What's for dinner?

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more that clothing?" -Matthew 6:25 NRSV

I understand worry. Everyone understands worry, don't they? We're out-of-control people, and that's necessarily unsettling. We have no sway over anything, yet we desperately wish we did. The best we can make of that is worry. It's natural. Like breathing.

I've spent a lot of time worrying about my place in the world, whether my life will amount to anything. Worrying if I'll perform well enough, what people will think of me when I fall on my face. Worrying if my family will self-destruct, leaving literally everything broken. When I read that passage in Matthew, those are the things I think of. "Don't worry if you'll ever amount to anything, Emily. Don't worry if your life appears to be spiraling into a pit. I'm taking care of everything," says the Lord. But lately, I'm reading that passage more literally.

A couple weeks ago, I made radical changes to my diet after a couple of very informative medical consultations. I decided to stop eating several things and also told myself I needed to eat more consistently. The things I eliminated are at the core of a modern American diet, so all of the things that are convenient, that my diet has rested upon my whole life, are no longer available to me. Thus the subject of food has become paramount to my brain. That's the first trouble.

But it's not much unlike trouble I've had before. In our sparsest times, I would allow myself to eat once in a day in order to preserve food for later, because I wasn't sure where else I would get anything to eat. I know what it's like to not be rolling in food. So that in itself does not bring a fresh perspective to Matthew 6.

My second trouble does, however. All the time in my past when I've intentionally plowed on without food, I was rarely distractedly hungry. Quite often I wasn't hungry at all, but when I was, it was easy to ignore. Thus food, although I lacked it, did not keep me preoccupied. But these changes in my diet have rendered me ravenous. I don't know why, but I have never been so hungry before. Even when I eat, a lot, it's only a short while before I feel like eating again. I had fashioned my lifestyle, my self, abound being as close to indifferent to food as I could be. If I wasn't hungry, I didn't eat. If I was a little hungry but it wasn't convenient to eat, I forgot about it with very little trouble. Physical urges did not rule my days, my brain did. But lately, I can't forget about being hungry. I'm frankly tired of eating.

Which brings me to my last trouble. I was told I'm in the prime position to develop diabetes. One of the greatest enemies of a glucose level is fasting. Self-denial has always been one of my greatest virtues, and, I'm finding now, weaknesses. No matter how hungry I am, I could still press on and not bother myself with food whenever I don't want to deal with it. But I really don't need to do that. Ugh.

For the first time in my life I have genuinely worried about food., what I'm going to eat and drink, and when. This is not a #firstworldproblem. Even at my poorest, it still wasn't much of a problem. There's so much food in this country that sooner or later I've always come across something to put in my mouth to keep me alive. I would eat it posthaste, then move on.

But imagine if we didn't live with so much food that it rots in dumpsters. I think there would be a lot less worrying about where one has to be when, who's mad at them, who they're mad at, and how well they're going to do on their chemistry test.

Although my recent scrambling for food has not been motivated by poverty, it has helped me more thoroughly realize how cushy my culture is. We really miss out on so much.

"The Misadventures of Emily Lynn: Locked Out" by Emily Lynn

This is a story about a girl who usually has her head on straight, but watched it turn sideways this afternoon.

I set out to make a few stops today as the sun was still high in the sky, but had already begun its descent. Less than a mile from my house, I realized my phone was still charging in my bedroom. “It’ll be fine,” I thought. “I won’t be gone long enough to miss it.” Onward I drove. First stop: done. I reduced $45 of product down to $0.99 at CVS in a matter of minutes. Second stop: over just as quickly. Two books purchased in my favorite thrift store for a total of $0.49. Then the third stop. Two cans of pineapple and a pint of coconut milk ice cream purchased at Publix. Everything was going swimmingly.

I walked back to my car, in one of the grandest moods, and saw my keys sitting in the seat on the other side of the locked driver side door. I laughed, and exclaimed “Noooo!” through my giggles. I took a moment to process wonder and appreciation at the reality that my first reaction to trouble was amusement. I then smilingly shook my head at the fact that the first time I lock my keys in the car is also one of the rare days I don’t have a cell phone. Irony rules my life. Coming out of my head, I then began trying to address the problem in front of me. I forcefully yanked every door handle, hoping one might miraculously pop open. I pressed on the windows, hoping one of them might be loose and move down even a fraction of an inch. I had been driving with the windows down, so I longingly thought, “Why didn’t I leave at least one of them cracked? Just this once?” At a loss, I even tried pressuring the lock with a coin. I simultaneously hoped it would and wouldn’t work. If it worked, I would be ever so grateful to have my keys back in my hand and avoid further frustration. If it worked, then any prowling miscreant could quietly open my doors. I felt both disappointment and relief when it failed. I then began formulating a plan of action.

As I considered what to do, the owner of the vehicle on my driver side came walking back to his car. Before he pulled off, he noticed my look of helplessness.

“Did you lock your keys in your car?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Do you happen to have a wire hanger handy?”

“No, I don’t.”

“If you have a wire hanger, I can get into your car.”

“Yeah? Well, I wish I had one.”

“The store down there at the end probably has one.” He pointed to the thrift store I had just visited.

“Yeah, they probably do.” Why didn’t I think of that?

I retrieved a hanger and passed it to my would-be rescuer. He set to work bending it and carefully squeezing it through the door seal.

In his car, poking his upper body out of the open passenger window, was his grandson, a boy who looked to be about four years old. He was a chatty young man, and we had a congenial conversation as grandpa worked hard to rescue me. We talked about hair cuts, his stuffed dogs, Spiderman, and cars. If only it was that easy to talk to everyone. “Pawpaw,” as my new young friend called him, worked doggedly for at least 15 minutes, but was meeting no success. I thanked him for trying, and he lent me his phone to call my parents, who were an hour away. There was no answer, so I left them a message, trying to work out what I was going to do while I talked. I spotted a McDonald’s across the street, and figured that would be a good place to wait. I told them I’d go over there and try to find another phone to call them again.

“Pawpaw, are we gonna take her home?”

“No, but maybe we can take her to McDonald’s. Would you like a ride across the street?”

He delivered me safely, and I thanked him again. I didn’t ask him his name, but he told me he was a retired police officer, and my simmering cynicism was quelled just a little more by finding that, even in retirement, someone had taken the pledge to serve seriously.

The manager inside let me borrow their phone, and this time my dad answered. He said they were heading my way, so, since I couldn’t eat anything they serve, I bought a sweet tea, and turned my attention to my melting coconut milk ice cream. It wasn’t going to be meeting a freezer anytime soon, so I was just going to have to eat it. I settled into a booth, and dug into my pint of vanilla bean with a straw. I may have imagined it, but there was a gentleman across the room that kept looking at me with a puzzled expression at my choice of utensil. The whole pint took me about a half hour to eat, and by the time I was done, I indubitably had surpassed my sugar limit for the day. The rest of my time there, I amused myself by drafting this story on the table with my fingers. I’m not in the habit of carrying a purse, but as a writer, I really need to figure out some way to always have writing instruments handy. Thankfully, though, my imagination has not died, and with only the aid of forming the letters in front of my face, even without a lasting mark, the words appear clearly to my mind and I’m able to organize my thoughts. Things it did not take imagination to clearly see were gazes other patrons gave me, obviously wondering if I believed my fingers were genuinely making marks on the table. Not all who look insane are.

My parents finally arrived, my dad’s spare key helped me retrieve my own, and although my short outing turned into the opposite, my story ended well.

And for this I am grateful, for as much as I love telling stories, I grow tired of using personal pronouns, and am determined that the next story I tell will about someone else. Even if it is about me. I don’t know how David Sedaris does it.

Never be the same again.

I'm setting the record straight. Sherlock is one of the best shows to have graced modern television. Thus spake Emily.

At the end of season 3, Sherlock tells John Watson of a story his brother used to tell him about a mysterious East Wind, "a terrifying force that lays waste to all in its path."

Although less destructive - perhaps - I think an east wind came to visit my house today. Or visited my life, rather.

I am currently home alone. Although a rare occurrence, I have had this experience before. Ever an introvert, it's always been a good thing. My energies get recharged, my mind and will have a chance to refocus. But this time it's different.

When I was a very young child, both of my parents worked full time, so my days were spent away from them, at my grandparents' house, with my brother. Then my family moved to a new town, in a new state. Frequently, my parents would take my brother and I back to our grandparents' house and leave us there for some quality family time, while they took the opportunity to have some time to themselves. As soon as my other brother was born, he joined the occasional routine of extended stays away from our parents, and what used to be a twosome, became a threesome most of the time. But the twosome never disappeared. The age gap between me and the youngest spans a full ten years, so there have always been situations when we necessarily parted company. Friends would invite me over for parties where it wasn't really appropriate for baby brother to tag along. I would decide to go on concert trips that wouldn't have me home until 2 AM, far too late for a little boy. But at only 21 months apart, the other brother and I rarely had reason to not be together. We experienced life's milestones at roughly the same time. We had all the same friends. Our favorite band when we were kids was the same, as was true for most of our other interests.

Not much changed as we grew. Our borders did expand, yes. We each met people the other didn't know, our tastes started branching out in directions the other wasn't travelling. But we never became strangers, and started speculating what would happen when we moved on from the lives of our parents. One thing seemed obvious: we both would need at least one roommate, so who better to share expenses and space with than someone you've been amiably, even joyfully, living with for 20 years. So for the past several years, as we each approached the end of our collegiate journeys, we've talked about one day when we would branch out to face the world alone, young, determined humans, finding their own paths in the world, yet together.

But life doesn't always work out how you expect it will.

Today, brother dear drove west, and intends to stay there for a while. And I'm looking at living alone soon becoming an everyday reality. I am making plans that will encompass seeing him in just over a week. And he says he plans to be back here for a bit in a few weeks. But today marked our first steps in divergent directions.

I'm excited about what lays in the future for each of us, but I can't help but pause over the end of one of the only consistent realities I've ever known.

I'm starting to realize how much comfort I have built and clung to around myself. I've embraced change in some areas, but in more I've stayed staunchly the same. All day long, in this house with no one but the cat, I've found myself craving familiar things, yet somehow not able to let myself be so self-indulgent. I wanted to listen to the same song over and over, but after a couple times I compulsively turned it off, even while yearning for it continue. I'm the queen of musical repeats, so why can I not let it play now? I decided it was time to make dinner, and out of all the familiar, convenient options in front of me, I chose to make something I've never made before, all the while heartbroken at the unfamiliarity of the contents in the pot I was stirring. It was delicious, but foreign, therefore not quite as delicious as it could have been. I turned on Netflix, and as much as my heart was screaming at me to turn on something I know, all my fingers were able to click was something new that I had never seen.

If I may digress for a minute, I'd like to take it back to the subject of my first paragraph. I really want to tell you I watched the first season of Sherlock when it premiered, and have been a tried and true fan since, but to do so would be a lie. With the approach of season 3, I finally decided to watch the first two so I could catch the current one as it played on TV, and not only did I become hooked on the show, I became enthralled by it's two central players, Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch, particularly Benedict Cumberbatch. That man is a gift to acting. He's one of the few people I've ever googled extensively, and I've watched hours and hours of him in recent weeks. I'm convinced that if ever given the opportunity, we'd be good friends. He spent a year of his life teaching English before he went down the path of acting, and once sang "Pure Imagination" in an interview, so how could we not get along? Getting back to the narrative in progress, when I decided I wanted to watch something, not only was I yearning for something familiar, I specifically wanted to see Benedict Cumberbatch, to hear his rich, captivating voice. Despite not knowing him personally, his presence, albeit only in film, has become a familiar friend. But I couldn't let myself wander anywhere near him today.

I want familiarity so badly. But one of the most central pillars of my life has been destabilized, so even familiar things feel wrong at this time. Rather than spoil their familiarity, I'm avoiding them. To quote what I believe is Herman Melville's greatest work, Ah humanity!

Life will continue. A new reality will form itself around me. Familiarity will return. Sometime. After all, everything familiar was once unfamiliar. But for right now, everything is still unfamiliar. And in this discomfort is where I'm going to sit for a while.

December 25th, 2013

I'm listening to the slowing sounds of my quieting house, thinking of all the things that happened in this room today, and I realize...I had a really great Christmas.

********

From the age of seven, Christmas for me predominately became about travel. We lived 6 hours from my closest grandparents, even further from the others, so to keep with tradition and spend our holidays with the family, we had to drive. And to be able to spend all day with everyone, we couldn't travel on the day of, it had to be earlier. Christmas at home became a foreign idea.

When it wasn't predominately about travel, and we happened to be home on that day "children call their favorite time of year," that meant we didn't have enough money to make the trip. If we didn't have enough money for the trip, that meant we barely had enough money to eat. Our "feast" was small. Presents were few, if there were any to be found, and often times decorations were even hard to come by. As you may imagine, Christmas atmosphere was always lacking in these times.

Growing up with this as the reality, I felt uncomfortable, not because I cared so much about the traditional "Christmas experience" (although I would be lying if I claimed it wasn't a challenge), but because it created a chasm between me and my peers. Returning to school after Christmas break, everyone wanted to talk about their experiences, and all the gifts they received from loved ones. These conversations weren't so tough at first. The only difference in what I had to share was the conspicuous lack of any time at home, and the feelings of anxiously lying in my own bed awaiting the excitement of the coming morning, and waking up in my own bed ready to embrace all the day had to give. I felt similar feelings, but in a springy hide-a-bed at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Still exciting. But different.

Then came the first year my parents didn't buy me anything. The first day back at school went something like this:

"Hey, Emily! Did you have a good Christmas?"

"Yeah, I did. How about you?"

"Yeah, mine was great. I got...*excited rambling for at least a minute, perhaps longer if their haul was particularly spectacular*. What about you?"

"...*awkward silence*...Well, my parents didn't really buy me anything this year."

"What?"

"I didn't get any presents from my parents."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

Conversation over. And if the subject wasn't graciously changed, I would be treated to stares. As someone who tried hard to blend into the background, this was hardly better than even the most awkward of conversations. I wasn't embarrassed. I harbored no ill feelings toward my parents. I was just uncomfortable with people noticing me. Just knowing they were thinking of me was almost more than I could handle. (And this, friends, is why God let me be home schooled from the age of 12. After I got to live outside of that anxiety for a good long while, I got over it. Immersion therapy works in certain circumstances; this wasn't one of them.)

Along with financial constraints, as my siblings and I got older, my parents felt less pressure to create the "Christmas experience" for us, so there was yet another reason to not force the buying of presents. And in the middle of our constant moving, most of our Christmassy possessions got broken or misplaced, or had no room to be displayed between all the moving boxes. (For a time, we always moved in the winter. Always.) Replacing them was slow to happen, and since we were barely home anyway, it was easy to let Christmassy traditions slide without much comment, because it seemed like too much effort to get an empty house ready for Christmas.

Starting in high school, Christmas for me slowly started becoming more about apathy.

All the while, Christmas in the surrounding culture was becoming bigger, and bigger, and bigger. (Irony rules my life. I'm going to write a book about it someday.)

Thanks to commercialism, the Christmas season snuck up when I wasn't looking this year. All around me were suddenly people putting up trees and lights, and filling up their social calenders, and I wasn't feeling any of it. Filled with the weight of my experience and my reluctance to jump on the bandwagon this year, I started bracing myself for new levels of apathy, and the personal mourning I knew would come after that apathy.

But what I was blind to at the time was that through all the years of stripping me of the things of Christmas, God was working to renew my heart and baptize my mind, and help me to truly cherish Christmas in a way I couldn't have otherwise.

Miraculously, this year we got to stay home, and not because we couldn't afford to see our family. We will see our family, this coming weekend. Christmas is rather inconveniently in the middle of the week, and the two of our number that have "real jobs" couldn't get off work all those extra week days around it. As neither depression nor rush were plaguing our days leading up to Christmas, I started to feel the Christmas Spirit at the beginning of the week. I was pleasantly surprised.

Then I looked around me and saw no tree. No lights. It was too hot for snow. And I remembered it had been so long since I got a present that I had no reason to expect one. And really, when I thought about it, I didn't even want one.

Then I realized all those things didn't change my mood at all.

And then I got really excited.

When you catch the Christmas Spirit it's infectious, and will only grow until its course has been run.

And so today, at home with my parents and little brothers, fed by music and sumptuous food, was a marvelous day.

But it looked almost nothing like Christmases of my earliest memories.

At this point, I am so far removed from North America's traditional "Christmas experience" that I don't even know what that means anymore, or how most people celebrate Christmas. What I do know is it's still my favorite holiday, but for completely different reasons. And it feels more honest than ever.

I don't want to change a thing.

"Then let us all with one accord
Sing praises to our heavenly Lord
That hath made heaven and earth of nought
And with his blood mankind has bought"

The chapter titled, "You mean, we get to sing together?"

I like to liken my life to a story. In our age of literacy, stories are often found in books, and formatted for such. Thus I find chapters a useful metaphor for identifying sections of my story-life.

I've been living in a weird chapter.

Before I elaborate, come with me back to the beginning. What beginning? The beginning of me.

I was born in church.

That isn't technically true. I was born in a hospital. On a Friday. My memory of that time is fuzzy, but I can say with almost strict certainty that my mother didn't drag her tired self and my wee frame to participate in services two days later. But a week and two days later? Yeah, I'm pretty sure we were there. And every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night after. We lived (and still do) in the land of A Church on Every Other Corner, after all.

When my family moved to a new town in a new state six years later, we found a new church to go to, and I remember feeling like those people (and us after we became a part of the group) were the most progressive I'd ever met. Why? They didn't meet on Sunday nights. Or Wednesday nights. Just Sunday mornings. (I remember one time, since we didn't have church in the evening, my family went to Opryland one Sunday afternoon. Only radical people went to theme parks on Sundays.) You mean, it's not required to "go to church" three times a week?

But you know what? We got together for parties pretty regularly. And Bible studies. (Yeah, that's right. I said parties before Bible studies. We celebrated a lot.) And small groups. And meetings. So while our gatherings looked different than the ones to which I was accustomed, I still was just as churched as I had ever been. Probably more.

Then I grew, and rather than just hanging around watching my parents participate, I became a participant, even at some times when my parents weren't. Church was a bigger part of my life than ever.

Here now we return to the current chapter. Several months ago, I began traveling more, almost exclusively on weekends. This translated into frequently missed church services, and my greatest experience of disconnection from the structure of the modern-day American church. It was odd. But not as odd as what was coming.

In October, my church ceased having meetings on Sunday mornings entirely, and we started just meeting for a Bible study every week. I won't go into the details of why that decision was made, but I will say I was kind of excited about the future of our little niche in the body of Christ. As for myself, however, I thought, "This is going to be interesting. What am I going to do? I've never not 'gone to church' before."

I didn't have long to think about it, though, as I was barely home on the weekends in November. Sundays became travel days, and I would worship the Lord in the car by singing all by me onesies, reflecting, praying, listening to WNYC's Radiolab, and staying on the road. I haven't "been to church" in weeks.

Last night, a dear friend of my family and the ministry he works for had one of their "Worship in the Boro" nights, and I was glad to attend. But as soon as the music began, I thought, "This is strange. I'm not sure I know what to do with myself." Everything felt familiar and foreign simultaneously. "So, I'm supposed to sing now, right? We're all going to sing together. That's pretty cool."

"Oh, now we're all supposed to stand up. So I guess I'm going to stand and sing. And what am I supposed to sing? The melody? I think I'll harmonize. I can harmonize, right?"

"Wait a minute, now everyone's clapping. So now I'm clapping. Sort of. This feels so weird. People actually do this in church every time they meet. Really? Really."

This monologue may seem unnecessarily dramatic and exaggerated, but this is truly an accurate representation of how surreal the whole experience was. I was born in church, remember? Not only that, I'm a musician. Singing has summed up the majority of my church participation. Yet there I was feeling out of place in a service full of singing.

What just happened?

I sat there marveling at how something that was once such a routine part of my life had turned into an almost new experience for me. My contemplation of the situation accompanied me home. My first inclinations said, "This is not as it should be. Church shouldn't be something you don't know intimately. Singing shouldn't make your eyes open wide in wonder."

Then I thought, "Why shouldn't it?" Music is one of the most marvelous gifts we on this earth have been given, and the human ability to make it spring forth without the aid of any outside thing is the most wonderful musical reality I know. Being wide-eyed is a natural reaction to that.

My thoughts continued in that direction, and I began to realize that "going to church" isn't something I should take for granted either. There is no mandate for how we as followers of Jesus should congregate, where we should congregate, when, or how often. If we aren't sensitive to the purpose and necessity of our intersections with one another, then "going to church" can become a dead ritual. We'll do things mindlessly, never once considering their intent, or stopping to receive all the goodness they can afford us if we don't rob them of their vitality. No wonder I've seen so many dead people in church.

So weird as this chapter may be, maybe it's also just as good. Many of my expectations obviously have been diminished, so perhaps I'm in a place to receive something new. Something new and sincere in all of its fullness. I'm actually kind of excited about it.

Healthcare through the lens of idealism.

Before I get to the point, here's a story I hope will bring you some measure of mirth.

As I was preparing for the composition of this post, I was on a mission to Jesus juke myself. Jesus juking can be one of the most infuriating things to happen to a person when it comes from another. When you lament, "I can't find my keys!," and a well-meaning friend encouragingly (or so they think) responds, "You only need the keys to the Kingdom!," how should you respond? Telling them how wrong they are won't work, because then it will be obvious that you indeed do not have the keys to the Kingdom. So you bite your tongue, facepalm if you're alone, then try to move on with your life. But I think the chances of a Jesus juke being supremely funny are raised when one does it to oneself. Unless you have the same sense of humor as Eeyore, a jab at yourself can automatically be understood as a joke, whereas the same comment to someone else might not be as quickly understood. I do admit to being biased in this area, as I have a self-deprecating sense of humor, and nothing is more self-deprecating than poking at the holes in your own spirituality.

After considering my thesis idea, a phrase popped into my head which I knew came from Scripture, but whose context I did not know as intimately. The way I was remembering it was casting a shadow of condemnation over what I was preparing to write. Nevertheless, I looked it up, preparing to compose an introduction like this: "The Bible says this....but....here's what I have to say," only more imaginatively, and hopefully humorously, of course.

But, once I found the context of the phrase on my brain, it didn't mean what I thought it meant in relation to what I wanted to write. At all. It could actually be taken to mean exactly the opposite of what I was assuming. Jesus juke foiled.

That's probably a good thing.

Moving on.

If you get to know me well at all, you will soon find that I don't like politics. Vehemently. The only reason even acquaintances might not know this about me is that I try to not regularly call attention to negativity. But if I let my passions reign unchecked, it would be public knowledge. Strangers who pass me in public would know. Something else I dislike almost as much as politics is participating in discussion of said subject. Aside from the obvious reason of disliking the subject itself, the reason I don't like talking about politics is that whenever people ask me questions, I feel that to answer them with my honest opinions, I'm always dodging the subject. This is only a problem because I still care too much about the perceived quality of conversations with me, and I've gathered that people who dodge the subject are generally found to be annoying. My conversation skills really do not have a lot going for them, so every little improvement I can make is a good thing.

If I don't want to dodge the subject, then, why don't I stop doing it? That would make sense, Emily. Just quit complaining about your socially divergent habits, and save the Internet from yet another page of dribble nobody wants to read. I don't stop doing it because I can't. I am a radical idealist at my core, and I don't know how to live any other way. Idealism is not practical in almost every circumstance, certainly in politics. This is why I'm not a politician, and why I'm grateful for all the people out there who are up for the challenge. As often as I feel like situations may not have been handled as well as they could have, I throw no stones as I know my own leadership would lead nowhere fast. Leave me to the underground. That's where I thrive.

The latest hot-button topic that I will inevitably circumvent if you attempt to seek out my opinion is the Affordable Care Act and the state of the healthcare system in my country. Ask me if my feelings on the new law are positive or negative, and I won't give a straight answer either way. What I will say is this:

I.Don't.Like.Insurance.

I don't. At all. On the surface, it seems like a good idea. I understand why the idea of insurance was cultivated and then instituted as a standard practice in paying for unforeseen incidences. Who plans to have a heart attack? Who plans for their house to burn down? Suicidal persons and arsonists. That describes neither me, you (I'm assuming), nor an overwhelming number of persons in the world, so it makes sense that most of us aren't going to have large sums of money on hand to pay for all the trouble we run into in our lives. I get it.

What I don't think the first visionaries in insurance expected, however, is this: buying insurance can quickly move from being a smart life decision to preying on a person's fear. Societal wisdom has said, "This is the way you need to handle all the mishaps and tragedies you will face in your lifetime, otherwise you're sunk," then as soon as obtaining insurance becomes a struggle, persons will often become overwhelmed with the stress of working enough to cover all of our modern-day insurance expenses, or they live in worry and panic every day that they live without being insured, afraid to truly live lest something happen to them. Either way, there is no release from the burden. The advance weight of things over which we have no control was never meant to be our responsibility.

Also, in some sections of my culture, I have seen a cavalier attitude develop as the result of insurance being the norm that is unsettling to my conservative core (And please understand, I mean this word in its true sense, not in the political tint it has come to represent. Efficiency, economy, conservation: the longer I live the more I realize these are things that motivate the way I live my life in almost every way, even in the expression of my personality. Nobody is better at being expressively conservative than me. That's only a slightly hyperbolic statement.) Since insurance companies have overwhelming become the ones who directly pay for things, it can be easy to dissociate from who the responsible parties really are: you and me. Forgetting this is only a problem when unnecessary expenses aren't given a second thought, which I think would be less likely to happen if people paid for everything directly from their own reserves. For example, I haven't met anyone who would disagree that medical tests are over-priced, but I don't know how many people have given thought to whether all of them are beneficial. Doctors, who are supposed to know more about how our bodies work then we do, prescribe a test, and we think "Well, the insurance is going to cover it, so might as well." But maybe, if we took time to think about it, and do more research, we'd get closer to finding an answer or solution down a different, better avenue. I don't, nor will I ever, suggest a blanket boycott on medical tests, but in my own experience, I have been through countless medical tests that have never provided me with any useful information, and even at the time I felt like they were being done "just because we can." I've even had doctors say equivalent phrases to me when suggesting these tests. "Just because we can" is never a good reason to do anything. Except sing. So all that money was spent to find out nothing. If your life is anything like mine, I suspect you've had a similar experience. Out of sight does equal out of mind in this case, and when it comes being smart about how you live your life, this is not a good thing,

Lastly, insurance shrinks even more the space where generosity and goodwill live. If all of a person's needs are met, then there's no reason for anyone to be compelled to help them. Having lived a life that's placed me in a lot of helpless positions, I've seen what good is done for the world when generosity and kindness are allowed to flourish.We lose something important when they aren't. I know what it's like to not even have a place to live or food to eat, and as terrible as that may sound, the beauty that has come from those situations is irreplaceable. More people need to see that. Feel it. Taste it. Breathe it. I'm not quite sadistic enough to suggest that more people need to suffer, but just almost.

What then is the solution for our country? Ideally, it's that the church would love so much like Jesus that the debate that's been going on would quickly reach its end. Until that happens, by God's grace, I'll be doing what I can to make that a reality in my own corner of the world, and coming to terms with the fact that I am required to buy something I don't even want. Radicals and idealists always chafe under governmental restrictions, so my plight is nothing new.




Since I've let vent my emotions over one contested subject, I'm trying hard to convince myself that now is not the time let fly on marriage. Dissent is like a flood, which is why I leave little room for it; once released, it's hard to stop....

On Propriety

Within the bit of the world familiar to me, there seems to be much conversation about moral propriety. People disagree about its relevance, how its defined, how, if at all, context affects it. To every point made there is always a counterpoint.

I suspect a big reason I hear so much of this kind of discussion is that the overwhelming number of persons I interact with are church people, who, collectively, all around the world, are supposed to be people who know God in a way others don't. God, in most common conceptions, is a representation of perfection, so it would naturally follow that God knows all about moral propriety, and the people supposed to know him best share in that knowledge and conviction. And it does seem, indeed, that many church people believe this with every bit of passion they can muster, as if every word they speak on this subject came straight from the Lord himself.

There are always a few taboo subjects that seem to dominate these exchanges (a fairly wise man once said "there is nothing new under the sun" and many generations and empires later, it's still true), and no matter how much they're talked about, even insisted upon on pain of eternal damnation, resolution is never found. I can't tell you the number of times I've been a part of the "Are swear words really wrong?" discussion, or "Is drinking a sin?" debates. There are always those who think they have it figured out, and that it's their mission to guide everyone into right thinking.

I've known enough Christians, and been one long enough myself, to notice a behavioral pattern that frequently emerges when church people meet each other. There are often initial warm feelings at having found another person who claims to share the same, deeply intimate beliefs that you do, but then a little reservation comes. Maybe you've seen this happen, or been a knee-jerk participant yourself: not all church people fall on the same side of the moral divide, so members of a burgeoning relationship have to assess where each other stands. Will the new person they just met be a fundamentalist type? Or will they be open-minded enough to get away with showing a few rough edges? Or perhaps they'll be one of those liberal Christians who smoke weed and use four-letter words and welcome complete transparency, even beyond rough edges straight to skeletons hiding in the closet (which for a hyper-Christian, is supposed to be the place you pray, right? So scandalous.). So a few casual comments about morality are dropped (You know, when I'm upset, I sometimes use some words I shouldn't.), a few pointed questions asked if you're feeling bold (Do you ever drink? (By the way, am I the only one mildly irritated that the verb "drink" has become synonymous with "drink alcohol?" Maybe I'm too enamored with distinction.)), responses to the tone and subject matter of the conversation are assessed, then it's clear where all the players stand, and the relationship is now free to bloom within its newly found definition (or stagnate, if these particular church people find themselves irreconcilably at opposing ends of the moral divide).

Here I'm going to spoil a bit of a point I'm going to make later. However, if you're reading this, chances are you know me well enough for this to not be a spoiler; our relationship has already spoiled it. The spoiler is this: although I may appear to be one on the surface, I'm not a "fundamentalist," lest it be in a very loose sense of the definition. I've had these kinds of exploratory conversations many times over, and every time I find myself talking to someone who doesn't get a ruffle in their feathers whenever the subject of tattoos (or any other controversy) is brought up, I feel a small thrill on the inside. When too many feathers are ruffled, I tend to receive vibes of uptight-ness, and it's a drag to spend time with someone who's uptight. (Trust me, I know how terrible it is. I'm a recovering curmudgeon, and by the grace of the Almighty, will one day have shed all vestiges of uptight-ness.) But even while I'm happily chatting with my non-uptight church friends, whenever the conversation is morality-colored, there's still an underlying sense that the act of discussing the subject matter at hand carries a certain inappropriateness, even while simply telling stories of things that actually happened, and not in any way endorsing behavior that's something other than ideal.

I think we're missing something.

Life is life, people are people, and stuff happens. The wordsmith in me wants to say that in a more imaginative way, but nothing I craft communicates my point as clearly and effectively. What wrong is there in talking about the facts of life (both those facts of life, and the truth of what happens in the world moment by moment)? Beyond that, when has darting around the point, or hiding imperfections (or sin) ever helped anyone live a better life? Or be more righteous? If you know of a time, please tell me. I'm always open to new ideas about how the world operates, but I'm certain enough about my current point, that I will plunge forward at the risk of being contradicted.

Perhaps I'm biased. At the least, I know I've come by this point of view easily. My mom started giving me the talk (yes, that talk) when I was a toddler, and I've lived every minute of my life since then in the same open atmosphere that fostered such candid discussion with a person who lacked the mental capacity to comprehend what was being said. If ever there is a good excuse for veiled conversation, it's when you're talking to a child so immature that 90% of what you say will go over their sweet little head. But my mother was fearless. Nothing has ever been blacklisted in my house, to the point that I, the resident introvert, have sometimes speculated fondly what pleasantries might accompany living with people who are too uncomfortable to speak with abandon. I could be quiet and alone most of the time, and no one would ever challenge me to open up when I'm not in the mood. How truly nice that sounds. After getting past the surface idealism, though, I realize how insufferable a person being left alone would make me ('socially awkward' is what I am now, but if left alone, 'socially incapable' would be more appropriate), and I cringe to think how miserable it would be to be unable to say anything with no fear of offense. As tired as I can get of interacting with other humans, my own selfish comfort is not worth the sacrifice of candidness.

As vital and influencing as a transparent environment was to my most formative years, more important was the accompanying atmosphere of respect. I watched my parents kindly and humbly treating everyone they interacted with outside our home, but more impacting still, I watched them kindly and humbly treat me and my brothers. I've witnessed many sad incidences in the world of children disrespecting their parents, but much of the time, my sadness is increased when I find that the disrespect they're extending is proportionately equal to the disrespect they've received. Don't misunderstand my meaning, parents have a hard job, and children cannot be catered to in all their whims. But discipline and respect are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they're closely tied. My childhood never lacked discipline, and I was never unclear about the authority my parents had in our relationship, yet, at the same time, I never felt that they saw me as anything but a whole person. Living confidently as a whole person goes a long way in cultivating one's ability to respect the personhood of everyone else.

I think this, respect, is central to the whole debate over propriety. Maybe getting a tattoo is not the best idea. (I'm picking on tattoos, but you could substitute a number of other things.) Maybe it's even wrong. But how respectful is it to condemn someone for having one? Doing that, when you have, as Jesus said, an even bigger plank in your own eye, is disrespectful. It's inappropriate. If I may even be so bold (because I've just confessed to you how much I value candidness, so to be anything but would defeat the point I'm making), it's sinful.

And that, my friends, is what I think this really boils down to: sin. The way I see it, sin is all that's truly inappropriate. And to even begin to get a handle on what that means, I think we have to define what's really important when we interact with others. Respect is what's important. Thus condemning someone is inappropriate. Gossiping about someone is inappropriate. Degrading someone to another is inappropriate. Slandering someone is inappropriate. Shaming someone is inappropriate. Taking advantage of someone, whether it be sexually or any other way, to fulfill your own desires and please yourself, is inappropriate. Getting back to that hypothetical tattoo, maybe getting it wasn't ideal. But I'm much more interested in how much respect you extend in your relationships, and less how much ink has been added to your dermis.

Lest my motivations behind contending for this point of view be misconstrued, let me make a few things clear (just in case you don't already know these things about me). I have no body art, not even an ear pierced. I don't drink alcohol. I've never smoked or done drugs. I even avoid caffeine (despite living in a gourmet coffee-occupied society)! In keeping with the rules of probability, you will likely never hear a curse word come out of my mouth, and I'm as chaste today as when I was born. I look like one of the most upright people alive. Redefining the bounds of propriety is in no way an attempt to excuse any of my behavior, because frankly, according to traditional ideas, there isn't anything to excuse. If anything, holding to these ideas makes me more honest, and leaves me with fewer excuses for my behavior. I may not ever have trouble with substance abuse, but loving the way I should is always a challenge. Where it counts, I am still at the mercy of grace and not my own abilities to keep it together.

I would be delighted to see the world, particularly the church, particularly myself, become less uptight about things that are beside the point, more diligent in contending for the importance of love and respect, and more honest in both speech and action. So don't be surprised if you hear me talk about sex in church. But if you catch me disrespecting someone, remind me that you respect me enough to tell me when I'm being worse than a cotton-headed ninnymuggins.