Dear Verizon, thanks for taking so long to fix my phone...

So on Monday afternoon I was sitting in my neighborhood Verizon thinking about God's love. I know that's an unusual segue, but it was a lengthy train of thought that got me from from point A (600+ missing phone contacts) to point B (God's love) so I'll spare you the details of the first half of the story. Suffice it to say, it's not because I was being pious and heaven-centered in my thinking. Rather, I was being a little neurotic and impatient, and strayed upon the topic of God's love unintentionally. Either way, that's where I ended up.

Specifically, I was thinking about something I heard recently...that God's love is so different than any human love we can know for this reason: God knows us completely AND He loves us completely...and ultimately, that's what we all desire more than anything else in life. To be known AND loved. Because most of us have experienced being known by someone who didn't love us, and lots of us can say that we have been loved by someone who didn't really know us. But so often we feel that the people that love us would quit loving us if they really knew ALL of us. Deep, deep down though, we long for the whole package...enter Jesus.

So then I was sitting in Verizon thinking about Jesus. And I was thinking about how if we love Jesus, he asks us to love others the same way we are loved by him. So we are called to know others well and love them well. Which led me to wonder how well I am knowing and loving the people in my life...maybe not very well most of the time.

Sometimes when I consider who or what I want to be and I get to thinking of an department that could really use some improvement, I try to think of people in my life that emulate those traits more effectively I do.

Which is how I came to be sitting in Verizon thinking about my friend Mary.

Mary has a gift. Seriously. She, more than anyone else I've ever met, makes a person feel known. This is why I wanted to be her friend.

Mary and I haven't always been friends. I mean, we were never enemies or anything like that, but we were simply acquaintances for a long time, first. And then one day Mary called me and said she needed an accountability partner and that I might be the person for the job. I have no idea - besides the great and wonderful providence of the Creator of the universe - why she would think that. I didn't exactly have a reputation for being organized, or consistent, or "lovingly confrontational"...things that would be good to look for in an accountability partner. But nonetheless, that's how our friendship began. After about a month of me rescheduling and canceling and flat out forgetting our plans to meet - and Mary not giving up on me - we finally started meeting weekly for coffee. What I lack in organization skills Mary has in abundance. So our accountability took the form of bulleted lists of things for which we needed prayer and help and wisdom and follow up. I was pretty honest about my own crap from the get-go, because Mary and I weren't friends yet so I figured I didn't have much to lose. If she knew all about me and decided she didn't like me...oh well. Lucky for me, that's not how things worked out. The more of my junk I told her about, the more Mary showed me love. Which doesn't make any sense, really. But that just goes to show that she was loving me with Jesus' love, and not just the world's surface-y, fair-weather-friend kind of love.

Sometimes when you share a lot about yourself with someone and they continue to love you in spite of it all, you chalk it up to their own forgetfulness.

But I knew that couldn't be the case with Mary, because I quickly learned that she has a mind like a steel trap. When we would meet every week for coffee she didn't just ask me about the things on the bullet list...she would ask me about things I had mentioned off-hand, and things I barely remembered telling her, and things I didn't even articulate but that she had picked up on. Shortly into our weekly meetings, she made me feel known. Which, like I said, is why we I wanted to be Mary's friend.

That was five or six years ago. A week ago I found myself on the other side of the state, sitting in Mary's kitchen at four a.m., in all of my messy-haired, pj'd-out, four a.m. glory. Her and her husband, Luke, just had their second baby and I had come to meet this new little person and help out for a few days. This particular night was a rough one for both little boys, which is why everyone in the house was up at four in the morning. Mary was apologizing - I suppose at the moment she was thinking that we were knowing each other a little better than even we really should. But the truth is, I couldn't have cared less right then that I was up at four in the morning with two fussy kiddos. Really, I was instead thinking that the whole situation was a lot like what God designed his church and his followers to look like...being deeply known and deeply loved, all at the same time.

I'm blessed by Mary and her family. I'm also blessed by so many other people who know me and love me anyway, not because I'm a walk in the park, but because they've been loved by Jesus and are loving me, and others, out of the overflow. I have so many of these people in my life that it's kind of ridiculous. It's an embarrassment of riches, you could say. Which is just evidence of how much God loves us.

Which is how I ended in Verizon thinking about God's love...

Freedom is not all cupcakes...

I'm currently reading a nonfiction, faith-themed book that I can't recommend. (I'll refrain from naming the book or the author, because first, I'm about to rag on it, and second, I'll probably misquote him...) I was optimistic at the beginning (it had an intriguing subtitle). Then there were some red flags mixed in with some good ideas. And now, about 3/4 of the way in to it, I'm growing weary of wading through page after page of vague, possibly-heretical fluff to find a few morsels of wisdom. I'm going to finish reading it though, because I'm compulsive like that.

The chapter I read yesterday was the one that really made me scratch my head. The author talks about what he calls his "freedom filter." The chapter is on the topic of truth, and the author states that truth can be hard to discern in this world (true). He says that a lot of people will try to tell you their own idea of truth is the final word on a particular matter (true). He says that people with more education, such as professors or pastors, do not have a corner on the truth market (true.) He says that as Christians we have the Holy Spirit, who discerns truth (true). He also says that because of that, all you need is a "freedom filter" - like his own - to discern absolute truth (what?) Ah, yes. the "freedom filter". Paul talks about it in the book of Ro...phil...inthians.

The "freedom filter" works like this:

1. You are presented with/think up a new concept, statement, idea, etc., called a "truth claim".
2. You say to yourself, "Jesus died so I could experience freedom. Does this truth claim make me feel A) more free, or does it make me feel B) sad, guilty or condemned?"
3. If A: you, my friend, have found yourself some real, genuine truth. Celebrate by making a batch of cupcakes. With pink frosting. Share them with a friend. If B: reject the truth claim. Cannot possibly be truth. Eat some cupcakes. You'll feel better. If C: you shouldn't have followed Jimmy into the cave. There are snakes and your candle has blown out. Turn to page 18 to turn back and leave Jimmy in the dark.

(Okay, so I added the part about the cupcakes. And Jimmy. But the rest of it* is pretty much what he was saying.)

I get the freedom thing. I dig it. I mean, the whole concept was Jesus' idea. His brainchild. His MO. He explicitly stated that he came to "proclaim freedom to prisoners". That we shall know the truth, and the truth shall set us free. That whoever he sets free shall be free. Indeed. I get it, and I love it. I do.

But the part in this guy's (the author who shall not be named) thinking that I feel gets a little sketch is the part where he says that Truth (being the very thing that sets us free, according to Jesus) only brings feelings and emotions associated with freedom - and never the opposite, such as feelings of bondage, slavery, guilt and condemnation. The author even gives a specific example of hearing a sermon in which the preacher leads you to believe that you are a sinner...because you sin. And believing you are a sinner does not lead to freedom. So that can't be truth. I beg to differ. And here is why.

I struggle with sin. (Yes way.) There is one sin in particular that I have struggled with for a long while - sometimes less, sometimes more - but it's been hanging around in my life, bringing death to my spirit, and I have been a willing slave to it for quite some time. The last few weeks, I've been thinking an extra lot about how sinful that sin is, and every time I think about that, and every time I give in to that sin, I feel sick. Like a rock in the pit of my stomach. This morning, I went to church and the pastor read from Matthew, where Jesus directly addresses that sin. And that rock in my stomach felt even bigger. Then I came here, to Dunn Bros Coffee, and was reading an article on the Relevant website (if you're not familiar, you should be...www.relevantmagazine.com) that directly referred to the aforementioned sin as...yeah...sin. Go figure. And the rock grew, and I felt even more sick. That rock has a name. It's called "conviction". Interestingly enough, that too is a function of the Holy Spirit. (John 16:8)

The funny thing about conviction is that it feels a lot like guilt. It's not the same thing, but as long as we're talking about feelings, guilt and conviction bear an uncanny resemblance on the emotion radar. And let me tell you...conviction, in it's earliest stages, does not feel like freedom. It feels like bondage. It feels like a rock in the pit of my stomach. It feels like I should have taken a dramamine before I went to church this morning. Conviction feels this way not because it is bondage, but because it reveals bondage.

So the other funny thing about conviction is that while it feels like bondage, it leads straight to freedom. When we decide that we don't want to walk around with this rock in our stomach any longer we can repent and seek Jesus' forgiveness. He will give it without reservation, and we are restored to freedom. Case in point, if the Holy Spirit had not convicted me of my sin, I might be still comfortably wading around in it for who knows how long, while it slowly sucks the life out of my heart. But instead this nagging cloud of "condemnation" that has been hanging over my head the last few weeks is the very thing that brought me back into right relationship with my creator - a place of extraordinary freedom.

I do, in part, understand where the author is coming from, and I don't mean to throw the baby out with the bath water. (On a side note: I used this idiom in the company of high school kids the other day and not a single one of them knew what I meant. They thought I was actually talking about throwing babies.) Paul warns us about being taken captive by empty and deceptive philosophies, namely legalism...and the author quotes that and other related scripture in "freedom filter" chapter. And I'll be the first to admit that I used to really get my kicks from being legalistic and just feeling guilty all the time. But I find that in our post-modern culture, so many of us want to freeze the pendulum on the opposite, feel-good upswing....because it doesn't make us squirmy and it looks more attractive to the world.

The thing I find though, when I try to look at the big picture of the real freedom God offers, is that the more I earnestly grieve my sin (something that makes me quite "squirmy" to say the least), the better I understand the price my freedom cost Christ, then the more deeply I can breathe when my chains are gone...and the deeper my love for Jesus.

*I don't have the book in front of me while I'm writing this, and I can't remember if the author used the word "feel" or not, when referring to the operation of his freedom filter. But for all practical purposes, I believe it was inferred that feelings were the primary gauge he was tuning in to - the chapter subtitle was, after all, "Can We Trust Our Gut?" - his conclusion is yes, we can.)

Coffee Beans, Karl Marx, and a Cookie Recipe...

I spent some twenty-thousand dollars and learned some twenty-thousand theories to obtain my college degree. Four years after graduating I remember only three of these theories: Cooley’s Looking-glass Theory, Sutherland’s Theory of Differential Association, and Marx’s Theory of Alienation

I remember the first one because Dr. Goss made us recite it verbatim for my Soc 100 final. I memorized the second one because just using the words “differential” and “association” in the same sentence makes any person sound smart, so I always keep that in my back pocket, just in case my high school kids are questioning my intelligence. And I didn’t even know that I remembered the third theory until one day a few months ago when I was pondering how it was possible I could derive so much joy from my job with Dry Creek Coffee.

Maybe it’s the way my car smells after carting 30 lbs of ground Nicaraguan into Rapid? Or the solitude (and bonus view of Harney Peak) my roasting shed provides in the midst of an otherwise chaotic schedule? Perhaps it’s the rich culture surrounding the whole coffee industry? Those are all gratifying, but they didn’t seem to account for all of said joy.

Then I had this vague recollection of learning something…in some class…once…about the proletariat being incurably miserable because they are so disconnected from the finished product of their over-specialized labor. Merely cogs in a machine. Pieces of a system. Oh yes…alienated. That’s it! Dry Creek is the anti-alienation.

Note exhibit A:

A farmer in, let’s say Guatemala, plants, harvests, and dries his coffee beans. He then ships them to a charming little company in Minneapolis called Café Imports. I call Café Imports (where I get to actually speak to one of the handful of employees whose bios are posted on the company website) and order my beans. UPS drops the beans off at my roasting shed three days later. I roast the beans, bag them and deliver them to the customer, who then calls me the following morning to report that they just had what was possibly the best cup of coffee they’ve ever had the pleasure of drinking. (That’s how it works…every time…more or less. Ha ha.)

Voila! Joy accounted for. Karl wasn’t all wrong. There is something intensely satisfying about being involved in nearly the entire process of providing a commodity, even if it is something as (I hate to even say it) trivial as coffee, especially when you receive direct positive feedback from the consumer.

So there you have it. Applied social theory. Applied undergrad degree…ha ha. Dr. Goss would be proud.

P.S. The following is a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, because, well, I love chocolate chip cookies. In full disclosure, I have never used the following recipe...I flat out stole it from bettycrocker.com, so I can't speak to the quality of resulting cookies. However, if anyone wanted to make the cookies, I would be plenty willing to participate in quality control taste-tests. Enjoy.

3/4	cup granulated sugar
3/4	cup packed brown sugar
1	cup butter or margarine, softened
1	egg
2 1/4	cups Gold Medal® all-purpose flour
1	teaspoon baking soda
1/2	teaspoon salt
1	cup coarsely chopped nuts
1	package (12 ounces) semisweet chocolatechips (2 cups)

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1. Heat oven to 375ºF.
2. Mix sugars, butter and egg in large bowl. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt (dough will be stiff). Stir in nuts and chocolate chips.
3. Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls about 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown (centers will be soft). Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet. Cool on wire rack.

Livin' It Up, Choppin' It Down, Keepin' It Real...

Last Sunday I returned from three weeks at Young Life camp. Ahhh...long live the lore of summer camp. As a kid, the camps I attended (choir camp, church camp, horse camp) held their own special sort of...nostalgia. A certain charm of place. And I remember that when the week ended and it was time to pack my bags and head home, it was always kind of a bittersweet situation. Now that I'm an adult...well...not that much has changed.

My job puts me in the small percentage of lucky grown-ups who still get to go to camp every year. Even luckier (read blessed) is the fact that it's not just any camp I get to go to, it's Young Life camp, which is pretty much one of the best ideas any one ever had.

So every year - for the last nine summers - I get to take a crowd of my high school kids to a fantastic property for the best week of their life, where they will laugh hard and play hard and meet Jesus. It's not a bad gig, really. In addition, since coming on YL staff, I occasionally get to spend a month or so working at one of those properties. This year God and the Midwest Division powers-that-be ordained that I would be on the program team (in non-YL terms that pretty much translates directly to "fun squad") at Timber Wolf Lake, a YL camp in northern Michigan. It was a crazy, hilarious and sacred three weeks. We saw more than 1,200 middleschoolers and their leaders come through the camp, exploded eighteen 2-liter bottles of Sprite on stage, and snapped some 2,500 glow sticks. We also saw God plant countless seeds of love and change...which volunteer leaders will get to help nurture in their kids back home. Like I said...not a bad gig.

Three weeks is a while to be away from home and a job and my family and my bed and my own YL kids, so when the session was over I was mostly ready to get on back to the good old SD. But like I said, it's always a little bittersweet. Life at YL camp is, in many ways, a good snapshot of what I believe God intended life and his kingdom and his church to look like. So this week I've spent my coffee-roasting time thinking a bit about why that is, and how to recreate that environment, in part, at home. (Roasting coffee is perhaps one of the best spiritual disciplines I have encountered in this life. More on that some other time.) Below is a very short list of some of the key principles I feel I should carry over from camp to "real life" (I hesitate to use the term "real life" in this context because ultimately, God's Kingdom is more real than the broken world we live in on a daily basis...but for all intensive purposes...):

1. Every task, whether it be scrubbing a toilet, or doing the "Go Bananas" dance, or verbally proclaiming the gospel, can have something to do with glorifying God and advancing his Kingdom.
2. Living in community is a good thing.
3. Servant-hood is the most effective kind of economy.
   
4. Praying daily with other people who have a common purpose and heart and passion is another good thing.
5. Facebook, cell-phones and email are non-essentials and are no substitute for face-to-face conversation.
   
6. Shoes are optional.

A short list, but a good place to start, no? Next blog entry...principles you simply cannot or should not carry over from camp to real life. Ha ha. :)

The "F" Word

A few months ago Sarah Palin called herself a feminist. This, of course, launched some heated discussion among Palin fans and feminists (well, mostly just feminists), the question at hand being, "Is it really possible to care about women and still be pro-life?" Could there actually be such a thing as a conservative feminist? NPR's "Talk of the Nation" was discussing Palin's controversial use of the f-word and solicited callers with opinions on the topic. I couldn't dial the 800 number fast enough. Literally. I was too late and just got a busy signal. But I definitely have an opinion on the topic, and for the first time in all my year of listening to "Talk of the Nation" felt that mine was one that might be worth airing.

My point here isn't to discuss this particular issue (Palin's claim) at length because the internet is already polluted enough with a full spectrum of related thoughts (seriously...just google "sarah palin feminist") but suffice it to say that I consider myself a pro-life feminist. (Interestingly, not a single one of the callers that DID make it on the air actually put themselves in this category. Disappointing, since the existence of such a person was really the debatable issue.) What I DO want to address is the issue of perceived conflict where there actually is none.

The reason Mrs. Palin's comment garnered so much controversy is because most people view these two topics (feminism and the pro-life movement) as inherently oppositional. I beg to differ. Both movements are, essentially, issues of the value of life. Of giving voice to a population that has historically gone unheard. Of advocacy. And I'd also challenge the belief that these issues are, at their core, political issues. Rather, for Christians, they are primarily biblical. I dare say, Jesus was a pro-life feminist...and teaches us to be the same. He teaches us to love one another. And care for the poor. And the widowed. And the orphans. And the "aliens in foreign lands". And...everyone. Curiously, these are the words Jesus used. Not political words. Not religious words. Not agenda words. Just real, practical, action words about love and compassion and advocacy. So in that context - the one that focuses on Christ's teaching - things like "feminist" and "pro-life" are two branches of the same tree.

When I was in high school, at that age when most people really start toying with independent thought, the fact that many of my beliefs on human rights and equality didn't line up with my conservative republican upbringing was a source of constant internal conflict and confusion for me. My Christianity and my "flaming liberal" stance (as my family so deemed it - though true flaming liberals probably wouldn't claim me) seemed to constantly butt heads. I would listen to Ani DiFranco sing about social justice (granted, she sang about a few things that were slightly more controversial, as well) and then read in the gospels where Jesus spoke about social justice, and then go to youth group where we didn't talk much about social justice. More often, we talked about making sure we were listening to good, clean, Christian music (Ani definitely didn't fit into that category). The more I encountered this incongruity, the more confused I became (I liked to use the term "tortured soul" back then...it sounded deep and mysterious...but I digress) until finally I decided that it wasn't my job to reconcile the two parties (or Miss DiFranco and Baptists, for that matter) and that I'd be better off spending my time figuring out who this guy Jesus was, how he lived, and try my best to follow suit.

And in the person of Jesus Christ is where I found the reconciliation I had been looking for in the first place. In Him I find the voice of justice...for unborn children and their mothers alike. I find a redeeming love that puts us all on level ground - regardless of our gender or ethnicity or political standings. I find a love that constrains me to love all within my reach and to put into action Christ's teaching on these topics. (This is stated beautifully and concisely by the fine folks at Imago Dei: "Compelled by love to live out and proclaim the gospel of Jesus, the church conspires to engage culture with hope on all fronts, to advocate for the defenseless, to seek justice for the downtrodden, to lift up the downcast, to embody the fearless love of the risen Christ.")

With Jesus as the epicenter of my ever-evolving world view, these issues (abortion, social justice, feminism, etc.) are a little easier to sort out than when building an ideology on an pre-fab belief system, or subscribing to an off-the-shelf party or denomination where all the pieces don't necessarily fit together. Be warned, however, that if you do this (strive to be Biblical ahead of sliding comfortably into a socially-approved sect) you will often find yourself awkwardly straddling the waves, with your feet in multiple boats. Lucky for us, it's not about the boats.

So...in closing, we no longer need to debate whether it is possible to be pro-life and a feminist. Now we can move on to bigger issues...like "Can you really be a Christian and listen to NPR?"


A Few Related Scriptures (because you shouldn't take my word for it...seriously...):

• Micah 6:8
• Luke 10:30-37
• Jeremiah 22:3
• Romans 12:15-18
• Jeremiah 1:5
• Psalm 139
• Luke 1:44
• Exodus 21:22-25