MENTIONABLES (via Mowser)

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Your Marketing Lesson For The Day

I am indebted to my friend Evan and to NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" for bringing these pants to my attention:

According to the Kmart website, "These athletic pants boldly proclaim just where she stands by pointing out that 'True Love Waits' in a large screen print on the front and back of these pants." Click here to order a pair for only $9.99! In girl sizes only (don't get me started on that).

A purity ring, while much less perplexing, is sooo last millennium. Now you can draw the boys' attention to your backside and remind them not to lust after you at the same time!

As Evan so astutely asked, "In this case, will the medium become the message?"

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

A Night for the History Books

I do not usually post about politics on this blog. Political machinations are not what I want this blog to be about. But tonight, I will make one exception.

Today Barack Obama captured the Democratic nomination for president, making him the first African-American to run on a major party ticket in the history of our nation. In 2000, if you had told me a black man would be anywhere close to being our president before I grew old and gray, I would not have believed you. If the United States ever elected anybody other than a white man, I figured it would be decades away.

I was wrong. The time was just a few short years in the future, in 2008.

My grandparents grew up in a time when Jim Crow laws were the status quo. My parents were among the first generations to attend integrated public schools. I have seen the remnants of that racist past in my own life, and I know the knee-jerk fears and prejudices that still lie in my heart. But despite all that, despite the persistence of history and the reality of wounds yet to be healed in both black and white, we are about to witness a person of color vie for the leadership of the free world.

I believe I will tell my children and grandchildren about the year that a black man rose to compete for the highest office in our land. I will tell them how unbelievable it was back in 2008, how remarkable, how controversial. I will tell them how, even if Obama lost in November, he nonetheless won simply by going farther than any person of color before him.

Whatever your political leanings, let us pause for a moment and be proud of ourselves. The year is 2008, and we have come a long way.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

A New Job, and More Good Things to Come

Hi, everyone. I got a new job.

Last week was my first week at my new place of employment, a law firm specializing in real estate and estate planning. It has the most positive work environment I have experienced in quite some time. It's interesting, and the people are kind. AND it's under two miles from my apartment building. I have a new life, and I can't believe how nice it all is yet myself.

So here's to the future: A new job, and with it, new opportunities to do what I love.

Just FYI. God bless.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Whistle While You Wait

Our neighbors have four kids. This would not be remarkable except for the fact that we live in an apartment building, and the largest apartments in the building have two bedrooms.

We met them at an open house last fall. The parents graduated from my alma mater back in the 90s, and they intended to work overseas. Their heart was for missions, for serving other people in the name of God. They have not lost that dream, but meanwhile, he works at O’Hare Airport while his wife home-schools the four kids.

These neighbors fill me with admiration, respect, and absolute terror. I find waiting very, very hard, especially when it feels like I’m not making any progress toward my goals, and I know I would not handle frustration as quietly as my neighbors. I imagine them practicing their French with flash cards while one of them washes the dishes, and it breaks my heart. At the same time, my pity for them makes me feel privileged, naÃ¯ve, smug — and a little guilty. What do I know about waiting, after all? And despite the years in a holding pattern, our neighbors seem to have retained their resolve. Even with the four kids and without any money, I have to believe they’ll make it. They have been waiting a long time.

Waiting for your dreams grinds the heart like nothing else; you can only hope it grinds the heart into something useful, like olives into oil. There is always the chance that the wait will grind it into bits, into bitterness, into nothing that could be construed as sweet or worthwhile. In the meantime, while working at O’Hare or washing dishes, how do you hold on? How do you respond so that you become useful rather than bitter?

By no means do I have this waiting thing down, but I do want to share a few things I’ve tried so that all this waiting doesn’t turn me into an angry, bitter person who is no fun to be around.

1) Try being thankful.

This is a tough one, but perhaps you can do it if you concentrate on people who have less than you do. While it’s good to acknowledge that bad things are bad, constant negativity will blind you to your strengths if you let it flow unchecked. Give your self-pity some limits. Remember the custodian who works at that job you hate, or the homeless man you pass on the way — remember the friend that died, if that’s the best you can do. If you are reading this blog, you are alive, your lungs breathing, eyes seeing, and brain processing all as they should. You have been educated enough to read, and you have access to technology such that you know blogs exist. Be thankful.

While you count your blessings, you may discover that you already have resources to improve your situation. You never know. Sometimes we’re looking down at the floor so much we don’t see the door.

2) Try being sad with those who are sad.

Of course, we should also learn to be happy for others when good things happen to them. I only phrase the second suggestion this way because I find the sad side of the coin more difficult. If my friend were to lose her amazing job, it would not get me any closer to landing an amazing job of my own, and it would only make her less happy. That much I can understand. So I can be happy for my friend with the amazing job. I am okay at “rejoicing with those who rejoice” — after all, everybody loves a party. It’s the “mourning with those who mourn” half that I fumble.

Basically, I can’t stand to listen to other people complain. This is not because I am a positive person. It’s because I don’t think they have anything to complain about (only I do). My self-pity curtails my compassion.

For instance, it’s hard for me to listen to people complaining about their jobs, especially people who work at companies who continually reject my applications for employment. For you it might be hard to hear people complain about their spouse, or their kids, or about how impossible it is to find replacement parts for their vintage Jaguar.

Maybe the complainer really is ungrateful, but don’t be too quick to judge. If you have a hard time mustering any compassion, check your own heart. Their ungratefulness does not excuse your envy or self-pity or unforgiveness. I speak from experience.

Remember, things in life are only hard in relation to everything that has come before it. I find cold showers so insufferable that I’ll drive to a friend’s house to use her shower if my water heater is broken. For my friends in Russia, however, broken water heaters do not qualify as emergencies; to them, cold showers just mean it’s morning. Yet every Christian Russian I have met has been kind and merciful to me, the rich and bloated American. If I can remember the mercy offered me, maybe I can listen to the complaints of those I envy and respond with mercy, too.

If you can’t “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn,” at least fake it. Say something kind and generous. You will be a better friend.

3) Try working hard at hope.

Maybe you are a naturally hopeful and positive-thinking person. I am not. I have to work at hope. So I argue with myself when I think despairing thoughts, trying to give myself perspective. I read through the Psalms, that I might learn to express anger and impatience and still somehow circle around to expressing praise. On bad days, I listen to a lot of black Gospel music, which preaches perseverance over and over and over, without minimizing any of the obstacles ahead. I cry and yell, and then I start over. I threaten everybody from here to heaven, and then I wait some more.

Now I don’t know what gets you through the night. But I encourage you to find it, pursue it, and not let it go. Everybody who ever achieved anything did so because they persisted. Talent is not a magic wand. Education will only take you so far. To finish, you have to persist. You might wait a long time, but none of that time need be wasted.

God wastes nothing. The Bible says that we can “rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Romans 5:3-4). I think it’s significant that hope is the last to arrive. First you just keep going. Then you become the kind of person that always keeps going. Then, at last, you have hope. All that time spent suffering or waiting around to be useful, God uses. He uses it to make you hopeful, to make you strong.

From the outside, it doesn’t seem like my neighbors are moving toward their goal. But their goal is not just to go to France; their goal is to minister to people in France. The years spent working a dumb job and running after kids may be just the crucible to make them grateful, compassionate, and hopeful people, people who have something real and tested to offer. Like olives crushed into oil, they may become much more useful after being pressed down.

If I have to wait, I want to wait like my neighbors.

Friday, April 18, 2008

Hear Me Out: How I am learning to listen

"Being listened to is so close to being loved that

most people cannot tell the difference."

~ David Oxberg

I married a very listening man. He listens well, patiently and often, and he remembers what I say much later, too. In fact, he probably remembers what I say better than I do.

I guess I knew this before I married him, but I don’t remember it among all the reasons in his favor. I thought of him as considerate and respectful and kind, but I don’t think I identified his skills as a listener underpinning those other qualities. It was like he listened to me so well, I didn’t notice. But I got the message listening sends: I felt respected, valued, and loved.

In contrast to my husband, I would rate my listening skills as merely “moderately okay.” This has been made clear to me in my listening group, where three other women and I sit around, listen and share, ask non-leading questions, and silently pray. The power of that group is all in the listening. The first several times we met together I found myself thinking about what I would say during my turn, or what I should have said, or what happened to me at work that day – anything other than listening to what the other women were saying. It was hard to concentrate on someone other than me.

At the same time my own listening-deficiency was becoming clear to me, I was experiencing the power of being listening to. I would tell of what was happening in my life like I had told it countless times to friends, family, and strangers; I would set out to tell it matter-of-factly, expecting a couple laughs, but at listening group I would tear up and cry. It was like I was being allowed to feel what I was saying because someone else was finally hearing me, the me behind my front of words.

Not only would I end up telling my story differently, with tears instead of wisecracks, I would hear myself differently too. Like the main character of C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, Orual, who rages against the gods until she finally hears herself as the jealous, center-of-her-universe she is, I would realize mid-story how selfish I sounded, how false, how afraid. Lewis’s title comes from the central question, “How can we meet the gods face to face till we have faces?” In other words, how can God answer truthfully until you have heard your own question accurately? How can He answer you when you are asking a false question, full of pretense and sin?

We are always full of pretense and sin, and God speaks to us anyway, though this may explain why He often seems to miss the point. For example, I tell God about how horribly this person has treated me and He says something like, “Love her as yourself.” God’s apparent naÃ¯ve idealism tempts me to respond, “Did you hear what I just said, God? Do I need to repeat the part about what a bitch she is? Because Your response does not make me feel like You have heard me. Love her. Pff.”

This just goes to show that “good communication skills” don’t help much if you don’t want to hear what the other person has to say. I do not want to love my enemy. That’s why I call her my enemy: Because I hate her. And yet God goes on about love, completely ignoring all of my complaints.

And that scenario assumes, maybe, that I have legitimate complaints against my enemy-neighbor (in which case God usually adds something about forgiveness, too). But I know there are times I have railed against Him and others for no good reason at all – for answers to questions that should not be asked, for recompense I do not deserve, for red herrings of all kinds. I have plenty of rants that miss the point, that aren’t really about what they’re about.

It is hard to speak the truth about your situation, about your past, about what you carry inside. I find it hard to communicate what it is I want – partly because I’m not used to being asked. So sometimes, it’s not that the other person is not listening to you; it’s that you are not saying what you really need to say.

For instance, say that I really need to tell someone, “When you did x, you hurt me.” If I actually said that calmly and plainly, I would probably get an apology, assuming I’m speaking to someone who cares. I want an apology, but admitting that I am hurt makes me feel vulnerable and weak, and I would much rather be angry than weak. Plus, I’m not entirely convinced that the other person will care, that they will bother listening to such a soft, teary voice. Yelling is the logical response of those who do not believe that they have been or will be heard.

Once Orual finally hears herself, she quiets down and quits her yelling. Being heard by another, I believe, has the same affect. If you can trust you will be heard, you have no need to yell. If you have been heard, you have reason to hope. Listening communicates love more clearly than words, more assuredly than kisses. We know we are loved by God because He promises to hear our prayers, whether the content of our prayers be true or false. He even answers the questions we aren’t asking: Love her, He says. Receive my healing and forgiveness, He says.

Half the time, I don’t even know what I’m saying, but God is still the one to whom all hearts are open and from whom no secrets have been hid. He gave me a listening man before I knew well enough to ask for one. Such is how God does, always. He hears.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

What I Really Meant to Pray

I said, "Lord, teach me to be patient."

I said this because I know I need strength to wait, but I also instantly realized that I would much rather not need this supernaturally-endowed perseverance.

I would much rather pray: Lord, teach me to be humble and gracious toward others despite their obvious inferiority in light of my dazzling, quantifiably-spectacular success. Yes.

Do what you can with me, God. Do whatcha can.

Friday, April 04, 2008

On the 40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King

Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King was shot in Memphis. I have been to the Lorraine Motel, where he died on the landing just outside his second-story room, above where a plaque rests now that quotes from the story of Joseph in the Bible, "There goes the dreamer…let us kill him, and we will see what becomes of his dreams."

The Lorraine is now Memphis' Civil Rights Museum. There is a bus you can walk through, sit in, of the kind that Rosa Parks rode. There is a lunch counter where you can watch an old film that teaches how to protest without violence. There is a Bible marked "colored," used when a black witness took the stand, and there are several newspaper articles that call Dr. King a communist.

At the Lorraine Motel, you can also listen to Dr. King give his last speech, on April 3, 1968. He was in Memphis because there was a santitation workers' strike, and in so many ways this was a speech like many others he gave encouraging all the people working for justice not to give up. Except in this speech, as Rev. Abernathy later said, he preached through his fear of death. It's called the "Mountaintop" speech because of a reference to Moses, the leader who took his people all the way out of slavery in Egypt right up to the edge of the Promised Land. On the Mountaintop, Moses saw a glimpse of the future he had worked so hard to reach, and he died there. The Bible says that God Himself buried him, and his people could not find his remains.

I never understood why God took Moses right then, at such a crucial time. But if Moses was anything like his late descendant Martin, we can assume that he died at peace with his life and at peace with his God. And we can trust that this same God will raise up a new generation, like that of Joshua, to serve His purposes and continue the work.

The whole speech can be found here. In honor of Dr. King and his dream, I will quote at length, because it's too good to edit much down:

Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: We know how it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.

We aren't going to let any mace stop us. We are masters in our nonviolent movement in disarming police forces; they don't know what to do. I've seen them so often. I remember in Birmingham, Alabama, when we were in that majestic struggle there, we would move out of the 16th Street Baptist Church day after day; by the hundreds we would move out. And Bull Connor would tell them to send the dogs forth, and they did come; but we just went before the dogs singing, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around."

Bull Connor next would say, "Turn the fire hoses on." And as I said to you the other night, Bull Connor didn't know history. He knew a kind of physics that somehow didn't relate to the transphysics that we knew about. And that was the fact that there was a certain kind of fire that no water could put out. And we went before the fire hoses; we had known water. If we were Baptist or some other denominations, we had been immersed. If we were Methodist, and some others, we had been sprinkled, but we knew water. That couldn't stop us.

Now, let me say as I move to my conclusion that we've got to give ourselves to this struggle until the end. Nothing would be more tragic than to stop at this point in Memphis. We've got to see it through. And when we have our march, you need to be there. If it means leaving work, if it means leaving school, be there.

Be concerned about your brother. You may not be on strike. But either we go up together, or we go down together.

Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness…

Now, it doesn't matter, now. It really doesn't matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us. The pilot said over the public address system, "We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we've had the plane protected and guarded all night."

And then I got into Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop.

And I don't mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!