Fall

I won't lie. I love the melancholy of a gray fall day when the wind is whipping and leaves are flying. I love it in the same way that I love the season of Lent. It's time that doesn't expect much out of you. Unlike the season of pre-Christmas where we are forced into happiness or summer with the incessant daylight, these days allow me to take a break, have a pensive moment.

One of my favorite poems and the only one I've ever memorized is e.e. cummings "a leaf falls-loneliness." 

Somehow cummings captures the beauty of the falling leaf and the solitariness of letting go of life. 

Endings and changes are such beautiful gifts. 

I fear finding life tedious or boring more than I do death. I fear that I will take the beauty and gift of each day for granted and forget to keep living and being surprised. 

So I watched the leaves fall today on my lovely walk through the bogs and woods. I watched the skunk cabbage decaying and the fireweed giving up its ghost. It's messy and a different kind of pretty than brilliant summer days and vivid colors. But, it was so relaxing; expecting nothing out of me than to keep passing by. 

Robert Earl Keen has one of my favorite melancholic songs called Lonely Feeling and this is the stanza that always sticks out to me:

It's a statue of Jesus your grandmother had when she died

All cracked and all yellow and you know you should throw it aside

But you're growin' religious, the older you get

You haven't been saved but it could happen yet

Kierkegaard would also argue for the gift of melancholy. It can lead us to despair, which is not a helpful place to go. But it can lead us into the external eternal (my words, not his). Melancholy makes us face the reality that nothing lasts forever, and reach outside of ourselves to hold onto that which does. 

Since Kierkegaard lived before plastic, his answer would be the love we see in Jesus. I'm going to stick with that one too. 

The happy Jesus button doesn't make the melancholy go away and force me into smiles all the time, but it gives me the strength to keep walking through whatever season I'm in. But hopefully not before I can talk my husband into letting me buy a couple more flannels and sweaters.

February 30

Kirt and I grew up in the same church but we are several years apart so we never knew each other. It wasn't until a fateful night at the Turnbull house when I showed up out of college hungry for a free dinner and he showed up as a sweet nineteen year old for a Bible study that we got to know each other. 

We disagree about how the meeting went, but since it's my blog I get to tell my story. It was snowing and I was wearing Birkenstocks (with socks naturally). He threw one of my sandals out into the snow and refused to get in unless I agreed on a cup of coffee. Luckily Perkins served bottomless cups of coffee so we drank until nearly 4 am. 

We went out every night that week and then I left to backpack around Europe for a month. I called him once when I met a cute guy to see if we were serious and he said no so there you go. I don't remember the cute guy's name, but he did teach me how to pronounce umlauts in German. 

I got back to Ohio for a short bit before I headed to Alaska to live in a remote native village. I asked him when his birthday was and he told me February 30. I'm not the quickest cracker in the box; I was just excited we were born in the same month. 

He didn't write back often. I'm a persistent dingbat and when Valentine's Day rolled around, I asked him what he wanted for his birthday. 

Wow. 

He did the "we need some space; I'm not ready for commitment" thing and I cried through that Valentine's Day until I got really pissed as my calendar skills finally kicked in.

We figured it out and we're still figuring out. If a perfect marriage is peace and order, then we don't have a perfect marriage. If it is about offering grace and space for disappointment and disagreement as well as delight then I think we are close to perfect.

Today is Kirt's real birthday. Turd. I figured it out after we got married. 

I'm so thankful he is alive.

I'm not the easiest person to live with and somehow my beloved has figured out how to live with my sometimes outlandish quirks and still smile at me or go to bed because he can't handle any more. 

He recently went with fear and trembling to get me yet another new phone. I just wanted a better camera and now I have a phone the size of my head. But, he taught me how to use it and I only took a couple of pictures upside down. There wasn't any yelling or threats to go back to stone tablets this time. Or my flip phone that I still miss.

He makes my world beautiful. 

The transition into the police world has not been easy on our family, but it has been amazing to watch Kirt find his vocation and make the community a better place. He is brave and compassionate. How wonderful to get to watch him live that out. He's also a toddler when he's tired, but who isn't?

I can't believe I thought it was February 30 for so long. Wow. That's embarrassing, but somehow he still loves me. Turd.

Dips

I knew it was going to be one of those days when it took me three tries to get my underwear on right. I'm not sure why it matters, except it's the same line of reasoning as wearing clean underwear. If I have an accident, I don't want the EMT to think I'm a dork.

So then I started thinking about all the reasons I am a dork. 

The first was a recent conversation where I brought up the fact that one side of my body stinks more than the other side. Seriously, my one armpit grows hair faster and smells worse than the other side. I think that's weird, but obviously not as weird as bringing it up in conversation. I'm slightly fascinated by whether this is true for everyone, but I did pick up on the social cues I shouldn't bring it up again.

The second is that I had to look up the etymology for dork to see if that is an accurate word for me. It's not. It means penis along with nearly every other slang word we use. They all boil down to penis.

So, then I had to look up my mother's term of endearment for me growing up and one that I often use lovingly with my children, "dipshit." 

You'll be happy to know that dipshit is the emphatic form of dip unlike the softened dipstick, which means penis. Naturally.

But, here's what I really love about looking up the etymology. Right there by dipshit is dip, "to baptize." 

dip (v.) 

Old English dyppan "immerse, baptize by immersion," from Proto-Germanic *duppjan (source also of Old Norse deypa "to dip," Danish døbe "to baptize," Old Frisian depa, Dutch dopen, German taufen, Gothic daupjan "to baptize"), related to Old English diepan "immerse, dip," and perhaps ultimately to deep. As a noun, from 1590s. Sense of "downward slope" is 1708. Meaning "sweet sauce for pudding, etc." first recorded 1825.

dip (n.) 

"stupid person, eccentric person," 1920s slang, perhaps a back-formation from dippy. "Dipshit is an emphatic form of dip (2); dipstick may be a euphemism or may reflect putative dipstick 'penis' " [DAS].

I will be the first to admit that I have stupid moments. Wow.  A whole slew of them just came washing over me like the time I tried to set a girl up with her ex-fiance without knowing it was her ex-fiance. 

I also have my eccentric moments when I look at the world and make observations out loud that others might miss. I'm not nearly as eccentric as men's body wash, but the fact that I read the labels on men's body wash makes me close.

But, ultimately, my identity is in my baptism. I am a dip. I am a beloved child of God who can trust in that love enough to live boldly, make mistakes, ask for forgiveness, and keep trying to put my underwear on until I get it right.

Humanity

I made the teenagers disgruntled on our trip to Whitehorse. I gave up being their friend a long time ago and now I take seriously the role of challenging and forming them into faithful, honest, and gracious folks. That means I get to help establish healthy boundaries and safe places. Not always fun.

One of the teens brought a slightly edited version of Cards Against Humanity and I would not let them play it after the first couple of rounds on the ferry. If you are unfamiliar with this game it is tag lined "A party game for horrible people." The game is a bit like Apples to Apples. Each round, one player asks a question from a black card, and everyone else answers with their funniest white card. For example:

"When I am a billionaire, I shall erect a 50-foot statue to commemorate ____________"

• Getting married, having a few kids, buying some stuff, retiring to Florida and dying.
• Not wearing pants
• Tom Cruise
• Mouth herpes

And those would be the tame answers. I'm not opposed to the game in theory. The absurdity of the scenarios is hilarious, but there are some degrading and horrifying responses too. They can also be hilarious, but not appropriate for teens.

Lutherans don't tend to be moralists so I don't stop the kids from teaching each other how to play poker or blackjack. They also play this mafia game, which is a complicated storytelling game where folks die in hideous ways. There is a disturbing element to the game, but it seems to me like they are trying to engage the precariousness of life and ridicule it. 

My problem with them playing Cards Against Humanity is that they haven't developed a depth of compassion and love for humanity. 

Teenagers, and many adults for that matter, are still figuring out the line between mean and funny. If you hurt someone, it is not funny. But it's not always that easy. There is this weird territory between engaging the absurd to mock diseases, prejudices, and sexual stuff (I think all that's relatively healthy) and being mean to disconnect and distance from life and relationship.

Humor can break down walls and it can build them. All of the teens rode in my vehicle and I felt a little like Jane Goodall documenting behavior. They are actively in the process of figuring out boundaries, safety and humor. Some times it goes too far and I need to pull them back. That's why mentors and adults are so important during this time in their lives.

I firmly believe it is only when one is madly in love with humanity in all its messiness that one can mock it. Humor has the gift of revealing the absurdity of life, turning expectations upside down, and making us see things in a new way. Humor, especially 50 foot statues of Tom Cruise, can act like parables and make us realize how destructive the status quo can be.

Humor can also degrade and humiliate. That doesn't belong on a church trip. 

They spelled my name so they're not too disgruntled.
They make me laugh and I love them bunches.

I do find St. Paul helpful in figuring out why poker is okay but Cards Against Humanity isn't. “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. (1 Corinthians 10:23).