Something Beautiful

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Don’t ask me how I went without noticing that I never announced our pregnancy on my blog. I spent most of the spring trying to keep the baby a secret for various reasons, so when the time came to announce it to the world, I was tentative. Nevertheless, I’m here now and WE’RE HAVING A BABY!!

I’m going to put up lots of pictures of ultrasounds and other stuff like that. You can see even more info about the baby over at our baby blog.

We are receiving gifts. Rather, the baby is receiving gifts. So, if you feel like purchasing something educational or poop-related, the baby will be very appreciative.

Wow! It’s been a long time since I posted anything on my blog, and I’ve got a lot to catch you up on. However, I first want to post my most recent sermon. Actually, I’m going to post my (2) most recent sermons. First, “Politics of the Plate,” which I preached at Christ Church in Summit, NJ on July 6, 2008. It’s about the the politically corrupt origins of tithing and the global food crisis
Check it out!

George Oates from Flickr has an outstanding article about online community building over at A List Apart. What resonates with me most is the  relevance of Oates’ thoughts for those of us building communities in the offline world. In particular, I wonder what the church might look like if we considered the fact that 95% of what people interact with online is generated by other users, not site administrators. We could hardly say the same thing of religious worship services, Bible studies, etc. Here’s a quick taste of what Oates has to say, I hope it wets your appetite:

People don’t like being told what to do. We like to explore, change things around, and make a place our own. Hefty design challenges await the makers of websites where people feel free to engage; both with the system itself and with each other. Embrace the idea that people will warp and stretch your site in ways you can’t predict—they’ll surprise you with their creativity and make something wonderful with what you provide.
–George Oates

Rarely have I been so proud of my North Carolinian heritage than when I read the following excerpt from The Religious History of America:

Everything about the evangelical Baptists and Presbyterians of North Carolina offended one especially acerbic Anglican cleric, Charles Woodmason, who found himself in something of a guerrilla war with backcountry disenters. They mocked him, stole his horse, and noisily disrupted his preaching, “halloing and whooping,” outside the church doors. They tore down the handbills announcing the places and times of his worship services and sometimes even put up fake ones to misdirect the Anglican faithful. At one point some hooligans broke into one of his churches and placed a pile of “their Excrements on the Communion Table.” (Gaustad and Schmidt, 107-108 )

What can I say? I come by it honestly.

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From time to time, I get to feeling like I haven’t done anything significant with my life. I have to remind myself of all that I’ve accomplished in order to shake off that not-so-fresh feeling. In general, I am quite productive and set ridiculously high standards for almost everything I do, and nearly always exceed them. Maybe it’s that perfectionism that leaves me feeling so dissatisfied. Nevertheless, I made a list of the 10 things I’m most proud of from my twenties. The good news is… I’m only 27!

1) Got married, stayed married
2) Started the Jonah Project (with the help of several other people)
3) Completed BA and MA degrees
4) private
5) Released Rain In the Desert
6) Traveled to India
7) Published (2) articles in The Journal of Student Ministries
8 Trained to run 1/4 marathon
9) Served in Colombia with YWAM
10) Developed and maintain lifelong friendships

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One of my professors told me recently that I should be keeping a journal of this time in my life. For reasons that I won’t explain here, I’m going to start doing that.

One thing I will comment on publicly is the fact that I have been really sensitive lately. I’m a hyper-sensitive person naturally (to a fault), so when I find myself even more sensitive than normal, I start creating conversations, events, whole worlds that don’t actually exist. I start reading a lot into off-handed comments, and imposing a whole lot of attitude on emails that were probably meant neutrally at worst.

Two conditions contribute significantly to my heightened sensitivity: 1) increased stress; 2) lack of affirmation. My increased stress has everything to do with the life conditions that I’m not going to comment on here. I’ll simply say that some stress is positive stress, some is not, and I’ve got both. A lack of affirmation is a far trickier thing because it’s much more subtle. What is affirmation? Is it something I give myself? Is it something others give me? Is it a compliment? Is it occasional? Is it a confirmation of my person? Is it the confirmation of a calling? Is it fundamental to my being? Well, yes.

As far as compliments go, I’ve got those. Compliments are like potato chips–they’re delicious, but they don’t fill you up and you can’t have just one. I can eat a whole bag of chips and still want dinner.

How do I affirm myself? Well, I suppose I remind myself of what I know to be true about my peson, my world and the people around me. Sometimes that means I affirm myself over and against others. That’s often therapeutic and necessary, but it’s hardly ever satisfying in and of itself.

I remind myself of what I know to be true: I am created in God’s image and have inherent worth and beauty; The center of my person is that imago Dei, everything else waxes and wanes; God’s love is for all people, including me, so we all deserve respect and to be treated with dignity; I am not God; I am finite and faulted.

How do others offer me affirmation? This one is tricky, because we all know people who go around needy of others’ world-shaping words, apparently incapable of affirming themselves. That isn’t healthy, and we all make efforts to avoid these people within the limits of social niceties (at least I do… if I’m honest). Still, I’m Reformed and I believe we need communities to affirm our callings, which in our culture is directly connected to one’s personhood.

Affirmation is in the details. It lies in others’ abilities to pinpoint the specific qualities that make us capable and skilled at particular tasks. Because we are one way, or have developed one set of qualities and abilities, we are able to make this or that particular contribution to the community, which in turn affects the world. Joseph Myers, in Organic Community, says that we live in a world in which people need to hear specifically what qualifies them to do what is needed by the community. In our world of anonymity and collective information, each of us needs to know what I can do to make the world better; what I can do to make my church better; what I can do to make my family better. I think this also has to do with the development of a specialist mentality in much of the Northern World (not using the East-West dichotomy anymore), where people believe they are highly suited for one very particular living condition and will search that out through various career paths, marriages, geographies, etc. Information, mobility and affluence are both the chicken and the egg in the sense that people’s searching is cyclical and generally produces more searching, rather than the desired living condition.

We have become hunters who can no longer gather.

I digress.

So, I’m really sensitive these days, and I’m searching, and I’m not gathering. Is affirmation the key to happiness? I don’t know. I never seem to have enough to know if it can sustain me. I will persist reminding myself that God is at my core, and everything else revolves around that core, coming and going, hunting and searching, longing for meaning in a specialist’s world.