Sometimes It's Better to Receive Than to Give

We didn't do the whole presents thing this Christmas. And yes, I am bragging about how we survived Christmas without embracing the mass consumerism in which you probably indulged (*pursed lips, judgmental eyes*). No, not really. In fact, as much as I appreciate pure family and food, I do miss the childhood anticipation, the feeling that the one thing on my Santa list would set the world right if I found it under the tree, and the valuable lesson of the inevitable anticlimax. My pajamaed sisters and I would wake up at an hour most of us would not care to even know about and sing Christmas carols until my parents woke up. Then, with my dad's camera flashing, we would rush to the tree with only a millisecond to notice the beautiful store-front (or tree-front, to be more accurate) display that my mom had finished only three hours earlier. What followed was always carnage (or a massacre, to borrow my friend Sandra's phrase). No liturgy. No waiting while your little sister struggled with ribbons. Maybe we missed a valuable lesson in patience and delayed gratification, but we didn't miss out on those other things the gifts bring out in us - gratitude, appreciation and a real knowledge that, unlike the Santa myths, we were receivers, recipients of the blessed bounty of our parents' work and grace.

2011 has been a year of receiving. My family and I, offering very little (other than cute pictures of our daughter on Facebook), have been surrounded by givers. Friends helped us with housing in the States, family helped us with house and car in Germany, and this was after they helped us fly to Germany in style. We received babysitting, plenty of free meals and the time and room for both an Alpen vacation and further education. All the givers in our life had been given much, and they only gave inasmuch as they received. Now, I'm writing for free and teaching for pennies, hoping to carve out enough of a subsistence that we can be better givers ourselves. Whenever I get to that point, it will be riding on the backs of so many who gave to us.

We didn't do the present thing, because my family in the States decided to forgo presents and pitch in to fly us to Florida. So we had one big present, a sunshine holiday, family, lots of pictures and plenty of food. It's an appropriate final gift after a year of receiving. After all, Christmas celebrates the Word who was both with God and was God, becoming a gift for us. That's why Christians took the dark pagan solstice holidays anticipating the return of the light and transformed them into our own Christmas feast. We celebrate what the Apostle John calls this "the true light that gives light to everyone" who came into our world. To follow Jesus is a gift available to us all. It is well worth receiving. May you receive much in 2012, so that you may give.

Walkin' in a Summer Wonderland

We're here. My family and I escaped the darkness of Central Europe and their Christmas Markets to spend the Winter Solstice (and surrounding holidays) in sunny Orlando. I'm enjoying sunning myself in my flip flops, taking my daughter to the beach and sleeping with the fan on, but I've noticed something: Christmas can be a difficult time for Floridians. An overlooked aspect of all the cultural wars surrounding the holidays is how "northern-centric" most of the festivities are. We sit here in our lounge-chairs drinking pina coladas while holiday films and music paint an idyllic scenes of snow-covered houses, steaming hot cocoa and Tommy Hilfiger models sitting around the Christmas tree in comfy sweaters. We poor southern souls dream of a white Christmas, knowing that the only way we'll get one is if we go on a ski vacation. In this economy? Forget it. The rest of the country puts on their galoshes to go caroling in the snow with Tiny Tim before a hearty dinner of roast goose, and we're left out.

In order to combat this insidious anti-warm weather bias in our solstice festival culture, and in the classic American spirit of Christmas war retaliation, I'm going to re-write some holiday classics that visits the sunny side of the "most wonderful time of the year." Below are some attempts, but this is a work in process. Feel free to add your own suggestions.

Walkin' in a Sunshine Wonderland

Jet skis zoom, are you listenin'?
Flowers bloom, sunsets glistenin'
A beautiful sight, the tiki torch bright
Walkin' in a sunshine wonderland

Gone away, is well none of the birds
Here till March is the snowbird
He comes from New York
In a car full of torque
Walkin' in a sunshine wonderland

A Christmas Song

Shish kabobs roasting on an open fire
sunscreen covering your nose
Yuletide carols being sung by the pool
and folks dressed up like Michael Phelps

Everybody knows a palm tree and some mistletoe
Help make the season bright (not that the sun isn't bright enough already)
Tiny tots, with their cheeks all aglow
looks like we forgot the sun block

Jingle Bells

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle through the land
Oh what fun, it is to ride in a four-wheeler in the sand
(repeat)

Dashing o'er the beach
in an uninsured vehicle
by the waves we go
too hot to laugh, so we giggle...

Frosty

Frosty the snowman, shouldn't come to Orlando
In the summer swelt, the poor guy will melt...  hey, dibs on the pipe!

The Death of Someone Who Cared

In 1998, I spent a month in Bologna, Italy with Agape Europe, a Christian student group. When I shared this with an Italian friend a few months ago, she was surprised. The University of Bologna, she told me, had a reputation as a Communist stronghold and many there were decidedly anti-Christian. At the time, I was naive about the reputation and no one reacted to our message with hostility. But if I had known, it would not have discouraged me - quite the opposite, actually. Not because I enjoy antagonism - I'm the type of sensitive soul who wants everyone to play nice. But some things are important, and I'd rather discuss important matters with someone who passionately disagrees with me than with someone who just doesn't care.

Perhaps that's one reason why Christopher Hitchens' columns in Slate and Vanity Fair were appointment reading for me (the other two reasons are both his informed opinions on pretty much everything and the quality of his prose, agree or disagree), and it's why I join everyone who marks his death with sadness. It seems like every scribbler in the business has written an obituary of sorts (many of them are quite moving), but Michael Gerson of the Washington Post best expresses my thoughts as a believer:

(Hitchens) recognized that there is one argument worth having about religion: Is it true or false? The rest is sociology. Hitchens thought religion to be false and dangerous, but not trivial. This may help to explain the affinity of many believers for the world’s most articulate unbeliever. Hitchens took the largest questions seriously.

I find having a strong antithesis to my own views energizing. They force me to examine and explain, not in the face of a tract or a political advertisement, much less in the face of emotional pressure, but in the face of an intelligent person who has purposefully and thoughtfully rejected my worldview (I've even used this space to exercise a response to one of Hitchens' essays). And if we really believe in truth, in Ultimate Truth, then we have nothing to fear from this. The truth is our friend, my father likes to say. This isn't to say the world of apologetics isn't dangerous. It has teeth, and it's best to go in well-armed and well-education, in community and  in prayer. But if apologetics is dangerous, apathy is deadly. If Hitchens' polemics has caused more people to consider Ultimate Reality, then for that, we can raise our hats in appreciation. 

Learning Colors

My (almost) two year old has been working on her colors. Here's a conversation we had some time ago while on a walk:

Me: What color is that car?

Daughter: Blue!

Me: Hmmm... actually it's red. What color is the grass?

Daughter: Blue!

Me: mmm... actually the grass is green.

Daughter: Grass... green!

Me: Exactly. What color is that house?

Daughter: House... blue!

Me: mmm... well, the house is white.

A brief pause. We both look around.

Me: Ok, what color are papa's jeans?

Daughter: blue!

Me (in my best praising voice): Exactly! Very good!

She's getting better.

Hamburger! Cheeseburger! Wutburger!

Speaking of Christmas markets and meat, if I ever set up my own booth for all the holiday festivities, it would be an old-fashioned, American hamburger stand. I mean, other than McDonald's, Burger King, Starbucks, Hollywood, Friends, Sex in the City, 65% of everything else on TV, Coke, Sprite, (all you who bleed red, white and blue, start humming "America the Beautiful" here) Pepsi, binge-drinking college students, Subway, Kentucky Fried Chicken, women playing soccer, foreign policy, the Ford Focus, CNN International, Gangster Rap, Jack Daniels, the Twilight books, Cowboy films, Native American street musicians and several military bases, the Germans really don't get enough of the good ol' U. S. of A. It's a good thing I'm here.

I would name my stand "Wutburger," after the city of Stuttgart's own wutbürger, those brave citizens who have stuck it to the Man and his insidious plans to... let me check my notes - build a nuclear power plant? No, that's not it. Send German troops to war? hmmm... nope, that's not it. To use child labor pour nuclear waste into the Neckar river? Hmmm... nope. Ah, here it is: The Man's insidious plan is to... modernize Stuttgart's train station. The wutbürger have thwarted this dastardly scheme by camping out by the main train station for the past... how long? Well, at least since I've been here. You can almost hear Neil Young singing:

"There's something happening here
And what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man building a train station over there
and it might cost too much money to be worth it depending on who you ask..."

(In their defense, I should point out that the train deal was pretty shady and dishonest to begin with, and that the train station could cause damage to part of Stuttgart's historic garden. The frustration resulted in the reigning Christian Democrats being kicked out in the last election. We're now ruled by the Greens in partnership with the SPD, and I wish them all the best)

"Wutburger" is a wonderful word. Burger means citizen (this fact has done extensive damage to the transatlantic relationship, particularly at lunch time.

German diplomat: "We must ensure that our mutual economic policy is in the best interest of the burgers!"

American diplomat, drooling: "Mmmm.... burgers...")

Wut, pronounced "voot" is hard to translate into English, but it includes a distinctively German brand irate rage. You'll experience wut if you commit one of Germany's unpardonable sins, like walking in the bike lane or or driving on the sidewalk. (people are strict here!) If you'll take a comparison to American politics, the Wutburger combines the rage and demographics of the Tea Party with the politics of Occupy Wall Street. Thankfully, the German commitment to pacifism trumps even the most extreme cases of wut. Think peaceful, seething protests. Against train stations.

I'd name my burger stand for the Wutburger, because they've had a tough week. It seemed like a victory for them that the funding for the train station was put to a popular vote last Saturday. Alas, democracy revealed that their "people's voice" didn't actually represent the people. The citizens of Baden Wuerttemberg decidedly voted pro-train station, revealing either a state-wide love of trains or a deep-seated distrust of hippies. So to all the wutbürger: you fought the good fight. Put your plackets in the recycling bin. Roll up your tents. Come on down to the Christmas Market and enjoy something hot off the grill. Yes of course there's a vegetarian option.

My "Wutburger" hamburger stand would feature the following culturally relevant offerings:

1. The original Wutburger - When I think of wut, I think of spice. Yes, the wutburger would be covered in Dave's Insanity hot sauce and feature several of those chilli peppers that even burn your skin. Why? You know what's worse than the Man building a train station? The Man building a train station while your tongue is touching the sun.
   
2. The Swabianburger - This burger may look modest on the outside, but the quarter pound beef patti will be covered with spaetzle, lentels and brown sauce. Eating the burger change your pronunciation so that your "s" sounds like "sh", cause you to keep your steps swept clean and give you a better taste in automobiles.
   
3. The Berlinburger - Like the city it's named after, this burger is poor but sexy. Poor because it's made from grade "F" canned ground beef. Sexy because it's covered in curry ketchup (hey, it's what they eat up there, so it must be sexy). Instead of a bun, you get two jelly donuts. Being the cheapest burger among the menu, it will be the most popular among Swabians, which causes resentment (even wut) among actual Berliners.
4. The Bavarianburger - The Bavarian is the most expensive burger on the menu. Not content with a simple beef patty, the Bavarian is augmented with sauerkraut additional meat, including three strips of bacon and a huge slab of pressed liverwurst. It's also covered in honey mustard and served with a liter of beer (two liters if you show up to the stand wearing lederhosen). Because the burger is rich, it's favored to win the Burgerliga every season, regardless of form from other burgers, and usually does so as long as the superstar meats don't quarrel (when they do, people roll their eyes and complain about the Hollywoodburger). It is therefore despised by every other burger on the menu, but let's be honest, it's the only burger that can consistently represent the Burgerliga in European competition.
5. The Frankburger - Covered in delicious green sauce and laced with Euro Notes.
   
6. The Ruhrburger - The proud burger of the mining industry, it actually consists of several small burgers combined to make the largest burger on the menu.
   
7. The Freiburger - Vegan, crunchy and only cooked in a solar power oven. Which is difficult in December.
   
8. The Hannoverburger - The only burger on the menu that speaks Hochburger.
   
9. The Cologneburger - Chances are, you've already seen this burger on TV.
   
10. The Dusselburger - A more expensive version of the Cologneburger.
    
11. The Hamburger - A beef patty served on a bun with pickles, lettuce and tomatoes. Hey, what were you expecting?
12. The Buffettburger - Lettuce and tomato, Heinz 57 and french-fried potatoes.
    

The Corner of the Christmas Market

I am so thankful for Christmas markets. You have no idea. They're like warm little campfires, providing a homey glow in the dark, German December. It's dark here for this Orlando boy. The sun rises in part of the South and sets in another part of the South, never having the courage to muster more than a 9:30am light. At 4:30pm, when the sun leaves its last pink kiss on a southbound cloud, I feel as though someone owes me something.

This, of course, balances itself out in June, where the sun is less like Apollo and more like Aphrodite: standing in all her glory, not just beauty herself, but shining on the world to make every part of it lovely, all the way to 10:30 at night when she finally lets the stars join the party. In any case, a little glühwein with friends under golden lamps at the Christmas market helps me forget how much I miss the summer. Thank you, Germany, for your Christmas markets.

On the first day of Advent, my wife, daughter and I decked ourselves in layers of cloth and went down to Plochingen's Christmas Market. I tend to like the small-town Christmas markets more than the huge ones like in Nuremberg. The big ones get repetitive – the same trinkets, sweets and glueweinstubes repeated checker-board style all over town. Small-town Christmas markets are quaint and lovely and you can see from one side to another and still not have the time for all the pleasure offered. We don't need Carnival. We need lights and lebkuchen and warm alcohol.

Even the small Christmas market is a bit overwhelming for my 23 month-old daughter. Crowds, people and scary bearded men. So I took her to the part I knew she would love: The corner of the Christmas market, a make-shift stable full of live animals. Beautiful fuzzy ponies (my daughter squealed and said “Donkey! Donkey!”) and cotton-back sheep, all hoping the visiting children would share their sweets. We petted a pony on the nose and fed grass to a sheep (no lebkuchen for you, wooly!), but then I noticed something else. Two cardboard cutouts of a man and a woman in robes and a discarded baby doll in the feeding tray.

These were, of course, the holy couple and the holy child, Mary, the virgin mother, and Joseph, her fiance, and their baby, Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. These poor cardboard figures leaned against the back of the stable as if waiting to be packed and recycled as holiday cards. Baby Jesus was half-covered with a blanket and looked like someone had tossed him in the manger from a distance of 40 feet. The holy family was thrown in there with so little love that I wondered if the whole purpose of this hesitant nod to religion was to keep Gramma from cussing without ruining the fun part. This was a stark contrast to the beautiful wooden manger scene front and center in Stuttgart's Christmas market (though I should point out that if German kitsch is to be believed, then our Lord was born with hair like Thomas Gottschalk). A starker contrast was the nativity scene I saw a long time ago in New York where I watched the Radio City Christmas Spectacular featuring the Rockettes. It was pimp my manger, baby, with golden stars and lucky charms, live camels and (I'm almost certain) live angels. Heaven on earth, right before the Rockettes came out and kicked their pretty legs. Deh, deh, dah, deh, dada....

The Plochingen manger scene is more accurate. Discarded to the margins during a hectic season, Joseph and Mary were kicked to a cave (sorry folks, the hotel is booked!), great with child, where God would step into the world onto animal feed. The Eternal, now a helpless infant, not in the best American hospital money can buy, but wrapped in cloths and laid in a manger. I can tell my daughter that God was once a baby like her, learning to walk and speak and eat. I can remind myself that he was rejected from the beginning. Ignored and forgotten by all but a few shepherds, away from the city lights where they could hear the angels. For some reason, these shepherds believed their eyes and ears and ran to worship something that couldn't lift it's own head.

If you've ever felt rejection, if you've ever been forgotten, left out or ignored, then know that Jesus identifies with you. We Christians don't believe that God remained something distant, unwilling to be grasped or touched. Jesus came to earth and brought the Kingdom of Heaven very near. He felt every rejection, pain and temptation that we felt. And what's more, he took the rejection, pain and temptation that we inflicted (on him and others) upon himself. He died as we should have died, and Resurrected that we may live. That's why the old Christians took the darkest time of the year to celebrate his birth; when all hope is gone, God shines his light in the darkness, and the darkness cannot understand it.

Wherever you are this Christmas, in the darkened north or the sun-kissed south, remember the child. That vague, fuzzy feeling of Christmas some people talk about – there's something to that, but it should lead us to more. It should lead us to a specific point in history where a child was born and God filled his lungs with oxygen. Remember the child if you are lonely and rejected. Remember the child if you warm your body with glühwein while laughing with friends (I hope you can do that at least once this season) or while shopping out of love and obligation or while watching your favorite holiday flick. Remember the child, light of life, true God of true God, wrapped in cloths, placed in hay. It's too beautiful not to believe.

Sausage Salad

Just like the zombies, Germans like to eat brains on a plate. Ok, it's not actually brains. Sausage salad only looks like brains, spread neatly over a nice, round saucer and served with a slice of bread and a little bit of parsley.

I was first introduced... well, warned of sausage salad by an American colleague when I lived in Freiburg. That day, the University of Freiburg's cafeteria was serving the cold, pink, flimsy treat. "It's sooooo disgusting!" were my colleague's foreboding words. "They actually make sausage into a salad and eat it!" To my surprise, his words were true. We Amis opted for the schnitzel, but student after student hungrily accepted this pork wurst, sliced in strips, covered in vinegar and cheese and unceremoniously plopped in IKEA-like bowls. Hardly a student refused the "brains on a plate" - you'd had thought the cafeteria was giving away free beer. I didn't' eat very much that day. The cafeteria smelled even funnier than usual.

Some time later, I was walking the streets of Freiburg with a German friend who suddenly said, "man, I could really go for a delicious sausage salad right now." I nearly dropped my backpack. "You really like sausage salad?" I asked, hoping that my tone of voice didn't expose my cultural insensitivity. "Oh yeah..." My friend had a strange smile on his face. He wasn't looking at me, he was looking into his memories. The thought of sausage salad brought forth remembrance of home, hearth, mom and family dinners long past. The same thoughts come to my mind whenever someone says "fresh baked chocolate chip cookies" or "turkey and stuffing." My friend was drooling. Sausage salad, this cold, pink, appearance-of-brains concoction is German comfort food.

Now, I'm no Andrew Zimmer, but I like to think of myself as a brave eater. I'm also a champion of most German cuisine, especially Swabian fare, but it's been a mental effort for me to come around to the virtues of sausage salad. Whenever I confess my hesitation, Germans (immediate family included) are flabbergasted. "What!?" they snort. "You don't like sausage salad!? They don't have sausage salad in America!?" They look at me like I've grown up on locusts and honey. But before I can point out that, where I come from, sausage is considered a meat, they forget about me, dream of a nice, heaping plate of sausage salad and begin to get sentimental for their mothers. Then they go to Aldi and buy a ready-made pack.

But let's get real. I come from the land that invented Hawaiian Punch, Wonder Bread and the McRib. We Americans have no grounds to criticize the cuisine of other lands, however brain-like. We need to pull the can of lite beer out of our own eye before we can condemn our neighbors. So recently, I sat down and ate sausage salad with my wife (who ravenously attacked it, the way I would attack a fresh baked enchilada). Judge not by appearances. It's actually not bad. Light, savory, oily, vinegary (in the best possible way) - a good, quick dinner. I still wouldn't order it at a restaurant when there are so many heavenly alternatives - Kaesespaetzle, Schnitzel, Maultaschen - but I'm beginning to see the appeal. Maybe the zombies have a point after all.

An Open Letter to My Daughter

Dear Daughter,

It's been a great 20-plus months. Your mom and I are proud of the way you're growing: walking, talking and fulfilling that divine duty of being unspeakably cute. However, now that you are freely running around and resolutely expressing your own opinions, it's time to set some ground rules.

1. Every morning, you are to eat nutritious oatmeal with little pieces of apple mixed in, not banana-chocolate chip muffins (like the four I ate).
   
2. You are not to walk in the street (as I often do, because I like having more space).
   
3. I know you like the YouTube videos of classic Sesame Street songs that we watch together, but goofing off on the Internet is a destructive waste of time. Oooo... someone posted a link on Facebook analyzing the challenges facing the Bears' offensive line.... interesting... stay there, I'll be back. (reads for ten minutes, then opens a political blog from a Twitter feed)
   
4. Speaking of glowing screens, relaxing in front of the television is not a healthy way to spend an evening (fortunately, you go to bed before your mother and I indulge in this nightly ritual).
5. Never let your anger get the best of you. This is especially relevant in the car, where we have to deal with TAILGATERS!!! HONESTLY, ARE PEOPLE JUST SO FULL OF THEMSELVES OR SO PERSONALLY FRUSTRATED THAT THEY NEED TO PUT THEIR LIVES AND THE LIVES OF EVERYONE AROUND THEM IN JEOPARDY TO SAVE, WHAT, SEVEN SECONDS OFF THEIR COMMUTE!!???? HEY!! YOU IN THE AUDI COUP WITH THE PRETENTIOUS SUNGLASSES! GET OFF MY... I'm sorry, where were we?
   
6. Refrain from all addictions. Oh wait, my coffee just ran out... I'll be right back (hurries to kitchen.... )
   
7. I know that you have enjoyed getting to know some of the little boys in the church playgroup. Let's remember: it is never too early for fatherly intimidation. Be sure to tell them that your dad is an expert in five forms of martial arts and is particularly effective with nunchucks.
8. Finally, it is in poor taste to wantonly post personal reflection, pseudo-insights about religion (or sports or politics or philosophy) or attempted humor on some blog where anyone with Internet access can read it.
   

The 1% and the Wee Little Man

Aside from breaking my solemn vow never to learn anything practical, a fun part of my venture in Frankfurt was the opportunity to see the "Occupy" or "99%" protesters up close. I love a good protest - the best ones are colorful, diverse and peaceful, and Occupy Frankfurt (from what I saw) has been all of these things (though giving Frankfurt's current significance, I expected it to be bigger, but maybe I'm just spoiled after living in DC during the Spring of 2003).

It won't surprise you that my attention has been focused by the worldwide movement's scattered references to Jesus (which I saw in pictures - especially from London - but did not witness in Frankfurt). Most of them refer to how Jesus drove money changers out of the temple, identifying the Lord with the protesters against the rich and powerful 1%.

There's much to this. God's economics are different than those of the world, and story after story, proverb after proverb, shows how unimpressed our Lord is with storing up treasure on earth. Jesus was often found with the poor and the marginalized and was often criticized for hanging with the wrong crowd, and scripture reminds us how God "brings down the rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble." Personally, whatever economic good they may achieve, I find the confidence, the slick suits, the making money from money, the pace and the goals of the financial industry foreign and uncomfortable, and all the more so for whatever complicity they have in the economic crisis. So put Jesus and me in the tents in Frankfurt, New York or London.

Except this. You see, all the prophetic language about the rich and powerful who ruin our lives got me thinking about a sermon I heard last February by a certain injury-prone Washington pastor (listen to the sermon - if anything I write is sloppy, inaccurate or just plain wrong, blame the blogger and listen to the preacher for your edification). It's about Jesus' confrontation with a character as slimy, if not more so, than the worst Wall Street or Washington has to offer. If you went to Sunday school, you've probably heard of him. His name is Zacchaeus, and we Sunday school kids used to sing "Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he!" Yes, he was little. And he was rich for all the wrong reasons. He collected unjust taxes from his fellow Jews on behalf of occupying powers, then exhorted plenty of extra for himself. He prospered while his neighbors suffered. He was the 1% in the town of Jericho.

As for Jesus, he was stopping by Jericho on his way to Jerusalem for the climax of the Gospel story, telling people about the Kingdom of Heaven along the way. Throughout his journey, he had mentioned that the poor were blessed, told the story of a rich farmer who died with his wealth after refusing to share it and had just pointed out that it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for the rich to come into his Kingdom. When the Gospel of Luke introduces us to Zacchaeus, the little man who preyed on the rest of the town, we'd be forgiven for expecting little Z to finally get what's coming to him.

That's not what happened. Zacchaeus was so desperate to see Jesus that the wee little man climbed up a tree - expensive digs and all - just to get a better look. But it was Jesus who looked at him. He called him by name. "Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I'm staying at your house today!" A sign of honor and fellowship - Jesus would break bread with this stooge, this crook, this greedy slime ball. The good folks of Jericho, little Z's victims among them, understandably grumbled. I know I would have. Jesus was going to occupy Zacchaeus' house for all the wrong reasons.

That's the problem with Jesus. We line up to demand justice from those who ruin us: the 1%, corporations, political parties, presidents, slum lords, druggies, moral degenerates, academics, bureaucrats, foreigners, locals, family members and whoever else. And maybe we're right - everyone was sure right about Zacchaeus. Then suddenly, we find Jesus crossing the battle lines to have lunch with the very people whose head we want. This is painful. Real crimes have real victims - tragic ones at that.

And yet, look what happens to Zacchaeus. He joyfully receives Jesus, converts and gives justice plus interest. He says, "half my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold!"

This is good news, not just for Zacchaeus or his suddenly prosperous victims. A couple chapters earlier, after a rich young man was unable to do what little Z did (bringing about this "camel through the eye of the needle" remark from Jesus) the disciples ask a good question. "Then who can be saved?" Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out that they "regarded the case of the rich young man not as in any way exceptional, but typical... for every person, even the disciples themselves, belongs to those rich ones for whom it is so difficult to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." This isn't a problem of the 1%; it's a problem of the 100%. Jesus' answer? "What's impossible with men is possible with God."

Jesus' Kingdom is something very near, so close to us by his grace. He's willing to visit our houses, to eat with us and to be with us. All we have to do is something we can't do without his help - let go of all our idols, i.e. repent and believe this Good News. It might mean giving up wealth, family or ambition. It might mean loving the enemies, the very people against whom we protest. But if we joyfully receive his grace, we learn to give grace to others and maybe, just maybe, an excellent sort of justice will follow - kind of like 2000 years ago in Jericho.

Frankfurt

I'm in Frankfurt for the next few weeks, and I must say, Europe's financial capital is making a wonderful impression. The heavenly weather helps, of course. I've always had a little bias against Frankfurt - it seemed to me like Wall Street without the rest of New York. (Indeed, I learned today that a nickname for Frankfurt, besides "Bankfurt", is "Mainhatten." Main - pronounced "mine" - for the river hat runs through it, and the rest, well, if you don't get it ask your neighbor...) I saw plenty of people with power posture and chic suits, and the skyline is a neighborhood of skyscrapers with the names of banks shining proudly at its points, but Frankfurt has more to offer.

I've only been here a couple days, but here are a three things that Frankfurt has going for it:

1. The Main River - Majestic, and with a splendidly-kept river walk, the Main is clearly the place to be where there is good weather. Joggers, bikers, walkers, lovers, picnickers and (happy day) biergartens rest on either side.
2. Transport - I've never seen a metropolitan so bike friendly (of course, I've never been to Amsterdam, but I've been to Berlin and Munich), and the Frankfurters take full advantage.
   
3. Diversity - In my mind, there are few things finer than walking among a spicy mix of nationalities, languages, colors, sizes, shapes, ages and activities. I suspect that part of this was tourist and the American military bases, but the whole gumbo must also think the international financial institutions, the university and the general life of the city of Frankfurt.
   

Praising the King

History is littered with gruesome tyrants and horrible monarchs. Gaddafi is the latest to be properly knocked off his throne, and reports of a mass grave discovered by Libyan rebels are just more reminders of what happens when a human claims god-like authority. I come from a country founded on enlightened, anti-monarchist principles, and within that country, I was born (and recently left) a state whose flag features Lady Liberty standing victorious over the Tyrant. Anti-authoritarian sentiments are, for obvious and very good reasons, particularly strong here in Germany. Thus, for Christians who wish to proclaim the Gospel in this part of the world, there is an understandable tendency to downplay the monarchical language in the Bible. For example, the Gute Nachricht ("Good News") translation of the Bible shows Jesus proclaiming "God's New World" instead of "the Kingdom of Heaven."

Worship leader Albert Frey has a different idea. On my desk, I have his 2006 album, provocatively titled Fuer den Koenig, or "For the King." Perhaps more provocatively, the cover is a picture of a sword that reminds me of the sword Gandalf hands to King Theoden in the film, The Two Towers. It's not aggressive - the sword lies chivalrous and downward facing on a scarlet cushion. If this strikes you as offensive or corny, at least take a moment to consider the album's liner notes. Frey was inspired to study in depth the kingly language in the Bible after researching the Middle Ages. This prompted the songs and the album, but he is not callous to recent history. He writes (and the following is my hasty translation of the album's liner notes. I'm aiming for accuracy, so if it sounds clumsy, believe me when I say it sounds better in German):

"It is sometimes asserted that we German speakers find approaching the kingly side of God difficult, because we have not had a monarchy for a long time and have bad experiences with authority sitting deep in our collective conscience. We honor neither stars nor politicians nor saints as much other peoples."

All true, and maybe even too understated. But instead of retreating, watch what Frey does. His response is to turn it on his head.

"It is my opinion, however, that our skepticism can also help us with our search for true worship, because we are less likely to be bedazzled by mere human glamor. For us, it is fully clear that no human being can totally embody the ideal of the King."

Where others see a barrier, Frey sees an opportunity. He goes on to take it home:

"But in spite of this, we naturally have the Sehnsucht for a good authority, for a power who does not abuse, but rather acts in love. And this Sehnsucht compels us to the throne of God. More than any of the old stories, from King Arthur to The Lord of the Rings, we find Jesus, truly, as the Good King, even when we find him, apparently powerless before Pilate, answering 'you said it, I am a King'... He is the true King. When we worship him - and that's the point of the songs on this CD - we are put right with a natural order, in spirit, in the invisible world as much as the inner world of our souls. When we proclaim who He is, we happen upon who we are: the daughters and sons of the King, people with worth and power to reorder our lives and fight for his Kingdom."

This isn't all macho knight stuff, though.

"The personal side of this good authority is the Father. God is also a loving Father, and that is also the theme of some of the songs. We need both of these moments so much: before the Throne of the King and in the arms of the loving Father. God claims us as Father and he claims us as King."

One of the reasons Albert Frey is my favorite worship leader in any language is that his songs effortlessly and without pretension weave together all the emotions of Christianity. Fuer den Koenig is one of the best examples of his work. Frey leads us to celebrate the majesty of the King and the intimate love of the Father. The listener, the worshiper, mourns, celebrates, proclaims and stands in awe.

If you understand German, buy it. And if you remain skeptical, give it a shot, anyway. Cast aside our human failure to live up to the King, from evil tyrants to Hollywood kitsch. You might find the True King, and in finding him, as Frey points out, we find our worth as well.

One Reason I'm Not a Naturlist

A little over a week ago, Alex Rosenberg made a case for naturalism in the New York Times. It's a strong case, and there's a lot I could write in process or in response. But then he writes this:

"That doesn’t mean anyone should stop doing literary criticism any more than forgoing fiction. Naturalism treats both as fun, but neither as knowledge."

Fiction is fun; if it were not fun, I would not read it (and I often stop reading a novel when it ceases to be fun for me). But if fun is the only thing Professor Rosenberg gleans from fiction, then I wonder if he is reading the wrong books.

Do Not Hinder Them

We ran some errands in downtown Plochingen today. We walked downtown – the weather was too beautiful not to do so. The sun, already autumn gold, warmed the ever-enchanting view of my wife and daughter ahead of me on the sidewalks. They looked like icons from an ancient Eastern Church.

After a few checks off the to-do list, our company parted. My wife would run to the little discount grocery store to buy a Knoedel for today’s lunch, and my daughter and I would stay in Plochingen’s pedestrian zone. The plan was to free my daughter from the confines of her stroller and let her little legs run up and down the street, as she had done in the past. But she wanted to go somewhere else. “Jesus!” she cried, pointing at the downtown chapel.

We were at the chapel the Sunday before. There was a children’s church service put on by the Protestant church. They sang wonderful little songs and learned about how, when Jesus was twelve, he stayed at his Father’s house. There were paintings of Jesus on the wall, medieval-style sketches from his life and death and life. At the front, like so many other European churches, there’s a statue of Jesus on the cross. (The comic highlight of the morning was when she pointed out that the Crucified One was “naked.”)

“Jesus!” she said again, matter-of-factly, still pointing at the chapel. At first I did not want to go in. Why go into a stuffy room with Europeanized Jesus pictures when we could still enjoy Germany’s September sun? “Jesus!” she insisted. Nervously, I looked at the stern sign on the chapel door warning people to be quiet and reverential while in the building. “Jesus!” she said. Then I remembered something Jesus himself once said: “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.” I opened the door and we went in.

My daughter pointed to one of the paintings. “Jesus!” she said again. This time she was not insisting but acknowledging. She hurried down the center aisle to the statue of Jesus on the cross. “Jesus!” she said. “Cross!” she said, pointing. I had never heard her say the word “cross” before. My daughter excels at pointing and acknowledging. Perhaps, in this case, it was her own way of worshiping.

In some ways, I find it strange that a child finds Jesus so interesting. When I was a child, I knew Jesus was good, but I had to grow into him. I preferred more adventurous Sunday school stories, like David fighting a giant or Samson’s action-hero invincibility. It was only later that I realized how Jesus, in his ministry of reconciliation, was so much stronger than either. I don’t know if my daughter’s child-wisdom will remain. Maybe, with age and other distractions, her interests will go elsewhere.

What I do know is that one of my responsibilities as a father is to show Jesus to her - to tell her about Him and to teach her what he said. I am to model Jesus for her. For this task, I am insufficient; we both need grace. One day, she will decide for herself if she will live up to her Baptism, if she will live up to this moment in Plochingen’s downtown chapel, if she will abide in Jesus and participate in his ministry of reconciliation. One more thing I know: if she is truly interested in Jesus, at any point, the worst thing I could possibly do is hinder her.

Cheese Fit for a Poet

Editor's Note: There have been some technical difficulties over at Justin's food blog, but while our vacation is still fresh, I'd like to offer the food posts from my "Austrian Correspondence" series. Later, I'll re-post them on the food blog and include pictures.

It's all about dairy, my friends. The Alps, to use a messy example from the good ol' USA, are, as if the state of Wisconsin was dropped into the Rockies. Amazing mountains with a culture of hiking, climbing and all the other mountain sports, combined with the best dairy products I’ve ever tasted. I tasted some good food, here, but it's the dairy that's worth writing home (and blogging) about, starting with cheese.

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.” G.K. Chesterton

You can always count on Chesterton for the good one-liners; I found the above quote while looking for a different one in a different context. But he has a point. Cheese is a wonderfully tasty and complex food, and the process of making good cheese is a journey of work and aging, not unlike that poetic beverage - wine. But Cheese gets such a bad rap that I really couldn’t imagine a poem about cheese that didn’t sound just silly. Cheese has so many connotations, from the farm all the way to the kitchen, that are more quaint than poetic. Smelling like cheese is not a compliment, and cheesy humor is associated with kitsch, cheapness and vulgarity.

Here in the Alps, just like other cheese-producing places, much of the culture is kitschy (or cheesy, if you’d like). Oompa music, lederhosen, quaint farmhouses and roaming cows with bells around their neck – I love it, but high culture doesn’t come to mind. But the cheese produced here is worthy of song and sonnet.

To my left, I have two cheeses, fresh from the farm. The first is called Komperdell “Village Cheese,” produced right here in Tirol. The texture is comfortable – moist and delightfully smooth. It has many tastes and would work well with a multifaceted wine, and wine is one of the flavors that jumps out when it touches my tongue. It’s a white cheese, and has many of the properties we Americans associate with good Swiss cheese, but much more savory.

The second sample could accurately be called Swiss Cheese, because we crossed the border and, aside from indulging in some duty-free shopping, visited “Sennerei Samnaun,” where the cheese is produced. The taste is both milder and deeper, as if it has more to say to you the more you eat it. The texture is much more firm to the bite and dry but in a pleasant way.

Both cheese sure beat the heck out of anything I’ve eaten from a supermarket. Naturally, they’re more expensive too, but they'd be even more expensive if we were not so close to the farm. If you’re not in the Alps, it’s worth the effort to take a weekend and visit the closest Dairy Farm, so you can eat this wonderfully complicated and delightful food. Who knows? It may even inspire poetry.

The Only One My Daughter Fears (Or, Does Our Pediatrician Have a Star-Covered Robe He's Not Telling Us About?)

My daughter loves people. If you've ever seen her, chances are, she's happy to see you. She'll let you pick her up, she'll smile, she'll laugh at all your jokes and she'll give you kisses when it's time to leave. Not only is she sugar and spice, but yes, everything nice is thrown in. There are only two people she fears. The first is not just one person, but a people group, and that is blond-haired boys her age. She fears them because, a few weeks ago, a blond-haired boy, born the same week she was born, came and visited. When introduced, my daughter attempted a friendly greeting. With a smile on his face, the blond-haired boy raised a metal toy car above her head and, with the focused speed of a lumberjack, clocked her cross-eyed. Understandably, she avoided him the rest of the day and now treats all blond-haired boys with suspicion. As her father, I am making it my duty to encourage and expand this suspicion, so that it applies to all boys and so that it lasts well into adulthood.

The second person she fears is our pediatrician. We visited him the other day. My daughter had a minor stomach issue, but, as with all of my daughter's minor issues, this one set off that same nightmare my wife and I have every week. You know, the nightmare all parents have, the nightmare that ends with all my daughter's minor issues become the subject of a Lifetime Original Movie. So, to escape our worst fear, we took our daughter to visit her worst fear.

Our pediatrician is a superb pediatrician. I am aware of his diagnostics saving at least one life, and all the ratings and local parental gossip are highly complementary. Our experience is good - he is another example of a man excelling and taking a proper joy in his profession. But our daughter, who always enjoys playing with other sick kids in the waiting room (though keeping a skeptical distance from blond boys), shrieks like that girl is Psycho when he walks in and doesn't stop until she's safely in her stroller three blocks away. This doesn't phase our pediatrician. He goes about his business with a stoic smile, prodding my daughter's belly (and taking a few kicks in the process) while speaking to my wife an indecipherable Swabian dialect. His impeccable bedside manner is friendly and funny.

I suspect the reason he scares my daughter so much isn't the danger of shots (she had most of hers in America already, and though she's due for another soon, she hasn't had one here yet), but his appearance. He looks like he went to Med School at Hogwarts. He has a long, thick black beard, like a neat bird's nest hanging from his face. His large eyes and long, thin nose complete the picture. I really, really want to see him in a blue robe covered in white stars and gold moons.

We left that day, and my daughter's screams subsided into suspicious sniffles. She was fine, he told us. Yes, perhaps. Or perhaps he simply slipped the right potion into her screaming mouth when we weren't looking.

Under Familiar Trees

How do you take time to enjoy the familiar?

A general difference between America and Germany is the immediacy of nature. Both countries have excellent forests, mountains, rivers and trails, and a lot of people who like to enjoy them. However, nature seems more immediate over here. In American, (at least in the cities and suburbs) in order to enjoy nature, I had to drive somewhere, but when I got there, I was a good many miles away from civilization. Here, I can get out of my house and walk five minutes and to be surrounded by trees. This was true in bigger cities, not just the small towns. The trade-off, of course, is that when a country the size of Montana has 80 million citizens, civilization is never far off. I prefer the German way, though, for the simple fact that I hike a lot more.

I am getting to know the Hills of Plochingen. They aren't as vast or as awesome (think the King James Bible sense of the word, not the Ninja Turtle) as what we climbed in Austria, but they have a patient beauty. I say patient, because it's the type of beauty that speaks against the Internet age. Now, let me be clear that I like the Internet age. I get to communicate with friends all over the world. Heck, I get to have friends all over the world. I get access to content, pictures and sports scores like like they grow on trees and it's always harvest. And I get to write on the Internet, here in my own little corner of the information super highway! It's like Jimbo Fischer putting me in at tight end for a few plays. It's like Juergen Klinsmann letting me play attacking midfielder at the 80 minute mark during a friendly. Thanks, coach, I'll put myself in! Rudddyyyy! But the temptation is to value novelty over stability, to constantly engage in a frantic search for the next thing.

That temptation sneaked up on me during an unexpected hike. My wife and I drove our daughter to the top of the mountain for a little family time. There's a trail fit for strollers and a few playgrounds up there (plus a track, tennis courts and a biergarten, but we didn't use those). After some family R&R, my wife suggested I walk home, through the woods and down the mountain past all the little houses with apple trees. That day displayed all the virtues of September: summers glory was fading into gold, no longer white hot, now nurturing. The air was cleansed by yesterdays rain. An hour's walk in such conditions was a piece of Eden. But along the way, that Eden was attacked, sabotaged by my own impatience. I wanted to change sites to other trees. I wanted to switch tabs to bigger mountains or click on a link to open up a vibrant cityscape with an edgy soundtrack. And hey, I wanted information. I have big decisions to make, and I didn't feel it happening in all the stillness, rustling leaves and decaying apples. I wanted to read what people were saying: blogs, forums, respected newspapers - these would either inform my decisions or provide a balm from their pressure.

I'm thankful to God that I saw this. He showed it to me. It was then that I could say a firm "no" to my desire to control the scenery. However familiar, his creation is there to love, to appreciate, to enjoy. These dwarf mountains, as innocent as ancient children, these apples trees, bursting with hope and life and taste. Every leaf - a work of art as much as a work of biology. A friend reminded me the other day that it's God who makes us lie down in green pastures, even when we'd easily run off to whatever is next.

Walk a familiar path. Look at a tree or a flower, the one you've seen a thousand times and, with patience (and not without effort), watch the poetry. Feel the tenderness, like a reflection of what an aged lover feels when he sees is wife of fifty years, a reflection of Him who sees us and knows us - every part, every moment - and loves us. This may be a good step in the direction of loving Him back.

Best Case/Worst Case -- Florida State II

My traditional best case/worst case post about my Alma Mater is a little late, mainly due to a labor dispute between writers and editors. But it is that time of the year where we can escape the realities of war, economic difficulties, professional productivity, civic obligations, family life, personal health, religious ritual and academic study to focus on one thing: college football. Thus, it's my honor and my duty to contribute. Just like last year (and with the appropriate apologies to the experts), I will examine the best case and worst case scenarios for the Florida State football team.

Best Case:

Unfortunately, the Seminoles have already passed up their opportunity to achieve best case. Yes, they trounced Louisiana-Monroe, their week 1 cream puff, 34-0, (hey, if you schedule Oklahoma, you can justify playing cream puffs. Not that that helped us last year...), but that was not best case. That was, at best, barely-meets-expectations case. Best case is when you commit no turnovers, have no need to punt, score a touchdown on every drive and not allow a single first down. The minimum score for a best case game is 98-0. So, for the remainder of the season, the best case scenario would be a series of 98-0 shellackings, with extra touchdowns scored on in-state rivals. By the time the ACC Championship comes around, the team is playing so divine that Florida State's players, coaches, professors, students and alumni all reach a light-producing higher plane, producing blessing, peace and justice the world over.

Worst Case:
The worst case scenario is quite the opposite. In this nightmarish dimension, the Florida State Seminoles, starting next week, fail to gain a single yard, much less first down, field goal, touchdown or safety. The defense allows the opposing running backs to pass through their tackles like Shadowcat, giving up 98 points per game plus extra touchdowns against in-state rivals. The horrendous performance on the field causes the team to literally implode into a black hole, engorging all matter and light into the spot in space where Doak Campbell Stadium once stood. Perhaps some of us might have escaped had we not cut the Space Shuttle program. As it is, the only ones who can flee the earth are the astronauts in the International Space Station, a billionaire Russian oligarch and three cocktail waitresses from the Russian's favorite St. Petersburg night club. Not that any could make it far, anyway....

Prediction: Somewhere in between. Happy football watching!

A Mighty Fortress

I lived in Germany for two years, and it's been several months since I moved back here from Washington, D.C. But a couple weeks ago, I had an essential German experience for the first time. I was privileged to sing Martin Luther's majestic hymn, "A Might Fortress is Our God" in the original German with a German congregation. Not only that, but I was on worship team duties, so I got to be a part of the creating and leading process.

I had never before heard the German version in its entirety (unlike some other famous German hymns like "Praise to the Lord the Almighty," sung in English and German at our wedding, or "Fairest Lord Jesus"), but it was a divine experience. The good news for English speakers is that Fredric Henry Hedge's translation is an excellent piece of work - near word for word perfection. Hedge added a couple of notes and syllables to the original to work it out, but it's very well done. (I was previously unaware of the other translations - I grew up singing Hedge's versions, but I hope I am speaking as someone who knows both languages well rather than as a sentimentalist when I say that the other translations I've read don't capture Luther's text nearly as well)

"A Mighty Fortress is Our God" is nicknamed the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation," but paradoxically, I find it a hymn of great comfort. It's a very familiar hymn for many of us who grew up in a Protestant church, and because of it, it's easy to miss the intricacies. Look at it again. It concisely outlines our weakness against the devil's schemes but then celebrates our Advocate, "the Man of God's own choosing." In light of our Lord Saboath's triumph, this Christ-centered hymn ends in a glorious call to repentance:

Let good and kindred go; this mortal life also

The body they may kill; God's truth abideth still

His Kingdom is forever

The best hymns and songs manage to confront the various emotions of Christianity. Luther's hymn goes through fear, faith, comfort, triumph and conversion. Because of this, whether singing or leading the congregation, there are two modern tendencies worth avoiding. The first tendency would be to skip a verse or two. We do this with most hymns to accommodate the modern attention span (myself included), and it's a trade-off that all of us make (especially with those 17-stanza marches in the hymnals). We always lose something when we do this, but verse skipping ruins the flow and scheme of "A Mighty Fortress." This is one of those songs where the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Besides, it's only four verses, so hang in there. Sing the whole thing.

The second modern tendency is more in a personal level. The combination of the hymn's familiarity and the hymn's unblushing reference to spiritual warfare can tempt us to remain "above the fray", so to speak, as we sing it. It's easy to mouth the ancient words without letting them penetrate mind, heart or will. Read it again. See for yourself why that would be a shame.

How Then Shall We Enjoy?

Kevin DeYoung offers Christians some good advice about confronting the continuing problem of binge drinking on College campuses. Read the whole thing for introduction and explanation, but his five step program is: 1) Know your enemy (i.E. debauchery poses more of a threat to young Christians than anti-Christian arguments), 2) Have a mature attitude towards alcohol 3) Be boldly Biblical 4) Show tough love 5) Remind Christians who they are.

Good list, but I think something's missing. I know what binge drinking look like. I went to a big state school where the T-shirts read "a drinking town with a football problem." My freshman year, we were the #1 party school and the #1 football team. I've seen wasted students do stupid, disgusting things, and I've read about worse. I mourn, not because they partied, but because they failed to party properly.

We serve a Lord who turned (a lot of) water into (a lot of) wine. During his time on earth, he went to a lot of parties, to the point where his enemies not only accused him of hanging out with the wrong crowd, but of being a drunkard and a glutton. But Jesus was neither.

We're not to be drunkards, and DeYoung is right that we should make that clear. Nor should we be gluttons. But I think "mature attitudes towards alcohol" should go more into how Christians should drink. Or, for that matter, how Christians should feast, tell jokes and have fun in general. This should all be in the context of a larger theology of pleasure, where pleasured is affirmed but not worshiped. Without such affirmation, Christian warnings about pleasurable things give the impression that we'd prefer to avoid fun all together. I've seen plenty of college testimonials that went something like this: "I used to party, but then I found Christ, so now I don't." Wow, count me in.

Instead, Christians should learn excellence in pleasure and not hide it. We should show how humor can be hilarious without engaging in cheap obscenities or destructive sarcasm. We should show how we cook, eat and enjoy exquisite foods without making a god of our stomachs. And we should show, especially to those who are still too young to partake, how good drink can enhance flavor, camaraderie, conversation and romance, and that those who settle for the over-consumption of cheap booze are missing out on something far greater. Of course, excellence in pleasure should clearly show that there are times not to partake - that there are seasons of feasting and fasting, and that there are times to be serious and that our happiness does not rely on drink. Excellence in pleasure includes knowing when to stop and when to say no, how to recognize and and give deference to our weaker brothers and sisters.

That's why this passage from DeYoung's post isn't very helpful:

On the other hand, the Christians that recognize the good gift of wine or beer need to grow up at times. Christian upperclassmen (and other adults) who can drink legally should be careful with alcohol consumption around underage believers. They should not talk about beer like it’s the coolest thing since Sufjan Stevens. Christian liberty is no reason for social life and conversation to revolve around the conspicuous consumption of alcohol.

Often, beer is better than Sufjan, Bon Iver, Tupac or whatever else is in your iPad. To not say so would be dishonest. Our social lives shouldn't worship alcohol, but neither should we treat pleasure in alcohol as some sort of embarrassing thing we have to hide. Alcohol is more likely to be a dangerous, forbidden fruit if we treat it like one. Moreover, if Christian youth do not have good models of excellence in pleasure, especially the pleasure of drink, then the alternatives offered by peers and media will be much more tempting.

Loriot, or Why German Humor is a Laughing Matter

Humor is one of those strange facts of existence. It's universal, everyone has it to some extent. It heals, it hurts, it unites, it divides. It helps us to understand, it clouds our understanding. It's important for me just for the way it makes life go down easier, not to mention how it helps do something I'm not always good at: connect.

Humor, of course, is difficult to translate across cultures, and living in another country, the change in humor can have, if you'll take the analogy, similar emotional effects to the change in diet. There are exciting new surprises, but there are certain dishes you grow up with that you start to miss. Here in Germany, I love Swabian comfort food , I've been pleasantly surprised by the varieties in pork and I'd take my wife and mother-in-law's cooking to any fancy schmancy chef. At the same time, I miss good, old-fashioned American chicken dishes and fresh chocolate chip cookies (ok, whenever fresh chocolate chip cookies are unavailable, I miss them, regardless of the cultural context). If you travel a lot, a menagerie of things you miss becomes quilted to your brain so that regardless if where you plant your feet, you're acutely aware that you are missing something. But better to have tasted than to have never tasted, or to have laughed than to have to have never laughed. Better, also, to remain in the present (usually).

Even as I miss semi-ironic banter with my sisters, Saturday Night Live, the Onion, or Jon Stewart, I've found that German humor is a foreign delight. This might surprise you, as every other country in the world judges the Germans as less funny than their own culture. Just across the North Sea, the English judge the rest of the world as less funny than their own culture, and they doubly judge the Germans. My parents have a book of joked about different culture, and it has only one joke on the Germans. It's a quote attributed to Mark Twain: "German humor is no laughing matter." Of course, in Germany, not taking yourself seriously is very serious business, which is why Twain's short piece, "The Awful German Language," sits front and center in most downtown bookshops.

But let me once again insist, German humor can be delightful, and my case and point is Loriot, the German comic died on Monday. Like many of the best comedians, Loriot was a master of his own language, so a proficiency in Deutsch is necessary to get it. Although some of it translates well, and I'll leave it to Philip Oltermann to explain how in his great post on Loriot (he also does a service and links to some of Loriot's best sketches).

I had never heard of Loriot until his obituary was the front page of every newspaper and the feature segment of news station. For the past two nights, my wife and I watched documentaries about him and his work. We laughed together. Loriot's sketches produce that uncontrollable, uninhibited belly laughter, the best kind. Between breaths I notice: life is better now.

That Horrible, Horrible Place Called Ikea

Let me start by outing myself as a user of Ikea products. I sleep on an Ikea bed with two mattresses - my wife's was specially made for her, but mine was from Ikea (we have two-mattress beds here in Germany - which is quite sensible, the more you think about it). My clothes are folded (mostly) and jammed into one of those sturdy, practical Malm dressers. I get a little emotional when I think about the white Erktop couch we left inside the Washington beltway. In fact, I think the chair upon which I sit was a result of that merry band of Swedes, but I'd have to ask my wife as she bought it a long time ago.

But the Ikea shopping experience, which has happened to me several times, is a flagrant violation of the Geneva convention. Their enhanced shopping method is several surreal labyrinths of household goods, worthy of Dante, Kafka, Hitchcock and the latter levels of the original Super Mario Brothers. The purpose of this, to the best I can ascertain (it's always difficult, after Ikea, to remember what's real and what isn't), is that each display, each fluorescent lamp, each bag of affordable power strips, lands a body blow to the mind. Overloaded with information, color, stimuli and a complex series of numbers that supposedly guide the shopper/victim through their warehouse (final level where you fight the big boss if you have enough power points and appropriate ammo, though I really don't remember if that part is true), the shopper is unable to make competent purchasing decisions, so he buys everything on his list and requires a military convoy just to get it all home.

This week, my family, against our better judgment, embarked to Ikea. We have two Ikeas to choose from - I think they hover around major metropolitan areas like those space ships in Independence Day. They lured us in with an email: kitchen chairs were on sale - 20 Euros off. We needed kitchen chairs - four of them. To boot, we also wanted nightstands, various kitchen items and curtains. We hopped in the Ford Focus and drove over there, the day calm, the weather hot but cheerful, rock'n'roll on the radio. We arrived at the mothership and were ushered (invited? Tempted? Who can say?) into a parking garage - it had only two levels, but the first one must have been as tall as Mt. Rushmore, because we drove upwards for miles, our car twisting up the ramp like it was one of the screws holding an Ikea dresser together until, nauseated (and in no condition to drive a car through a busy concrete enclosure, not to mention actually parking the darn thing), we reached our destination.

Somehow I parked, and we walked in, already disoriented. There's a friendly-looking place where you can leave your child with a friendly-looking Ikea employee. I looked over there. Our daughter is only a year and a half years old, and the kids need to be three to be left there. All the kids were watching a movie. I couldn't see what it was. There was a Pixar poster on the wall, but I bet that was a diversion. I suspect that the kids were really watching an instructional video on breaking kitchen chairs and nightstands, so as to send parents back to buy more as soon as possible ("Hi kids! Today, we're going to see what a hockey stick can do to a table leg!").

I'm told all Ikea stores are basically the same, but I never remember what comes first. Beds? Couches? Bathroom? Kitchen? All I remember is that there is a lot of furniture, surrounded my mesmerizing displays of idyllic rooms full of suspiciously perfect right angles. I'm also told that there are shortcuts through Ikea, and if you know what you're doing, you can actually get through the store quickly, kind of like how, at Target, you can buy what you need and escape unscathed (except for being forced to breathe in that inhumane popcorn-maker smell when you walk in the door, but that's for another blog post). Maybe it's true, who can know? But I think it's just a rumor that the Ikea authorities let fester for the sake of false hope. All I know is that when we were in the bowels of the Ikea kitchen displays, we could no longer find the sale we were looking for. Filled with panic, my wife realized she had not printed the sales email. We looked at each other. Beads of sweat grew on our foreheads as I struggled to hold on to my squirming daughter. I knew that if she ran off among the maze of cabinets and high stools, I might never see her again.

My wife took out her cell to call her parents to make sure the email was correct (conveniently, we left our notebook computer on their kitchen table). No signal. Not a bar. I took out my phone. Same results - just a blank screen that glowed uselessly until its automatic lock-down kicked in. In Ikea, no one can here you scream.

My wife and I locked eyes. That's all we had time for. She was beautiful. Quietly, but with a sense of purpose, she raced back the way we came (we had left a trail of those papers where you're supposed to write your product numbers, just in case). Ikea can bring a couple together in our desperation. But it can also tear us apart. I observed another couple arguing. It was a heated, angry exchange about what to buy for their bedroom. The woman was arguing on the authority of her nesting instinct, magazine articles, color patterns and thousands of childhood dreams. The man was arguing on the authority of their bank account and the actual size of their apartment. I didn't see how it ended. In an effort to distract her from the gravity of the situation, I took my daughter to make faces in a full-length mirror.

Time is different in Ikea. Who knows how much time passes outside of the store, or how long we were actually in the store. What I do know is that my wife made it back to us, but I really don't know how long it took. My beard was thicker, though, and my daughter was taller, but that may have been the mirror playing tricks. My wife's parents were able to confirm the sale, even if there were no indications in the mother ship.

Bruised, tired and hungry, we made our way to the cafeteria. Some might argue that the cafeteria is one of Ikea's redeeming features. After all, Ikea is one of the few places in Europe that offers free refills. But, chugging down my third glass of Ikea-brand cola like a Roman oar man on a break, I realized that the that was the catch. The free refills! What spurs the obesity epidemic if not the mass availability of sugar water? And what causes furniture to sag, slouch and break more than obesity? I looked down at the cream sauce oozing over my salmon. I looked over at the fries my wife was sharing with my daughter. I felt my chair creak and struggle beneath me as the conspiracy formed in front of my eyes. I returned our trays, shaken, and we quietly made our way down the escalator to the lower level.

The lower level of Ikea is room after room, stage after stage, of small appliances, lights, silverware, art prints and potted plants. There are baskets of products so inexpensive and appealing that you find yourself filling up your yellow bag with them without really thinking. "Yes, I'll take six of those three packs of picture frames." But the good news is that the cunning furniture displays have mostly stopped, though the damage has been done.

The warehouse is the final stage. The warehouse is where you actually get your furniture, vacuumed packed into immovable boxes, stacked on shelves, row after row after row, like the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. After an Indiana Jones-like search, we found our chairs and night stands, which we put on a pushcart and made our way, wearily, yearning for freedom, to the checkout lines. The checkout lines are automated. I scanned the chairs. Still no sale. I swiped the Ikea-family card, which usually is good for a free cup of coffee. Sale! We got what we came for! We got what we came for! My wife and I embraced. My exhausted daughter napped in the umbrella stroller.

We hurried out, making no eye contact with Ikea employees or other customers. We wanted to see the sun again. Under the weight of six, compact boxes, the Focus bent but didn't break. We drove away. What day was it?

Later, struggling to build our new nightstand, I realized I put a shelf in backwards, compromising the entire project. The white boards of some sort of pressed meatloaf wood, twisted and scratched as I tried to correct the error. The horror. The horror.

Did a Big Idea Make Big Ideas Elusive?

This weekend, some friends sent me Neal Gabler's interesting New York Times commentary, "The Elusive Big Idea." In it, Gabler bemoans the lack of influence compelling intellectual ideas have on modern Society. We make icons of those who, in the past, not only thought of something new, but also captured the attention and commanded the respect of the rest of the Western world, to the point where their ideas not only transformed their own field but impacted society as a whole. Freud's study in psychology brought about a paradigm shift in his own profession and influenced literature, theology and much else. The same could be said of Einstein with physics, Niebuhr with theology or Keynes with economics. Not only that, Gabler argues, but the ideas, and the intellectuals who argued for and about them, held more respect in popular culture. He writes:

"A big idea could capture the cover of Time — “Is God Dead?” — and intellectuals like Norman Mailer, William F. Buckley Jr. and Gore Vidal would even occasionally be invited to the couches of late-night talk shows. How long ago that was.

If our ideas seem smaller nowadays, it’s not because we are dumber than our forebears but because we just don’t care as much about ideas as they did. In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world — a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are disseminating them, the Internet notwithstanding. Bold ideas are almost passé."

Now, you might be thinking, isn't the screen I'm staring at now a pretty big, transformative idea? Couldn't we add the likes of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg to our pantheon of people with good, world-changing ideas? No, writes Gabler.

"Entrepreneurs have plenty of ideas, and some, like Steven P. Jobs of Apple, have come up with some brilliant ideas in the “inventional” sense of the word.

Still, while these ideas may change the way we live, they rarely transform the way we think. They are material, not ideational."

In fact, all this information technology is part of the problem.

"Where are you going? What are you doing? Whom are you seeing? These are today’s big questions. It is certainly no accident that the post-idea world has sprung up alongside the social networking world. Even though there are sites and blogs dedicated to ideas, Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, etc., the most popular sites on the Web, are basically information exchanges, designed to feed the insatiable information hunger, though this is hardly the kind of information that generates ideas. It is largely useless except insofar as it makes the possessor of the information feel, well, informed."

I understand these this intense need to be informed, and the makers of social media, not to mention search engines, were smart to capitalize on this. A few minutes ago, I had to close the tabs with my Facebook and Twitter feeds just so I could stay focused on this blog. Gabler goes on to write how traditional media, the disbursers of big ideas, is suffering in an instant information society. Print is shrinking in market share, and popular television talk shows no longer invite intellectuals to sit on their couches. Instead of pausing to think, we now have the means to gorge ourselves with information, and we use it.

We're a narcissistic society, it's true, though I'm sure other professors had said that about their students a generation ago. Also, I don't think profit and intellectual thought are as antithetical as Gabler says it is. He admits that there are indeed thinkers with ideas to give and mentions a few examples, but they just don't have the same impact or attention of the idea generators of the past. But I largely agree that today, with our glut quick, instantaneous information and fewer ideas that manage to influence everyone.

Here's the thing, though. Isn't the death of a big idea, in part, the result of ideas themselves? Gabler laments the fall of enlightenment thinking, which he says is related to the death of the big idea, but he never mentions a big idea that critiqued the enlightenment itself: postmodernism. Postmodernism's flagship tenet is the deconstruction of meta-narratives, which is another way of saying big ideas, is it not? Postmodernism became popular, because some big ideas, full of influence, impact, debate, scholarship and much else, were devastating. Consider this neat summary from an Economist article five years ago (about which I wrote here):

"The founding post-modern text (as books are called in pomo) is by two Germans, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Published in 1944, “Dialectic of Enlightenment” examined the culture that had given birth to Auschwitz. It declared that “enlightenment is totalitarian”—that the 18th-century attempt to replace religion with rationalism had supplanted one form of mental slavery with another. God had been elbowed out by fascism, communism, Marxism, Freudianism, Darwinism, socialism and capitalism. The post-modernists thought their job was to “deconstruct” these grand theories, which they called the “meta-narratives”. The pomos would free people from them by exposing their sinister nature."

What hath big ideas wrought? Yes, Freud and Einstein had big ideas, but so did Hitler and Stalin. Perverse as they were, they were birthed in an enlightened culture where ideas, to use Gabler's words, were not "intellectual playthings," but had "practical effects." Indeed, it was fear of Hitler that caused Einstein to apply his big ideas towards the creation of the atomic bomb. If big ideas are less important to many of us, it is, in part, because they managed to destroy themselves in the process.

What is the result of the postmodernist critique of big ideas? Well, one is mass individualism, which Gabler laments without naming. As the Economist article points out, Capitalism has taken advantage of this with niche marketing, which is perhaps why Mark Zuckerberg has probably had more of an impact on most of us than Steven Pinker (to use one of Gabler's examples). Aided with technology, we all get to pick and choose what we read, what feed we follow or whose pictures to tag. But it doesn't necessarily mean we cease to think; our thoughts rarely rest in conformity with our preferred ueber-thinker, and when they do, that thinker has less impact on society as a whole. I primarily use Facebook to share links and read the links my friends have posted, and much of it is good, substantial stuff. Ideas are not extinct, but there's a lot more of them, and, for better or for worse, it's less likely that the big few will dominate.

Yes, this leaves all of us wide open for narcissism. Furthermore, I share Gabler's dislike of celebrity gossip and the computer-like gestation of information without thought, not to mention a preference for long, thoughtful essays over the verbal volleyball of cable punditry. I wish Letterman would feature a prominent professor for every actor he hosts. But I would rather live with our frantic, electronic marketplace of ideas and distractions then go back to a time when an evil idea could become so dominate.

Will Wilkinson, in reply to Gabler, believes (and "would bet his immortal soul") that "more big ideas... were studied, discussed and produced in 2010 than in 1950." He goes on to put a sunnier face on modern intellectual discourse:

"A TED talk or a book-talk spot on "The Daily Show" may not have the audience or cultural centrality of a half-hour with Dick Cavett on ABC in 1970, but more people are consuming and discussing big ideas, old and new, than ever before. The difference is that the audience and the discussion has become fragmented and decentralised.

The fun part is that I, as a lay thinker, can join the discussion right here on the information super highway. For those of us who prefer a cooler, more intellectual environment, the answer is to remain relentlessly thoughtful, reading and considering the ideas we come across. Before, of course, we post them on Facebook.

Neurotics Like Us

Over at First Things, Bryan Wandel describes “Christian Neuroticism,” which is particularly acute among American Evangelicals given our historical tension with modernity and the impact of the Pentecostal Movement. Bryan explains: “Thus, many American Christians have had their minds wrung by the challenges of extrahistorical standards (due to the fundamentalist response to modernity) while their epistemologies have been strung out on the throes of immediate communication with God. This is not an enviable situation.” (Read the whole thing, for a fuller explanation of both the history and the psychology involved. I should also point out that I knew Bryan in D.C., and was thrilled to see his name “On the Square”)

It may not be enviable, but he goes on to write that it may not be so bad after all. An advantage to this acute state of being in but not of the world is creativity in line with the likes of Lewis, Elliot, Kierkegaard, Solzhenitsyn and Tolstoy. He goes on to conclude:

“Is the neurotic Christian unhealthy? Possibly. But you would have to judge him according to the norms of both his cultures. Moreover, this tension may be merely an enhanced version of the tension that all people are susceptible to when living in a finite, hurtful world. The world is good, and yet it is bad. People are spiritual beings, but find themselves far from God. The Christian neurotic, with the right guidance, might have the best experience to relate to when the world seems cruel and contradictory.”

I link to this, because Bryan provides a good angle on some of the tensions of Christianity that ceaselessly and with various levels of distraction occupy my mind, but his essay gave me two additional thoughts.

First, if modern American Evangelicals have a tendency towards neurosis, then we’re in good company. Aside from Bryan’s all-star lineup of writers, I know that Baptist Preacher C.H. Spurgeon suffered depression, and modern psychologists would have probably diagnosed Martin Luther with bi-polar disorder. We might even see a little neurosis when we read about Augustine’s spiritual search, and while I am insufficiently read in the old saints, I suspect that these tensions are a common theme. In scripture, we find that Jesus tells us to expect difficulties and opposition when we go out in the World, and the behavior of his disciples (gyrating between cowardice and courage, faith and fear, bold commitment and hesitation) is, in my eyes, comfortingly neurotic. Much of Paul’s pastoral instruction seems to be guiding his flock through the inherent tension between the world and the Gospel of Christ (I’m reading through 1 Thessalonians right now, whose message seems to be “glad to hear you’re doing well, Jesus is coming back!, so be good, keep calm and carry on). Then there are the cries of the Psalms and the prophets, not to mention ancient Israel’s struggle to be a people set apart from the pagans. So, I suspect that if we are a bit neurotic, then we are only experiencing what God’s people have experienced throughout the ages, with our own cultural and historical context to give it a different flavor.

Second, other than creativity and possibility having “the best experience to relate to,” I can think of one more positive result Christian neurosis, one that, used well, will benefit the Christian neurotic as well as those in his life: prayer. Such conflict, such tension, such unresolved stress between our desire to see God’s kingdom come while still live and thrive in our own world should cause us to see our insufficiencies and (if you’ll pardon the cliché) bring us to our knees. A prime benefit of Christianity is that we, by the Son and through the Spirit, get to commune with the Father. Prayer seldom resolves our tensions or fills our lives with ease (though how often we wish it would). But prayer does deepen our relationship with God. We drink living water from the source, and in that, we taste richness of the life He has given us.