True Optimism in a Wounded Workplace

(This is an excerpt from a piece I wrote, published today on Crosswalk.com)

I read an article the other day about how Western optimism is a counterproductive anomaly, leading to debilitating surprise and sorrow when bad things inevitably happen. While not a Christian article, writer Alain de Botton used Christianity as an example of pessimism, “that it’s a sin to suppose that such perfection can ever occur on Earth. Nothing human can ever be free of blemishes. There cannot be an end to boom and bust.”  

We so desperately want the opposite to be true during these uncertain times. We pray for God’s hand of blessing to return, for our jobs to remain secure, for the markets to flow freely once again. And we hang on to this American optimism because the alternative scares us and creates a tight ball of fear in our gut. Read more…

A note about marriage

Nine years ago today Brad and I said our vows, a pair of two 21-year olds in love. As the sun set over the lake and in front of our friends and family (many of them likely crossing their fingers over our young age!) we committed ourselves to each other and set our relationship before God.

Here is what I’ve learned since then:

1) Love is a choice. Many times that lovin’ feeling will come easily, but sometimes it doesn’t. In those times we make the conscious choice to actively love each other.  

2) Marriage is a gift, and only by the grace and mercy of God do we learn how to extend this same grace and mercy to each other.

3) And finally, no one else knows me like he does (besides God of course!) and that’s how it should be. The love that has grown between us since we first met is ours to hold. It is special and rare — almost like a precious secret. We prioritize, guard and nurture it.

I pray that God continues to provide His grace for us, and am so grateful that He’s brought us here together.

We Were Warned (Part 1)

My husband and I went to see a movie the other night (a rare event for us), and while walking toward our theater – giant soda and popcorn in hand – we noticed a stand-up poster for the apocalyptic movie “2012.” It was a picture of a city by the ocean, dramatically split into pieces by an earthquake, with tsunami-sized waves lapping at the homes. At the top of the picture it simply said, “We Were Warned.”

We paused for a minute, then took a sip of soda and crunched on some popcorn as we made our way to our seats, and settled in to watch “Angels and Demons – a film which, by the way, has nothing to do with demons and very little to do with angels. It does, however, make some very interesting points about science and faith.

(I will take this opportunity to point out something. In my last post, I wrote about how we’re a nation of viewers, content to watch movies about faith and adventure. And as you can see here, I do enjoy such movies — enough to make them part of a cherished date night. But for me the adventure doesn’t end with the credits.)

Back to that movie poster for “2012” — I’m not feeling terribly deep today, so I will save many of my thoughts for future posts. But I want to just throw some questions out there about being warned. Is that just Hollywood? Or have we been warned? And if we have indeed been warned – warned about what? Who warned us? And here’s the big one: what’s the purpose of a warning?

More to come later.

French Bread and HDTV

We’ve owned a flat-screen HDTV for a while, but I didn’t really care about it until recently when I saw a nature program in high definition. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the screen! Every water droplet in perfect detail, the leaf edges crisp and clear, flowers so vibrant I could have sworn we were actually there. My husband thought it was funny that I finally realized the value of HD, after all this time of owning one.

But as beautiful a picture as it was, I still couldn’t smell the flowers or feel the dew on the ground. Viewing the forest from my comfortable air-conditioned home told me nothing about the quality of air there, whether humid or pleasantly dry, whether cool or oppressively hot. All of the physical beauty, but none of the real experience.

Cooking programs in HDTV also amaze me. Camera angles are designed to reveal the beauty of the food, and the ease with which the chefs prepare it. But what about the nitty-gritty of cooking — the feel of it, the smells, and the dishes! Yesterday it rained all day and with my two children home for the summer we decided to make French bread together.

We used flour, salt, sugar, oil, warm water and yeast. We mixed and kneaded, waited for it to rise, and kneaded some more. Then we rolled it into two loaves, and waited for it to rise again. Finally we baked it, and enjoyed our beautiful bread with a simple Caesar salad for dinner. And what an experience! We had flour all over the kitchen, and all over ourselves. The funniest part was when my son, who loves to “test” all kinds of yummy batter as I cook, sneakily pinched off some of the raw dough and stuck it in his mouth, only to spit it out in horror less than a minute later.

We all had a good time, even while cleaning up the mess (but don’t look too closely)! It doesn’t even remotely compare to FoodTV.

So in all of this it occurred to me that high definition TV is just one example of the many ways we’ve become a society of “viewers” — an audience, watching from our comfortable places of leisure while someone else experiences the real thing. We leave adventure and action films with adrenaline pumping through our veins and the taste of popcorn in our mouths, and hop into our SUVs to head home. And I fear it goes deeper than physicality. Movies about spiritual warfare and great adventures in other-worldly places inspire our imagination for a time, but then what? We hear sermons and read books about God, but then what?

Let’s stop waiting for the next show, the next entertainment. There’s something Real for us, right now.