicago with his oldest now. We talk every once in a while, and once a month I send him a can of coffee and chickory—best coffee in the world. One cup keeps your mind sharp; helps you plan your next move. And with all the changes that hit you when you least expect it, you need all the help you can get.

Me, I’m here for life. This is my home—no place like it in the world. Life’s gotten me into check once or twice before, but I just keep on playing. I come down here Sundays and sit here at me and Charlie’s table, sipping my café au lait, waiting for a rival. Four moves or four hundred—doesn’t matter; I’m just looking for a happy ending.

***

I'm busily preparing to give four talks at a high school retreat in Alaska next month. I'm really looking forward to it, although I think November in Alaska qualifies as "off-season." My theme is "We Could Be Heroes," which has been a recurring theme for me for the past two years because of the book. But I think it's a good theme for kids--who wouldn't want to be a hero? Who knows what a hero really is?

Chez Lounge

The other night I was driving home and saw a neighbor doing something that I absolutely hate doing, and yet I was jealous of him. He was sitting comfortably on a chair on his sidewalk spraying his lawn. He had achieved serenity, shalom, nirvana, whatever you want to call it. Even his labor was leisure.

Let me clarify: I don't hate sitting comfortably, I hate spraying my lawn. It smacks of waste and futility--waste because I'm doing what God meant for rain to do, futility because grass withers in my presence. Right now I'm watering twice a day everyday because our wildflower garden, which supplanted our above-ground pool, has been supplanted by what we hope will one day soon be grass. It's a faint hope, though, since I killed the pool and wrecked the wildflower garden.

As a result, most of my thoughts while watering are occupied not with hope but with grumblings of how I might otherwise spend my time. I could be writing or serving the poor, although more likely I'd be quoting the Lemonheads: "What if something's on TV and it's never on again?" On the surface of things, to be condemned to sit in a chair watering my lawn for the rest of eternity would be, for me, like an eternity of wailing and grinding teeth. I looked at that guy in his khaki shorts and his long black socks and his fishing cap and Hawaiian shirt, and I thought, That dude is lazy. But then I thought, That dude is lucky.

I'm reminded of Frederick Buechner, whose definition of sloth is hanging on the wall of my office, just high enough that I don't have to see it every day:

Sloth is not to be confused with laziness. A lazy man, a man who sits around and watches the grass grow, may be a man of peace. His sun-drenched, bumblebee dreaming may be the prelude to action or itself an act well worth the acting. A slothful man, on the other hand, may be a very busy man. He is a man who goes through the motions, who flies on automatic pilot. Like a man with a bad head cold, he has mostly lost his sense of taste and smell. He knows something's wrong with him, but not wrong enough to do anything about. Other people come and go, but through glazed eyes he hardly notices them. He is letting things run their course. He is getting through his life.

So if that guy's lazy, then I'm a ten-toed sloth.

Dirty Thoughts

Yesterday I bought dirt. Again. The only redeeming value of buying dirt is that it gives me the opportunity to revisit one of my favorite SD posts of all time: Dirt Cheap. Hope you like it.

If you don't like it, try this link to a very clever revisioning of the movie The Shining. Proof that perspective does count for something.

INXS Through the Out Door

Well, I can't say that INXS's pick for lead singer was my last choice, but J. D. Fortune certainly wasn't my first or even second choice. Last night was the finale, and since Jordis was eliminated a few weeks ago, I was eager to see Marty take the reins. He sang "Don't Change"--the second INXS song I ever heard but perhaps first in my heart--and ruined me for any other INXS lead singer. Tremendous. Marty is from Chicago, which makes him a local hero, so I'm hoping his band will get picked up so I can get his song "Trees" out of my head and on to the radio.

Brooke Burke, with characteristically little emotion, invited viewers to sign up for the next season of Rock Star, but I'm racking my brain to figure out what big-name band needs a new lead singer. Maybe the Ramones? Maybe the Clash? Maybe, however, some band will take advantage of this opportunity to give their current front person the boot. Therefore, I invite you to nominate bands that need a new lead singer, whether they know it or not.

INXS in Excess

This summer INXS is doing what it's always done pretty well: overexpose themselves. Three nights a week we're called upon to watch Rock Star: INXS, as admittedly talented singers perform an odd range of songs on the slim chance that INXS--and America with them--will give them a steady gig. Every week one or sometimes two people are eliminated from the competition for the lead singer spot, and between performances we're shown the rigors of band-leading--from choosing whether you should wear a boa and which one goes with your stilettos, to how you can protect your voice well into your thirties. Meanwhile we observe what's come to be considered normal on reality television: interpersonal conflict, trauma and corresponding drama, and back-stabbing hypocrisy.

We're narrated through this rock-n-roll ropes course by Dave Navarro, himself the master of overexposure both literal and figurative, and Brooke Burke, who never quite adds enough edge to the "edgy" lines she's fed by the teleprompter.

I've never watched American Idol, and I swore I wouldn't watch Rock Star, but I found it almost impossible not to. The only time Rock Star was taken off the air earlier this summer was to make room for CSI something-or-other and advertisements for Rock Star. So I've been watching it, and I admit that there's a steady stream of good musical performances that span the years and genres of rock music, right up to the present. For every Beatles or David Bowie song, for example, there's a Hoobastank or Franz Ferdinand song not far behind. And occasionally you'll even hear a song by INXS.

I should say that I've always liked INXS. I liked INXS while my brother and sister were busy liking Duran Duran. I have Shabooh Shoobah on vinyl and Kick on tape, I went all the way to Nebraska to see them in concert, and I even bought the album MaxQ for kicks. (The reason you haven't heard of this side-project from their lead singer is because I bought the only copy.) But since the death of Michael Hutchence the band has been quiet, and their songs have gone by the wayside.

Now with Rock Star I'm able to imagine INXS with another bandleader--a woman, perhaps, or an African American, or a southern rock junkie. Or at least I'm invited to try and imagine it. INXS was a band of a distinct era, and for all its coherence as a band (they dress completely alike throughout the interior photos of Welcome to Wherever You Are, and inside Shabooh Shoobah we see the band lying naked together under a teeny tiny sheet), Hutchence was the quintessential lead singer. Distinctive voice, distinctive swagger--he was even talked about to play icon Jim Morrison in the film The Doors. So whoever wins this thing had better be something distinctive.

Consider, for example, other bands who have had to replace their lead singer. Natalie Merchant was replaced by 10,000 Maniacs with someone who sounded eerily like Natalie Merchant. Queen finally recoiled from the death of Freddie Mercury by tapping a lesser light from the same era: Paul Rodgers, formerly of Bad Company and Free. And neither group has reached their previous heights of fame. By contrast, drummer Dave Grohl mourned the death of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and then moved on, fronting the profoundly successful Foo Fighters himself.

INXS has hype going for them, but I wonder if they've thought this through. For one thing, they're subjecting their new lead singer to weeks of very public humiliation, not the least of which is having to perform his or her heart out while they sit in the back row with legs crossed and sunglasses on, complaining about being too "pitchy." By the end of this game, everyone will have an opinion about who should be INXS's lead singer, but only one-sixteenth of them will be happy about who will front the band.

Or consider this: INXS, a family band to be sure (three of them are brothers), will have as its figurehead the neophyte they've been systematically deconstructing for a whole summer. Are they ready to be led by their new lead singer? Are they ready to perform songs written by him or her? Ready to travel in the musical direction their new lead singer takes them? They're a family band, but they're sticking their most prominent member at the kiddy table, and that kind of disparity is no way to build trust or community.

I'm hopeful for INXS. Michael Hutchence was in no way the only great talent in the band, and if they have more music in them, more power to them. But for the sake of INXS, their new lead singer, and the scores of rock bands eager to follow them into reality TV land (I'll give odds on Rock Star: Genesis but not on Rock Star: Nirvana), I hope they'll turn the cameras off for a while and spend some quality time with their newest family member.

So many songs, such a little coupon

Congratulations to me! Simply for spending a boatload of cash on groceries, I've earned five song downloads (that's like a free $5 bill, people!). Now I just need to decide which five songs to download. I'm open to suggestions, so start posting now.

Thanks,
Dave

Consumerism Will Eat Itself

by David A. Zimmerman

I’ve seen a lot of things, but until recently I’d never seen a giant get waylaid by a dwarf. That’s just what happened in my local Walgreens parking lot not too long ago.

OK, just to clarify: when I say “local Walgreens,” I mean one of the three Walgreenses within a short bike ride of my house. And when I say “a short bike ride,” I by no means am saying that I actually ride my bike there. I have a bike but only recently purchased a bike lock, which I have used as my chief excuse for driving all over Lombard and surrounding territories when I could just as easily walk.

I also didn’t see an actual giant or an actual dwarf. Walgreens wasn’t offering a drive-in showing of The Lord of the Rings. Actually I was watching a massive SUV wrestle with, and lose to, a mini-shopping cart.

It started out innocently enough: the driver hiked the long climb from the ground to the driver’s seat of his suburban tank, and in the interest of efficiency pulled forward rather than back out of his parking space. Trouble is, parked immediately in front of his truck was a cute little shopping cart—one of those junior models that fit in the narrow aisles of your local Walgreenses. As the SUV made contact, the cart toppled, as might have been expected. But instead of being crushed (as might have been expected) the cart attached itself to the ramming bars on the front of the SUV and refused to let go.

The driver tried to break free by driving back and forth for a little bit, but eventually he had to admit temporary defeat. He put the truck in park and rappelled down to the parking lot and hiked around to the front bumper, where he and I assessed the situation.

Proposed solution 1: Driver lifts the truck, I pull the cart out from underneath.

Proposed solution 2: Driver wiggles the cart until it breaks free from the truck.

Proposed solution 3: Driver lifts the truck, I pull the cart out from underneath.

By this time my groceries were starting to spoil and I was getting bored. I also got the sneaking suspicion that the driver was blaming me for my lack of ingenuity while he was hoisting the car two centimeters above its resting position. Fortunately for our relationship, however, two other guys noticed our dilemma and came over to try out

Proposed solution 4: Driver plus two others lift the truck, I pull the cart out from underneath.

Proposed moral 1: Bigger isn’t necessarily better.

Proposed moral 2: Consumerism will eat itself.

Proposed moral 3: “In the abundance of counsel there is wisdom”

“Many hands make light work”

Being naturally geeky myself, I’m partial to proposed moral 2.

***

Next week I'm the MC and songleader for our church's Vacation Bible School. I'm nervous--kids are a tough crowd for me. But we'll have a strong police presence, I'm sure.

The week after that is the Wizard World Chicago Comic Book Convention. I get to go and sit at a booth and (I hope) serve as chaplain for the event. Can't wait to take someone's confession . . .

Go in peace.

Dave

Twenty-First Century Mullett

I woke up this morning wondering if the Caesar cut will one day be counted as the twenty-first century equivalent of the mullet. I'm very concerned about this; I've been wearing a Caesar cut for more than a decade now, and really, how long can a hairdo inspired by George Clooney continue to satisfy the American public?

Confessions of an Annoying Theater Goer

It's now been thirteen hours since I started watching Batman Begins last night. I know because I forgot to turn my timer off. I turned my PDA's timer on during the movie so I could reference scenes in a project I'm working on, with the added benefit that the glow from my PDA illuminated the page of notes I was taking.

So there I sat, in the center of the theater, munching on the ice from my Pibb X-tra, glowing, scribbling, crossing and uncrossing my legs. My friend leaned over and said, "Any way you could reduce the backlight on your PDA?" "Oops," I said.

My friend gave voice to what I'm now certain the people around me and perhaps throughout the theater were thinking: That guy sure is bright. Or more likely, come to think of it: That guy sure is annoying.

Technically, I had not violated any commonly held theater etiquette: My cell phone wasn't on, I wasn't kicking the seat of the person in front of me, I wasn't yelling at Bruce Wayne to watch out for that ninja! But I was annoying nonetheless. And for that I apologize to my friend and all his fellow theatergoers.

Revenge of the Sith

I finally saw Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, and though I enjoyed it, I experienced it more as a homework assignment that I turned in about thirty years late than as the blockbuster hit of the summer. Besides, everybody knows that Batman Begins is the the best prequel and true blockbuster hit of the summer.

Come on, you know it's true.

The Final Word

by David A. Zimmerman

I’ve never thought of myself as pollyanic or even optimistic. I think it’s fair to say that I’m more like Eeyore than Tigger. As my sainted daddy always says, “An optimist can never be pleasantly surprised.”

Nevertheless, I don’t think I’m alone in wanting a happy ending. You invest your time in a book or a film or a conversation, and you expect that you’ll walk away from such an encounter with a positive feeling toward it. The hero will ride off into the sunset with newfound love riding alongside. The city will be at rest, now safe from its most recent and all future threats. Your friend will wrap things up with a “Nice talking with you. See you real soon.”

Even confessional conversations and all-too-real documentaries and nonfiction treatises end best when ended on a hopeful note: “Americans are too fat . . . Here are some suggestions for how we can all lose some weight.” “Bless me father for I have sinned . . . Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.”

So imagine my disappointment when I turned today to the last page of a four-hundred page tome about the role of myth in culture and read eagerly to the final word: “despair.”

Despair?!? Are you kidding me?!? What kind of ending is that?!? There’s not even nobility tucked into the word despair. You can read A Tale of Two Cities, get to the last page to witness an execution and still walk away hopeful, even inspired:

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known."

The End

But walk away with the sound of “despair” still ringing in your ears, and whatever you hear next will carry its taint.

Giving despair the final word doesn’t just say something about a book or a movie or a relationship, it says something about our world. You’ve summed up existence in seven letters; you’ve given the worst benediction ever. The end of one thing is of course the beginning of the next, so to end so hopelessly is to infect your future with hopelessness.

Some assign that kind of hopelessness to death: the ultimate last word. In death we rot, we fade away; all that we’ve spent ourselves on over the course of our life comes to nothing. Death as the last word is a terribly unhappy ending, particularly because it wasn’t intended from the beginning of the story. Death entered the world as a plot point with the rebellion of humanity against its creator, and now death comes to all as we reap what we have sown.

But death has ceased to be the final word in Christian theology. Resurrection serves as an epilogue to death; in rising from death Jesus defeats it and removes its sting. Death is no longer an end but a beginning. Our heroes live happily ever after.

There. I feel better. Despair shouldn’t be allowed to get the final word, and we are good editors who steer the storytellers among us toward a more hopeful finish.

If we can’t bring ourselves to end on a hopeful note, maybe it’s enough to leave our story unfinished, and wait for the climax to be revealed to us. The Bible, of all things, ends on such a note of anticipation, after a thousand pages of staring despair square in the face and daring to hope:

Amen. Come Lord Jesus.

The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.

Now that’s a good book. I know, cheesy. But I feel better.

Spam of the Year

I got an e-mail today that I'd like to nominate for Spam of the Year. It's artful with just a hint of dementia, and it contains no vulgarities or sales pitches for mortgage refinancing or body enhancement. There's probably some kind of viral worm coursing through my computer as I type this, but this spam may be worth it to me.

If you think you have something better, feel free to post a comment. Just keep it clean, is all I ask.

***

In the middle of the night, I was walking by the sea, and baby baluga jumped out from amongst the bushes. SO one day Mr. Gregor exclaimed "Why do skater normals have no preppy either?!?!?!" So I wanted to watched. or Maybe if I wanted to watch it then I had a dream that countless historian lost their credit but i dont Remember what it was. I don't like you but can I have your autograph. No one wants your autograph so I started to cry in the pizza shop. Where did Ryan go? He must have moved to Ohio.

***

If you know where Ryan went, let us all know. Thanks!

Old Friends

I’m getting old. I can see it and even feel it—the grey nose hairs, the popping joints and the intermittent back spasms. But more than the physical indicators that I’m getting old, I’m getting signals that I’m getting old from all the young people around me. I’ve very nearly reached the age of irrelevance.

You may think me inordinately morose—a coworker of mine told me I have plenty of good years ahead of me—but demographically speaking, turning thirty is tantamount to a kiss of death. You switch from MTV to VH1, and you’re well on your way to NPR. You switch from Sunny D to V8, and Metamucil is starting to sound sensible.

For those of us who try to stay hip, we find that twenty-somethings look at us funny every time we name-drop: “Hey, have you heard that new Coldplay song?” And just in case you’re not conscious of this shift, you get all kinds of reminders from the annoyingly young. Joan Girardi, the title character of the TV show Joan of Arcadia, took a cold shot while lamenting her own aging process: “I’m seventeen years old—that’s half the age of a really old person.”

For all you math fans out there, here’s what the equation looks like:

17 x 2 = Really Old Person
17 x 2 = 34
Dave = 34
Dave = Really Old Person

I’m comforted by the knowledge that I’m not alone in feeling old. Liz Phair, who was hip way back in 1991 and continues to be one of those names I occasionally drop, is feeling her age a bit. She wrote a song about being in her thirties and dating a college boy. One line spells it out in large print: “Your record collection don't exist / You don't even know who Liz Phair is.”

I’m also comforted by the fact that although I’m ancient in the eyes of the young, in the mind of America’s founding fathers I’m very nearly the age at which I can be trusted to run the country. For you math fans out there, here’s another equation to play around with:

17 x 2 = Really Old Person
Really Old Person +1 = 35
35 < Absolute Political Power

So, although I have virtually no chance of actually being elected president, I am now only two months away from having at least potential access to absolute political power. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Joan Girardi.

Lately, though, what’s comforted me more than anything is the relatively new presence in my life of old friends. Until last year, I went to a church that helped people to build relationships by grouping them demographically: married couples were introduced to married couples, retirees were introduced to retirees, and so on. If someone fell outside your principal demographic, they were effectively invisible to you within the confines of the church.

My new church is small enough, though, that it would be silly to group people so narrowly. As a result, I recently spent three months in a discussion group with people who were twice my age. I felt like a student, except that I was treated as an equal. We talked about health and loneliness and family, as I’ve done with my demographic peers in the past, except that these discussions came from a completely different frame of reference. I found myself with a different outlook: in the past I’ve dwelled on my youth and consequently I’ve feared aging; in this group I looked forward and saw people experiencing life in all its fullness, and aging lost a bit of its sting.

Since our group disbanded, one of my old friends was sent to a hospital, and I had my first inkling that I will over time watch many of my loved ones get sick and eventually die—some sooner than others. But the older we get, the more we understand that dying is OK; God uses death to usher his people into a life without tears, fulfilling the vague longing that’s followed us throughout life.

This awareness of death eludes the young but regularly tests the faith of the old, and in that respect having old friends is like a spiritual discipline: none of us is immune from death, and the sooner we face up to that the sooner we can make our peace with God and get on with living.

***

Mark your calendars: Batman Begins hits theaters June 15; Fantastic Four hits theaters July 8. For a guy who's inexplicably enamored with superheroes, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . .

Ducks & Cover

By David A. Zimmerman

You hear some stories and you feel compelled to comment. Forgive me . . .

Arkansas attorney Ben Lipscomb decided recently, as he is given to do, to spend the day duck hunting with his friends and his beloved dog. Eventually he separated from his friends to find more ducks to shoot. He hit the gold mine—ducks to his left, ducks to his right, ducks above and all around him. He just kept turning in circles, shooting and reshooting, while his dog retrieved his bounty for him. By the time he hit the legal limit of dead ducks, however, he had turned so many times that he couldn’t tell where he had come from.

He couldn’t find his friends, and they couldn’t find him. All he had was his dog, some dead ducks, a rifle and the clothes he was wearing—camouflage hunting gear over bright white unmentionables. He ate a duck raw to stave off his hunger, he sloshed through the ice-cold waters to find some indicator of the way he should go, his dog barked intermittently to draw someone’s attention to his plight. But no luck—they had been left behind.

The hunter’s friends, realizing the problem, had returned to their car and called emergency services for help. So began the manhunt. Helicopters flew overhead in crisscross patterns trying to find this solitary hunter somewhere in the expansive hunting grounds. They actually flew directly over him a number of times during the search, but they couldn’t see him, despite his jumping, waving and shouting, for, you see, he was wearing camouflage.

The purpose of camouflage is to conceal its wearer so that no one can see him (or her, I suppose, although I don’t recall ever seeing a woman decked out in cammies from head to toe). In this case, the camouflage did its job too well: Ben Lipscomb was in danger of being hidden to death.

What would you do? Our hero came up with an idea that sounds as insane as it was pure genius: He took off his clothes.

Underneath the camouflage, as I mentioned, was a pair of bleach-white underwear. Lipscomb dropped his hip waders, ripped the underwear from his waist, tied the undies to the barrel of his rifle, and waved his makeshift flag as the helicopter was making another pass. Presumably he paused to pull his hip waders back up.

His trick worked. The Arkansas State Police spotted his flag and made a beeline for his briefs. Shortly thereafter, he was out of the woods.

Fortunately for Lipscomb, he was smart enough to wear white at night; camouflage underwear, while undeniably stylish, serves no real purpose and, as we learn from this story, could very well kill you.

If that moral to the story doesn't do it for you, try following one of these two paths:

1. At a certain point, concealing your true self becomes counterproductive.
2. When you’re wading through the muck, and you’ve had your fill of duck, stick close to your friends or you’ll be out of luck. (That's about as far as I've yet been able to take this soon-to-be-famous country song. If you have an idea for another verse, post a comment; note that I have yet to use the phrase "pick-up truck.")

***

I've had the opportunity recently to talk to a lot of people about my book Comic Book Character, although people seem quite a bit more interested in talking about my spandex body suit. If you want to talk comic books or superhero movies or how someone who believes in God could waste their time on such silly fantasy stories, shoot me an e-mail at dzimmerman@ivpress.com.

Yoga Ate My Socks

Fair warning: I'm about to reveal some of the secret wisdom of the Eastern art of yoga.

Secret one: when stretching your chi, wear something—anything—other than blue jeans. They’re a bit, um, bindy.

Secret two: no pair of socks can survive a vigorous round of yoga.

I learned both these lessons the hard way—on the dilapidated tennis court of a New Mexico retreat center, surrounded by emerging leaders of the American church. My trip was a crosscultural experience, a trip from the suburbs into the land of granola, soy nuts and urban mission.

I was introduced as “the Establishment”—which I suppose is true, though the label left me a bit queasy. I was invited to get out of my head and into my body—which I suppose is an apt prescription, though I hadn’t exactly packed for such a course of treatment.

I had expected, I think, to play with my hacky sack a lot, to beam things back and forth on my PDA, to hawk my book (due in next week! Only $12!), to talk about pop culture and to stay up really late each night.

Instead I learned right away that these people weren’t kidding around. I was with folks who saw a gap between what we profess and how we think and behave. And they’re doing something about it. Some choose to live with the homeless. Others pool their resources so there will be no poor among them. Some are reexamining what Jesus said and adapting their stance toward culture and the church accordingly. Others are recalibrating their faith so it is centered in their bodies rather than their brains.

All this came to a head for me as I prayed through the Lord’s prayer, moving from Lotus through Upward Dog and finally to Rag Doll—or something like that. I was short of breath due to the high altitude and sweaty like a pig due to my poor fitness. That’s not how I usually pray; I usually pray between sips of cappuccino while lounging on my love seat with my feet in slippers and my cat on my lap. No sweat.

There’s something to be said for sweaty, breathless praying, though. Talking to God can seem to be such an abstraction, really the most unusual thing about believing in God altogether. Embodying my prayer that day was, in a word, stretching.

I've since imagined yoga routines for the Doxology and Psalm 23, and I'm gearing up for St. Francis’s Canticle of the Sun. And I’ll do all these things just as soon as I finish my cappuccino.

And once I get myself some proper yoga pants.

And I should probably invest in some new socks while I’m at it.

***

Going to Dallas for Thanksgiving? Stop by the Logos Bookstore at 1:30pm Friday, November 26, so I can meet you and so you can see the fly flip animation in my new book.

Dallas a little inconvenient for you? Try the Borders Bookstore in Wheaton, Illinois, on Tuesday, December 7, at 7:30pm.

More to come . . .

Ticked Off

By David A. Zimmerman

Part of my church’s ministry to the community these days is a program called Alpha. If it were a macro in Microsoft Word, it would look a little something like this:

For n = 1 to 15
1. Enjoy a meal together.
2. Sing together.
3. Watch a forty-five-minute video together.
4. Talk together.
Next
End

As weird as that may seem to you, it’s pretty standard stuff. Ask any programmer. The really weird thing about the program is that the speaker on the video is British. Now, I don’t hold it against anyone for being British, but they shore do talk funny. It’s cute, in a way, like watching public television on Sunday nights.

My line of work puts me in contact with lots of British books. For roughly the same amount of time that I’ve been going through Alpha, I’ve been busy translating two British books from English to English. As weird as that may seem to you, it’s pretty standard stuff. British grammar, for example, calls for single quotation marks around quoted material: ‘Four score and seven years ago’. It also calls for terminating punctuation (that’s “periods” for all you laypeople) to be placed outside quotation marks, as you can see in the same quoted material above. To translate the phrase from English into English, then, I would render it thus: “Eighty-seven years ago.”

Subtle, I know. It can take some time, but in general most English-to-English translation is relatively straightforward. Where it gets dicey is in the arena of idiom.

British people call the subway the ‘tube’. They call the bathroom the ‘wc’. They call a line a ‘queue’ or something like that. They say things like ‘quite right’ and ‘tally ho’ and ‘jolly well good’. None of these has a direct equivalent in English. It’s my job to decipher their meanings and make them meaningful to American readers.

I find myself applying this skill to my experience at Alpha. The most notorious example thus far comes when the speaker starts talking about lists. Several things on his lists have invariably been ‘ticked off’, which seems on the surface to be unlikely—unless, I suppose, his list included the job of ‘ticking off my American audience’, for example.

For Americans, intentionally ticking something or someone off is offensive, a willful act of malice. For a British speaker to go around ticking things off so ca