Purple socks

I'm wearing purple socks today, which instantly makes me think of Donny Osmond. 

I wore purple socks when I was a kid and then walked around the house singing, "I'm a little bit country, I'm a little bit rock and roll." 

Purple socks also makes me think about my purple underwear with a cow and poem on them, 
I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I’d rather see than be one!

I don't still have the underwear, but I loved that poem.

Thinking about Donny Osmond and purple socks and cows also makes me think about the Duke brothers. 

Here are some of the divisions in my life growing up:

           Luke Duke vs. Bo Duke
           Ponch vs. Jon
           Magnum PI vs. MacGyver (Okay, you actually could choose both without TV trauma)

I don't remember placing people into many categories outside of TV culture. That was a pretty huge part of the 70s and 80s without an overwhelming amount of choices so it was easy to put yourself and others into appropriate subcultures.

Here's the phenomena that I see in our current culture. 

We have way too many choices. I don't know how folks manage the number of radio stations down south where you can run through the dial for hours and most of it ends up sounding like the same twenty songs. We have a billion choices and sometimes they are overwhelming, exhausting, and superfluous.

We divide our choices into two opposing options. We lump stuff into two major categories and turn life into black or white, right or wrong, my way vs. your way to try and make choices easier. It's not silly divisions like TV, but major dividing walls that leave us unable to live in the same reality let alone find common ground.

It might be time that we get serious about moving out of either/or thinking and engage a wider range of quality options without a glut of exhausting choices around minutia. 

I know it's true in the church. I'd love to get out of the consumer culture of church where the goal is to find one to suit your own desires and there's a church on every corner competing. There are so many churches to choose from we tidy it up by pitting evangelical/conservative churches vs. mainline/liberal churches. Those are ridiculous categories and we end up mocking God's vision of shalom.

I think it is also true in politics. It is time to move beyond a two party system. I appreciate what John Adams wrote a long honking time ago, 

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” 
― John Adams, The Works Of John Adams, Second President Of The United States

We don't divide neatly into "country vs. rock n roll." That's a lazy way to think through complexity. Donny and Marie could get along because they looked for a third way that honored both their ways. 

Oh Alice, see what happens when you get me purple socks:)

Dark

It slips my mind how dark night can be.

Seriously, we have excessive light for a quarter of the year and then suddenly we are hurled into utter darkness. 

Beautiful sunset at 3 pm. 

Pretty soon I'll adjust and it won't matter. But now I'm having some challenges.

1. Sleeping. Since it gets dark by 4 pm, I'm ready for bed by 8 pm. It just feels like the day should be over.

2. Driving. You can't really see because we don't invest in street lights and there's fun black ice this time of year.

3. Eating. In the summer I forget to make dinner because it's light for so long. This time of year I'm ready to eat dinner at 5 pm. I just need someone to get it made by then.

4. Leaving the house. It's easy to hunker and hibernate. Sophie and I have quite the string of cribbage games going.

Other than those minor challenges, we adjust and try to maintain healthy rituals.

It's hard to sneak a walk in while it's still light so I find myself walking the dog in the dark quite often. On a normal cloudy day, the lights of the city are trapped and it's relatively light out. We've had a stretch of clear days so I'm freezing my booty off and it gets really dark. And I mean dark. And I don't believe in flashlights; they ruin your night vision.

On Sunday night,  I went to the local campground in the pitch dark to walk the dog. It was dark and no one was around. When I say dark, I mean barely see the ground kind of dark. I sat in the car making my list of why I should go back home:
1. It's dark
2. It's cold
3. I'm slightly terrified of being attacked either by a pack of wolves or the monster who lives under the ice in the lake and whispers to me as I walk by. Rationality is not my strong suit; imagination is. 

I have a great coping skill when the voices in my head start telling me not to do something. I do whatever it is they are trying to talk me out of to spite them. 

If spite isn't a good reason to face discomfort and fear, then learning to be brave should be.

I don't think courage comes naturally so I try to do things that make me uncomfortable if not terrified. If I can talk down my voices making excuses for inaction and comfort in little things, then maybe I can stand up to those voices in true tests of courage. 

Like the fight at the middle school today. It was uncomfortable and scary to intervene, but necessary so I did. I started a list of all the reasons I shouldn't get involved, which obviously made me get out of my car and get involved.

We often confess in the church, "The light shines in the darkness" but if you never hang out in the dark how do you know?

Underwear

Is hate speech ever helpful? 

The answer is probably not, but it sure is tempting.

There are times that being sensitive to everyone's feelings is exhausting. Sometimes I want to wear a sign that says, "I'm unedited, but I believe you are emotionally mature enough to respond appropriately so please forgive me and don't stew." 

I realize this would be a large sign and kind of weird, but I do tend to say or ask what I'm thinking or wondering and I trust people to either holler at me for being inappropriate or tell me what they are honestly thinking. 

I don't often think hateful things, just awkward things. That worries me a little. It makes me think I'm out of touch with other people's lives and pain. 

I hated and spoke loudly about that hate when I did work against the death penalty. The rage of feeling so powerless in the face of an unjust system made me throw fits. Having to sit quietly in church beside the guy who sent us death threats and wrote nasty letters to the editor made me want to scream. And I probably should have. There is justified hatred towards injustice, and there is justified  rage that comes from feeling so impotent in the face of it.

I hated when I would argue with someone about the injustice surrounding the number of poor people of color on death row who were defended by real estate lawyers. Folks would normally end the argument by saying, "You believe what you want and I'll believe what I want; we'll agree to disagree."

Hell no!

It's easy to be conciliatory when you have the power and the systems work to keep you in power. So what is left when you don't have power and you see injustice?

If not hate speech, then at least inflammatory speech. You need something to get people's attention and make them uncomfortable enough to consider a different point of view. 

I think of the prophet Jeremiah in the Bible hiding his underwear in a rock for many days and then pulling it out to parade around town saying,

Sophie with a bag on her head because I
couldn't find the
 underwear on her head one.

"Thus says the LORD: I am about to fill all the inhabitants of this land — the kings who sit on David's throne, the priests, the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem — with drunkenness. And I will dash them one against another, parents and children together, says the LORD. I will not pity or spare or have compassion when I destroy them." (Jeremiah 13).

Parading ruined underwear around with a warning of God's destruction sounds like street theater to me. It sounds like the way to shock or jolt folks into a new way of seeing and hearing those without a voice.

That doesn't condone hate speech and it is never appropriate for those who have power, but I do understand the need for inflammatory speech so the comfortable might wake up.

I also get that I follow a savior whose greatest act of street theater was pouring out life and love on a cross instead of vengeance and hate. Instead of playing the power games, the just vs. unjust, he opened his arms to all. "Forgive them for they don't know what they're doing" (Luke 23:34). 

So for those who have power right now please leave some space and grace for those who feel crushed not only by the election, but by every look of disdain and suspicion they have to navigate through each day. Maybe if we did some serious listening to each other, we could have fewer ruined underwear parades.

Sunglasses

My husband has gotten disgruntled a couple of times because I keep getting our sunglasses confused. They look the same to me in my world, which is probably revealing about how cheap my world is. 

Sunglass confusion isn't normally an issue since we don't see the sun regularly, but we're on vacation.

I bought new awesome sunglasses for only three dollars. Kirt got some Oakley's for his birthday. I have deduced that his cost more than three dollars.

Don't ever buy me expensive sunglasses. I break and lose them on a regular basis so the guilt and responsibility would kill me.

A bit like wedding rings. 

I've gone through four of them, but I found number three again in the potato patch so it doesn't really count.

I'm not a diamond girl. Besides all the ethical baggage around diamonds, I'm afraid Kirt would become bitter and hateful every time I lose them so twenty dollar bands are perfectly dandy.

I lost one in the cranberry bog many years ago. That was my favorite one. I learned the important lesson that cold hands in mucky water does not bode well for wedding rings. 

Number two was lost in a grocery store when I was telling a story with hand motions. 

Number three was in the potato patch but later recovered. 

Number four is somewhere in a drawer but it's really tight so I don't wear it unless I need to have something on my finger because I've lost number three again.

Here's my challenge. I'm a cheap German and a little scattered about where I place things. There are times I think I could live happily as a hermit in a cave without stuff to lose. Shopping does not bring me great joy and I hate feeling obligated to spend money as a way of showing affection. 

I'm willing to spend money if it is:
1. An experience
2. Good food
3. Outdoor equipment
4. Something I know will bring delight to someone I love
5. Sweaters or socks
6. Books

One of the great gifts of living in Juneau is that it is not convenient to eat out on a regular basis or shop on a regular basis. It's much easier to wrap your life around other elements of being. 

The temptation to eat out and buy stuff is much harder to resist when it is in your face every moment of every day. I knew I was in trouble when I picked up one of those creepy cats with moving eyes and arms to see how much it was. It never occurred to me to want something like that until I saw it was on sale. That was my cue to go sit outside.

And that's my cure when I feel the consumer bug start to eat me alive. 
I go outside. 
I close my eyes. 
If I can't ground myself in prayer and the eternal, I at least try to do a reality check and think of how much work and exercise it will take to pay off and burn off this trip. 

That's really it. How we vote has power, but how we spend our money probably has more. It's not like there's a perfect or pure way to use our money, but there is a mindfulness and awareness that's helpful. Some things are truly worth more.

I'm not sold on the thought that sunglasses are one of those things, especially since I normally end up layering them over my regular glasses. My kids tell me I look like a rock star when I do that Oakley's or not.

National Anthem

I  L-O-V-E  baseball. 

I'm so blessed to get to watch the entire battle between the Indians and Cubs, even if it involved a seven hour delay in the Seattle airport. Four of those hours were spent watching baseball so it wasn't so bad. We'll see how things turn out with the game tonight.

6 reasons baseball rules. 

1. I can process all that is going on without too much effort
2. The interactions between players is almost as much fun as the sport
3. I've enjoyed the wide display of gum chewing and sunflower seed spitting. Elijah gave us the helpful hint that it's best not to chew gum and sunflowers seeds at the same time.
4. Pitching is an artistic performance.
5. It's not a contact sport so each player models healthy family systems where they play their part without getting enmeshed in other's drama.
6. There is a child-like pleasure in the game that can be seen in the faces of many players.

One of the great things about baseball is the singing of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. The goal of singing this song is for everyone to sing along and encourage the players and crowd. It nearly brings tears to my eyes because you can feel the unity of the stadium in the solidarity of song. They don't necessarily use professionals to lead the singing because it's about the crowd not the leader.

There is something about being part of the spirit of a crowd that helps one understand the Holy Spirit. It is being part of something greater than yourself but which encompasses one self. Sorry, that's theology; we're talking baseball.

I grieve what we have done with the National Anthem. I'm not opposed to all the lovely performers who sing their little hearts out to great applause, except that's not the point of the National Anthem. 

IT'S OUR NATIONAL SONG. 

There's only a bit of irony that we've handed our national song over to soloists. The country that sings together stays together and we are definitely struggling with our national song.

Time for baseball. 

P.S. I had to include a picture climbing trees because we also miss that in Alaska. How do people remain on the ground with so many amazing trees to climb?