A Still Life

After a couple of weeks of taking time to tend to private concerns, my focus is returning to routine and life before me. I’m sitting in my living room with flavors of Thanksgiving still lingering and signs of Christmas emerging. I’m thumbing through this great family Advent book for creative practices to embrace in our home and in the Church. Just as surely as the catalogs keep arriving, talk of toy wish lists continue growing. While it may be altogether age-appropriate and not-at-all unusual, I find myself in a hurry to move past our son’s Christmas greed and get to the part where he naturally skews toward generosity and compassion. But if that’s a discipline I am still striving to embrace, then of course I am foolish to expect this young child to arrive at my own sought after destination.

I move toward embracing such ways of moving and being by reading words like those from this friend and of the actions of these activist heroes. Our family moves toward embracing such ways by welcoming neighbors for a long, leisurely meal instead of participating in Black Friday shenanigans. Let’s be honest, I have my own wish list of stuff even when I kid myself into thinking otherwise. I move toward a way of generosity and compassion when I unexpectedly receive that care from others. Recently, upon returning from a long trip, I was welcomed home by the fairy friends who crept into my house with savory soup, amazing floral arrangements, fresh rosemary bread, and a divine mac & cheese. These friends become heroes, too, and they remind me of a way that really can be lived right here and right now.

This time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not just an in-between time or a countdown to festive celebration, it’s an opportunity to move between gratitude and living a life shaped by the perspective that true gratitude brings. In some ways, the anticipation of Advent is also anticipation of the life of gratitude and compassion I hope to one day fully embody. Can any of us ever fully embody it? Not yet. We sit in a perpetual before but work toward the goal, nonetheless. I am glad to sit in this season of gratitude for just one more day before the excitement and intentionality of Advent begins. One more slice of pumpkin pie, one more day of leisure and rest, and one more day to savor the moments that really matter.

As I said the other day, I have at least half a dozen posts swirling in my head from my nine day trip. It was part annual conference and part family visit with a dash of vacation. My mother flew up from Alabama to drive the first leg of the trip with me, and she lovingly kept the kids for me while I participated in the meeting. After a few days, she flew back home, then my husband flew to meet us. We then drove across another state to meet up with his folks who had driven and flown to the family home near Aiken, South Carolina. That’s a lot of miles by car and by plane. That’s a lot of gas to fuel those cars and those planes.

As we drove the hours and hours on four different interstates, I watched the big-rigs drive by. These giant trucks weave in and out of traffic, they have special detour stations, gigantic fueling depots, and even their own special billboards marketing to their on-the-road sexual impulses. As I continue to grieve for the Gulf, my home, I watched these trucks and deeply felt my participation in oil dependence as each rig passed. Clearly, I am only willing to modify my life in minor ways to decrease the amount of petroleum I wittingly consume. I am trucking along on those highways just like the giant containers of mostly useless and unnecessary items that are passing by on those same roads.

My Love, the environmental conservationist, and I talked about this irony as we drove the 10 hours home in our non-hybrid (but decent MPG) car. So many people see only the overt ways we participate in oil consumption and give little thought to the subtle ways oil consumption creeps into our daily lives. Friends often roll their eyes when I start talking about the products I won’t buy, the distance I won’t drive around town, the suburbs I try to avoid and wish not to contribute my tax dollars, and the fact that I willingly pay more to do my shopping all in one location. This is not an exercise in self-righteousness. I really am trying to get at something, well…righteous.

Lauren Winner was one of the keynotes speakers at the conference I attended, and several years ago she wrote a great little book called Mudhouse Sabbath. In it, she connects her Jewish roots to her practice of Christianity as she reflects on lessons learned in various Jewish practices. My observations on the road, not unique to this trip but magnified by the images in my head of the BP oil geyser, took me back to her chapter on kashrut/fitting food. Winner is linking faith food practices to Barbara Kingsolver’s work and writes (emphasis mine):

Why is Kingsolver so committed to this culinary calendar? Because shipping food from greenhouses around the world is America’s second-largest expenditure of oil. (The first, not surprisingly, is our daily reliance on cars.) As Kingsolver explains, ‘Even if you walk or bike to the store, if you come home with bananas from Ecuador, tomatoes from Holland, cheese from France, and artichokes from California, you have guzzled some serious gas.’ To eat seasonally (and locally) is to enact a politics of reduced consumption.

If I drive 30 minutes across town because I have some great coupons that save me a little cash, I need to be mindful that there are embedded costs I’m not considering. Am I driving alone in that car all those miles? What costs are hidden in the products I desire? And I’m only talking about oil consumption here. We could get detoured in conversations about car exhaust and waste, fairly traded and fairly grown products, and assorted other veins of equally important justice issues.

There’s always more I know I can do, and there are plenty of contradictory moments and purchases about my life. I admire my friends, a family of 5, who share one car and do a heckuva lot of walking. I admire my youngest brother who’s spending a few months studying with the good folks at Polyface Farms to learn first-hand about sustainable agriculture and healing the land. And if you’ve read much of this blog, you know I have great love for Rev. Billy and his choir who are presently raising funds to continue their fight against mountain top removal in Appalachia. At the very, very least, these friends and not-yet-friends have crept into my brain and set up camp. They are with me on the road as I ask new questions and embrace different ways of moving and being in this world. Always new questions to ask. Always new ways to discover.

I am enjoying this Spring; my soul needed it. We are playing in the soil just a little each day all around our home. We are learning how to grow from seed and how not to grow from seed. We are anticipating a bumper sunflower crop in addition to more zinnia, a growing perennial bed, reorganized herb garden, and the veggies awaiting planting this week.

Last week my schedule was overflowing with the goodness that was Virginia Baptist Women in Ministry’s annual Feast: festival of image, table, and word. Oh, to gather with so many lovely people was gift and nourishment and rest all at once.

Today my first post as a guest blogger is up on the new BWIM blog. I am excited to dream with passionate, creative women about new ways to share life thoughts, challenges, encouragement, and fresh ideas with each other. What does it look like to be a Baptist woman in ministry in this day? Why do organizations like BWIM and VBWIM matter for my life? The new blog offers a great answer.

Tomorrow I am leading my church’s monthly women’s group in a look at Earth Day and care for all creation. There are so many great resources available, and I am having such fun thinking of ways to connect this and this and this.

Oh, there’s so much more, but that’s enough for your and my reading pleasure. Happy Tuesday to you.

I have many thoughts brewing this morning about: this year’s Christmas with an almost-four-year-old, the pornographic toy catalogs that raid my mail chute each day to seduce our imaginations away from the mystery of the Christ child’s birth, the failure of an attempt to express my hopes and feelings to some family who find me eccentric and over-the-top for challenging the culture’s ways.  

Rev. Billy blogged in the wee hours before heading out to witness before the crowds at Macy’s as he and the choir testify to another way of experiencing the upcoming holiday season: time not stuff, love not plastic, less not more.  While I often write and preach about the influence of the dominant culture on our lives and faith, he refers to the push of the demon monoculture.  It’s a push and swell to move us all into one homogenized mold of stuff stuff stuff same same same–from the big box stores to the uniform, McMansion suburbs.

I traveled to Appalachia almost two years ago and spent about twelve days going up and down mountains with a group of seminarians to learn about the unique culture of western North Carolina.  I read about snake handlers and mountain religion, I anticipated folk art and handmade wears, and I imagined standing witness to great poverty as we encountered folks our nation used and forgot.  That Appalachia still exists, but it has satellite television.  Truly, the demon monoculture started creeping up the mountain through the air.  As my traveling companion and I drove up and up and up and around the bend, nearing our destination we saw it.  There, nestled against rocks, founded on land that was blasted flat with dynamite, was a Super Wal-Mart. The demon monoculture had climbed the mountain and unleashed its discount prices.  

Our immersion trip became one not of understanding the old ways, the preserved culture, but of asking how the not-from-heres had literally and metaphorically changed the landscape of an entire region. In other words, how was the demon monoculture erasing the existence of a people?

Rather than resting in warm beds or visiting with family over coffee, way too many Americans spent last night in line for cheap stuff they don’t need so they came be more like the person across the cul-de-sac.  My family is observing Buy Nothing Day today; a tiny push back against the lure of shiny and new in hopes we might be saved. Won’t you join us?

After I watched the film What Would Jesus Buy? with my husband, I became quite intrigued by the preacher-activist-evangelist-performer Reverend Billy.  In recent weeks, I have started following him on Twitter and have even joined The Church of Life After Shopping for their Sunday Hour of Power (really a half-hour of power) with Rev. Billy and his wife, Savitri D.  The more I learn about Rev. Billy and Savitri, the more fascinated I am by their methods and message.  The Rev. just ended a run for Mayor of New York in which he came in fourth of eleven candidates.  I so admire his ability to speak boldly to power and the unique voices he and Savitri offer to and against our dominant culture.  As with this post today, the Rev. speaks poetically not simply against consumerism but for (in the language of my faith tradition) abundant life.

Perhaps I am fascinated by this pair because of my own interests in the language and ways of consumption.  I look at the Christian church in the United States and am often sickened and saddened by our unquestioning loyalty to the dominant culture.  Rather than instinctively understanding that our loyalties belong to a kingdom not seen, we all-too-often march in step with the unimaginative rhythm of the marketplace.  

In preaching on forgiveness and reconciliation today, I noted: it is all too easy for us 21^st century Americans to look at Jesus and grace as just another commodity.  I HAVE forgiveness, I HAVE salvation. They’re MINE, and it’s your responsibility to go get YOURS.  That’s a sad, unfortunate manifestation of modern thinking in our culture.  We’ve missed the stuff of Jesus’ teaching when we think the language of faith, the Way that Jesus talked about, is just something else to possess and consume rather than a path for our transformation.  

I’m fascinated by movements that push against fierce autonomy and mindless consumption, advocating for interdependence in community and simpler life.  I’m also increasingly examining my faith tradition for ways in which we’ve lost our collective imagination and ways in which our practices and theology have been polluted by a toxic culture of plastic consumerism.  I want to find and use my own bold, prophetic voice to advocate for change, to shine light on places of injustice, to inspire and foster imagination, and to rediscover who we as a people (not just a smattering of individuals) could really be if we lived more in community and less on our own.  I am thankful on this day for discovering good folks who are doing this good work.