Resourceful

I'm thinking about food. That's not unusual for me, but it's not because I'm hungry. My thoughts are much more random than that.

I'm still giggling about Kirt's definition of "resourceful" to Elijah. They are working on Elijah's Cub Scout book and when defining resourceful, Kirt said, "Like mom, when she looks into the refrigerator and makes dinner from what she sees." I think this could be in direct response to the macaroni and cheese that cleaned out all the aging cheeses and several vegetables that blended in.

I am a resourceful cook and 85% of the time it is scrumptious, and the other 15% develops character. We have an expanding table and it is not uncommon for us to have a crew around it. The kid's friends know when they eat at our house they don't have to like the food, but they do have to try it. Folks drop in and our motto is that there is always enough.

I like feeding people. My mom is an amazing cook and my grandma was an amazing and resourceful cook so it's in our DNA. There is something wonderful about cooking that makes me feel like I am bringing order in the chaos and doing something concrete after a somewhat nebulous day as a pastor.

I refuse to show up to lunch meetings without food for the folks present. It's weird, but I am greatly distracted by my own rumbling tummy that I want to help us all be fully present for the business at hand. It seems like there are all kinds of Jesusy implications around sharing bread together and I don't really need to lay all those out.

The Alaska Food Coalition is in town right now and they are great encouragers for our Juneau Food Resource Summit. Many of the agencies who provide emergency food in Juneau are finally talking to each other and figuring out how we can fill some of the gaps. It's been good this week to review our values:

-Improve our community through interconnection of services

-Provide access to sustainable nutritious daily food and distribute surplus food better

-Create opportunities for human connection

That last value is as important as the others. Food is where we often gather and where some experience their greatest loneliness.

There are few things that I feel passionate about: Jesus, family, friends, coffee, ping pong, hiking and food. Maybe not in that order depending on the day. I am willing to stake not only my table, but my life on the fact that there is always room at the table and there is always enough. Sometimes we just need to be more resourceful.

Don't say this . . .

I've decided on two of the top things that I don't want to hear people say about me as I age and die. These are besides the obvious ones regarding sagging body parts.

1. She was always so nice.
2. She would do anything for anyone.

I don't think I'm in danger of either, but I do find these summaries of peoples' lives trite and unhealthy.

She was always so nice
Coming off of an overnighter with teenagers reminds me that nice is not always an appropriate response to a situation. I try to be clear about expectations without yelling. I don't always succeed (mainly with the yelling part). I do expect the people around me to be accountable for their lives and to hold me accountable. Sometimes that means asking awkward questions or confronting inappropriate behavior.

The root word for nice is traced back to "stupid or ignorant". Yet another reason to avoid being nice. I can be hard on people when I think they are selling themselves short in life. I asked Hannah after the overnighter if she ever pretended that I wasn't her mom. Her reply was, "No, but sometimes I pretend that I can't hear you." Fair enough. I don't imagine that I'm easy to live with, but I make no qualms about calling people to be alive
.


She would do anything for anyone
One of the most helpful things I ever heard about healthy boundaries came from Shane Claiborne discussing the community where he lived in inner city Detroit. People came to the door seeking help all the time and over the door was a sign, "If you can't open this door with joy, then it is best left closed."  My rule is that if I can't do something without feeling bitter, then it is best to leave it undone or ask someone else.

The word martyr means witness, but we have turned it into someone who would do anything for anyone until that becomes their total identity. I am all about relationships and sharing stories, experiences, and resources. I'm not sure God's vision for life is to give until we are consumed and grumpy. I do think God's vision is binding us together in relationship where there is giving and receiving.

There. Don't say those things about me even if you are tempted. I actually wouldn't mind the sagging jokes as much.

Edutainment

I am somewhat convinced that Kirt changes my cell phone on a regular basis just to keep me off balance. It actually makes me giggle a little to see the great fear and trepidation in his eyes when he hands me a new device. I have only thrown one of them so far. My theory is that if I can't figure out how to answer the darn thing, then it deserves the pavement.

But because he loves me and wants to keep me from throwing things, he updates my contacts and puts apps on there with every new one. He also gives me a ten second tutorial on how to use it because he knows I stop listening after that. I don't use any of the apps, but I did laugh when I saw the Kama Sutra on there. He said that was for religious edification.

The point of this way too long introduction, though, is the dictionary app that gives me a word of the day. I was initially excited about this. I love words and I'm hoping to expand my vocabulary so I don't use sh%# so much. I can use it as a noun, verb, adjective and adverb. We also used it as a term of endearment growing up, but I realize that it doesn't fly in polite company so I'm working on a stron

ger vocabulary.

The first couple words of the day were not rich, enthralling words, but I thought that was just a bad run. Then the word of the day was "edutainment" and I came close to throwing my phone. If I wanted to expand my vocabulary with stupid words, I would just swear more (there is some irony here because stupid is one of the three forbidden words in our home).

Edutainment? We went to an edutainment park in Malaysia. It was a tour of mosques from around the world. Exploring the mosques and their history was actually educational, and riding in the tiny train back to the entrance was entertaining, but I don't feel like we need to make up a stupid word to describe this experience.

So I'm taking the app off of my phone as soon as I motivate myself to figure out how to do it. And I'm reading more Agatha Christie to my children. Talk about a word of the day. Agatha knew how to describe people and situations in engaging detail. Words like phlegmatic (calm, unemotional), truculent (aggressively defiant), and indefatigable (persisting tirelessly) pepper her stories and develop resplendent scenes and people.

That's truly why I want to expand my vocabulary. There are so many complex aspects of the world, people and God that I need a better grasp of vocabulary to communicate particularities with greater clarity and insight. Sh%^ will only go so far.

It doesn't mean learning big words just for the sake of using big words, but learning how to communicate what God is doing in this world, what we are doing in this world with language that unlocks imagination. Seems like a good thing to work on for a loquacious preacher.

Cuba

Staring out at our frozen parking lot today made me think of Cuba. I'm not whining about all the ice and the $500 we've had to spend on gravel to keep our parking lot from turning into a rink or lawsuit. Okay, maybe I'm whining a little; I will admit that the ice skating has been lovely. I'm just tired of wearing grippers everywhere.

So I was thinking about Cuba. I know we just got back from the tropics in Malaysia, but Cuba seems closer and the recent thawing relations opens up new possibilities. There are also mojitos, beaches, and pretty amazing music too.

We had the privilege of visiting Cuba for a couple of weeks in 1998. I do not want to belittle the terror and suffering that the Castro era brought. A wonderfully written novel about the horrific experiences of that time is Waiting for Snow in Havana. I also need to acknowledge that every tour of Cuba is filled with propaganda to support the revolution; I am not that naive.

But, we had been in Tanzania the year before and Cuba seemed like a paradise. There was water and electricity; healthcare and education. This was after the fall of the Soviet Union when Cuba was struggling greatly, but still managed to provide residents with basic services.

Don't fret, I gave up communist leanings a long time ago (even though I think after reading Acts 2:44,  "All who believed were together and had all things in common," one always has to be tempted with a common purse). I do find myself agreeing with Reinhold Niebuhr that communism and unbridled capitalism both fail to take human sinfulness seriously.

There is no perfect political system or idea, but there are scary ones that sound pretty tempting. I started out in college as a political science major, but realized soon that I couldn't change the world through politics. It was changing me way too much so I switched to math. If you can't change the world, at least make it orderly. Then, I stumbled into a mandatory religion class and fell in love. I fell in love with the world and my place in it. I fell in love with a God who is alive and at work in the world in the most mysterious and unexpected ways. 

So now I don't try that hard to change the world. I just try to keep my eyes and heart somewhat in tune to what God is up to and get on board. The scary thing is that I normally end up doing all the changing and the world just keeps spinning.

Yay it's snowing now! I don't need to go to Cuba any longer. The snow on ice will really make the sleds fly and that beats a beach any day.