My Thoughts Exactly

If you read nothing else this week, please read this, "Your Friendship on Facebook," another column from my friend Meredith. I am deeply fascinated (OK, concerned) with the issues she brings up here. In this new society in which a piece of hand-held metal is treated with more value than the person standing next to us, I am preoccupied with how to teach my children the value of real community.

Even if you don't share my concern, read it just for the clever blazer analogy.

Stories, Part I

I love people’s stories. Love telling them. Love listening to them. Love writing them down. I even love the funerals in my family because they bring out the stories. Some of my best memories are sitting in the basement of the Methodist church in my little home town, eating chicken casserole and listening to relatives I barely know tell stories about those I loved.

One of my favorite examples of good storytelling is the movie “Up.” While the talking dogs and wrestling geezers are entertaining enough, the part I love is the story that’s told in the introduction. In about six minutes, with no words, we get one of the most beautiful love stories ever told. But that’s not even the best story in the movie. The bigger story comes later—in the midst of the talking dogs and wrestling geezers—when the old man realizes one of life’s most important lessons: Life is what happens when we’re busy making other plans.

This was one of the rare movies I saw in a theater. I was the lone adult with seven children, and when Mr. Fredrickson makes this important discovery, I erupted. I shook and sobbed so hard that I scared the child on my lap. I have since—in the multiple home viewings of “Up” we’ve had since I ran out and bought the DVD—tried to explain the significance of that scene and why it affects me so profoundly. A story that changes the way you look at your own life is the most powerful story of all.

I’m reading a book right now about good stories. Not how to tell them, but how to live them. I’m thinking a lot about my own story, about what it would look like—up to this point, anyway—if it were captured in six minutes with no words. That may not be all that far off from how God sees it. To Him, the Bible says, a thousand years are like a day. (Does that roughly translate into 39.5 years being like six minutes? Probably not, but let’s just go with it.) And 1 John 3:18 tells us that God’s more interested in what our actions express than our words. So what about my story? Am I living a love story to Him, or a love story to myself? Something to think about.

Real Wisdom or the Conceit of Wisdom?

My children have a hard time grasping how I grew up without the internet. It’s sort of like saying to them that I grew up without water or food. And my kids are still too little to really use the internet much; in another ten years, they’ll compare me with people who grew up without indoor plumbing or lightbulbs.

The gap between my generation and my children’s is arguably the biggest in all of history. My childhood more closely resembled that of my grandparents than that of my own children. I didn’t even live in a town with restaurants (though I well remember begging my mom for a Happy Meal when a McDonald’s arrived about an hour away from us). I remember cooking with no microwave, and using pens, paper, and stamps to stay connected with my friends each time I moved. In my house, I was the television remote. It was a big day when we got that little clicker and I got to stay on the couch with everyone else when my dad wanted to surf our three channels. Ah, the memories my children will never have.

I’m a suspicious friend of technology. While I’m as fascinated by the internet as the next person—how cool is it that at a moment’s notice, I can find out if Robert Goulet is still alive or not?—I’m also leery of what it’s doing to our minds and our culture. I stumbled across this quote in the book Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps:

“And as for wisdom, your pupils will have the reputation of it without the reality: they will receive a quantity of information without proper instruction, and in consequence be thought very knowledgeable when they are for the most part quite ignorant. And because they are filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom they will be a burden to society.”

The origin of this quote? Socrates. About 2,300 years before the invention of the internet. (Yes, I looked that up on the internet and learned not only a lot about Socrates, but how a mom lost 21 percent of her body fat by obeying once simple dietary rule. Thanks, Google ads!)

The question is not if technology is shaping our minds and our culture, but how. Only time will tell if it’s for better or for worse. Like most things, it’s probably a mix of both. In the meantime, my job is to teach my kids to use the technology and enjoy it for what it is while not becoming controlled by it. And most important of all, to invest their lives in the pursuit of true wisdom over mere information.

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding. To him belongs eternal praise.”

Me and Suicide Bombers

This week I’ve been considering how I’m like a suicide bomber.

I should explain.

I’m editing a book on the Islamic hadith. The hadith is a massive collection of instructions given by the prophet Muhammad that forms the backbone of what most Muslims believe today. With the Qur’an, it is a Muslim’s handbook for living. Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot.

I spent last week on Shariah law. I get up early to work most mornings, and it’s a unique experience to read about Arab thieves having their hands chopped off and hung around their necks while I’m eating my Cheerios. This week was jihad—a term, in the author’s words, that sends chills down the spine of anyone who remembers 9/11. The book quotes a Time magazine interview with an Iraqi suicide-bomber-in-training. Among other startling statements, the young man says this: “The only person who matters is Allah, and the only question he will ask me is, ‘How many infidels did you kill?”

Like all good thought-provoking comments, this one got me thinking about what I believe. I’m sort of a believe-in-it-so-much-you’ll-die-for-it kind of person. If I don’t believe in my core values enough to put my life on the line for them, do they really matter? Do I even matter? Or am I just here to have a good time like so many other people?

I agree to some extent with the suicide bomber’s reasoning. I wouldn’t say God is the only one who matters—everyone matters—but He is the one who matters most. The bomber and I have reached the same conclusion about whose opinion most drives our decisions—our Creator.

And what will He ask me when I meet Him in heaven? I’m not sure He’ll ask me anything, or that I’ll even be able to speak if He does. We know from the Bible that we will all have to give an account of our lives before God (Romans 14:12), but I can’t begin to imagine—nor do I really want to—what that will look like. But if it came in the form of just one question, what might it be? Unlike the bomber, I’m willing to bet my life that it won’t be about how many infidels I have killed. Jesus died for all infidels, for sinners just like me. But what about, “How many people did you love?” Or, better yet, “How many people did you love when you didn’t feel like it? And did you do it well?”

Now if only there were a training camp for people willing to give their lives for that cause. Sign me up!

The Name I Never Appreciated

“Why do Christians celebrate Christmas so much more than Easter?” I've heard it's a question Muslims ask of us.

It’s a good question. Easter sneaks up on me every year. I don’t spend all year waiting for it or a month decorating and shopping for it. With the exception of a yummy ham and a few snapshots of my shivering little girls in their colorful dresses, it seems to come and go without much fanfare each year. (In Colorado, it’s twice as likely that it will snow on Easter than on Christmas.)

I spent most of my childhood dreading Easter because Easter was my last name. Some of my most uncomfortable restaurant memories are dining out on Easter Sunday and giving the name “Easter” at the hostess desk.

“No, really, what’s your name?”

“Easter.”

Awkward laughter. She thinks we’re lunatics. Why couldn’t we have just stayed home?

As a teenager, I got smarter. When I gave my last name and received the usual response, “Like the bunny?” I snapped back—in the way only a teenager can—“No, like the resurrection of Christ.” I even decided to use my unusual name to my advantage when I ran for head girl of my high school. (Head girl is an old-fashioned term from student council president. That’s how old I am.) My best friend dressed up in a 6-foot bunny costume and hopped around school with a sign on her back that said, “Some bunny named Easter is running for head girl.” She even made a speech in it. (Thanks, Kendra. That was really above and beyond.)

It was only when I ditched my name—becoming instead a glorious, anonymous Jones in the crowd—that I could look back objectively and be proud to have shared a name with the most significant event in all of history. When God looks at me (or anyone else), He doesn’t see what a mess I am. He sees Easter: the exchange of my sin for Christ’s righteousness.

It’s only now that I can think of my mom, my brother, my sister-in-law, and my two nephews—the only Easters left from our family—and be a little envious that they still get to carry such a cool name.

Happy Easter, everyone!

The New Welfare

Before jumping into a new topic, here’s a link to a friend’s excellent article loosely related to my last post. Called “Facebook: A Turbulent Romance in Four Acts,” it’s definitely worth a quick read. Besides, Meredith is just one smokin’ writer.

At the risk of boring you to pieces, I’m going to share what I’ve learned about welfare reform in the past couple of months. Since health care reform is all the buzz right now, it seems a timely topic. And the more I talk with people about this, the more I realize how little most of us know.

In 1996, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. While the bill brought about many changes for people on public assistance, the biggest was that it reduced the amount of time any one person could receive it to five years. You can go on and off, but once you’ve passed the five-year point, you can never receive it again. The name “welfare” was also dropped, at least officially. The subsidy is now called TANF, Temporary Aid to Needy Families, which doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue and could explain why it never caught on among those of us who aren’t part of this world.

Under President Bush’s faith-based initiatives program, many religious organizations rose up to help fill the gaps created by welfare reform. Some of these lasted, but many are no longer around. The group we recently signed on with, Faith Partners, is one that has endured. Their strategy is fairly simple: partner “church people” with families who are working to get off of TANF. After taking initiative to sign up and complete ten weeks worth of classes, the families (nearly all single moms) are matched with a team who will begin walking with them as mentors. The team aspect is key.

The woman we have befriended has about 18 months of TANF left. She’s 30. She’s raising three kids and has a man who comes and goes from their lives. TANF, supplemented by Medicare and food stamps, provides (barely) enough to live on if she can prove she’s either in school or working. For the first three years, she says there was no accountability and the checks just came. Now that she’s down to 18 months, the pressure is ramping up—more forms, more questions, more people showing anxious concern for her. But people stuck in poverty have a very hard time planning ahead or thinking about the abstract future. They focus on what’s right in front of them, and that is usually so overwhelming that they often find it impossible to make any forward progress.

My sense of urgency for this woman is huge: Eighteen months to complete a GED and get through some college classes (ideally) so that she can find a job that pays well enough to support her family. I’m not sure it’s doable even if she weren’t dealing with the emotional exhaustion of a man who loves her only when it’s convenient, of a mother who just died an agonizing death, of three additional children lost to the state, of an adolescent daughter that she’s struggling to get custody of and trying to learn to parent for the first time, or a mouth full of false teeth that pop out every time she sneezes.

Life is hard for all of us. But I’m beginning to get some insight into America’s poor—even the motivated poor—and the slippery, uphill, marathon of a mountain they climb just to keep functioning every day. Yes, it’s often their own bad choices that put them on that path, but my eyes have been opened to how stuck they feel once they’re there. I may not do a thing to help my new friend, but she’s already helped me see the world from a whole different perspective.

Snack Nation

Snacks have become the American way. My kids eat snacks (or at least they want to) all day long. We are required to send them to school with snacks. We stash snacks in the car. We can’t watch a movie without them. Practical things like tissues and band-aids have been pushed out of my purse to make room for all the snacks.

I have a vague memory of eating Cheerios in church as a preschooler, and occasionally I’d be rewarded with graham crackers and milk when I was a bit older. When my mom went back to work when I was in junior high, every once in a while I would sneak in a bologna sandwich before dinner—and the guilt was nearly unbearable. Unless I’m remembering incorrectly, I believe I made it through my entire academic career with no snacks in my backpack. (Come to think of it, I didn’t have a backpack until college. Now my five-year-old manages one.) So why is it that my kids can’t seem to make it through the morning without snacking?

OK, easy answer. Frito Lay and Kraft have deep pockets and heavy influence.

But the snack culture that has exploded on the scene in the past twenty years isn’t limited to food. People want snack-size news (whatever they can grab from the ticker at the bottom of the screen as they’re flipping channels), snack-size education (get your online degree in just 11 weeks!), even snack-size marriages (Can’t we just live together and act married without all the heavy commitment?). And what about snack-size relationships? This is my biggest concern of all: Quick and easy relationships for people on the run! Light, easy, and conveniently packaged by social media sites for those who don’t have time to be bogged down by real emotions and deep conversation.

Don’t you just crave a real meal sometimes? Something you can sink your teeth into?

No doubt our snacking culture has contributed to our nation’s obesity problem. But I think there might be an even bigger problem lurking in the shadows, one that won’t surface for a number of years but that frightens the bejeebers out of me. What will be the societal impact of a whole generation of relational snackers?