Vehement Adventure

Well, in a desire for a fresh start,  a renewed commitment to blogging, and a new perspective on some ideas, I have decided to move blogs. Hopefully this will be the last time… this is my 3rd or 4th blog now. So… check it out.

http://mariadrews.wordpress.com/

I haven’t written in a long time. I blame it on several things 1) we don’t have internet at home- Mike and I have decided to save ourselves a lot of money and time wasted online by just not getting internet this year- and it’s been great! 2) I’ve been trying to be a little less media-inundated this year, which means less internet, less TV, and less movies (but on the other end, it means a whole lot more listening to NPR) and 3) I haven’t particularly felt very “safe” about sharing my thoughts, feelings, and experiences lately

I’ve been going through a weird period in my life which I keep hoping will end soon but also keep  fearing it never will. I feel “out of bounds”. I’ve never felt this way before, not in this way, so I am assuming that most of you haven’t felt this way either. I keep feeling somewhat dissident. different. unacceptable. I am afraid of my own thoughts and what I am becoming, yet I am so excited about it and wish I felt like I could fully embrace who I am. I feel like I have been slowly wading out of the mainstream and into some unknown and “dangerous” territory. I haven’t been here before, so it scares me, but I also am loving the adventure. It seems better out here.

I fear being judged. I fear being told I shouldn’t be thinking what I do. I fear losing my credibility because I have stopped thinking like everyone else. I fear being looked at as weird and irrelevant. I fear being seen as troubled and in need of some transformation or conversion back to the normal. I fear being unaccepted. discarded. feared.

So I walk this line of thinking about the world and seeing the world in a different light than before, yet not sharing the view. I have crazy thoughts and share them with so few. I constantly edit myself to only share a side that is more “acceptable”. I struggle with both being judgmental and being judged. I am afraid of being kicked out. And my authentic community seems to be getting smaller and smaller.

I do not want two selves. I do not want the authentic and the inauthentic. Perhaps I just need to take a leap and be my authentic self, and see what happens. But it’s scary standing at the edge of the cliff, thinking about what might happen if I jump off.

And so, I haven’t been blogging much.

I have strong views about this, but you can see it for yourself…

I have been wrestling with how a church best does political engagement lately. As one of the new leaders of our church’s social justice team, this is a big question for me. To politically engage or not engage? How much? How? I was challenged recently by my friend Dave and his post, and by Greg Boyd and his post. You should read both, or this rest of this won’t mean much.

First off, I agree with most of what both of them said. I really liked what Greg said here:

Sadly, instead of confessing our greed and ungodly divisiveness and sacrificially pooling our resources to serve the poor, we tend to rather point the finger at government while positioning ourselves as people who are smarter at spending public funds and solving tough issues and more righteous in caring about the needy. I suspect the American Church has been so divided, so influenced by American greed and thus so impotent for so long, most can’t even imagine it being otherwise. Related to this, we’ve relinquished so much responsibility for caring for the poor to the government for so long, most American Christians can’t picture the Church itself, without the aid of government, taking responsibility for this.

And here:

And notice this: all the while we’re wading through these issues and fighting over what we think Caesar should do, we’re still spending 97% of our wealth on ourselves and not getting anything done for the Kingdom.

If you have read his blog post, I totally agree with his analysis on that particular situation. It makes sense that the church do something themselves- why wait around for politicians to do it? But how about this. I really really believe that we should give up, for the most part, car culture in this society. I also know that won’t happen until we burn up all of our oil and it becomes insanely expensive to own a car. So what I would love to see is higher gas prices that reflect the environmental mess that burning gas makes, or I would love to see much higher miles per gallon standards for cars. But what could Christians do in the face of our environmentally damaging culture? Even if you totally disagree with my opinion, aren’t there issues, like this one, that Christians can’t solve outside of politics? I want to see us care for God’s creation, not consume it for our own personal benefit. Sure a church could all bike everywhere, care for a local park, garden, buy forest and preserve it, be careful that their lifestyles doesn’t do environmental damage… but that just delays the inevitable. Shouldn’t we engage politics, too? Or just do our best outside of politics?

Read Dave’s post, then read my reply.

This post has been bothering me, especially as I am moving into my new role as the leader of the social justice team at my church. What is the best way, as Christians, to create change? What should our involvement in politics be? This post challenges me, as have other things you have said about politics. I am not quite as disenchanted of politics as you, (I still hold out a hope that change can happen through politics), but I do appreciate your challenge of putting our hope in politics.

I guess I have two questions. Does it have to be an either-or? Does it have to be either doing something ourselves or petitioning someone else to do it? Shouldn’t we do both? Change our own lifestyles, convince those we know and have influence with to change theirs, and then petition those in power to do the same, to change policies? I agree that we shouldn’t wait around for our government to change the world (if we do we’ll be horribly disappointed) but at the same time I think it needs to be part of the whole answer.

Second question: If Christians don’t participate in politics, aren’t we being separatist? As much as we may think that politics doesn’t work or is corrupt, shouldn’t we still try to challenge the system for the better? Isn’t opting out of political engagement just ignoring the systems and the powers at work in our world ? Isn’t opting out of the systems that we live in making us isolationist? I may hate the way that politics work, but if I chose to simply ignore politics and not be engaged, how is the Kingdom of God ever supposed to touch the political realm?

Either way, I don’t think that Christians are very good at any of this… we aren’t very good at addressing the world’s problems, either through personal lifestyle changes, through Christian communities deciding to live differently, or through engaging politics. I think we should learn how to do all three well.

Or we could just sit around ignoring the world, and wait to go to heaven.

Please please please tell me what you think. I really want opinions. Stay out of politics and try to build the Kingdom, or engage in politics as part of bringing the Kingdom? If my church wants social justice, how should we get it?

Ok, I’m really not, but sometimes it goes through my head. Never seriously, but about every other day the thought flies through my mind. It’s more something just to ponder, to laugh at, and then quickly push out of my mind.

At the end of my day you could find me…

a) picking up leftover wrappers or crumbs from the floor from 8th-10th grade students who haven’t figured out how to pick up after themselves

b) staying late tutoring one of the students who really really wants to get it right (I love these days)

c) talking to a student in the hall, explaining to them how their behavior was unacceptable that day (usually followed by a call to their parents)

d) throwing all my stuff on my desk and rushing out the door because I don’t want to stay late for the 10th day in a row

e) talking to parents, copying things, collecting things, finding students extra paper/folders/binders/etc or any other variety of running around the Christopher House

My job? I love it. The students? I love them, too. But like most people who love their students and love what they are trying to do (get them into college in a few years), sometimes we would rather just take a day off, quit for a bit, or just come to work and not actually work for the day. We get sick of being let down, complained to, insulted, and lied to. We get sick of spending our days trying to keep students behavior in check and rarely getting chances to really do something good. We get sick of hearing our own loud voice, of calling out students’ names, of telling people to “sit down” or “do not leave” or “pleassssssssssssssssse take out your homework”. We wish we could have just one day when we didn’t have to fight students and instead just worked with them. (Just one day, God, one day.)

I love my job because it is so freaking hard. I love my job because it pushes me. I love my job because the students are amazing.

And then some days I just don’t want to show up again for the next.

As always, Campolo speaks the truth…

“I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were
sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related
to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is
that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact
that 30,000 kids died last night.”

- Rev. Tony Campolo

Last night Mike and I went downtown to Grant Park (if you are not from Chicago, that is the park that is along Lake Michigan at the south end of Michigan Ave. If you have ever been a tourist in the city you have probably seen it.) Chicago shows movies in their parks during the summer but the biggest Movies in the Park events are down in Grant Park.  They set up a GIANT screen and you bring your lawn chairs and blankets and fill-up a giant field. Well, last night we got down to the park via the El around 7:30 and were greeted by thousands of people already covering the field. Being the crowd weaver I am, I went all the way to the front and we found the perfect spot in the front row. We brought a blanket, two pillows, a big bottle of ice water, and a bucket of Mike’s homemade popcorn. The movie ran from 8-11 and we didn’t get home until after midnight, but it was AmAzInG! Why? Because the Sound of Music has been and still is my all-time-favorite. And it was fun watching it with a crowd that cheered whenever something good happened, clapped for all the songs, and booed the baroness. Plus we ran into an old friend from UW-Madison who we found out lives only 3 blocks from our new place! Ah, good times in Chicago

You gotta listen to this:

My Phonebook

and this:

Fitting In

Want more? Sure ya do…

Louder than a Bomb

How many hours can a person stare at a computer screen each week and not go bonkers? I just may find out…..

A few thoughts on working in the office

1) Having three people working in a small room completely filled with stuff doesn’t make for a productive work environment

2) sitting at the same desk for 8 hours a day staring at the same computer screen for 8 hours a day and talking to other people for only about 30 minutes a day (and most of that on the phone) makes you want to scream

3) If I want to work outside at one of the tables or if I want to go down the street 2 blocks to the coffeeshop, where I know I can be much more productive, why shouldn’t I be able to?

4) eating lunch at your desk is depressing, I don’t care how busy you are

5) and finally… it has only taken me two days of 8-hours-a-day-working-alone-at-my-computer to realize that I am completely not cut out for this. thank goodness I am going to be with students a few hours every day in just a week… and extra thank goodness that I am going to be a youth minister after that, where I will be encouraged to get away from my computer and desk and actually go interact with humanity… whewww

well, i haven’t been blogging much because mike and I moved last weekend and our new place doesn’t have internet yet, and I didn’t blog before that because i was gone for a week for Americorps training, so sorry this has been few and far between. Hopefully we can figure out some cheap way to get internet soon and then i’ll be up and writing more! (And hopefully pictures of our beautiful new apartment will be coming your way…!)

in the absence of my own blogging I wanted to share my sister’s blog with you. She just moved to Switzerland for a year to be a live-in nanny for a family that lives outside of Bern. So go ahead and read about all of her adventures. Oh, and you can try to learn the metric system, how km convert to miles, and how swiss francs convert to dollars with me.

I already miss her but it’s so exciting to hear about her adventures abroad- from not being able to read road signs to exploring new cities. I already want to go visit her so badly and she’s been there less than three weeks! We’ll see if it happens or not this year for me. (My first trip to Europe!) In the mean time, I’m going to try to live in Switzerland vicariously through Justine’s blogs and our internet chats.