Sometimes the weather has a great sense of humor, and today the Iowa snow I knew I would miss at Christmas has followed me to Virginia. A blessed, quiet way to welcome the last week of Advent. And a great opportunity to wrap a few gifts and listen to NPR.
Rilke reflects “the summer was immense” but this year brought a three-month fall. Three months of crisp-not-cold air, three months of tiredgreen-gold-orange-crackling leaves. The marigolds and pansies still haven’t given up. September football and the last of the goldenrod in Pennsylvania. November football and the last tailgate of the season. For Thanksgiving, it was still fall in Iowa, which is not always the case. This year I’m thankful for a fall so immense. So immense that, for the first time in many years, I’m ready for Christmas. Lord, it is time.
Last weekend I visited my sister in Being in
As we’ve become more involved at our new church here (an Anglican church plant), I have thought about how different churches emphasize different things about their mission and operation. The following thought from Tim Keller really crystallizes the concerns facing many evangelicals who are dissatisfied with certain church models … but Keller also offers a hopeful, appreciative way forward in the “church-model wars.” He says,
“John Frame's 'tri-perspectivalism' helps me understand
“By thinking in this way, it makes it possible for me to love and appreciate the best representatives of each of these contemporary evangelical 'traditions.'”
Our church here is really strong on the “priestly” points: community, liturgy, sacraments, service, and justice. But we also have strong preaching (which healthfully drives those activities forward) and volunteers who keep us organized!
Do you ever steal blog posts from other people? I think it’s a fantastic idea, if you give the original author credit. The list below recommends books to read to understand the culture. It comes via Justin Taylor via James Kushiner from Ken Myers. I’ve read some Lewis, Berry, and Barzun—but not from the list below. Have you read any of these works? I’m intrigued by the books that focus on a particular cultural product, like language and music.
Five “Thinner” Books:
(1985) (1985)Five “Thicker” Books:
September is determined to put an end to summer. There was a nip-in-the-air when the local kids went back to school, and I cheerfully donned a jacket and scarf for the morning commute. Fall has always been my favorite season, and if it comes early that is fine by me. With it comes the realization that we are still here in Arlington. We’ve survived an entire season (both real and metaphorical) and we really live here now. There will be only two Saturday football games – not six or seven. Wes won’t have law school classes to attend or exams to take. I won’t change jobs, as I’ve done every year to mimic the academic calendar. There will still be fellowship groups and potlucks and dinner parties. Yet all the faces will change. This reflection on late summer from a former college newspaper colleague (I really recommend his blog!) helped me bid summer farewell. But I’m still looking for a perfect tomato.
Last weekend we wandered outside the Beltway and camped in Lil’ Blue (the Civic) merged onto
Then I spotted them. The real blackberries. The ones you can eat. I picked just a few (I swear!) and heard a rustling down the hill. A buck was enjoying some berries, too. In another wannabe-camper moment, I delighted in the fact that so shortly after leaving the office I was already communing with nature. The hot dogs and beers weren’t bad, either.
Update: The “Stuff White People Like” blog’s most recent post makes fun of how we camp.
The dining area and living room (above) are not as gloomy in real life.
Just found this set -- for our very narrow balcony -- on clearance.
Wes is sitting in this chair, sipping mate, as we speak.
This reflection is an antidote to my previous post:
We’ve settled in to a bit of a weekend routine, and it’s my favorite time to be out and about in the neighborhood. I’ve walked up and down our high-rise-ridden avenue, and out away from the traffic through quiet, tree-lined streets with tidy brick colonials and bungalows. We had a few friends over for a relaxed Saturday lunch and dipped our feet in the pool across the street. They brought a blueberry pie.
Our new church meets in the evenings on Sunday, and I really enjoy being home in the morning. It’s the only day out of seven that I can ease into. After a quiet day, it seems natural to close the weekend in worship and fellowship, and to go out into the week reminded of God’s active grace.
David Brooks wrote a great column today on the lifestyles of people like Sonia Sotomayor—people who exhibit the essence of success in a meritocracy. Even in the middle of recounting Sotomayor’s remarkable accomplishments, Brooks says, “Her biographers paint a picture of a life now that is frantically busy, fulfilling and often aloof … It’s the story of people in a meritocracy that gets more purified and competitive by the year, with the time demands growing more and more insistent.”
Just finished another great article in byFaith magazine: an interview with Ken Myers of Mars Hill Audio, which is sort of like Books & Culture meets NPR. The interview included some great reflections on common grace, how evangelicals think about culture, and the right response to the "new and improved." The writer framed the piece around Myers' reputation as a "well-informed generalist" and how Mars Hill Audio provides rigorous content on a variety of ideas. I love it. One major reason I was an international relations major in college was because of its interdisciplinary nature; I wanted to take history, political theory, and languages all at the same time. My book club in Iowa City showed me how teachers, doctors, singers, and secretaries can all gather around African lit. 
Here's a rainy-day shot of my little city garden. It's got marigolds, fuschia, potato vine, and a steady coleus. I've harvested the poor mint half to death (mojitos! iced tea!), and the oregano loves all the thunderstorms. My basil is holding out for the good hot days of July & August, saving its best for when fresh tomatoes roll in. The marigolds are shy in this shot; a new round of blooms should come in a couple days!This post is named in honor of Michelle, who knew exactly what I was thinking and accurately imagined the current state of our new home, a one bedroom high-rise apartment. Yes, we’ve arrived. We arrived over a week ago, in fact. But it still doesn’t feel like home.
I’m an impatient settler. I like to clean and get everything put away…right away! We’ve had a bumpy first week, but we are mostly unpacked. We have to wait to arrange our library and put pictures on the walls because of painting. Some painters came yesterday unannounced at 8 AM. I was sad to send them away, but they would only have been able to paint the boxes white, not the walls. That seemed like a waste of paint.
Today’s task: Empty three large boxes labeled “Garage.” Hmmm … we don’t have one of those here. What can we store? All the closets and cabinets are full.
The moving truck is coming tomorrow. I haven’t had to pack all the boxes myself this time, so the move still seems distant, days off. I’m still trying to figure out what treasured possessions should come along in the Civic and what to trust to the movers. There were a lot of goodbyes today, yesterday, the day before and before. It’s hard to go.
I’ve been listening to a new CD from Alli Rogers, a folk/pop singer-songwriter originally from Cedar Falls. I’m not great at remembering tunes, but I’ve had her song “The Things We Can and Cannot Keep” in my head these last few weeks as we’ve prepared to leave Iowa. It’s good for a transition:
what can we carry
what will stay with us
what will shine like gold
when the story’s told
some things will tarry
some will return to dust
there are things we can
and things we cannot keep
Off the top of my head – favorite food moments from three years in Iowa City. A foodie yearbook page, if you will. Our friends are even more fantastic than the food they served.Michelle’s cedar plank salmon and rosemary cheesecake (pictured at left) … indescribable. Good thing I’m not a food writer, because I couldn’t do them justice.
“Iron Chef” gatherings hosted by Emily. Squash, nuts, berries. And prizes for most creative, best presentation, and tastiest dishes!
Frequent family dinners, with countless desserts and lots of good conversation.
Cooking bibimbap with Jung Ok at Paula’s. Very spicy red stuff.
Bookish brunches and many, many fellowship meals at Lisa’s house. Coffee, casseroles, cookies. The door is always open there … just walk right in!
Darby’s scones, up on the third floor. She doesn’t live there anymore, but she still makes good things to eat.
Trying Thai recipes with Melissa – lettuce wraps and peanut-y noodles.
Orpah and Nate’s very cheesy pizza. Exploding beer and salsa!
Our move from a little city to a big city is fast approaching. We’re not just changing towns; we’re changing regions. The people, cities, and landscape of the Midwest have nurtured me for most of my (brief) adult life … so I think some appreciative words are in order before I head “home” to the East Coast.Wide-open spaces: (cue Dixie Chicks) The birds here stand out against the sky—there’s nothing to compete with their profiles. The robins love the tree beyond our balcony. But the hawks and crows I notice more often, circling and gliding over the interstate. Open sky means knowing where the sun is, and I watch its arc rise and fall with the seasons. At first, all this sky made me feel a bit insecure, and the land seemed so naked. For me, no hills or mountains made places seem like the “middle of nowhere”—even Chicago.
Honest, hard-working people: I know this sounds like a presidential campaign cliché (and boy, 2008 was a long year!) but in large part it’s true. People in the Midwest are friendly, and not just because they have to be. At my favorite little grocery, the high schoolers look me in the eye and say thank you after placing all my bags in the trunk. Both sides of my husband’s family hail from Iowa, and farming stories explain why hard work is still valued and expected.
A great public library: This is more specific, but the outstanding city public library is one of the things I appreciate most about where we live. It means free movie rentals on Friday nights, copies of new nonfiction, and a quiet place to spend a little time in between errands. For my friends who are moms, it’s a common outing. The playground and coffee shop next door make for a trifecta of fantastic gathering spaces. The community really treasures its library, and it shows. I’ll miss it!
There are many more specific things I love here: our active little church, every friend, the squash-and-peppers farmers market, conversations in coffeehouses, raindrops on roses...
The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion, by Stephen L. Carter, is on my reading list—ever since I found it for $3 at our public library’s discarded-books-store. (Of course a book like this ends up in the dustbin in Iowa City.) It was published in 1993, but somehow I suspect it is still relevant today (like Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind)."In our sensible zeal to keep religion from dominating our politics, we have created a political and legal culture that presses the religiously faithful to be other than themselves, to act publicly, and sometimes privately as well, as though their faith does not matter to them."
(I know, I know, I should read books before commenting on them!)
I read a couple of interesting articles recently that discuss the increasingly strict obsession we have with what we do and do not eat. As a farmers-market-loving foodie, I’m wary of knee-jerk conservative reactions against “liberal elitist granola types” because they tend to be pretty pejorative—about both liberals and their granola. But the idea that food restrictions are taking the place of sexual mores is worth noting.
Chuck Colson wrote a brief column on the issue, and referenced a lengthier article by Mary Eberstadt. She summarizes the issue well:
“Just as the food of today often attracts a level of metaphysical attentiveness suggestive of the sex of yesterday, so does food today seem attended by a similarly evocative — and proliferating — number of verboten signs. The opprobrium reserved for perceived ‘violations’ of what one ‘ought’ to do has migrated, in some cases fully, from one to the other.”
Is this true? Yes, for many people. She also notes that these “verboten signs” do not just apply to personal choice; they are meant to apply in a more universal sense. In this vein, she adds, “Moreover, this reversal between sex and food appears firmer the more passionately one clings to either pole.” I don’t agree with that statement—my “crunchy con” friends and I are testament that you can uphold traditional morals AND pay attention to what you eat. But all values don’t hold the same weight!
Colson picks up on every person’s intrinsic need for a moral code:
“… as my former colleague Jim Tonkowich notes, ‘For all our relativistic talk’ about encouraging people to make their own moral choices, ‘we cannot get away from an inner sense of right and wrong and the desire to codify [it].’
Jim is right. As the apostle Paul put it, God’s law is written on our hearts. We can deceive ourselves into believing it doesn’t exist, but when we do, we find our God-given sense of morality breaking out in other forms. In this case, in food—though it would be better the other way around.”
I love enjoying the delicious food God gave us to eat (so many choices!), and I’m still trying to sort out which “food values” should transcend personal choice and impact the public. I wish these articles had discussed this more thoroughly ... Please help me think through this!
I received a copy of Democracy in America during high school (as well as many a PoliSci lecture), and commentary referencing Tocqueville’s 19th-century observations always piques my interest. This First Things article had a succinct description of what Tocqueville observed about religion’s role in the public square:“Tocqueville calls religion “the first of their political institutions”—despite the fact that religion “never mixes directly in the government of society,” it “singularly facilitates their use of [freedom]” by making women and men moral.”
In large segments of the public square today, orthodox religion is seen as actually making men and women amoral and backward (there’s nothing worse than being called “traditional”). Morality is instead defined narrowly—and somewhat absolutely—by a set of politically-correct views. (“Politically-correct” is such a tired phrase, but I can’t think of how else to describe peer-pressured, media-sponsored public morality.)
“Separation of church and state” is quickly coming to mean “separation of religious-based morality and the public square.” In the process, we are losing our ability to “facilitate the use of our freedom” because politically-correct morality tells us we can define our own boundaries. But how are we to do so collectively, if each person’s views are equally valid? And how do we tackle societal ills, if we do not address moral choices? (see: “binge drinking, University of [X]”) Tocqueville realized how our country’s religious foundation—not an official church—enabled its citizens to use individual freedom constructively for the common good.
There’s so much more in this article—read the whole thing. (There’s a great section on what Tocqueville meant when he said American women were superior their European counterparts.)
Do you ever read something and say aloud, “Only in America?” It’s one of my favorite phrases (thanks Mom), and I muttered it after reading about this yoga trend in The New York Times “Style” section. I love this part of the paper; it so perfectly encapsulates a certain kind of city lifestyle by noting various “trends” which do not occur anywhere else. As I read, I like to pretend it’s really an Onion-esque commentary on the faux-urbane. But the articles are actually serious.
After I read that article, I asked my husband: “Guess what you’ll only see in America?” Without missing a beat he said, “dog yoga.”
Justin Taylor has posted a prayer for today from “The Valley of Vision.”Quiet, contemplative posts like these remind me to pause, but it’s hard to respond appropriately to the text when I’m reading it on a computer. How do I pray off a blog post? Maybe I should go read the hard copy …
Late October and early April days often seem the same in Iowa. With the green gone—or not quite back—the sun and the wind break all the way through barren limbs and it smells like dirt. The slanted light and earthiness remind me of similar days in New England. I miss the woods, and I miss the stone walls. My sister and brother and I explored the walls all around our old, old house. We marched on top of the sturdier segments but mostly scrambled over the tired, misshapen, now-meaningless markers. We built forts around them, conquered them. The ants and beetles found refuge, and we found the edges of our wooded world.
I know, I know. I should have read “Orthodoxy” ages ago. Well, I finally did. And I plan to again. My church group has been discussing postmodernism, absolutes, and politically-correct language about truth. Here’s a quote you may have seen before:“But what we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed.”
An acquaintance from my college newspaper days has also remarked on the recent media attention given to all things Calvinist. His post has more substantial points to consider. If you are a film fan, you may also benefit from his extensive list of reviews and other thoughtful blog offerings.
There is much rejoicing over the Obama family's plan to plant an vegetable garden on the South Lawn. Yes, it's just a garden. And yes, hundreds of families across America have never stopped gardening. (This is apparent in Iowa.) I'm all for sarcastic "trend" spotting. But I think their garden will actually make a symbolic difference; it will get a younger generation to pay attention to where food comes from.
A friend from our church fellowship group sent an interesting article from TIME. Apparently “The New Calvinism” is one of the “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.” I took a look at the rest of the list, and the other nine things had to do with globalization, environmental challenges, and other broad-based ideas. This Calvinism thing stood alone as the only religion-related item, and seemingly a niche one at that. The New York Times did an edgy, mostly fair portrait of Mark Driscoll a while back. What are we to make of this heightened interest in what certain Christians believe—and not just how they vote? With an increasingly fragmented evangelical political scene, are religion-beat editors and journalists looking for the Next Big Christian Caricature? Or are they genuinely interested in what these Christians believe about God?“The New Calvinism” gets it mostly right, in terms of quickly sweeping over the evangelical Reformed scene. The last line was really interesting, suggesting “… more Christians searching for security will submit their wills to the austerely demanding God of their country's infancy.” Is the writer recognizing that we’ve abandoned those religio-moral beliefs that made our country great? (Usually J. Edwards and the Founding Fathers get pounded for being so austere!)
Spring is coming (almost) and some recent reading dovetailed nicely with the soon-to-be season. Nate Jones, a friend from college, wrote a book review/reflection on “gardening in the cracks” for the latest issue of Books & Culture. He argues that we need a “theology of gardening.” (My good friend Michelle reminds me we need a theology for everything.) An excerpt: “Any theology of gardening must be first a project of recovery, exploring the place of the earth in the biblical narrative and the story of God’s people upon the land … we have too often regarded the land as essentially an object of production rather than a creation.”
Barbara Kingsolver makes a similar point about “land as object” in her 2007 book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I could write 1,000 words on my mixed feelings about this memoir, but overall I’m interested. The book helped me ask: How have I lost a connection to what I eat every day? Nate’s article helped me ask: What cultural attitudes about food and land do Christians have that we might have just adopted without thinking about it? I know this discussion ties into the larger evangelical turn toward environmentalism – and I like the moniker “creation care.” In terms of daily life, though, let’s face it: I’m looking for good food. And sharing it is the best part!
I check in on Rod Dreher’s blog almost daily for news and thoughts about religion, current events, and where conservatism is heading (or not heading) in this country. He brought this recent William Saletan article (on Slate.com) to my attention, right when I was so discouraged about the truncated media coverage of stem cell research. It’s nice to see that opinion-ators on both sides of the spectrum see the danger in adapting an “ends justify the means” approach to science.
GetReligion.org has some helpful analysis of the media coverage.
I recently finished "Culture Making" by Andy Crouch, and it left a little of itself behind after I returned it to the library. There's a lot to reflect on in this book.A variation of a common saying instructs “Never discuss religion or politics in polite company.” I majored in politics at a distinctly religious institution, and my professional career is decidedly at the intersection of those two spheres. Sometimes it makes for awkward dinner parties (though I have many like-minded friends). I believe it’s important to probe the depths of what we believe and carry our beliefs into the “public square”—whether that means the local park or the presidency. The challenges of my generation—or any generation—cannot be addressed with an insufficient picture of what it means to be human and what it means to serve a sovereign God.
Another saying declares, “I write to know what I think.” Writing is a worthwhile exercise in itself, and I need to do more of it. I may never write an original thought here (and readers may laugh at my naïveté!) but I hope it’s a fruitful synthesis of ideas. There might also be updates from the farmer’s market, because that’s always a more popular topic at dinner parties. :)
This is a personal blog, and the title is derived from my initials. As I begin writing, I am preparing to leave one city (a small university town) and establish a home in another: our nation’s capital. The title also reminds me that this world ultimately is not my home, and a better place is prepared. When I was growing up, my mom took me to New York once or twice a year. I remember staying up in the hotel room, sitting up against the window, and peering out at all the lights.
