I'm trying to find something I don't like about China and so far, nothing comes to mind. We're off to Beijing in a few minutes---taking the train up there for a few days---but I'll be back soon as I now am connected to the internet from my room.
At last, again...I feel as though I have a pulse. It's almost sick to realize how dependent we Americans are on the internet.
Can you tell I'm excited? Well, I am. I'm smiling right now actually! Seriously. I am.
Among other things, I read the most daring and provocative and depressing book I've read in a long time over this past weekend: "Mysterious Skin" by Scott Heim. I don't recommend it to the masses...only to those of you who saw "Irreversible" and "Requiem for a Dream" and thought it was "nice."
Only a few more hours of packing, and my road to China will begin. First start? Interstate 94 West toward Chicago.
Maybe it's due to China. Maybe it's due to the pictures I see with co-workers, wrapped up in giggles and oversized grins, reflecting the inner child inside of us all. Maybe that's why it's so hard not to cry.
Not because it paints a frightening picture by juxtaposing alcohol up against other "more harmful" addictive substances. Not because it will probably fuel the paraonia already in most parents minds when it comes to wonderfing if their teenagers or college-agers still living at home are closet drunks. No, this book should be read for the very reason Zailckas writes in her introduction that she wrote the book: for the utter commonness of her own story. There is nothing terribly extreme or extravagent about Zailckas' experiences, but at the same time, her experiences are as harrowing sometimes as the darkest parts found within and beneath all of us. It's as if she's hitting the world (America in particular) over the head and going, "this happens all the time...why!?" Why is drinking part of what it means to be an American teen? Why is it that at age 21, it's expected that you get smashed and people look at you in almost shock and disgust when they hear you don't? What's wrong when someone is always asked for a reason they're NOT drinking, instead of those who do drink excessively in social situations? I'm all for drinking--believe me. I drink on occassion with friends, but these questions and so many more that Zailckas raised to the surface got me wondering 'what does drinking do to one's identity or more importantly, one's self-concept?' Especially when a kid starts at age 14, like Koren Zailckas did.
Even though the book runs a tad long, it sill reads (most of the time) like a fast-paced fiction novel---building up tension, heightening awareness, and brimming with greater and deeper insights the more pages you jumble through. And to top it all off, Zailckas never falls into the trap of self-deprecating writing. She manages to entertain, inspire, and tickle the annoying hairs on the back of your neck enough to keep you smiling, chuckling and shaking your head in awe throughout the book. So read it...and see for yourself.
"Are you ready honey?" She asks me whenever she passes me in the hall. Her face can barely bottle up all the joy.
"I'm gettin' there!" I'd say.
Once the "Neville Day" potluck party began, Carol was nearly bouncing of the walls as others decided to throw some hot dogs on the George Foreman grill. At the sight of this, Carol exclaimed "Make sure you brown them really good! I like my weiners brown!" and then laughed uncontrollably, as if she was in third grade and had just told the naughtiest joke to her best girlfriend. And then, she danced the waltz out of the break room to get some more ice for the diet pop. Everyone else just kept asking if she was drunk.
Once the party was well underway, Carol admitted to sucking down three cups of coffee a couple of hours before noon. This, a co-worker named Flo informed me, is "all she needs to get going. Once she's gone there ain't no stopping her no more." And this is part of why I love working at the hospital. People eat a little too much sugar, perform a little too many blood withdrawls, and start one too many IV pumps before going sailing into a mental state of euphoric oblivion. And of course, everyone merely shrugs and accepts this as normal behavior. After all, if there's one thing you learn after working at a hospital it's this: vocational norms and public displays of indecency don't exist.
Instead of splintered communions between strained faiths or no faiths at all, there was love. Instead of sharing a meal with a total stranger being as agonizing as getting fillings at the dentist, there was peace. And instead of self-centered receipients in attendence, there truly seemed to be the Holy Spirit dancing between the bride and groom.
It's no wonder then that at each one of these joyous occassions, I found myself soaring like a baby bird flying successfully for the first time. I found myself meeting and making new friends---not ones to be easily forgotten but to be quickly cherished. And now, I thank God for it all.
And another issue that cannot be talked specifically about in hospitals? Death.
As absurd to me as this seems (after all, we all are going to die) employees are trained not to talk about patients potentially dying. Even though it is a hospital and it seems this would be the safest place (if any) to talk about such a thing (i.e., I realize saying things like "she is dying" or "he only has 2 more hours to live" may seem out of place and a bit creepy for say, a high school locker room discussion or a grocery store checkout lane but at a hospital? Can't this be a safe place, if there ever should be a safe place, to talk about death?
I'm not advocating momentary morbid conversations all day long, plus the weekends. I'm simply wondering 'why' we westerners think we must be so "proper" and "professional" and "reserved" and "calm" and "collected" and "put together" when it comes to the subject of death?
All this to say, today I overheard one nurse tell another nurse "285 Bed 1 has expired." Which in farmer talk means "the milk has gone sour." However, in hostpital talk it means a "this person has died." As soon as I heard this while walking by, I stopped, looked at the nurse and then walked on. I don't think I like the idea of referring to people as if they're all gallons of milk just waiting to be thrown out. I don't necessarily think it's healthy to be reduced to a number and treated as if you're the one product that just didn't make it into the big supermarket aisle display this Easter season.
But alas, I have no alternative language code or system to offer the medical field so maybe I should just shut up. Maybe I should be walking around room-to-room while working at the hospital, labeling patient's foreheads with my human-expiration/death-date stamp. "Oh I'm sorry 265 Bed 1, but you're probably going to expire tomorrow so please---eat your over salted pieces of bacon and try not to think about it."
Conversations lately have been wild, as I feel almost embarassed at how blunt and obvious so many people in my life have been when it comes to approaching me about my own faith. Case in point: today at work, one of the receptionist ladies who answer phones, do patient charting, and a host of other things, asked me "tell me what was the best single thing you learned while at school/seminary last year?" Now, understand this: up until this point, the most contact I've had with this woman is a fair 'hello' exchange from time to time. But here she is, asking me the most radical thing I learned last year at seminary and wouldn't you know I had to think for five minutes before even answering. My response, now looking back, wasn't so great even though she seem to accept it as legitimate and marginally profound. And now that I think back again, I wonder why I didn't steal from the great theologian Karl Barth when giving my response. Because after decades of theological research and intense epistemological debates and creation/evolution talks, and liberal/conservative protestant discussions, he was asked what (out of it all) was the greatest thing he came to know.
"The greatest thing that I've ever learned and known is that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so."
Sometimes I need to be just taken back to square one and remember who it is I'm actually living for. Yes, Jesus loves me...and Jesus even likes me (something Brennan Manning taught me to accept) and this I've come to know and love and cherish and cling to when I'm feeling alone and depressed, and depend on when I don't know where to go or who to turn to. It is the "it" in the gospel that blows me to pieces. It is in the form of grace and yet still, it hits me almost every time.
Thank you again Tara for allowing me to see the light, again and again.
I know people bring their home to work and vice versa. I realize that amongst me at work there are nurses working who have husbands that beat them, and there are those of us who are extremely lonely and confused, and there are others who continually find themselves living in fear, in anger, or in a state of being where nothing makes sense---at all. I realize we all bring our own worlds to the big world of work and we all attempt to continually throw bits and pieces of our worlds into the wide open melting pot. So maybe I shouldn't be surprised at days like today. And maybe you're reading this and wondering what the heck it is I'm really talking about.
It's so hard to explain really, but I"ll try in one sentence. You ever have the kind of day where near strangers began to ask you about the ultimate questions of existence, where persons are opening up to you about serious personal issues they have at home, where another woman seeks out your advice on whether or not it's "okay" for her to be a lesbian, and where in the midst of it all, you're constantly being torn between the thought of doing the work you're at work to do, and doing the kind of human work you know deep down really needs to be done?
Well, if you get that you know what kind of day I had. Not bad, not necessarily good---just befuddling and confusing and fascinating, all at once.
Of course, it's hard to read such a question without hardly any context but immediately I thought 'no...it isn't!' Even though I generally frown upon such language (i.e., "we've got a battle to fight today, and the Church must fight back!") I understood the question and still found myself disagreeing. Consider the past presidential election for instance.
Were the two main issues (gay marriage and abortion) evangelical Christians rallied behind really the ones central to the global Church's concerns at large? Meaning, were these issues the main battle going on in the world today? Were these the biggest hindrances to people coming to Christ? Or coming to God?
Once again---like in the good ole' scary Bible times---people who know very little about God and don't even pretend to call themselves Christians generally seem to be the ones fighting for justice, for peace, for love. So when the Enron scandal came out, how did the Church respond? Did it speak vehemently and passionately against this corporate scandal of injustice, lying, cheating and stealing, like it did when it spoke about abortion and gay marriage? Or was it merely just another story of man wanting too much money and the Church believing that there were other more pressing issues out there? Could it be possible that maybe, the Church missed the boat---again!?
In the New Testament, it's no surprise to the average person that Jesus addressed the problem of greed and the love for money as the single greatest threat to knowing Christ. Yet, when was the last time you heard a sermon on America's equating salvation with earning more money? When did the Church last picket corporate criminals who steal from middle and low income familes just so they can take another week of vacation in a year?
Somehow, most of us Christians (including myself), don't seem to be too concerned with that whole "sell everything you own and follow me," command that Jesus gave. No, we're on America's side for the most part. After all, how dare we question this Christian nation's values? How dare we suspect that the things that America holds to be its dream is not at all what we Christians should be living or dreaming for?!
In other news (as if some of my friends confirming of this thing wasn't enough) I've finally come to terms with something about myself: I'm not a cynic, despite always saying "maybe I'm a cynic" in every other post. No, I'm an idealist. So whenever something coming from me sounds purely cynical, know it's really just my idealistic mind meeting up with my idealistic heart in order to construct an idealistic world.
But then, it came up somewhere else---in another book---and I decided to revisit the story again and see if I really agreed with the "new interpretation" that was out there in so many Christian scholar circles today, on this particular story.
Simply put, many Christian and Jewish scholars today are saying (what Madeleine wrote over 10 years ago about) that perhaps Abraham actually failed the test yet God honored and fulfilled his promise to him anyways. Yes that's right...you heard what I said: Abraham failed the test and God intervened just before his son was to be killed.
If you read more closely and you seek out the character of God more thoroughly in the Old and New Testament, it seems very against God's nature to request such a thing. I know, I know...many of you are saying, "But he was only testing Abraham---to see if he really feared God, and loved God more than anything." But I'm thinking more now, "Was he?" It seems this tenth test of Abraham was really a test of whether he would choose law over love. And sadly, instead of choosing love Abraham chose law, and didn't even go as far as to question God's motive on the matter. Was Abraham simply obeying or is there such a thing as discernable obedience? Why didn't he question God who had called him to keep his commandments (which how could he forget, included "Do not murder") when God was asking him to violate one of these commandments? All throughout the Old Testament it seems Abraham and so many others wrestled with God and argued with Him whenever He would ask something shady or unreasonable of someone. I mean come on, God changed his mind a number of times because of people like Abraham who wrestled and duked it out in the relational life pool of ideas with God. Is it ironic or mere coincidence that Jacob, the man who wrestled with God is whom Israel is named after? God's chosen people's very name suggests the fact that they "wrestle," and yet, Abraham (this time around) doesn't do anything of the sort! Something is seriously messed up here, isn't it?
Perhaps I'm merely trying to understand the infinite too hard with my finite brain. Perhaps I really don't understand this kind of God---a God that would ask me to murder someone I loved so dearly. After all, if this happened today would not 99% of Christians be telling the Abrahams out there, "That is not God telling you to kill your son! That's someone else! Don't listen!"
From my perspective so far, it seems that you don't have to change a lick of scripture to come up with this interpretation of the story. It seems that Abraham could've seemingly failed the test, but yet, by God's grace was given what was promised to Him anyways. And if I'm not mistaken, wouldn't that be more in line with the God we Christians proclaim to serve? Wouldn't this interpretation make more sense when it comes to years and years later and Jesus is about to be crucified, and it is uttered (and compared) "Are you sons of Abraham or sons of God?" Or metaphorically speaking, do you live for the law or live for love?
I'm still thinking on this a great deal, but when I read this again recently and did some more research on it, I came to see it as a much more freeing and grace-filled interpretation of a sacred story that's been agonized and studied over year after year for thousands of years. I'm gonna keep searching, but for now this is just another thing in my life in which God's grace grows and my need for mercy extends even greater.
But at least I enjoy it still even though most people would simply scoff and say, "Oh my gosh! That song came out like last summer! It's so old!" To which I always smile and say, "I know....but I really love the old songs! What can I say?"
One of my many favorite lines from the movie "Millions" seems to appropriate today after I got to know one of my employees at the hospital a little better. She is one of those wonderful older women---vibrant, very alive, and a very hard worker---and she also wears a necklace key change thingy that says "Jesus Loves Me" on it repeatedly (one phrase after the other) and is vehemently not a fan of George W. Bush. She makes me smile whenever I get to talk with her.
So today, she's sharing with me about herself, her past and her life basically and it saddened me to hear her story. Hearing how she struggled with physical and emotional abuse for years and years until finally, after 30 years she left him (she forgave and forgave and forgave and just kept letting him "come back"), I was angry with the world again but yet, too upset and sad to really do anything about it. I stood there listening, and watched as my respect grew even more for this woman---a 52 year old child at heart---and I thanked God again for being able to see someone I thought I knew...in an entirely different light. And this goes on all the time and I seldom choose to notice it. Maybe I don't want to see how I see people because it makes me think about the way people might see me. I wonder how so many people could be wrong about me, and I think about the few who I feel "get me"...like few people in this world do.
And I suppose that is how life is generally supposed to work. We see people the way we want to see them until they give us reason to see otherwise. And when those few people in our lives give us that other reason, they no longer become simply other people---dancing in the sea of the census---but they become our friends, and the ones who will hold our hand when we will leave this world, and be with us as we slip into the next.
This is why today, I'm happy to be alive.
So now I'm reading "Our Town," and it is simple but lovely. It may seem strange that I'm reading a play before I go to bed, as it's not your typical Mary Higgins Clark or Dan Brown summer fiction reading type-of-a-book, but for me---honestly---I love that I'm finally getting to read it and so many other classics like it because I feel like I robbed myself back in high school by sliding through and hardly reading a thing! If it weren't for Miss Smith, my senior year A.P. English teacher, I might have even escaped high school having not read "Hamlet!"
But back to books I'm reading or have been reading: "The Giver" by Lois Lowry...I skipped it in 5th grade but came across it recently and said "I need to read this Newberry medal award winner!" and so I did, and again it made me so happy. I don't know if I would've appreciated this book or many others for that matter, had I read them when I was "supposed to." So perhaps now is my time---as the writer of Ecclesiastes would probably agree---and today is the day when I will see the beauty in so much literature that I blindly and foolishly scoffed at during my early childhood years.
So here's to a summer reading list sprinkled with bits and pieces of the classics! And by the way, don't be surprsied if I start quoting famous dead literary geniuses and turn into a high school english teacher by the end of July. As you all know, I tend to get caught up in whatever it is I'm currently reading and someeeetimmmes take my happiness a little too far.
Case in point: nurse Jenny saw me and didn't recognize me at first. So when it clicked in her head, "Yes, this is Neville. From last summer. You remember!" she gasped and blurted, "Oh my gosh! I saw you from behind and I thought you were an old man! What with your receding hair and all!"
She said it like it was Kalamazoo Gazette front page news. Like it was the given common sense we all really must recognize, and point out. She hugged me tight, laughing and giggling, and I have to admit, my gut reaction was to give her a noogie while trying to rip chunks of her own hair out of her head---you know, just so she could feel what it's like to have "receding hair." But then I thought, 'she's probably right.' After all, my hair...styled with gel and sticking straight up, and getting longer every new day, probably resembles a 42-year-old doctor's head more than my own 22-year-old one. And so, I keep hugging Jenny back, and I smile, and I think of how fun it is to be 22 years old and already losing your hair.
I guess I should've never made fun of all those Rogaine commercials I saw when I was young. God is surely getting back at me...in a very smart, and clever way. Oh well---that's life: God-1, Neville-0.
And yes, I AM keeping score!
So here we go, if I had to make it up right now:
1. "Millions"
2. "Crash"
3. "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room"
I'm such a dork. Goodniggggghhhhhhhht.
It is indeed everywhere we turn here in America. You don't have to look too long or too hard before you find it or see it. Power is what so many of our conversations are really about and it's sad to see and understand and comprehend how this very thing can rip the Church apart--and the world too, for that matter.
But still, life seems worth the risk. The risk of living for love is a "fearful gamble," (again, Madeleine L'Engle's phrase---not my own) but it is one I'm ready and willing and wanting to repeatedly make.
Here's to frenzy Friday garage sales and much fun-in-the-Michigan-sun. And as Kelmo "Moselle" Blomgren would like to say...."Boo-yeah!"
Tonight, after flying back from David and Kelly's wonderful wedding in Minneapolis, I had a two-hour plus conversation wtih Dot, a sixty-something-year-old Catholic who was exactly who I needed to talk with after these past few crazy weeks. It was the first real, amazing, transparent, affirming, Catholic / Protestant background dialogue I've ever had where it never turned into any sort of debate or argument. As we sat there, me in seat 16D and she in 16E, we said nothing until the breaking of the pretzels and the serving of diet coke. Up until then, we had both been reading or in our own little American Airline world...trying not to make contact with one another I think. But then, the food came and the pretzels were broken and the diet coke was served to both of us, and we couldn't hold back any longer. And God, I think, had something to do with all of this.
She shared with me about the rich tradition and meditative worship of the Catholic faith, and I shared with her my sunday school class Protestant upbringings, and told of how much I valued these memories today. She needed help with her parish in these ways, while I needed guidance in Protestant problems and it went on and on like that until our plane landed in California. We said our goodbyes, blessed one another and gave the kind of hug Jesus would be proud of, no doubt, and when our own little ways.
And after that wonderful moment, I thought again of how wonderful it is to be apart of something as radical and as breathtakingly beautiful as the Church of Christ. And I thought about the bond Dot and I shared---both spiritually and emotionally---and the common ground we walked on and talked on together. And I thought about the way we laughed at ourselves and joked about the silliness God must look down upon at us in---so often and so frequent. It was the perfect ending to two near-perfect weekends of two events where close friends were pulled together as one by God and by the Church.
I usually never say things like this, but I'm so looking forward to meeting Dot again--wherever and whenever that may be. If it won't be till' heaven, I'll be just fine with that.
And so, the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine proves to be more than just an act or sympbol or practice we meditate on when we remember Christ's sacrifice for us---for really, whenever there is a meal being shared by the people belonging to the open-wide-arm hold of God, and there is fellowship and food and laughter exchanged, there Christ is...affirmed and remembered in spirit, in act, and in action. And the world is really, as Bjork would say, "full of Love"---again.
