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bright spots round-up

A little-known band once sang the following lyrics: “I have to admit it’s getting better, a little better all the time (it can’t get much worse!)”. This is true for me in a lot of ways, but it’s on my mind right now in the thick of “shelter in place”. Most days, if not every day, my anxiety has been heightened and I’ve been feeling emotionally weaker than I have been (more on that perhaps some other time), but there have been moments and experiences that have been bright spots in life, and they probably shine even brighter now than they would’ve before.

One of my very favorite podcasts right now is Pop Culture Happy Hour, from NPR. In their weekly show, their second segment is “What’s Making Us Happy This Week”. I’d like to borrow from this and try out a regular “What’s Making Me x This Week”-type thing. “X” standing for whatever I feel like sharing.

This edition will be more of a list format, as I’m going to cover the mid-March through present day time period when we’ve been in shelter-in-pace. So let’s begin “notable bright spots through shelter in place”! (It needs a snazzier title, I know)

  1. Random Stationery Hauls

Throughout the pandemic I’ve experienced more of an importance placed on supporting small businesses, and for me, Greer Chicago is one of the first small businesses that came to my mind. I placed an order in April, and now I wish I had taken a picture of the packaging it came in because everything inside was beautifully wrapped with the utmost care, which hit me as a really simple and refreshing sense of order in the midst of the chaos. And then I had the distinct pleasure of seeing and holding these gorgeous notebooks and pencils and erasures, the next best thing when you can’t actually visit and experience Greer Chicago’s shop in-person. The pink pen is a Kaweco Sport fountain pen – I had gotten a light blue version of this last time I visited the shop, which Reggie very literally sank his teeth into earlier this year. It writes like a dream, and my handwriting isn’t worthy of it, but it certainly motivates me to write more and write better.

2. Zoom

I know we’ve gotten into the “Zoom sucks” stage of the pandemic (I’m no exception to this). But. Without it, especially in the unseasonably cold March, April, and early May that we had, I would’ve almost completely isolated myself from my people (because nothing has changed the fact that I still struggle with talking on the phone), and my weekly routines would’ve been significantly upended. Zoom definitely is not a 1:1 substitute for meeting in-person, but with the technology, I can still meet with our church small group, and “go” to my counseling sessions, and talk with a friend over lunch, and celebrate birthdays, and, the craziest one for me, make new friends. As far as what I regularly do from week to week, thanks to Zoom, nothing has really changed for me during the pandemic. It sure does look and feel different, and it’s far from ideal, but not unlike a lot of times in life, sometimes we have to accept the shadow of the best thing until we can experience the actual best thing itself again.

A couple quicker-hits:

3. How different churches are using YouTube. Two examples that I’ve been viewing/participating with on a regular basis are Trinity Community Church’s Daily Office videos and Church of the Ascension’s Morning Prayer videos.

4. Middleditch and Schwartz on Netflix. I love improv and I love these two goofballs. It is delightful and it makes me wistful for the time when I’ll be able to go to a live show again.

5. Indoor dog parks, like Wag n Paddle, that were able to re-open in May, while the outdoor ones near me are still closed.

6. Animal. Crossing. New. Horizons. (Nintendo Switch)

Thanks, Al.

7. Making classic cocktails. In the days before covid, I’d go to restaurants/bars on a semi-frequent basis and try out different cocktails, so now we’re learning to make and try some at home like the Old Fashioned, Manhattan, Negroni, Gimlet, Sidecar, and my favorite, the Aviation. It’s been so much fun to learn the techniques and the ingredients, and not have to pay nearly as much per drink as I’m used to!

That’s a fairly all-encompassing list for now. What’s been helping you get through this universal weirdness?

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my constant theology hangover

I’m not completely sure what got me started, but lately I’ve been absorbing “Christian thought” at an alarming rate. Feeding this new addiction are the myriad of books, YouTube videos, podcasts, not to mention personal Bible reading and being heavily involved in church life. I find myself asking way too many questions and questioning everything, some questions stemming from doubts, others from past ignorance, and still others out of anger toward Christianity “lived out” on the macro scale, as shoved into my face by CNN and the like, no thanks to Franklin Graham and the Southern Baptist Convention.

I’m frustrated with myself for asking questions this “late in the game”. I’ll be 33 in a month, and I feel like I wasted 20 years by stuffing my questions back into my body, by going with the flow with the bizarre teachings of my Christian church and school, and by growing into adulthood well-acquainted with grace and orthodoxy but truly unsure of how to translate these beautiful things into my worldview and way of life.

I honestly don’t even know where it began. I blame therapy. I had challenged people, the people I was very comfortable with of course, here and there about theological matters, especially my long-suffering seminary student husband. The questions I had been asking though, honestly, were peripheral to the ones I really needed answers to. The ones that meant everything. I have learned and grown a lot through therapy, and my main goal in therapy has been to fight against fear, to be a more brave person. And one of the scariest things for me is to be completely and utterly honest. Even as I type that, I feel the nausea set in, as well as the desire to turn off the computer and maybe wash the dishes for a change. Anything to avoid what’s really going on inside of me.

So, here’s the question I’ve wrestled with, ignored, shoo’d away, buried beneath other less-daunting questions:

Is it possible we’re wrong?

“We’re” meaning the evangelical Christian community, in which I’m fully a part (at least from a membership standpoint).

“Wrong” meaning–wrong about everything. Wrong about God being real, not even getting into “loving” or “Creator” or “desiring community with us”, etc. Wrong about Jesus. Wrong about how salvation works. Wrong about who we let “in” and who we leave “out”. Wrong about the Bible and its authority. Wrong about heaven and/or hell. Wrong about why we’re even on earth. Wrong about how we do church. Wrong about how we treat each other. Wrong about the relationship of our faith and our culture.

This is a dauntingly open-ended question. So I ask a follow up question:

If it’s possible that Christianity is “wrong”, is Christianity still worth the risk?

Baby steps.

Right now, my answer is Yes. Christianity is worth risking being wrong about. Sure, chalk it up to naivete or the fact that I was “born into it”, but in my life I have “tasted and seen that the Lord is good”, as they say. I’ve seen lives change before my eyes as a result of the Jesus story. Sometimes Christians suck and they make me angry, and sometimes I suck and I doubt my own growth, but then I see Jesus and believe that he and he alone is enough for me to be okay with being a Christian.

So, that’s where I’m at right now. I’m a Christian because Jesus. I’m betting everything I have on it, because I see no other compelling alternative. But, I still have a lot of other questions, ranging from parts of the Bible that confuse me, to how church should work, to what sin and hell look like, to how I should live and fellowship with others. And for this journey, I’ve been soaking in all kinds of teaching and literature to the point where I’m suddenly exhausted every night and feeling dead when I wake up each morning, head literally aching due to what I’m calling “theology hangover”. Not sure exactly how to cure this other than to drink some coffee and let it ride.