Never Mind

I am a child of the 80’s. The nineteen eighties, to be clear. America’s grunge music movement came of age about the same time I did. Bands like Weezer, Jane’s Addiction, Smashing Pumpkins, and Nirvana pounded through new “alternative” radio stations. I remember sitting in my peachy floral bedroom with puffed curtains and twice draped side tables listening to Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit with the volume so low only I could hear. Music like that was forbidden in my house. Of course it was. I am not sure how you could listen to alternative music with your parents’ consent and it remain what it was. On this side of things, considering how loud kids are, I am not surprised that my mother would ban angry, loud, riotous music. For those of you unfamiliar with Cobain’s garbled teen anthem, it was everything that a teenager, whose skin suddenly doesn’t fit, wanted: angst, head banging, and a probable hidden meaning.

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous.

Here we are now, entertain us.

There we were, a whole generation of odorous teenagers sitting in the dark waiting for something to make life worth living. We sat glued to the images of the blonde warrior fighting our fight in a high school gym while we read the lyrics on Say What? There was some serious stuff there, or was there? There must have been. Was it me, or did that basketball goal look an awful lot like a gibbet? And the cheerleader, so blonde and popular, the feminine, so recently liberated, plastered with a scarlet A. There must have been subtext there. There must have been meaning. If we could have understood the words, the pieces would have dropped into place. There must be meaning.

Never mind.

That niggling worry over meaning would fade. Like high school. Like arch rivals. Never mind. It wasn’t important. Our music was grungy and angry. We were lost. We needed for life to matter. Kurt Cobain needed for life to matter. He was terrified that there was no meaning. Life was just a vapid extension of high school.

            But surely, faith gives life meaning. Surely the fight for the greater good remains. Surely we can rouse ourselves to care. The church of my adolescence tried. They made godstuff more entertaining. They made t-shirts and W.W.J.D? bracelets. They made our music cooler and turned the lights down. We raised our hands and smelled like Holy Spirit. But when they turned the lights off, we could no longer see well enough to pass the plate and the cup. We became faceless spectators. Things got lost in the dark. Doubts crept in. The God of eons and mystery was reduced to sound bytes and hyped emotions.

            

            I feel stupid and contagious.

            Here we are now, entertain us.

And Christianity of the ‘90’s became a contagious childhood virus. A rite of passage that was, once gotten over, no longer a threat. Like chicken pox.

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.  My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce, and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry, and Porcelaine.  John Adams in a letter to Abigail Adams, May 12, 1780     

Our ancestors fought, bled, and died; planted, studied, and philosophized; painted, wrote, and created, and we gaze, amazed and pacified at the works of their hands hemmed in by our 2.64 by 5.44 inch worlds, searching for meaning in: a mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido. 

Lost and bored by freedom.  

Offended

A Christian is totally fearless, constantly cheerful and always in trouble.

My first instinct is to disagree. I am not sure why. It seems like a decent statement, but I want it to be wrong. Probably because I am not fearless. Probably because I am often sad. Probably because I do not get into trouble.

Nothing makes me more uneasy than when someone offers a definition of what it means to follow and live Divine mystery. Often our definitions become privacy fences around our church gardens. When Jesus was asked what the kingdom of God was his only reply was a collection of similes so confusing and vague that his followers have been wrestling with them for 2000 years. 

The Kingdom of God is like: seed, yeast, treasure...

But we need our definitions, creeds, doctrines, pages and pages of laws, all to define and explain an inexplicable God. It is all really a defense mechanism against the uncertainty of dealing with a wild wind of a God. We name and define ourselves to ensure that we are tallied in the right column.

Hey, Mom, am I doing it? Am I safe? Do you love me? Hey, God, do I matter?

And if our definitions fence someone out, we put in our own narrow gate welcoming in anyone who fits. 

My Western Civilization class in college, taught by one of my favorite professors ever, who incidentally came to the first day of class with a broken fly, described this in terms of history. Roughly, he said, if one side of a discussion or ideology names their cause something Positive (aka good guys) then the opposing view must deal with being the Anti-Positive-Side (aka bad guys). 

Any positive image implies a corresponding negative. 

The Light Side implies The Dark Side

  

Language is powerful. Every word, spoken or written carries the weight of its thesis and its antitheses. Sometimes language is truthful and revealing and sometimes it is not. Sometimes it serves to expose injustice. Fair Trade implies that there is unfair trade. 

Side note: if we were to label all items accordingly, it might temper our buying choices. 

But sometimes our language just introduces exclusion and hurt. For every fearless, cheerful, mischievous Christian out there, there is a sad, coward sitting in the pew whose deepest need is probably not excommunication. 

A friend recently said she had heard a discussion about the gross amount of energy consumed by “taking offense” and the zen lives we could all have if only we could learn to stop taking offense. 

And I was offended by that. Winky face.

Taking offense is over done. We all spend way too much energy combing over our lives looking for places where we have been offended. Maligned. Our childhood cries of, "Not fair," simply reach a wider audience in their adult form. And now it is so easy. We have become a society of virtual protesters. All willing to join in taking offense as long as all it requires from us is a thumb tap. 

But if we don’t take offense, then we become passive to the language defining us.

The happy, brave, trouble-maker who offended me to begin with did not seek to exclude me from the Kingdom of God. He just developed his language in a vacuum of offense. No one questioned him. No one with indelible tear stains asked, "What about me?" 

Sometimes the regular old thing needs to offend us. Deeply. 

After a truly remarkable week, I feel like our first response to the lives of others needs to be love and the second, and a very close second, is to watch our language. If all life is sacred, then we need to scour our language for what we are really saying, because no matter what our opinions are, the greatest commandment remains: love. 

Super bowl commercials and "Vaxxing"

For those of you unable to access the internet, social media, and therefore not reading this, nothing...

To the rest of you, I WANNA GO BACK TO FUNNY SUPER BOWL COMMERCIALS.

Also, I was in charge of the food stuffs during the Super Bowl, and I am officially firing myself. We had pretzels and soup. Not even a decent chili. It was like if taco soup and brunswick stew got married and had a really boring kid who only wore pressed khakis and never spilled his drink. I mean, it was nice, but not really Super.

Also, there was no dessert.

And then the Nationwide commercial came on.

Obviously I was already feeling tender in my near junk-food-less state, and then the beautiful curly, mop-headed boy FREAKING DIED.

Can I just make a bid here for some Bud-WISE-errrrr frogs or something?

Would that be too hard?

But here is where this Public-Health-Minded, Duke RN, preacher's wife, crazy foolish writer person has to say something Inflammatory and (for some mysterious and insane reason) Controversial.

Accidental death is the number one killer of children under age six in the US (thanks Nationwide).

Do you know why?

Because childhood diseases have had been nearly eradicated by vaccinations. We live in an era when children won't die of diphtheria or measles or be deformed by polio. Our children will most likely never have worms or rickets. Their teeth won't rot. In this light, public health has performed a miracle in the past one hundred years.

So, yes, accidental death is the number one killer of children in America--because childhood diseases aren't. For now.

Suspense

Ball game tied.  Two minutes left. 

Rusty haired child standing elbows on knees, peeking through a veil of suspense. His game was this morning. He knows the rush of success and the hollowness of misstep. He watches, tongue pinioned, fingers splayed on the floor. The bumps of his child frame show through his own game shirt, smeared with dirt from an afternoon in the yard. His breath hisses and squeaks in time with the squeaks of the blue shoes. He is held safely between the knees and arms of his dad who leans over him in paired tension. Two strings tuned to different octaves. 

He is safe now--his world bounded by the shot clock and a tied score. We can keep him safe tonight.