my big house makes me feel good

the lies we believe. I'm watching PBS (which I just really love), and right now I'm watching a show that highlights big A houses, with their custom made doors and cabinets, granite countertops, grand winding staircases, and MUCH, MUCH MORE! So much money spent on this grand space, a space that doesn't even feel lived in or cozy. But it's a status symbol isn't it? These folks are now on TV, even if it just local. And their friends can come over and "Ooooo" and "Aaaaaahhh" at their home, further affirming them that they are people of worth because their house is so huge and pretty and fancy. Do we really believe these lies?

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I'm going to Durham, NC on Tuesday, to spend some time with Aislinn and Matt. It feeds my independent self that sometimes wants to get out and being able to fly alone is one the ways I feel the most independent. Don't get me wrong, I'm not so independent that I can't work with other folks. I know that would mean death to my marriage (and defeats the purpose of the Family of God), I'm just not going to lie that when I get to do something solo sometimes, I kind of like it.

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I'm not saying a big house is wrong. When we fill it with friends and family and have people around our dinner table. When we open the extra room for the stranger, then we might need that big house to serve and love people best. what I am saying is this...

Don't believe it. Your fancy house just gives you an expensive padding for your bottom and a silver spoon in your mouth and might even make it harder to follow the Christ whose life oozed with simplicity.

Lord have mercy on our lifestyles and the ways we seek the world to affirm us.

Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy.

Right now, I'm taking a break from recording. Yes, Matthew Clark is here with his traveling recording equipment ("Where did you record?" - "Suitcase Studio," I reply.) It can be quite exhausting to record, and though I've been looking forward to it for quite some time, in some ways I'm looking forward to it being completed. I don't dislike recording altogether, but I don't love the way it has you look at your music, with a painfully critical ear, making you nervous and overly conscious over every single note that escapes your mouth. I miss more guitar chords and squeak out more off-notes than usual. Yes, I prefer house concerts and living room praise choruses and shower-singing. 

Yet, I've also discovered something else today, that recording is like a spiritual discipline. 

Not in the sense that you are doing it all the time, but in the sense that sometimes you don't want to; it is hard, and it is necessary. Matthew said today that when we write songs and play them live, they are developing... changing and forming into their best form. Then, we are ready to record them, to make them solid and complete. They've been tried and tested, and so we need to do "finish" them (though they live on and on and we continue to play them over and over and over...) This helps us even move on in writing more, to change and grow, to see new experiences through the lense of song-writing. I can often feel an experience even more fully by putting it into a song, singing it over and over makes it even more real to me.

I am resting right now, as Jeff is in there putting drum tracks over my vocals and guitar. Matthew will go home and add some bass, some harmony vocals, etc.

 

Together, we'll make this music complete. What's best about recording is the togetherness of it all. I need Matthew; I need Jeff. We do this together.

"What is the Church for, if we don't reach out and hold the hurting?" (j. casper)

It's easy to forget what we, the Church, are for; it's easy to stop digging through the junk we call "church", to stop doing what it is we are to be doing and love like we're supposed to be loving. I won't even pretend I have a perfect paragraph or "how-to" for us... I just know that we're so often not doing it. But I try not to sit around and complain about what we're not doing, and instead work towards helping my brother and sisters (and myself) become betters lovers of God and people.

It doesn't take long, though, to start giving up, to let our posh, American, selfish lifestyle suck the life right out of us, and almost quit altogether. It's easier to start picking out carpet colors and song styles that better suit our tastes, than to tear down walls of racial divide and sit on the curb with a homeless drunkard who is lying to my face and still see the face of Christ in him.

It's easier to just suffocate than keep gasping for air.

Ah, but tonight I was so encouraged. It takes one conversation, one soul to help you get going again. We are not alone. Josh is easing through Memphis on a road trip that's just beginning, but he's come into our home with his quiet smile and given us new hope, that our Love is not in vain and that all over the world people are wrestling and struggling. I love it that our brothers and sisters stand with us in solidarity and give us nudges and keep us going.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just climbing a sand dune, taking one step, only to slide back down, maybe even further back than where I started. We are a hurting and broken people, us world-dwellers, and very few of us have felt the spark, fanned the flame, and lived into the Love that put on flesh for us. Very few of us rest in that. And so we sit on curbs and give away some money and move into the abandoned places; we take risks and open our homes and put an extra place setting at the dinner table. We give ourselves away.

Friends, it is so much more than the style of music and order or worship at the 11 o'clock hour on Sunday. We've got to know that.

thank you, brother.

Critical, I've been so critical lately. Both inwardly and outwardly I've been criticizing everything and repeating the phrase, "I need to do this; you shouldn't do this; if only they would do it this way." What is wrong with me? Where is grace? Where is patience? How did I go on about this and miss it? Perhaps you haven't seen it, but I am painfully aware of it (and so is my husband!)

I think it might have something to do with want. We all want something don't we? We want skinnier bodies, more money, more discipline in prayer, the answers to life's problems; we seek affirmation from people by looking polished, "having it all together," saying all the right things, paying attention to all the "right" people, even if "for the sake of the Kingdom." But we want. 

At dinner tonight I found myself saying, "Uh, that's so lame, why would they want to have this big festival with a bunch of concerts. It's just going to attract a bunch of Christians. People don't meet Jesus through flashy shows; they meet him in the face and lives of others." Now, I know this blanket statement can't be true; I'm sure lots of people can say they were moved to know Jesus because of a concert, a festival, a crusade. But I'm thinking of how Jesus moved and affected people. There were some crowds we hear about, and maybe they left some of the stories of other crowds out, but there sure are a lot of one-on-one encounters. Quiet, intense encounters, that left a life changed. Did they all give it up and follow Jesus? We can't know. But I know from my measly 23 years of life lived that when eyes meet, when laughter escapes, when bodies are embraced in lingering hugs, something happens... something that can't be replicated from a stage and a sinner's prayer.

But I rambled.

I still can't say such strong words as "can't" and "won't" because God can and does use anything to make his name known, to nudge a person's heart, to waken something in their spirit that might not have been stirred otherwise. I just want things my way; I want my opinions and theologies to be true and correct.

Alas, I shall ask, "but what do you want of me, Lord?"

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory... (Psalm 115:1)

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This week in particular has reminded me of some of the things I love most about the South, some of which are only relevant in the DEEP South where I come from. And since I don't write about "light" things very often, here goes...

Things I love about my South.

1. the way the city shuts down with the prediction of ice/snow that never actually comes...

2. sweet tea

3. cheese grits

4. pool swimming season lasts from May - September (at least)

5. sweet tea

6. New Orleans cuisine

7. two days out of school for Mardi Gras holidays

8. the ability to wear skirts at random points throughout the winter

9. no need for snow tires

10. sweet tea

11. southern accents

12. southern belles (like the sweet lady at our last church who sounded like Blanche Devereaux from the Golden Girls, but with much better morals.)

13. sweet tea

I'm constantly dreaming of places to move, all of which are NOT in the South, claiming that I can't stand the heat, that I want to meet people who follow Jesus instead of just claiming him, and that I want to hike and whitewater raft more. And those things are true, and those dreams keep dreaming, but you know, my South is home and you just can't get good sweet tea anywhere else, that's for dang sure.

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Wishing you that joy and peace that came when the Word became flesh....

We've been waiting for so long to see them, to sing songs, to laugh hardily, to see the beautiful color of their eyes. And it's finally here. What's better is we get to share them with matthew clark AND my parents--the whole Family, together for Thanksgiving, a time to be especially thankful and reminded of everything, even the small things.

Aislinn and Matt will be here so soon; we haven't seen them in a year. Our soul-friends, you could call them, ones we miss every single day of our lives, but they're finally here!

AND we're in the North Carolina mountains! too much, too much!

We've already been sharing so much of our lives. We made a stop in Knoxville, met some new friends, crashed on their futon and floor, ate crumpets and sipped coffee and shared about life and love and the Church and all the things that sound so cliche on a blog, but are so rich and meaningful when shared on the living room floor of a duplex in the foothills.

We were made for relationship; this is it. This is beauty at its beautifulness-est.

We love this Family!

"Sharing is caring..."

You must have sung this song as a child. I'm not sure the rest of the words, but I've got a hint of a tune in my head that goes along with this phrase, and I am singing it in my head just now...

Sharing is caring.

But sharing sure does freak people out these days. "You let someone else drive your car?" I do, after all, have such a deep affection for this chunk of metal sitting in the driveway. "You actually want to live with other people? I could never..." No, I could never live with people; why on earth would I do that? "You put all your money in a common fund? Never."

We don't do all these things, and even if we do, it probably doesn't look exactly how you'd imagine, but then again, some of these we do. I'm awed at the extreme sense of ownership of every tiny detail of our lives--down to the very thing that was given to us freely--our salvation. It's my car, my house, my money, my church, and my worship service. "It's just me and Jesus!"

Mine, mine, mine.

Sharing is caring.

One can't blame another for having this ownership over things; it is the center of American culture. Get a good degree so you can have a good job and buy lots of things. You will have complete control over your life when you have enough money to live where you want, have what you want, at any time you want.

But my friends, I'll tell you, in my measley experience that sharing is caring, even when your hands have to be pried off of that which you prized so dearly. Once it's out of your hands, you never realized how good it felt to loosen that grip and wiggle those fingers.

So loosen your grip and wiggle your fingers.