Back in the US of A

My daughter must think Florida is a tropical Christmas land. We harked the herald in the Sunshine State last year, and we're back again, novelty German presents in tow for another round of palm tree cheer. The same houses on my parents street have the exact same decorations around their palm trees. Yup, my daughter has no proof that Florida ever removes its Christmas kitsch. Come to think about it, neither do I.

As I write this, Germany's under a blanket of snow and will likely remain that way through the Yuletide season. We, however, spent the day on a beach just north of Naples, Florida, worrying about getting sunburned. Sure, I know you're supposed to dream of a white Christmas. Anyone who has lived in Florida for more than three years might dream of a white Christmas until they actually (re)experience one. Then they realize that snow never shows up without cold and darkness and then "In the Bleak Midwinter" becomes the appropriate carol. Enjoy your hot cocoa folks, but I'm happy to pop open a cold one while soaking up the vitamin D this December. "Snow on snow on snoooowwwwww....."

Of course, coming back to America is a reminder of the things I miss and don't miss. Here are some back-in-the-US-of-A observations, in no special order:

1. Patriotism - "the American flag!" squeals my daughter from the back seat of the car at pretty much every traffic light. Now, I'm doing my duty to teach her to wave the flag and smile (She's not quite old enough for the "Fifty Nifty" song, but she'll get there. If you don't know what the "Fifty Nifty" song is, ask your American friend), but sometimes you forget how much patriotism you can fit in a square block. The used car lots are surrounded by so many flags you'd think the bones of some hallowed president were buried under the Toyota Tundras. Of course, I was proudly patriotic when I went to see Lincoln. When I found out about the film a couple months ago, most of my German friends gave me strange looks when I got all giddy. I loved the film (Daniel Day Lewis is worth the price of admission), though something in me, planted by almost two years on European soil, rebelled in silent protest whenever the film became too sentimental. 
2. Trader Joe's - It's good to see you Trader Joe's. Thank you for opening in Florida just down the street from our little vacation condo. The chips, salsa, bean dip, peanut butter, and various American craft beers were just like old times. Of course, this time around I'm less impressed with the fact that you have Rittersport. 
3. Fashion - Everyone knows day-to-day American fashion is more casual than day-to-day European, but it's always a small culture shock when you actually see it, and I come from a part of Germany that's not exactly a world fashion capital. But wow, it's Christmas and the gym clothes are out! You can't waive an American flag without hitting someone in yoga pants, gym shorts or tights. Speaking of tights, I had the strange experience of being startled by body openness coming back from Europe. Somehow, between the time I left two years ago and Advent 2012, tights transformed from something women wore under skirts to an appropriate trousers alternative. Walking through the Atlanta airport, I thought that I had stumbled into the locker room at the local ballet. The times they are a'changin'. In any case, I take full advantage of America's casual attitude combined with Florida's pleasant weather. No, I'm not ready for tights yet (unless I'm running in the winter time) - I still feel a continental need to wear something that requires a belt when I go anywhere. But man, hello flip flops! I wear them in Germany too, though I get judgmental stares in the supermarket, because in Germany sandals combined with socks, are indoor-only attire. But flip flops are to Floridians what leather loafers are to Italians. Wear them all the time. Do you feel that breeze, feet? This is America. This is Florida. This is freedom. 
4. Plastic bags - Good gravy, America, do we really need to use so many plastic bags!? If we stacked up the plastic bags we've used since Thanksgiving we could probably get back to the moon. The lady at Target will double your plastic bag if you buy a pack of gum. The Germans have the good sense to charge for them. Everyone goes to the store armed with baskets and cloth bags, not just the types who pack their NPR totes with arugula. I remember when a plastic bag tax was introduced in DC  - people cried out as if they were being forced to go to the dentist. But it seems to have worked. Let's cut back, folks. 
5. Southern hospitality - Southern hospitality, oh I've missed you. I didn't even realize how much I missed you. We all love to feel welcome, but as a parent, you hope for a special place in heaven for those who welcome your child. This was especially true when we touched down in Atlanta to hit customs before our connecting flight to Orlando. Few people are happy to see a child in an airport, but the Atlanta airport staffers delighted at the sight of a tired, curly-haired almost-3-year old in our umbrella stroller. I near' thought they were going to invite us in for a glass of sweet tea. And it wasn't the whole smile-with-your-mouth-not-your-eyes plastic hospitality you sometimes get. The good folks in the ATL were happy to see us. We felt welcomed. 

The New Saturdays Mornings

Waiting in line at the post office a few years ago brought about this reflection on Saturday mornings. I, content and well-rested after sleeping in, reading unbothered and eating my wife's apple-cinnamon pancakes stood in front of a beautiful and exhausted young mother. Married and waiting for children, I knew my idyllic Saturday mornings were numbered. Now, a father of an almost-three year old, Saturdays are no longer us time. My wife and I can no longer enjoy the executive breakfast or the lazy reading and comfort coffee and all the other Saturday pleasures afforded to young married couples. Parenting is a great job; it's the best job I've ever had, but you don't get to take a day off for a well-deserved sabbath.

My new Saturday mornings run like this. My daughter's noises wake my wife up. The noises could be singing, crying, talking, laughing, grunting, coughing or any combination thereof, but my wife wakes up. My wife sleeps like a soldier - any small noise and she is up and ready for action. I'm glad she's not the kind to keep a gun under her pillow, or else I'd get shot in the ribs every time I needed to use the toilet at night. The noises can come at any point between 7 and 8:30 AM, the later the more merciful. My wife rouses me with an elbow and a whisper of "Schatz," which in this context is German for "darling." I wake up, fumble with whatever clothes I can find and exit the bedroom stage right. I let my wife go back to sleep. Saturday morning is her turn.

I go to my daughter. She's usually happy to see me, though sometimes she protests, "Mama! NOT Papa!" "Sorry kid, you're stuck with me." is my response. I pick her up.

***

What follows is a philosophical discussion about the potty. My more progressive argument is that big girls, including all the cool kids in her future kindergarten, go pee pee on the potty. The potty is the future, and even though I'll still love her if she's wearing diapers during her drivers' test, it is good and just and right to take the porcelain splash. It's well worth pointing out, I continue, that those who use the potty are often rewarded with gummy bears. My daughter's arguments are more agrarian, a kind of curmudgeonly conservationism suspicious of change and newfangled technology. While she has successfully tried and used the potty, she doesn't think the evidence for permanent change is very compelling. The diaper has served her well for almost three years, keeping leaks at a minimum and promoting a lifestyle where nothing need be interrupted just because nature calls. Indeed, if more adults wore diapers, then economic productivity would increase as toilet breaks decrease. And isn't the toilet break just one more staple of the lazy, anti-capitalist worker? In the same way, my daughter can continue coloring, playing with her dolls or watching "Baby Praise" without that unproductive walk down the hall. In any case, the toilet is cruelly cold, especially in morning.

***

After setting a livid toddler on the toilet with a 50% chance of achieving the desired result, we move to our living/dining room. She scampers to her toys and I take a dreary walk to the kitchen. Any walk I take in the morning is dreary until I have my coffee. I make coffee. While the coffee drips, I put my daughter's oat meal in the microwave, grate an apple to put over the oatmeal, pour her milk, take out two pieces of bread, put it on a plate, spread some delicious German spreadable over it (either creamy honey or creamy meat), put a mandarin orange next to the bread. The coffee is finished. I pour my coffee, pour some more milk over her oatmeal and voela! breakfast for two is served. Restaurant quality multitasking.

After putting the appropriate plates in the appropriate places, I pick me daughter up to bring her to her seat. She then erupts in a declaration of independence. After all, she can climb into her chair by herself. I let her do so. While we eat, I pop open the laptop. Now I know some of you are judging. The laptop at the table is against all conventional parenting wisdom. Screens distract from loving attention, and technology is harmful to child development. Technology should be kept away from the child until it is able to grow its own cucumbers and spear its own fish in the river. And besides, I'm a terrible example. Let me respond. First, I still engage my daughter. I really do. Second, we always eat a computer free family lunch in traditional German fashion, as well as an evening bread. And third, who doesn't read the newspaper at breakfast? I just don't have a paper version.

Breakfast is finished. I push my daughter's stool back so she can get down by herself. Any of the following could happen: reading a children's book, listening to a children's CD, drawing on the doodle board or putting a farm-based puzzle together. Personally, I'd rather keep reading the screen, like in the old days. At the couch, or at the table or (in nice weather) out on the balcony. Often, she plays, and I get to read. But then, I feel a little hand tap my knee. Time to close the laptop or the the book. Her turn. Whichever book is on. "Curious George?" "Mickey Mouse?" "Little People?" "ABC?" "Jesus?" She usually asks regarding on her mood - usually a particular book stays her favorite for about three weeks or so, and comes back again after a few months. But I read. I reluctantly put aside my selfish pleasure of a morning built around me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, when no one else is there. But love is a less-accessible pleasure. Close the macbook, the newspaper or the book. Put the child on the lap, read the book for the thousands time. The annoyance gives way to a certain joy that's stronger in memory, but always there. I give the characters voices, she tells me what's in the pictures. Love and love. Coffee helps.

Two Kinds of Sin in "Perfume"

It's hard to want to read anything else after reading a superb novel. I sit, outside on the balcony, inside a train on the way to work, knowing another world awaits if I could just move on start reading the first book on the pile. And I do, and I'm always happy I did. But that great novel leaves behind a little mist that leaves everything else hard to see. I just keep thinking of them.

Patrick Süskind's Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, gruesome as it is, was the most recent "great novel" on my list. It's the first great novel I've read entirely in the German language. I read translations of Kafka and others in college and I've practice my language with the German versions of fun Swedish thrillers, but I haven't read anything that you could call great literature auf Deutsch, and the fact that I read and understood  Perfume was an encouragement of my own language ability. It's beautifully written - even to my second-language ears - still dark and disturbing yet strangely human. If you haven't read it, let me say that it's well worth it (though, again, gruesome). Oh, and if you haven't read it, then maybe you shouldn't read the following paragraphs. One of the novels pleasures is its unpredictability, and there are spoilers ahead.

In a book about brutal serial killer with an extraordinary sense of smell, it's a credit to Süskind's writing that I came away feeling more philosophical than disturbed. There's a lot in the text I could talk about, but I want to mention how Jean-Baptiste Grenouille's villainy reminds me of something C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity.

Grenouille's first victim is a girl who's smell he simply wants to possess. Her exquisite smell conquers him and he kills her. The scene reminds me of a pit bull attacking a two-week old kitten. It turns him into an animal. But later in the book he becomes something worse. As he realizes what kind of power scent has over a person, he decides to combine the best human smells, which are evidently only possessed by pretty girls. Then, methodical and sinister, he murders 25 of them and steals their scent. Why does he want this master perfume? He wants to be loved and adored by all, and he knows the perfect smell could manipulate this adoration. His animal desire leads to a heinous act; his pride leads to 25 more. Here's what Lewis writes:

You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the centre of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Later in the same chapter:

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

You can read the whole chapter here. I'm quoting this out of order, but here is one more point Lewis makes:

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

I have no idea if Süskind considered such religious language when creating his antihero, but it's interesting to note how Grenouille always looks inward and never up.

Parenting Tip: Give Your Child Choices

After over two-and-a-half years of parenting, I feel I'm qualified to give a few tips out to all the struggling parents out there. I don't do this too often, lest I come across as immodest, but mercy compels me to speak every once in awhile.

My father told me (and he might have gotten this from Bill Cosby, but I'm not sure) that when it comes to kids, it's good to give them choices, but in such a way that they make the right choice. This way, the child is convinced to do the right thing without going through the stubbornness struggle that comes with simply issuing an unpopular order.

For example, when it's time to take a nap, I tell my two-your-old daughter: "Daughter, do you want to take you nap, or do you want to go to the doctor's and get a shot?"

When it's time to take her home from a beloved friend or Oma's house or anywhere else that's new and fun, I say, "Do you want to go home, or would you rather go to the doctor's and get a shot?"

Bath time? "Get in the tub! Unless, that is, you'd rather go to the doctor's and get a shot."

Finicky eater? "You can either finish your rotkraut or go to the doctor's and get a shot."

And of course, every evening, after lovingly reading her a story and singing a soothing, biblically-themed love-a-bye, I whisper: "It's time to go to bed, darling. Either that, or you can go to the doctor's and get a shot."

Of course, when it's actually time to go to the doctor... well... I let my wife handle that one.

Phone Home, Elke and Sven, Phone Home

What a powerful, counter-cultural post by Elke Naters and Sven Lager on Zeit Online. What a rare modern, public witness to the radical love of Christianity. What a testimony as to why these poor but sexy Berliners who moved to South Africa and embraced the faith of the "transforming power of love,"' to use their words. Haven't read it yet? Click on the link and read it. Don't know German? Pop that baby into Google Translate and let'er rip. It's worth it.

Naters and Lager moved to South Africa, because, among the rhythms of their Berlin life - "writing books, having kids, going drinking" - they went, comfortably enough, "with any particular pain, but without any particular depth." In contrast, I moved to Western Europe. Growing up in a family who always heard from international people and international places, Western Europe was like a storybook of endless chapters that I could step into. Heck, eventually I married into it. The food, the trains, the culture mish mash, the hoards of bright, artistic people who valued not just producing things but the moments where drinks and walks and bike rides are shared with friends. These things just weren't as abundant in the land of individualism and energetic economy.

That life of drinks and art and conversation - well, I wouldn't have given that up for South African excitement, myself. Maybe that was their storybook place. I read "Cry, the Beloved Country," and believe me, I want to see the country, but I'm not sure if I'd be ready for the pain part. But for Naters and Lager, they needed to taste more life. Something (to paraphrase their words) more radical than punk, communism or whatever isms we stuff in our soul to make the world better and our morals correct. In Africa, they found a land that was not just Christ-haunted, but Christ-bathed, a land of amazing healing, yes, but of even more amazing forgiveness and reconciliation, repentance and belief.

I'm glad they wrote their piece, not in some right-wing rag, but in one of the most respected German-language newspapers. I like that they included conversations over wine with their bewildered Berliner friends. (The title of the piece is, after all, "You actually believe in the Bible?") I like that, judging by the 760 (my last count) comments, many full of snide and bile, that they seemed to hit a nerve, a nerve I'm so often afraid to touch. And, believe me, I hope all of this is a sign that Naters and Lager haven't forgotten where they came from. Not everyone can travel for their spiritual journey, and we desperately need to hear their stories. We need to know what radical forgiveness looks like, lest we think we don't need it. We need to know that God is moving and just, that he loves us, that he hasn't abandoned us. Phone home, you strange, foreign, Bible believers. Tell us more.
...

For what it's worth, I've sat with him here. I sat with in him those comfortable street cafes in Western Europe, between classes or meetings or days off breathing second-hand smoke while nursing a Spanish coffee and the kind of book that melds mind and soul. I held his hand with a tiny band of praying Italians at a Pisa train station, at an Easter morning worship circle in Eastern Germany and with my own child in a church here in Plochingen. And for the many here who do not know him, who keep him at a comfortable distance, I've felt God's dancing love for them, his desire for reconciliation. May we, to quote the old prayer, see Christ more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly, wherever our journey takes us.

Olympic Post

The closing ceremony is over. The medals have been lovingly packed away (sorry if the American team took so long... zing! Hollah!). I watched it. Like other sports, I loooovvve watching the olympics. I remember watching the '84 Olympics with my mom. Both of us were especially excited by the horse-jumping. As I grew up, I was dazzled by Carl Lewis and the original dream team and Michael Phelps and marathons and running and jumping and swimming and synchronizing! This Olympics was no exception. This Olympics was spectacular. I loved the variety - sports, countries, fans, scenery. Well done, everyone.

Here are a few post thoughts:

1. Keep all the sports. Keep that ever-expanding Olympic Leviathan consuming strange, wonderful sports from all five ringed continents. And why not? Basketball's popular, running is elemental, but why not include walking, synchronized swimming or handball? The fun part of the olympics is that the popular and the obscure meet on level ground (or water). The olympics isn't a closet to sort out the stuff that prevents you from finding your favorite socks. There's room for everybody in the party. Now, the impatient sourpusses who can't handle flipping between rhythmic gymnastics and field hockey might ask, where do we draw the line? I like the cigar test - if you can smoke a cigar while playing without it impeding your performance, then it's not a sport (sorry darts and poker - they show you on ESPN, but not the Olympics...).  But everything we might find boring (I find riding bikes in circles in the gym boring, but I can't deny it's a sport and the athletes are worthy - plus the moment when that old Brit came back and won and cried during the anthem... well, good stuff) or not fitting into our cultural understanding or looking silly.... I mean, the 50 km walking looks silly. Evidently, proper athletic walking technique involves shaking your hips in a sexy salsa dance style. But I've never seen a sport where so many people keeled over in exhausted. Well, maybe at band camp, but that always involved asthma and heavy brass instruments... But anway, there were 303 disciplines. Keep'em all... 
2. Speaking of different sports, how can we even talk about who's the best olympian all time? Folks can make they're case for Phelps, Bolt or dozens of people before them (maybe Bolt makes his own case - this seems to annoy some folks, but I like his Muhammed Ali showmansship - plus, behind the cocky act, he clearly takes joy in running like a cheetah). Apples, oranges, times and training. I wish we could watch Bolt could race Carl Lewis or Jesse Owens or Jim Thorpe on an even plane of modern training and technology. But we can't. Enjoy the present, remember the past. Know that this bar and blog conversation can't ever really be decided. 
3. On display - part of the profession for the athlete is being on display, and none more than the Olympics. This includes way those aerodynamic suits don't leave much to the imagination (not that I noticed... someone else told me). But I'm actually talking about the emotional (which requires looking up at their faces). Honestly, would you like to have millions voyeurs watching you at your job? Imagine if your last job interview were not only broadcast live all over the world, but it was analyzed ad nauseum by business experts, journalists, and comedians for the remaining night. Especially the part when you didn't get the job and you sat on a park bench sobbing like that poor Korean fencer who was gypped out of a spot in the finals due to a strange clock malfunction. Or you got the job and you celebrated by hurdling park benches like that hulking German guy who got gold in discus with Mo Farah's victory expression pasted to your face. Sure - they knew what they were getting into, but they're still human. This struck me especially when a German high jumper got 4th place for something like the third straight tournament. There, for all the world to see, she jumped up an down, tears in her eyes, screaming "I always get 4th! Always 4th! Always 4th" That hissy fit of raw frustration reminded  me of my own pathetic hissy fits, behind closed doors, usually alone or with someone who made a promise to God and me that includes the words "for worse." But I will say, come winter time, that I have a great pair of aerodynamic running tights. 
4. London - China's incredible, collectivist display at the Beijing opening ceremonies may have been astounding, but for whatever our many flaws, I much prefer the dynamic, multicultural West with its breathing room for movement, humor, song and spirit. Great vision, great games, and if I had money to spend (ha, hehhhhh....) I'd immediately do what your tourism offices is hoping I'd do. 

Not Athletic

From the moment my legs could kick, from the moment my fingers could touch the leather stitches and lacing of a ball, from the moment I could watch modern titans put on superhero costumes to reap points, touchdowns, goals, runs for their city, country or university, I have loved sports. My earliest audio memories include my father's voice, my mother's voice, my grandmother's voice and football commentator John Madden's voice. (if you don't know who that is, ask your American friend to imitate Madden's trademark "BOOM"! He would yell "BOOM" for touchdowns, good hits, good blocks, good runs and effective athletes foot fungus removal. "BOOM" is America's answer to "GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!")

My dad took me to my first baseball game when I was just five - Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, standing room only, industrial stadium nachos, Cubs lost to the Mets. I dressed up like Washington Redskins' Quarterback Joe Theismann for Halloween. My walls were decorated with the likes of Michael Jordan, Charlie Ward and Gred Maddux, among other titans of my youth. Today I can straddle the Atlantic and rage and rejoice with the tides of European and American football. (to those who think one or the other is boring, then you need better cultural understanding: Americans like to hit things and need to take frequent breaks. Europeans think life is too complex for winners, losers and scoring opportunities.) With every major tournament my spine gets sparkly and my eyes get tingly (or maybe I overcooked the barbecue). Athletic feats! Matching uniforms! Philosophical arguments about meaningless things! Yes, from the very beginning, I could watch sports like a champion. Playing sports, however, was a different matter.

You see, the problem, the suffering, the shame, is that I was always awful at sports. Really awful. From the moment the first gentle grounder avoided my baseball glove and went through my legs because I was imagining dinosaurs sitting in the dugout, I tried to keep up, but never quite had that spark. My trophy case is full of participation trophies and the occasional coach's award for team spirit. I tried, but sports required an amount of concentration I could only give to stories and television, as well as a coordination that only existed in my muscular imagination. (My imagination needs no performance enhancing drugs)

Now, this never stopped me from useful childhood participation in team sports. But from the little leagues to pop warner, coaches recognized my deficiency. They would place me in positions that required the least amount of participation. In baseball, that meant left field, the part of the diamond where it was statistically unlikely for a ball to reach me. I'd stand there fantasizing about hitting home runs like Andre Dawson while my teammates fielded double plays. By the way, baseball's the worst for a non-athletic person. In all other sports, I could hide my inability in a cloud of dust, cleats and team activity. But when I came up to bat, all eyes were focused on my stance, my motion and my strength, and this knowledge hung on my mind like an ice brick. It's like every play is a penalty kick. My greatest triumph was whenever I was walked. "Good eye!" my coach would shout, encouragingly, after I trotted to first after not swinging through six pitches. Yes. My "good eye" (where did I leave my glasses?) and the knowledge that not swinging was my best chance at reaching first base.

When I played youth soccer, the coaches always had me play sweeper. Now, in Germany, sweeper is a hallowed position, but in American youth soccer, sweeper is where you put a slower person who doesn't have the hands or the attention span to play keeper. Essentially, I would stand in a defensive position and dream about dinosaurs attacking the neighboring parking lot, and if the ball got close, I was supposed to kick it away from our goal. I remember actually kicking the thing, like, three times. The rest of my teammates would fight tooth and nail for goals and glory. If we won, I was overjoyed for our group effort. If we tied, I was relieved. If we lost, I wept. But no matter how the game ended, there were free soft drinks for everyone, which was by far the best part of youth team sports. I did score a goal, once, when I was seven years old. My coach let me take a penalty kick, probably to fulfill some contractual obligation to have everyone touch the ball at least once. Without any particular strategy in mind, I kicked the ball straight ahead as hard as I could, and the keeper was kind enough to had been standing somewhere else. I was ecstatic, and my father, to his eternal credit my biggest fan wherever I went, erupted in a triumphant scream like I had just struck out Willie Mays.

It's a horrible thing for a boy to be bad at sports. It's like a fish being bad at swimming. It's like a calculator being bad at math. It is psychologically and spiritually important for boys to test their speed, strength, agility and endurance against one another, and to overcome - to triumph. Sure, there are other talents out there, but none so primal as athletic prowess. For such amazing feats, the athletic boys received respect, honor, swoons and early first kisses. I would play in the playground and in the large backyards of Virginia, hoping desperately that at some point, mind and body would kick in to find me home-running, slam-dunking, last-second-diving-catch-for-a-touchdown-celebrating like all the other neighborhood boys, for whom these things just clicked like the button of an old-fashioned coke machine. Instead, I was the easy out, the last pick, the "everybody go long except you" guy.

I kept trying though, and in high school, I ran cross country - a sport that required zero coordination and that valued camaraderie among under-nourished high school kids above talent. A sport for the weirdoes, where I was a four year junior varsity member and a winner of the coach's team spirit award. And I still run today, for fitness and vanity. Fitness, because I want to live a long and comfortable life, and vanity, because I want to give my wife a reason to look up from her iPad whenever I walk to the shower. It's for those reasons that this past Saturday, participated in my first public sports event since my cross country days. I ran the Plochingen 5K.

Saturday was brutally hot. Now, I'm from Florida, and Florida is brutally hot, but Florida is at least decent enough to have a violent thunderstorm every afternoon to cool things off. On Saturday, every air particle hung over the pavement like it was in suspended animation. Every speck of dust, every piece of pollen, every smudge of pollution stuck to the the inside of your lung like old rice in a pot.

But we persevered! My goal was 25 minutes, and in the face of rainforest conditions between three-story houses and the occasional friendly man with a garden hose, I reached it! Crossing the finish line, I tore off my shirt and flexed my muscles like Mario Balotelli, except that my body hair to muscle ratio is much higher than his. Ok, actually I kept my shirt on and walked like a drunk in an obstacle course towards the water station. My wife cheered (we even had our own WAG section!) and my daughter cried (mainly because of the weather). Ok, so a girl overtook me on the last lap. That doesn't matter. What matters is that I reached my goal and I had fun. Besides, everybody deserves a victory dance.

The Different in Europe

A couple weeks ago, my daughter and I went to a friend's house for coffee and cake. The coffee and cake was spontaneous - the original plan was a quick swap: translation of a letter for a couple of ESL books and some hand-me-down girl clothes. But when we arrived, the cake was on the table, the coffee was ready, and the other guests had already arrived. My friend and her family were about to move to Michigan for a couple years. In the weeks before our spontaneous coffee and cake meeting, I taught some English to her and her daughter while bringing in the occasional anecdote about living in the good ol' US of A.

Her other guests were a Turkish woman and her daughter. The Turkish woman wore a beautiful, gold-hemmed headscarf that, along with her excellent posture, gave her a stately presence. Her daughter, save for a slightly darker complexion, could fit in well with any Swabian play group. They both declined cake - there was something about it that made it unfit for the Muslim diet - but they ate generous helpings of fruit salad. The Turkish woman asked if my daughter was a boy - it seems like my daughter's name sounds masculine in Turkish ears - but no big deal.

I love Europe for these moments. In this little strip of land crammed with countries and tribes and dialects finally at peace with each other. Their last wars went too far, so they decided a common economy was a good way to keep the peace and make a little money. It made sense, with everyone so close together. I go two hours in any direction and the people are different. Sure, European, still, but different languages, cultures and mentalities, spiced with Turkish and African immigrants, not to mention the occasional displaced Yankee.

Now, the talking heads prophets are predicting European collapse - or at least the currency and Union, and, more darkly, giving voice to those who despise with The Different as our neighbor and collaborator. Plenty of the prophets, especially from my own country, can't hide their Schadenfreude behind the curtain of grim prophecies. Clearly those snobbish Brussels elites hadn't read their Keynes or their Burke or their own opinion polls or the Greek accounting sheets. The boom times hid all the structural problems and the bubble to bring about debt, stagnation, unemployment and overall hopelessness. Financial hardship is a common ground for a divorce.

They may be right. The whole kitten-caboodle could fall down all around us. Or, the magic elixir will work and we'll all have cushy jobs, a sense of meaning and tickets to Eurovision. But it's worth mentioning that whatever happens, we'll all still be here. Our neighbors will be our neighbors. We'll have to talk and trade and exchange and ask and immigrate and emigrate. The Different will remain both across the border and across the street. The Different are in that country in the north or the south that everyone is complaining about. Sometimes The Different is in the other balcony flying a foreign flag during the football tournament. Sometimes The Different is on the other side of the bed. For better or worse.

Whatever system, past, present or future, the second greatest commandment applies. We are to love our neighbors as ourselves. Judging by the story that follows it, our neighbors include The Different, especially those close to us. We're close to each other. We're different, and we can break bread together. Or cake. Or if you can't eat the cake, there's always fruit salad.

Bilingualism and Technology

Here's the scene. My wife sits at our dining/living room table curiously manipulating an iPad. My daughter bounces around the room, as two year olds do, curiously manipulating toys, books and the occasional strange grownup thing like a couch pillow, junk mail or stray administrative document that we'll probably need later. Without any apparent reason, my daughter points to something outside of the window. The following conversation ensues:

Daughter: Baum! 
Wife: Yes, that is a baum! And what does Papa say?
Daughter: Papa says, "tree!"
Wife: Exactly! Mama says baum, Papa says tree.
Daughter (pointing to the iPad): iPod!
Wife: Actually, this is an iPad.
Daughter: Papa says, "iPod!" 

The Violinist (A Voice of Our Own)

My weekly journey to Stuttgart ends late in the evening. My last class finished, I walk briskly down Koenigstrasse. Stuttgart's great shopping street is nearly empty. The locals huddle in bars to watch the Wednesday night soccer games and dart in and out of clubs like shy gophers with cigarettes. The muscles in my legs burn with the pleasure of movement that contrasts nicely to the icy central-European breeze against my face. There's freedom in walking, freedom in knowing that the street, the sneakers, the buildings standing in attention all the way were designed to parade me to the train station and take me home, where my daughter sleeps and my lover waits. I am fast, but I don't hurry; I walk in an un-lonely solitude that I experience in big cities at night. 

A line of music breaks my thoughts like an unexpected visitor. Where have I heard that before? Oh yes. That's "Time to Say Goodbye" the song Andrea Bocelli sing's in my parent's speakers and in that Italian cafe I frequented in Freiburg. It's not typical of the violinist. She usually plays songs from movies. I usually hear her play the theme from Schindler's List or "My Heart Will Go On." 

The violinist is blonde, pretty and perhaps a bit too thin. She's young - a teenager? Her hair is straight and nearly tied behind her head in a pony tail that wags in a friendly manner as she movers her bow back and forth over her instrument. She's an amateur, no question, with only the occasional evening pedestrian for an audience. I like to think that she's Russian. I don't know of course, but my prejudice says that a blond girl with a violin must be Russian. Of course, I can't tell. She could be a local. She could have been born down the street from me in the good ol' US of A. Or anywhere else, really. 

Why does she play? Need? Charity? Hope? Hopelessness? I don't know. But as I pace by, I reflect how much she's like a blogger. It's one thing to play in our bedrooms or write in our journals - little pieces of us expelled from our minds with no listener or accountability. But the street and the Internet give us a voice. Regardless of our talent or depth, we get to say something that might be heard by anyone who happens to walk by our night, our street, our website. We may dream of Carnegie Hall or The New Yorker, we may reflect on what changes in history, education or genetics might have gotten us there. But that does stop us from playing and typing, pretending and expressing, saying something that may just cut through the noise of our busy minds. 

I continue home, "Time To Say Goodbye" fading behind my right shoulder. 

Feel free to leave some change in the hat. 

Some Observations After My Facebook Fast

Ok, brace yourselves everybody! Lent is over and I'm back on Facebook. It dents my pride to admit how much I missed a glowing blue social network that was first designed for college students, but I did miss it. Logging in was a bit like coming back to the ol' neighborhood after a long trip. Only a bit.

Every generation is confronted with technological change, and the Internet is our biggest revolution. (though I'm still holding out for Star Trek style teleporters. Beam me anywhere, I'll be back in a minute!) And every generation asks, do we really need this? And with the Internet's capacity for public naval gazing, the question gets asked more and more and more. The answer is mostly no, but on average, I'll take our present hyper-connected world to a pre-Internet age. It's just so interesting, and there's so much stuff I can look at and read for free.

I missed Facebook, because I miss my friends. My travels are among my treasures, and I have several places I could call home, but this means that no matter where I am, there's someone I miss, someone whose face I would like to see, someone who I experienced in a new way and can't experience again in the same way, but we can share a knowing smile, even if the moment is shallow or the joke is no longer funny. Facebook, besides being an outlet for posting clever links and public relations for my family, is public nostalgia and a great excuse for smiles and fondness. The danger of course, is that we fail to be rooted with those around us, that we ignore family, friends, work and place. I fasted in part to distance myself from this danger and to tame the impulse to avoid work or confrontation or other unpleasantries by hungrily scanning my feed for something I like. This helps connect me to the corner of Swabia where I get to live. And if it's God who brought me here, then why not close the browser and pay attention to where he has me? Why not take additional time to celebrate his Fast, His Passion and His Resurrection deepening my local connections, especially to Him. 

Now that Easter has come and gone, here are some (random) observations:

1. I still have a long way to go to be localized. It's to be expected in a foreign culture, and I've noticed that the more I move, the more time it takes for the to sink in and reach a place where the soul is sustained. 
2. The desire to numb my brain on Facebook has not gone away, and let's face it, there are good times to numb the brain (as long as we don't go overboard, now). 
3. However, my desire for attention has been weakened - I fine myself caring much less how or if people respond to something I post - this is freeing, and I'm thankful. 
4. A pleasant side-effect of the fast was a sense of quiet - there was less buzz. What I mean by that is fasting from social networking meant that I was less compelled to hastily follow events that I really had no control over. Whatever is the latest in politics and elections, culture and scandal, however important and compelling, there's a certain freedom to not be "in the know," much less to see them as opportunities to promote my little agendas. 
5. I can't stand timeline. I'm not on it yet, but every time I go on Facebook, I get an apocalyptic warning that it's going to be forced on me. I've normally been in the pro-change team whenever the site updated itself, but timeline pages are confusing, unattractive and disorienting. The pages manage to look (and this is not the fault of the individual users) both less personal and more narcissistic. I get that Facebook is looking for our information (it's kind of flattering - they want to know me!), and that's why we get to use this wonderful tool for free, but can they at learn our basic desires for advertising revenue without the headache-inducing split-screen? Is MySpace too organized now? Really, if you want to know my preferences, just ask nicely. 
6. On a related note, wow, things change quickly in Internet land. One of the things I noticed was how different everything looked - not greatly, but enough to notice. It's like a child you haven't seen since last summer - my how he's grown! Plus, I got bombarded with invites to games and apps I never knew existed. I'm too old for this people - I still think emoticons are clever... #oldmansittingontheporchwaivinghiswalkingstick

Chocolate Eggs

The moment finally came, the spring equinox, the part of the year where the light begins to overwhelm the darkness in the Northern Hemisphere and all the birds start singing love songs. There was a day a few weeks ago where the cafes first opened their doors and put chairs and tables onto Plochingen's cobblestone market street and every child between the river and the top of the mountain went down to the local park (mine included). I saw new friends, sympathized with fellow parents and found out someone had waxed the slide when my brave daughter landed on her bottom three feet (one meter for all you continental Europeans, one metre if you're the writer of the technical English book I use) in front of it. The sun stayed up later, giving everyone color and smiles. (It's not all fun, of course - right now the trees are taking their revenge on my using them for fuel and shelter and lesson plans by warring against my sinuses)

Next week is Easter, and I intend to bite into a big fat chocolate egg (and finally check my Facebook account - what's new?). Here in Germany, they're usually filled with egg liqueur (the taste makes this American think of the Christmas nog), though I hope to get some good Cadbury egg in the mail. You know, the tasty treats that rot your teeth on contact and taste like love mixed with sugar. In any case, I waive my palm in glad anticipation.

These are the feelings of new life: taste, smell, sound, sight, touch. It's appropriate that Christians confiscated pagan fertility symbols for our Easter parties. We eat the eggs and hug the bunnies and then, still shaking from sugar highs and feasting, we go to church and shout, "The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!" Life renewed. Resurrection. New birth.

This is good news. No, this is wonderful news. Wonderful in the literal since, and I find it especially grand here in Western Europe where people have told me they love the feeling of wonder but refuse to believe in wonder itself. After all, how could anyone rise from the dead, the way Jesus did, the way his closest followers risked their lives to say he did.

It means that things like death, suffering, injustice and evil, results of the fall, however they got here, don't have the final say. These things, present as they are to our senses and our newspapers, as real as they are to our lives, especially those who face the worst of it, do not lord over us. This is wonderful news.

It also means that, however messed up we are (and make no mistake, we are) that there's something about us, in our flesh, in our spirit, in our soul and all we are, that God loves and wants to preserve. God sees it, made in his image. He loves us enough to send his Son to die for us, to take the penalty for our sin, and to raise us with him. Jesus' rising means that we will also rise. God wants to renew us and preserve us, for his love, for his unending pleasure.

This holy week, it's worth stepping into a church to observe the worshippers, the smell of spring and new life in their nostrils, celebrate the wild coronation of Palm Sunday, break bread on Maundy Thursday, mourn death on Good Friday and revel in Resurrection on Easter Sunday. If you find you can't believe in wonder, it's a good week to give it a shot. The awakening flowers, the jubilant birds and the chocolate eggs invite us to do so.

The Train to Stuttgart

One of the best parts of my weekly routine adventure is Wednesdays, when I take the train from Plochingen to Stuttgart. It starts with a brisk, 10-minute run to the train station (hey - I'm a parent and I happen to enjoy breakfast) where I'm usually just in time to catch the Regional Express. The Regional Express only stops three times along the Neckar river before we hit the Swabian metropolis. Sometimes I hit the Jackpot and land an Interregional Express, which is a nonstop trip to the mighty Hauptbahnhof (main train station).

I love speeding through past the Neckar hills as they wake up to the gentle glow of the Eastern sun. The hills and the buildings and the trees get thicker as we approach Stuttgart, a testament to Germany's lively effort to weave nature and civilization. I love that I'm not driving so I can watch them. I love that I can read the enormous book that I got at the library and that I'll regret bringing later as I lug my backpack down Koenigstrasse (hmmm... Kindle?..nahhh). I love that I can go through my prayer cards, which help me better love all of those who I think about and who are not on the train. I love that I can see the people.

People on the train are the best. Students buried in their iPods. Hippie punks with dread locks, patches and tattoos. Businessmen with ties and glasses and important newspapers. A bouncy Japanese woman with bouncy hair who bounces her son on her lap while singing a bouncy Japanese song. It's a strange thing about public transportation. During the commute everyone is equal, united in a sense of purpose and destination. Everyone is close. Sure, we try to be far away, choosing the seat furthest from any possible contact with strangers, especially if we have strategies for when we arrive and which car we take. But eventually, the train fills up and people from every tongue, tribe and nation are packed together like a game of human Tetris. It's awkward, funny, uncomfortable and humanizing. And it sure as heck beats vehicle Tetris on your local highway.

Of course, the camaraderie ends at the train station. That's the moment we stop, well, ok, many moments before, we race to the door like it's a fire drill, everyone aware of the trouble each day has and how everyone else should learn patience.

But before that, there's the serene moment of speeding with a book, a prayer and so many flavors of human to look at. The train speeds ahead like a mechanical wild horse. We run parallel with another train, this one carrying cargo cargo instead of human cargo. It's hard to tell which train is faster, but they both seem to be enjoying the chase. I imagine that they greet one another with a sunrise smile, glowing that they're doing what they were created to do.

Talking the Talk with German Talk Shows (Discuss.)

What do you get when you combine Oprah, David Letterman, Meet the Press, Around the Horn and the McLaughlin Group? You get an average German talk show.

You see, most American talk shows center around a theme and either do one on ones with celebrities, gurus or experts - think Oprah or Letterman - or have a panel to either (depending on the day of the week and the network in question) cooly analyze the significance of the topic or screech like howler monkeys about how the opposing political party uses the shredded pieces of the Constitution for floss. But most of them at least have a focus and guests who can either talk intelligently about a topic or scream in panic until we either believe them or switch to that episode of Modern Family we've tivoed for later.

German talk shows usually have a theme and a minimum of seven guests to discuss the theme and it's at this point that the German sense of Ordnung (order, but with much more stability and cleanliness) that has kept the German economy going and the streets swept clean, breaks down into the chaos of a good German discussion. The panel introduction usually goes something like this:

Moderator: "The theme of today's show is 'The German Economic Miracle: A Nostalgic Look Back.' Our guests are a junior politician from the Green Party who has published a pamphlet called 'Solar Powered Cars: It's Not Rocket Science,' a woman from Hannover who just published a romance novel about the forbidden love between a zoo keeper and a taxi driver, Schalke 04 Football Club's new Korean Striker (will be speaking through an interpreter), the public relations director for Audi, a professor from the University of Bonn who's expertise is modern history and recently wrote a critically proclaimed book called The German Economic Miracle: Why It Should Still Make You Angry or Maybe It Shouldn't, the new light-weight women's kickboxing champion, the pirate party's senior press officer who will be live tweeting the event, and a thirteen year old boy who overcame protests from the local health department to start his own doner kebab stand."

The host then proceeds to bounce through his roundtable like a butterfly in a daisy garden while each of the guests tries to use his or her three and a half minutes of fame to promote their book/cause/film/lifestyle while attempting to say something intelligent about the topic at hand. Sometimes, of course, it makes great television - I remember when a pirate party candidate came on for the first time and a guy who looks like the guy who updates your software at work except with green hair had some interesting ideas about trade law while some woman (an actress... maybe? On a German talk show it's really hard to keep track of who is who) told him she hopes he doesn't sell out like Joschka Fisher. Well, I guess that was great... But more often I get dizzy.

Sacred Gummy Bears

My first thought was: "there goes the nap." If you're a parent, you understand. A child's nap is a parents' oasis, the proverbial eye of the storm, the cigarette break on the construction site, a moment where peace reigns once more and you can find yourself finally cleaning the house or doing that extra work or simply ignoring the pile of dirty serial bowls to indulge in reading, music, TV or blogging. To skip the nap is worse than skipping breakfast. To skip the nap is worse than watching your favorite team lose to the last-place team in the division. Not only do you have a cranky kid to contend with, but your chance to ease your day with something soul soothing and life giving has been banished to the bottom of the diaper pale.

Speaking of which, nap killer #1 is what we Americans euphemistically call #2. If a child stinks her diaper after you laid her in the crib, well, forget it. She ain't going back to sleep, and if you don't act fast, you're going to have to send a load of laundry on an emergency wash (followed, perhaps, by an emergency bath, emergency floor scrubbing and an emergency shower).

Nap killer #2 is sugar. It could be fallen nature, it could be genetic disposition or maybe she's just a quick study of her father, but my little girl sucks down sweets faster than a puppies devour a stolen bratwursts. After which, she buzzes around our apartment like a trapped wasp, leaving stuffed animals, crayons and my wife's makeup supplies in her wake. To lay her in the crib after sugar is to risk her kicking through the bars while singing her own medley of "the ABC's" and "The Wheels on the Bus." She ain't gonna sleep. That's why this morning, as my pastor gave each church child a packet of gummy bears (to my daughter's shrieking delight), my first thought was: "there goes the nap."

Today was our special family church service. We met in the morning instead of the evening, and we brought a potluck dinner. The sermon was something applicable for children, and the "children's church" pre-sermon warm up involved a competition for gummy bears. Naturally, all the children, including the adorable two-year olds along for the ride, got their own packet.

I wrote earlier of soul soothing, and I wonder if those gummy bears were good for my daughter's soul. For her, gummy bears are a sweet, joyous occasion, a special treat and a beautiful indulgence. And today, this was associated with church. Church can be an oppressive place for children. A place of uncomfortable shoes, strange chairs and the coercion to sit quietly while an old stranger talks. There is, of course, a place for children to learn to sit quietly and listen - patience is worth learning for any part of life, but there's only so much a little girl can take. Today, I was grateful that my little girl got gummy bears.

In a weird way, these gummy bears reminded me of a deeper, spiritual truth. All sermons, prayers, songs, stand up, sit down, how are you, please be quiets and peace be with you point to something wonderfully sweet. The Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ is a wonderful thing, the kind of thing that would cause someone to sell all his possessions so he could have it, the kind of thing that would cause a woman of ill-repute to smash an alabaster glass of perfume at Jesus' feet and perform a bizarre and sensual and public act of worship.

Many (though not all) of those close to Jesus thought he was wonderful. Wonderful enough to leave much behind, wonderful enough to perform these bizarre acts of worship, wonderful enough to run to him the way a two year old runs down the aisle for a packet of gummy bears, uninhibited, unashamed and free. It feels strange for me, two thousand years later to imagine, indeed appreciate this sort of devotion. But devotion to Jesus offers something sweeter than any of the wondrous things present to our senses (though when used properly, these wondrous things point to it). The pastor went on to say that Jesus compared himself and his Kingdom to a mustard tree that gives livelihood and shelter to the birds - he offers us his livelihood and shelter, and he teaches us to give livelihood and shelter to others. He offers forgiveness and reconciliation to our Creator, to him we've sought when we thought we were looking for other things. He offers change in us, that we can learn love each other without ambition, agenda or manipulation, that we can learn love God with all that we are. It's worth running after, reveling in, talking about, thinking about. It's worth tasting.

An update. My daughter ran off her sugar high by following the bigger kids around the church. She went right to sleep at nap time, only to have the moment cut short by nap killer #1.

The Tall One and the Short One

In a flash of spiritual inspiration, I gave up Facebook for lent. On Fat Tuesday, after an orgy of status updates, link sharing, photo tagging and friend stalking, I closed the blue f-tab for the last time until the Feast of the Risen Lord, during which I will open the tab back up and frantically share every funny thought that occurred to me during the previous forty days. The tab was closed, and I moved my neck. Up. Down. Right. Left. Roll the neck. Look around. Evidently, the computer is at some sort of table designed for eating (judging from the crumbs on the keyboard). There were three chairs - the one I was sitting on, white and wooden, an identical one next to it, and, across, a funny-looking chair with long legs, a small seat, and it's own individual table.

My steps away from the computer were tentative. Everything was strangely non-digital. There were colorful playthings on the floor and bookshelves much like the ones I see in the backgrounds of literary blogs. The difference was that it was so three-dimensional and there's a feeling of touch to it. It felt like I was imposing myself.

Suddenly, I heard a noise! It was the light, clumsy rumbling of little feet. A very short human person came running at me with a peculiar smile on her face (from the dress, hair and other appearance indicators, I am assuming "her"). I made gestures to indicate that I came in peace and that she should take me to her pigmy tribal leader, or at least a representative from the nearest Consulate. The little person simple smiled, grabbed my leg and said "pa pa pa pa," and some other phrases in broken English, including "story," "pretty," "I'm a Little Teapot," "Jesus," and "Elmo."   

Then, what I will now call the "Tall One" entered. She (and I am sure she was a she) was not especially tall per se, but she was significantly taller than her babbling companion, whom I will now refer to as the "Short One." The Tall One seemed to be the matriarch of the... well, where were we? Clearly indoors (as indicated by the large wooden door and several windows that couldn't be clicked)... However, unlike the Short One, she did not speak the language I'm accustomed to on Facebook but rather the one they use at studiVZ. The Tall One spoke to me in a familiar manner, something involving food and plans for the evening, but I was relieved to see that I understood her. My translation function was working away from my profile (though I haven't been able to test other languages).

In an effort to bond with the Tall One and the Short One (no telling what they would do if they turned on me), I tried sharing a clever commentary from the New York Times website. I couldn't post it anywhere on the walls, so I simply held up the computer and used gestures to point to the still open tab, highlighting a sentence that I found especially pertinent. But I got no response, no effort to re-share - not even a thumbs up. Well, I thought, if they weren't into insightful observations, how about humor?

I held up a series of funny, tongue-in-cheek pictures about how various strata of society - the media, my parents, the education system - see personal bloggers. I found the pictures hilarious and was secretly comforted by the thought that anyone sees me at all, but no dice. Neither the Tall One nor the Short One Got it. In fact, the Short One wanted to draw on my pictures. I suggested she use the keyboard to type, but the Tall One intervened.

Then it dawned on me why I wasn't getting through to them. I hadn't sent either of them a friend request, and with my privacy settings, that means they wouldn't be able to see what I shared. I wasn't sure how to do this without the Internet, so I improvised. I found a couple of pictures of myself (for some reason, there were several of them, along with pictures of the Tall One and the Short One framed by polished wood). On the back I wrote "Un Till would like to be your friend". The Tall One frowned and put hers back in the frame. The Short One drew on the picture until the Tall One took it away.

My last hope was an ancient socializing technique called "poking." Cautiously, I drew closer to the two companions. I extended my index finger and poked each one in the belly area. The Tall One gave me a bemused look, but the Short One shrieked with childish laughter. Finally, I was getting somewhere. Facebook has a lot to teach them about bonding.

Two Eyes (Thoughts on Religious Brutality)

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, I took a short-term job with the para-church organization now known as Cru to help coordinate their hurricane recovery projects. To the thousands of Cru faithful all over the United States, there was no more obvious way to live Christianity than to help those in need, and for the next two semesters, we hosted group after group (the high point being the thousands-strong spring break do-gooders) of students who would camp out, borrow tools and help recover houses and neighborhoods from the wreckage. I traveled to New Orleans quite a bit, though much of my work was from a cushy Orlando office. The real heroes were the student volunteers who took a semester or two off to live and work downtown for the remainder of the year.

During that time, I saw religious conviction at its finest. I mentioned the volunteers who put off their pursuit of the American dream to dig houses out of the mire. I was even more impressed by some of the local churches. One church not only housed our volunteers but refused to let them get away with just eating cereal from the local discounters every morning and, and their members whipped up eggs, grits, bacon and biscuits. People who lost so much in the Hurricane invested their time and treasure to ensure that those who came to help had a proper Southern breakfast. The resource sharing and generosity of those involved showed the meaning of "labor of love."

There was of course, another side to religious conviction. I saw plenty of silliness preached and promised in the name of the prosperity gospel. (One pastor told me his vision of everyone having a big-screen TV) I heard of another pastor using our volunteer efforts to promote his candidacy in New Orleans' local politics. My volunteers told me he had a habit of turning away people who needed help from outside of his voting district. Religious conviction can be a magnifying glass to the human experience. It can bring out our best, and it can very well bring out our worst.

In her Spiegel Online column last week, Sibylle Berg looked at the religious experience with one eye closed. (Note - if you can't read German, Google translate will give you the idea. I quote her using that and my own rough translations) She sees the bad and not the good, possibly because when she looks at the bad, there is so much to see. The column is entitled "Religion Is, When Men Oppress," and "men" is the operative word. While she stands with intellectuals, homosexuals and racial minorities against the religious oppressor, it's sins against women that most draw her venom. She writes:

"That what we in such a conciliatory way describe as "tradition" is nothing more than discrimination, sexism and racism. Instead of being satisfied to stay home and believe something that doesn't concern anyone else, the world is being ruled over by the power of muscle over mind." (that sentence sounds more eloquent in German) 

Her anger is righteous, appealing and rails against a form of repression that any reasonable person should find disgusting. And she has plenty of current events on which to build her case:

"Dealing with the uncertainty of people with idiocy and brutality is a powerful new trend... in Israel the religious are beginning to throw stones at lewd women. In many parts of the world they are still being circumcised, and then there's the death penalty for homosexuals. The urge to separate grows and makes their already difficult lives unbearable."

And there are plenty of events in history to add to her case - crusades, inquisitions, terrorism, human sacrifice and much else. In fact, when it comes to brutality, I don't think there's anything new under the sun - just new faces and new weapons. She has her vision of paradise - a mind your business coexistence that welcomes headscarves, thongs, chaps and animal masks and that "everyone can believe in something that, at the end of the day, won't prevent their death." Western Europe is closer to this, and I sure prefer it hear to Saudi Arabia. But her one-eyed view of things like religion or tradition misses a few things.

First, and briefly, it misses that not all oppression is religious. If Berg would look East, she would find countries where the religious aren't the oppressors, but rather the oppressed. In China, the officially atheist government evicted the Dalai Lama, crushes house churches that don't tow the party line and threatens Muslims and other minorities on the Western Border. Oppression is when men oppress. This has been done under the banner of every religion and with a little creativity can be done under the banner of every philosophy, humanism included. We rarely live up to our ideals, religious or otherwise.

Second, Berg's righteous anger makes her blind to religion's role in promoting the equity and justice she advocates. With one eye closed, she doesn't see the good folks who refused to mind their own business when Katrina wrecked New Orleans. Or consider slavery. Whatever the religious justification of the original Christian and Muslim slave peddlers, we should remember that it was a motley crew of Quakers and Evangelicals, i.E. religious nuts, who worked to bring down the North Atlantic slave trade. Over a century later, we should remember that Martin Luther King, a Protestant Minister, was one of the most effective forces against the brutality of the USA's endemic racism. King's "Letter From a Birmingham Jail" should be required reading for all people, but please note how he chides his coreligionists for doing precisely what Berg wishes religious folks would do - nothing. King wrote:

"When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.

In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: "Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother." In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular." (emphasis mine)

When religion is a passive player, it goes along justifying whatever the Zeitgeist happens to be. Those were the white moderates King criticized. True religion, according to the Apostle James, isn't polluted by such worldliness. Instead, it looks after the orphans and windows, the least of these in society. When they stand for something, you get the likes of Martin Luther King and William Wilberforce. It's true for dozens of my coreligionists, women and men, that I know personally. Whenever we stay home with our silent, private faith, and this is too often, we are doing it wrong. If Berg really cares for her oppressed sisters the world over, she'd do well to remember this.

I sincerely hope that all brutality and oppression will go back into the swamp, to paraphrase Berg's closing metaphor. But the desire to taste the divine lies in all of us, and to throw those of us who nurture it under the banner of thugs, bullies and ignoramuses is to look at reality with one eye closed. We Christians believe that the divine came to us, that he walked this earth in a time when both imperial and religious brutality were common. Something Berg wrote reminded me of him. She wrote that "in Israel, the religious are beginning to throw stones at lewd women." This, of course, happened before, and we get a picture of how the Divine confronted it:

But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground. At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

Whitney Houston and the Joyful Noise

It's a strange sadness, the sadness I feel at the news of Whitney Houston's death. I've never been much of a pop music guy, and I could never be called a real Whitney fan. I never bought an album, and I only know the songs that the casual radio listener would know. I remember my mother singing along to "I Wanna Dance with Somebody"in the kitchen back in the day - probably having a welcome respite to those incessant children's albums (as I am now all too familiar with). I remember being annoyed as a Middle Schooler when it seemed like "I Will Always Love You" was the only thing they played on the radio. Yet even with my distance and preteen attitude, Houston's voice always stuck with me more than her fellow pop divas and more than pretty much all the other voices that haunt my speakers.  

I think I know why. In several places, the Psalmist invites us to "make a joyful noise to the Lord." Houston sang with an unhinged joy, the kind of joy you see in a two year old girl when she dances to her favorite song. As far as I can see, none of her talented contemporaries had that. Maybe they could match her in attitude or showmanship or however else you measure divas, but they couldn't match her in joy. The joy recalls that famous scene in Chariots of Fire where Eric Liddell, the Scottish missionary who was preparing for the 1924 Olympics is accused by his sister Jennie of ignoring God's work to run all the time. He tells her, "I believe God made me for a purpose, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I can feel his pleasure." (And for what it's worth, Ian Charleson beautifully captures Liddell's joy in the film)

Houston sang as if she could feel God's pleasure, and it was infectious. Yes, her problems were legion - a bad marriage, drug abuse and all the trappings of deification. I can't say I'd have done better. I can only pray the same prayer I pray for any of us: God have mercy on her. I can only hope that she has been found with Jesus, where her voice can soar with the joy of the heavenly hosts. 

Pay to Potty? Only Under the Following Conditions

Whenever I'm in Europe (nowadays, that's pretty much all the time), I get a lot of advice. No, not personal advice, except for one time when a lady at a restaurant said I shouldn't allow my daughter to throw silverware at her. (strict, these people! Strict!) No, I mostly get advice about how my home country, the good ol' US of A, should be run. All sorts of issues come up, but lately, economics have been the hot topic. You see, they blame our current economic difficulties on a brand of cowboy capitalism that enriches the fat cats at the expense of Joe and Jane Average. Now, I agree, it's horrible to enrich yourself through exploitation. But friends, I've seen an insidious form of exploitation, exploitation of our basest needs, right here in virtuous Baden-Wuerttemberg. It happened while I was at Stuttgart's Main Train Station and I urgently had to use the restroom (note to my British readership: restroom is American for loo, which is slang for toilet, if you're still not with me).

Now, as the patriots over at Stuff America Does Best have pointed out, public restrooms are treated as a right, are readily available, and unlike other public institutions, they don't have to make ends meet with funding drives. But this isn't so in Europe, as I discovered in Stuttgart. No, in order to come to the appropriate place of relief, I needed to fork over a Euro (which is like a buck forty!) to a company called "Rail and Fresh Public Toilet Facilities," which is just one brand name of Hering International. Do you know what that means? Somewhere sits a German fat cat wearing a pin striped suit, legs crossed and propped on his antique oak desk, teeth clenched around a cuban cigar that he only takes out to yell at his Swedish secretary (named Kitty), and all he has to do is listen to the Euros plop every time we have to go plop. This is an atrocious form of predatory capitalism - demanding our cash when we're vulnerable and dancing in desperation. 

Ok, I know Rail and Fresh offers clean facilities and scent sprayers among other amenities, and plenty of women have already told me that they'd gladly shell out a Euro for a clean place to sit, but such luxuries necessities should be a given, not extra incentive to have us pay to do what our ancestors have always done for free using chamber pots kept under the bed. To get my hard-earned Euro, Mr. Monopoly Man's German cousin, you're going to have to offer the following:

1. Scent sprayers must spray top-of-the-line cologne, none of the cheap stuff. I prefer Eternity by Calvin Klein, but you'll have to offer a variety to suit the needs of your clientele.
2. Complimentary champagne, served in a crystal glass
3. Sauna, complete with steam room and optional Thai Massage 
4. An assortment of wordy and snobby newspapers and magazines, including the following: The Economist, The Guardian, The Times, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Die Zeit, Die Welt, Der Spiegel, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine, Die Sueddeutsche Zeitung and all of their French, Spanish, Italian and Turkish equivalents. What? USA Today? If you must. But no tabloids. We want this place to be classy. 
5. A flat screen TV in each stall and over each urinal 
6. Silk toilet paper
7. Relaxing music, yes, but performed live by a professional string quartet
8. Professional cleanings, yes, but by the cast of Downton Abbey 
9. A short Circus Olay show, repeated on the hour
10. Beat Poetry reading every Friday
11. A warm towel after you wash your hands provided to you by a man in a tuxedo who speaks a southern accent. Doesn't matter from which country - it could be the southern part of the U.S. or the southern part of Portugal, as long as it's a southern accent. 

If none of these services are offered, then I will be forced to go with the competition. And by competition I mean a dark corner of the train station. Or one of the port-o-potties reserved for the Stuttgarter 21 protestors. Or a toilet on a parked train. 

Elmo Among Other Monsters

When it comes to Sesame Street, my daughter is following in my footsteps. I love Sesame Street, still do. It was the only show that I was both consistently allowed to watch and enjoyed watching. The show's educational, yes, but not only did it "make learning fun," but it captured the joy of learning things, a joy so many of those drab hygiene and physical science videos we watched in school never had. Add in smart pop culture references and characters kids and adults can care about, and you've got yourself a fine piece of television. So in this new age of the Information Super Highway, one of my first acts as father was to plop my kicking baby in my lap and watch YouTube videos of classic Sesame Street. She loved it so much I can't open up the lap top to do something important (like write a blog or goof off on Facebook) without having my daughter run up, grab my leg and in her best "melt papa's heart voice" say: "Letter B?"

There has been, however, a cultural shift since my childhood of sitting on our plaid-green couch to watch a show brought to you by the letter "K." You see, one of the biggest appeals of Sesame Street was that it was always a little rough around the edges. The street itself appeared a bit dirty, the characters lovable but gritty, the pictures and film had sort of a Public Television residue that smelled of cheapness and passion and authenticity. But this has changed. Sesame Street looks gentrified. Take a look at the website. You won't find smoother edges in Buckingham Palace. It's as clean the surgery ward. There's been a change, and I can sum it up in one word: Elmo. 

No question Elmo is the Street's most popular character. No question. If you visited the website, then you were greeted by his sweet furry face. That same face makes the little icon on the URL. He's everywhere, including my daughter's crib and coloring books. He's ingeniously designed for maximum cuteness and cuddliness. The cute one with a cute voice, and his cuteness has spread all over Sesame Street like a funny picture on Facebook. When I was home for Christmas, my mother wanted me to go to the local art house theater to see a documentary about Elmo's mover, shaker and speaker, Kevin Clash. His story is a powerful, feel-good, American-dream story of the best kind. No doubt he's a genius at his chosen career, and if there's a puppeteering pantheon, then he will sit with Jim Henson and Frank Oz to judge us all. But I couldn't see the film. There were some scheduling difficulties that explained this. But the truth is, I hold a grudge against Elmo. I miss the old furry monsters, like the ones in this old "C is for Cookie" video. 

It's not that the old monsters have been fired. Cookie, for one, still plays a prominent role (though the good folks at Sesame Street are reigning in his gluttony to help confront America's childhood obesity problem). And if you look through the website's list of muppets, you'll find characters like Herry, Frazzle and the Two-Headed Monster, all monsters of the old school. The old-school monsters weren't like cuddly kittens. They were more like your crazy uncle's biker friends. You know who I'm talking about. They were rough. They drove American-made motorcycles, drank beer from the bottle and had powerful, meaty arms. In fact, they may have both showed you your first tattoo and given you your first sip of beer. Your love for them was mixed with fear. They weren't ones for snuggles, but if you ever had a problem with a bully, needed repair work on the tree house or were threatened by a rabid dog, you knew you could count on them, just like you could count on old-school monsters. Now, not only are they crowded out by Elmo and his relentless sugartooth, but they're in a sad state. Look at their pictures on the website. They look like they've been thoroughly scrubbed and shampooed by a child-marketing expert. 

I don't mind Elmo's existence. Cuddles are necessary, and I wonder how many of today's conflicts could be solved (or at least eased) by a good snuggle. But life has rough edges, and Sesame Street's greatest strength was that it could acknowledge this and still take joy in singing, laughing and learning. 

Of course, the Elmo promotion is on to something. My daughter loves Elmo, the same way she loves puddles and pretty dresses. With no prompting (certainly by me), she was drawn to them. Among her army of stuffed animals, she has two Sesame Street dolls: Ernie and Elmo. Ernie was my favorite growing up. My daughter likes Ernie, and Ernie is my daughter's main sleeping partner, because by chance we threw him in the crib when it was dark outside and she needed a friend. But as much as she may try to hide it, Elmo is her favorite. She just sees him first. Elmo's like that gregarious kid in your third grade class that always made your teacher smile in a way she never could for you in spite of your obvious superiority in both behavior and grammar. Whenever we watch that old "Letter B" video, her next request is "Elmo." Doesn't matter which Elmo video, and there are lots to choose from. And, given time and mood, I indulge her. But I use my fatherly authority to throw in some old-school monster videos too. After all, there's more to fatherhood than snuggling. 

The Allure of Cowardice

A great American poet once sang:

"I'm not a coward I just never been tested
I like to think that if I was I would pass
Look at the tested and think there but for grace go I
Might be a coward I'm just afraid of what I might find out"

Ok, maybe the Mighty Mighty Bosstones aren't exactly what you think of when I read "great American poet," but hey, me still likes the ska, and besides, the tune takes me back to high school. Moreover, this is the lyric that comes to mind whenever I reflect on the Costa Concordia disaster and the cowardice of her fleeing captain.

From his cringe-inducing dialogue with the Italian Coast Guard to eye-witness reports, it looks like Captain Francesco Schettino was tested and did not pass. His cowardice was shameful in and of itself and all the more so if it cost additional lives. His actions are deplorable, and we can all hope that he'll face the appropriate legal and professional consequences. Yet, as we rush to condemn, joke, or muster up talk-show host outrage, we should keep in mind that we may one day be tested as well. We should be careful with our judgments.

Cowardice is an ugly vice, especially when we look at it from the outside. But when we face the choice between self-preservation and self-sacrifice, self-preservation can look smart, wise and even beautiful. Have you ever been in that situation? I know I have. Nothing as dramatic as a sinking boat, of course. It could be as benign as lying to a colleague or a family member to hide your own mistakes, or avoiding confrontation someone who is stronger than you. Even when it means refusing to do what's right, it's alluring to protect body, dignity and reputation. The boat begins to shift and break and suddenly the lifeboat makes more sense than all those things we learned in Sunday School. Like most everything else we call sin, it's ugly, but in some perverse place that's very natural to us, it's understandable.

Of course, I know some people who are naturally courageous. They make the best sea captains and soldiers, police officers and pastors, not to mention any other career that involves confrontation and risk. If this describes you, then know that I envy you. C.S. Lewis wrote somewhere that courage is the virtue that enables all of the other virtues. You have a shorter path to self-sacrificial love. For the rest of us, the Costa Concordia tragedy is a call for reflection: what would we have done? Would we have elbowed aside the old and the young for a place in the lifeboats? Or would we have risked our necks so that others wouldn't have had to? More to the point, are we avoiding commitments, confrontation, responsibility or love out of fear, and what can we do to overcome this?

I have a few ideas. First, be honest with yourself. I'm an expert at rationalization. It's not good to allow cowardice to hide behind intellect. The truth is our friend, and the sooner we look it in the eye (an act of courage itself, albeit a private one), the better.

Second, friendship is a great help here. I know most guys have a story from school or university where, having confessed our fears to ask a girl out, our friends egg us on and encourage us to make the step. The same thing can happen with any of the circumstances I described earlier. Have safe friends where, between beers and laughs, you can talk about the places where fear has us trapped. Cowardice is weaker against numbers.

Finally, Christianity has a great thing called repentance. If we've given in to cowardice, sometimes it's too late to undo it. Other times, we just can't go through with what we ought to do due to fear. In both instances, we can take frightened hearts to the Cross of Christ. There's a great old hymn called "Rock of Ages," where the choir sings to Christ to "be of sin the double cure, cleanse me from it's guilt and power." If cowardice is too big to crawl out of on your own strength, well, Jesus died on the cross to break sin's power over us. You can confess your sins to Jesus, and he will help you grow in courage. Second, if the guilt of a cowardly act is stuck in your soul like a bee sting, well, Jesus died on the cross to take our guilt as well. Repent and believe the Good News, follow him, and grow in courage. After all, if sacrificial love is the most excellent example is courage, then what is more courageous than the cross?

Nones and Lovers

I've been wanting to write about Eric Weiner's New York Times column on Americans and God since it came out in December, but I've been busy doing other things, like trying to work for a living and thinking up warm-weather holiday songs. And the truth is, I wanted to give it some thought, because I think it's worth responding to as a Christian. Weiner represents a form of non-belief that is probably more prevalent than the faith of convinced atheism. He's undecided, a self-described "None." What's a None? Well, here:

We Nones may not believe in God, but we hope to one day. We have a dog in this hunt. Nones don’t get hung up on whether a religion is “true” or not, and instead subscribe to William James’s maxim that “truth is what works.” If a certain spiritual practice makes us better people — more loving, less angry — then it is necessarily good, and by extension “true.” (We believe that G. K. Chesterton got it right when he said: “It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it.”) 

I suspect that Nones number even more than the increasing number of people who check "none" on the surveys. I bet that many who cross "Catholic" or "Protestant" or "Muslim" or whatever belief are practical Nones, the cultural inheritors of a religious faith without significant bearing on their thoughts, decisions or prayers.

Weiner's "Noneness" is more nuanced than the None who just hasn't thought much about the afterlife between work and family and recreation. After a "health scare", this "rationalist" began to explore faith. In doing so, he went on a literal spiritual journey, traveling the world to sample the varieties of religious experience, which he chronicled in his book Man Seeks God: My Flirtation with the Divine. At this point, I should make clear that I haven't read Weiner's book, and answers to the questions and criticisms  I'm about to write may be found there. Nevertheless, his Times column has made a statement about the Nones' view of religion in America, and it's worth addressing.

For starters, let me say "amen" to the None's strong discomfort with the cross-pollination of piety and politics. While there have been times when the church should have done much more (I don't think Weiner would argue with Dr. King here), and I've wrote here before how unimpressed I was by large Christian gatherings using lots of (self-serving?) superlatives in their marketing. It's the sort of thing that would have made me want to clutch Noneness like a life-preserver had I not already been spoken for.

Weiner himself thinks humor is important, and I agree with him (note my heading). He thinks that "precious few of our religious leaders laugh. They shout." Yes, I hear them shouting too. I hear them shouting every time CNN talks to the latest loudmouth to draw a crowd or some doomsday prophet gets much more media attention than they deserve. But I can testify that while every church will have its sour-faced mice, much laughter can be heard between the pews. I grew up in a laughing family, surrounding by laughing people, and all of them thought you could know the Lord personally and would be happy to talk about it. We Christians run the whole gamut of emotions if you take the time to get to know us. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree with Weiner's Chesterton quote: "It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it." Well, every religion can be joked about, and the best jokes come from within the ranks. Rather, it is the individual's jokes that are the test of his own character. Are they capable of joking? And when they do, is it in the right time and place for the best effect? Or are their jokes there for reasons of poison, to prey on the innocent and to build themselves up at others' expense? As some religious guy wrote somewhere, for everything there is a season. If you're a None genuinely seeking God and you visit a church that seems incapable of humor (and I've been there), give it one more week to make sure that your perceptions aren't clouded by a bias against the kind of people who show up there every Sunday (I have to watch myself there too). But once it's proven that the jokes are either unavailable or inappropriate, run (don't walk) to the exit. Bad humor's a good reason to find another church, but it's be a poor reason to try and put distance between yourself and God.

If Weiner has distance between himself and God, humorless blowhards have contributed to it. He needs a new kind of religious leader. He writes:

The answer, I think, lies in the sort of entrepreneurial spirit that has long defined America, including religious America. 

We need a Steve Jobs of religion. Someone (or ones) who can invent not a new religion but, rather, a new way of being religious. Like Mr. Jobs’s creations, this new way would be straightforward and unencumbered and absolutely intuitive. Most important, it would be highly interactive. I imagine a religious space that celebrates doubt, encourages experimentation and allows one to utter the word God without embarrassment. A religious operating system for the Nones among us. And for all of us.

A Steve Jobs' of religion... sounds nice doesn't it? It sounded nice to me until I began to unpack the analogy. I'm a fan of Apple products, and I am using one to write this blog post. But as sleek, hip and user-friendly as they are, they aren't for everyone, as Microsoft's "I'm a PC" commercial slyly picked up on. Weiner's religious space wouldn't be something for all of us. It would be one more niche in a crowded market. Furthermore, high-technology is effective to the point that it is individualized, that I can sit alone in my computer which is my own electronic kingdom, filled with my apps and my favorites and my bookmarks and social networking sites where I can pay attention and ignore people at my own leisure without fear of boredom, pain or small talk. It's straightforward, unencumbered, intuitive and interactive because it's mine, made in my image and serving my purposes and, for the small price of targeted advertisement, I can be as spiritual and unspiritual as I want, I can experiment, celebrate my doubt or my faith with no book or leader to tell me that I might be in any way off base (and if they do, I can simply delete their comment). I can utter whatever the hell I want, because as far as I'm concerned, I'm alone.

Christianity, to my daily dismay and glory, has a different user experience. It involves other people. I go into a church and I sing songs and say prayers and listen to words with all sorts of people. People with the wrong politics, the wrong interpretations, the wrong family traditions, the wrong styles, the wrong jokes. Their flawed behavior is rarely intuitive and often encumbers me. It's interactive, alright, but the interaction involves me putting aside my desires and agendas to meet other people where they are. It can be very tedious and often takes years to fully feel like part of a Fellowship (and having recently moved, I'm feeling these bruises once again), but it is well worth it. To sing and pray together with someone else in the presence of Almighty God... to have actually done that makes it worth it to come back and drink from the fountain, again and again. Weiner contrasts the private and public nature of religion, but his conclusions are too individualistic. Spirituality is private and public, yes, but knowing God is a communal experience - it's community with Him and with everyone else who has taken the plunge. It's there that we "become more loving" and experience "human grace."

I sympathize with the Nones' desire to remain outside all of this. I sympathize, because I detect something in them that I know in myself: a fear of commitment. Let me explain by way of politics. I confess that I find it difficult to commit to a particular political viewpoint. While living in Washington, I knew people who delighted in this commitment. They had strong politics, and they could argue them so well that I would be convinced until I talked with my next friend who had a different view. Everyone was right, and they could prove it. Moreover, the incivility and ill-humor of our political leaders and the media's appetite for scandal and provocation makes me feel about politics the same way Weiner feels about religion. But at the end of the day, I have to vote. I have to check the box next to the candidate I think is best and which statue or bill sounds the most reasonable. If I don't participate, my voice is completely marginalized and I miss out on the privileges of representative democracy.

Much like politics, religions have their loud blowhards and people who take what I feel is an uncomfortable delight in having strong opinions. But the responsibility for my participation does not rest on them - it rests on me. Commitment to God is less like buying an iPad and more like getting married. It's all encompassing, and we don't get to sever our ties when confronted with suffering, discomfort, other people or the fact that it's often us that needs changing. But the reward, and Christianity's key selling point, if you will, is love. Indeed, the Bible says that God himself is love and that all of God's law is summed up in loving God and loving each other. We're invited into this love through an act of love. Jesus died on a cross 2000 years ago that we may experience God's love through communion and fellowship with him, even when we're humorless blowhards with bad politics. The question then, is not whether we have the right operating system. It's whether we embrace Love or none.