Flickering Screen

As I write this, I'm watching "American Idol." I'm almost ashamed to admit it. I suppose I can see the drama and entertainment value. I'm not really a fan of public humiliation, however deserved, or the style of music (though it does make a party, I suppose). I guess it's more about bonding with my roommates, particularly with Dimiter, who doesn't like "24" or "the Office," like the rest of us. We're judging the men at the moment, and I'm pulling for the fat guy with a lot of hair, just because I like to root for the fat guy with a lot of hair. (As an aside, Jeff Foxworthy is in the audience, which adds entertainment through osmosis) TV so addicting, there were times I have purposely tried to live without one. I could be reading, writing something more philosophical (ok, ok, maybe not), learning to finger-pick like all the cool guitarists. Yet nothing gets guys to bond like a flickering screen. We need the help.

Update: the guy with the hair did great.

More on faking it...

A bit more on the subject of faking it for appearance's sake: A professor of Literature at the University of Paris has written a guide on "How to talk About a Book You Haven't Read." I guess appearing cultured rather than being cultured is a universal (not just American) phenomenon. Here is a link to the New York Times article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/books/24read.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Of course, perhaps it's self defeating to write a book about not reading books...

My Second Lent

So I was devouring sausages on the way to the Lent service today. The night before, the place where I worked had a networking/mardi gras party, which meant that the spoils of fat Tuesday were available in the office kitchen. Someone had to eat them before they went bad. The office Catholics were all fasting meat, and, after putting together a budget, I'll take all the free meals I can get. (did I mention the crab cakes were particularly excellent?)

Perhaps that's an indication of just how new I am to Lent. I was raised in a "lower-church" protestant tradition, where we limboed under the church Calendar, with its fasts and feasts (pausing, though, for Christmas, Easter and a wonderful "Harvest Party" every Halloween) and everything else that was not necessary for salvation and morality. And while I say that tongue-in-cheek, I don't disapprove either. Tradition has meant death to so many people that it us understadable why they want to focus on the core of God's love in Jesus Christ.

In the Metro, I saw all the catholics and "high church" protestants with ashes on their foreheads. I wondered if I would get ashes on my forehead. I wasn't entirely sure of their significants, other than perhaps harkening our Jewish forefathers who would mourn under sack-cloth and ashes (everyone still was dressed in conservative, Washington business atire, so no sack-cloth), but it seemed like a cool thing. It's interesting wanting to put a mark on your forehead for stylistic reasons (would you prefer a thumb-print or a cross?). I guess it's just as random as a neck-tie.

At a coffee shop with free wireless, I sat down with a friend of mine to wash down the party favors with fizzy water out of a glass bottle. Then we walked to church.

The sign on the door of the church instructed us to enter silently. It's a heavy thing to walk into a crowded room that is completely silent. One becomes somber and self-conscious. Self-conscious because anything could be heard - a hastily dropped bag, a text message or some misplaced gas would echo from stained glass window to stained glass window, causing a domino effect of snickers and coughs, disturbing the penitent attitude of 200 worshipers. Somber, because it was a dark church with no mood music. Somber, because of the grave way Pastor Dan approached the podium to say his opening words. Somber, because it was dark.

I intended to be more of an observer, this my first Lent. It was the first Lent for many of the young, upwardly mobile Evangelicals who attend my church. Pastor Dan sent out helpful sheet on the meaning of Lent. It's more than giving up chocolate, alcohol, meat or lunch (in the case of my Lutheran office-mate). It's a time of self-examination and repentance before the joy of Easter.

Now, I've nothing against having a special time for self-examination. However, lack of introspection cannot be found among my many flaws. This blog probably proves it. I'm neurotic enough; do I really need a season of neurosis before I get my Easter basket? My belly-button is thuroughly examined, thank you.

Yet, I want an opened mind. Before I entered the silence, I felt nothing but curiosity and the desire to follow the "ashes on the forehead" trend. I told God that if he wanted to speak to me, I'd listen. Me and my big mouth.

A Lent service is designed to bring the open-hearted to their knees. This one was effective. From the invitation to worship to the closing hymn, we reflected on sin and brokenness. I learned the ashes on my forehead, which I did receive in the form of a smeared, silver cross, were meant to remind us of what God told Adam after he sinned. From dust we were made, and from dust we were returned. Sin brought mortality, eternity completely outside of divine happiness. Sadness, anger and more sin. Darfur, Krakow, Hitler, Nero, you and me. Lent is a time when we experience some of the same grimness God feels as we flee his love, as we fail to trust, as we fail to love others, the poor and needy in particular, as we fail to forgive and use others for our selfish purposes.

Two years ago I was broken open, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It cost me my dream job, what seemed to be my calling, in a country I love. It cost me deep friendships and a beautiful relationship. I failed to trust, because I could not. I was mentally unable to. My mind was overworked and tired, and I was lost. I went home to reboot and rebuild.

I've since put my life together. I am surrounded by beautiful people of God. In my work, I help people learn things they would not have known otherwise. I am in a fascinating, historical and cultural city. And somehow I trust. I trust God. Not very well, as you probably have observed, but I trust him, deeply and beautifully. This evening, as we were silently receiving the ashes, I saw my dark time as a Lent. It was a season of anguish, of repentance, of learning to trust. It was dark. Yet God was light, waiting, searching and loving.

Psalm 51, David's Psalm of repentance, has a beautiful line, one I understand more deeply now. "Let the bones you have broken rejoice." Sin and life may break us, but we don't end in brokenness. We end rejoicing. I don't fully understand what caused my darkness. Yet afterwards, I trust deeply. I learn to trust still. I look down and see that I still have a heart, I have a mission. I still have relationships. I still need to repent daily. I still need to grow. Yet God has been looking the whole time. Lent, it seems, is less about introspection and fasting - those are only means to an end. Lent is about repentance. It's about the gravity of what Jesus did for us on the cross. It's about the heavy sort of Joy that comes with death defeated, with the thought that nothing and no one and no situation is irredeemable.

I've wondered if I should fast something these next 40 days. I could give up Alcohol, meat or television and be better for it. I could spend my Saturdays helping the poor, which would be better still. I asked God about this too.

While I feel a neurotic desire to give up some of these comforts - maybe I will in the end - I believe this Lent is about moving forward. It's about remembering, in awe, of where God has brought me. It's about repenting of my sin. It's about being brave enough to pray to God and ask the question that has scared me for two years. "What's next?"

If you're still with me, bless you for reading my long ramblings. We closed to a beautiful hymn (which had the same tune as "O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus," another hymn I love) called "Through the Night of Doubt and Sorrow." I want to close with it as well.

Through the night of doubt and sorrow
Onward goes the pilgrim band
singing songs of expectation
marching to the promised land
Clear before us through the darkness
gleams and burns the guiding light
trusting God we march together
stepping fearless through the night

One the light of God's own presence
o'er his ransomed people shed
chasing far the gloom and terror
brightening all the path we tread
one the object of our journey
one the faith which never tires
one the earnest looking forward
one the hope our God inspires

Onward, therefore, all ye pilgrims,
onward with the cross our aid
bear its shame, and fight its battle
till we rest beneath its shade
soon shall come the great awaking
soon the rending of the tomb
then the scattering of all shadows
and the end of toil and gloom

Even better, I talk like I know about sports...

I just saw a great commercial on ESPN.

As I write this, I am watching the University of Washington play Pittsburg in college basketball. Not because I am a particular fan of either team, but because it's Saturday and I want to do something relaxing. Besides, there's something fresh and raw and deliciously tribal about college sports that professional sports can't seem to match. It's messier, but it's a passionate mess.

Anyway, the commercial was advertisement for ESPNews, the network's 24 hour sports-news channel. It's like a never-ending episode of Sports Center. Anyway, the protagonist of this commercial was a man who clearly didn't know sports and always embarrassed himself by saying obvious sports falsehoods. ESPN news cures him. He ends the commercial saying, "now I know about sports. Even better, I talk like I know about sports."

What a great line. Credit the commercial makers for sneaking some social commentary in ESPN's attempt to grasp viewers and money.

It's part of our nature, isn't it? We want to pose, we want to present ourselves as something. Our ancients painted their faces to demonstrate their prowess in battle. We wear the right close and speak the right language. It's better to talk like I know about sports. I feel that pressure in Washington. Everyone here is an expert. I feel something like penis envy at every party where I find myself drinking wine with someone obviously more knowledgeable about wine than me. I can never remember what grape gives what taste to what wine-sort from what region. I just know that Spanish wine I drank with Daniela in Malaga was one of the best tastes I've ever had in my mouth. Of course, I can't brag about my travels anymore, not with my co-workers laughing about good times in that one party district in Hong Kong. Yet I want to, immensely.

I don't need ESPNews. I need a 24 hour news station filled with facts about culture, politics, philosophy and travel, so I could wow my friends. Who needs education when you can talk like you're educated.

I wonder if this is fueling my ambition for higher education more than I let on. I do have some pure motives (the post-modern in me replies that no motive could ever truly be pure. Perhaps I should conclude that it's better not to have motives). I honestly love to learn. I want to show Jesus to people somehow, and I want to do this from a position of knowledge and understanding. I truly love culture, art, travel, coffee and wine.

Yet, there's a part of me that's uncomfortable not being the coolest guy in the room. It's amazing how much that steals the joy all these things bring.

Many places to live

I just read something beautiful in Henri Nouwen's the Return of the Prodigal Son. (actually, the entire book is beautiful. You should read it) While writing about the differences in people, the different struggles we all have, he implies that when Jesus says, "in my Father's house, there are many places to live," he means not just spatially, but that there is room for all of our quirks, personalities, thoughts, gifts, and unique redemptive stories. I've never liked to be put in a box. It's a comforting thought that heaven will not be uniform.

Winter

Today I left early from work. There was ice on the road, so the Federal Government shut down. As I was walking home, shivering beneath my standard, very Washington (though I have to say, I look good in it) black trench-coat, I met my two Serbian friends. They laughed when I told them Georgetown (where they were headed) would probably be closed. They said Serbia is like this all the time.

I moved to Florida when I was 13. I thought everyone was a wimp for pulling out the winter coats when it dropped under 70. Then they would cover their ferns with blankets. I imagined they put on their wool socks, snuggling under seventeen quilts and an electric blanket.

Of course, it took about three years for me to join them. I didn't realize it, though, until I moved to Germany. Before then, I nursed the idyllic picture of winter, sort of a combination of Christmas, ski vacations and staying home from school. That was there during the month of December. Every town in Germany, and Freiburg is no exception, hosts a Christmas market, where the entire town gathers to drink Gluehwein (a hot, spiced wine that is perfect for winter), eat Lebkuchen (cakey, chocolate-covered ginger bread) and buy trinkets, not to mention socialize. It's a nice way to pretend we still live in quaint, small village communities. I'm sure we had no problems back then.

Of course, then came January and February. And I started coughing a lot. I started coughing from November to April in Germany, and I'm happy to say I'm continuing the tradition. The idealism was gone and the reality that the decision to go hungry for the evening or go to the grocery store is a heck of a lot more difficult in the winter had set in. (I think I still have peanut butter and a spoon...) Winter was something long. Moreover, it was dark. I never noticed it during my Virginia childhood. Darkness and 5:00 is depressing. It certainly affected my mood.

However, there was one more thing I noticed, that I haven't noticed before. Spring. Spring is beautiful in Florida, but it's not that much different than winter. Spring in Freiburg was heavenly. One day in March, it was finally warm enough to open street cafes. Sunlight rested on the Cobblestone roads as delicately as it rested on my forehead. Arms were naked and ready to be darker again. Faces were brighter as well. It was as if someone was handing out smiles. It was that day I went to the banks of the Dreisam river to sit in the grass to read Les Miserables. It was there I read the part about Marius being so in love that he did not notice the magic of spring. It was the first time I noticed it. (I also noticed a naked man ride by on a bicycle, which was much less magical) I still don't know if it was worth the cold, dark winter.

That's the kind of question I ask God a lot.

"Post-modernism is the new black"

I really hate to steal someone else's title, but it was too good.

It's a tradition I inherited from my father - reading the latest issue of the Economist every time I ride a plane. It's wonderful, really. It's an education. I am told that to study for the United States Foreign Service Exam, one should read each issue from cover to cover. I walk away with the feeling that I "really" know what's going on, which is good ammunition for Washington. Agree or disagree with their positions, they do argue their points clearly and logically, which is more than I can say for most publications.

My favorite article this time, somewhere in the air between Orlando and Dulles, was called "Post-modernism is the new black." With an ironic tone, it examines capitalism's response to post-modernism. The founders of post-modernism were socialists, and capitalism was one of the "meta-narratives" it attempted to deconstruct. (Of course, they were no friends of the communist meta-narrative either)

In so many ways, post-modernism is beautiful. It naturally appeals to me. It's a philosophy where everyone gets to make up their own dance. There's real independence without real expectation on people. It's quite selfish in some ways, but given it was born in Europe in the 1940s, this was better than the alternative. Every other philosophy - religious, political, psychological - seemed to have contributed to the two wars, needlessly killing millions. How appealing to forget about who's right and stop fighting! It's still appealing as the grand narratives of "democracy" and "fundamentalist Islam" are killing each other based on beliefs. Would it not be better if we just stopped believing? In some ways, it seems we'd live much easier lives. So says post-modernism, which criticizes every belief, every "meta-narrative" from Christianity to Freudianism to Nazism to Capitalism, meticulously deconstructing everything the ancients took for granted. They criticize as only the French and the Germans could.

Yet one of the grand narratives, says the Economist, has succeeded in embracing post-modernism for its own propagation. As belief has become less important, at least in any corporate sense, everyone has started to dance their own dance. And capitalism has responded. Everyone has a "will not to be governed." Everyone is "the artist of his/her own life." And there are all sorts of products that go with this. (Blogs being one of them) I wonder if this is best demonstrated by a commercial I saw many times last year (and honestly enjoyed). A cell phone company was advertising a combination phone and MP3-player. What is more post-modern than that? Don't give me your stuffy old definitions of what phones must do and how pop-music must be heard! Our generation can do anything it wants. Wer'e our own artists, thankyaverymuch. So the commercial shows a young, incredibly hip looking woman being "the artist of her own life." Walking down city streets, she listens to some awesome "chick-rock." She walking in a normal, confident manner. But every time she passes a mirror, her reflection (or in other scenes, her shadow) is dancing in a way that made me desire to be as free as her. Perhaps an MP3-phone could help.

You are your own person, and there's a product for each of you out there to help you express that. You are your own niche-market.

This is different than a lot of Christians I have met. I've worked in missions and associated with missionaries, many of whom feared post-modernism. When belief is viewed as un-important at best, or dangerous at worst (watch the movie Downfall and you'll understand why many Germans aren't too keen on believing in anything), it makes spreading Christianity different. Christianity is a meta-narrative. It claims God stepped into the world to save us from our own selfishness. It claims if we follow him we can act more like him and we will be able to live in a state of eternal peace. Following is not very post-modern. It means letting someone else be the artist of your life. When someone else is the artist of your life, he can paint some unpleasant pictures. Popes used his narrative to lead others on crusades against Muslims, killing un-told thousands. And we ask why religion is so un-appealing.

Thus, so many Christians face post-modernism with a sort of gravity soldiers must get when they must face bullets. With modernists, one could at least have arguments. One doesn't know where to begin with a "pomo."

Yet, I wonder if by embracing capitalism, many parts of the American Evangelical church have ministered in a post-modern way. "What's Jesus for you?" is a common question. It kind of sounds like "what can brown do for you?" What is God doing in your life? In a previous blog, I considered Saddleback's niche-market worship services. We can almost be the artists of our own church service!

Let's now consider how much of this is a good thing. I love how it opposes uniformity. Christianity is open to many different kinds of people, kinds of worship and kinds of gifts. There's no exclusive priesthood, even though a professional priesthood (or clergy, if you prefer) is necessary. Many parts, one body. We're often accused of being exclusive. Yet post-modernism reflects Christianity in this way: everyone gets to dance, everyone gets to play along. Your color, gender, and background, under this grand narrative of the dying-God, doesn't matter. We were pomo before pomo. Moreover, it has taken evangelism away from the argument and the track and more to the individual. It is forcing us Christians to know and love our un-believing friend. There is little converting from a distance with post-moderns, and those of us who have ministered to pomos are better for it.

There is, as always, some danger. CS Lewis often warns that each age is susceptible to certain lies, and that the members of each age need to compare notes with other ages (he recommends reading old books at least as often as you read new ones). Inclusiveness can give way to individualism, to selfishness. Many observers rightly note that many churches have lost the real sense of community they once had. When you are selfish, the church, the Bible and the needy become as important as my mp3-player. I go to church, read my Bible, pray and give to the needy based on my feelings. These are the food of Christianity. I need my Christian brothers and sisters as I need nourishment. I starve when I don't read my Bible. I get lost in myself when I don't pray. I lose out when I don't give to the needy - be it my own, relatively unimportant possessions (even now I fail to believe this completely!) or the eternal gift of the Gospel.

I go to a church that in some ways is less post-modern. Yes, it does give me ways to serve in ways that may suit me more than others, and the church itself may be a niche-group as many of us are in the same stage in life. But the worship service forces me to participate with other people. As hard as it is for a person who cherishes his freedom and independence to admit, I am not the artist of my own life, and I am better for it. God, through my brothers and sisters, through scripture, through prayer and through sharing, is painting a picture infinitely more beautiful than I could on my own. He constantly overcomes my resistance to it, and at my best, I rejoice.