Tithing our Words

A.J. Jacobs is doing some interesting things.  He’s the guy who read the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica, and who tried to live by all the Biblical rules for a year.  And now he’s doing a Guinea Pig Project, with a book about the various undertakings he’s gotten into as a human guinea pig.  Here’s an interview with him that I enjoyed:

http://www.smithmag.net/memoirville/2009/09/10/interview-aj-jacobs-author-of-the-guinea-pig-diaries/

Today I read an article by him in the December issue of O Magazine.  He was talking about tithing.  Listen in:  ”Since I’m a writer, I also tell myself this: one out of every ten words belongs to someone deserving.  In that previous sentence, it was the word deserving.”

He’s clever, and I’d definitely like to meet him.  Heck, I’d like to BE him.  I like these guinea pig things. My jubilee blog here IS one of those guinea pig things (“Hey… what if I actually lived out jubilee for a year.”).

But beyond being entertained, I was also touched and challenged.  If I’m going to tithe on my writing income, then every 10th word belongs to the poor, every 10th minute does, every 10th thought, every 10th project.

I’m a Christian, and I believe in the priesthood of all believers and that the work I do every day is God’s work (in that it should be honoring to Him, dedicated to His service and in line with His principles).  And then I should give 10% away, as a start.  Not legalistic shoulds, shoulds that come from gratitude.  But I don’t often think of part of my actual workday or part of my actual output as belonging to others.

Jacobs gave me something to think about, and I’m also going to go read all his books.  Though maybe not the whole Encyclopedia Brittanica.

I Miss the Trash Ball Machine

Busboys & Poets (the original location on 14th) here in DC used to have a trash ball machine next to the bathrooms.  And my kids and I were customers.  Maybe we were the only ones… perhaps that was the problem.

But I loved it.

The idea was that you could pay a quarter and get one of those cool, hermetically sealed capsules with a piece of trash in it.   That’s it.  Not convinced?  Well, I always figured the money went to something good, since the machine took up valuable real estate in the middle of an activism-focused bookstore.  I doubt the owners’ kids were getting Gucci loafers with the proceeds.

And here’s the other cool thing: sometimes the trash was, well, not so trashy.  Perhaps 1 out of 9,734,242 times you might get a dollar in your trash ball.  Or a homemade, hand-written fortune or message, or an actual comic out of a Bazooka gum wrapper (but alas, not the gum, which had long ago been chewed up and stuck to someone’s shoe out on U Street).

The possibility was the thrilling part.  Sort of like Las Vegas, only cheaper.

And I always felt virtuous buying trash.  Because just think about it… the trash would have been in a landfill otherwise, or it would have been litter.  Never mind that it became one of those after I had the thrill of paying for it and then opening the case with my teeth.  It’s the idea.

Well, maybe you “had to be there.”  And if you had, my beloved trash ball machine still might be there too.

Guilty Pleasures

I read an interesting article today in The Washington Post called “Grappling with a wealth of guilt: Young heirs seek moral balance between inherited windfalls, social responsibilities.”   Here’s the Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/19/AR2009111902137.html

It resonated with me because it raised a topic that I’ve written about here.  Here’s the line that got me: “Burke Stansbury, 33, a nonprofit administrator who inherited $1 million in stock three years ago, opened up about how his newborn’s breathing problems were forcing him to reconsider how much of his fortune he should use for his family and how much to give away.”

OF COURSE he is thinking about this.  And any parent would.  And no one would fault him (or should, in my opinion).

I wrote two posts about this; here’s a link to help you find one, which can lead you to the other: http://jubileeyear.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/children-are-the-exception/

I was taking exception with my own inclination to use money to spoil my children (who do not want to be spoiled, thank you very much), money that could otherwise truly solve problems or address needs for others.  This is a totally different thing than using our own money to meet the serious needs of our own children.  Like Stansbury would naturally be inclined to do.

So wouldn’t it be cool if we would use our big bucks to help other people’s kids with their breathing problems? Stansbury sounds like the sort of guy who would.

This sure relates to the notion that we don’t have adequate healthcare in America until everyone has adequate healthcare.  I want my government to use the wealth it has to take care of everybody’s newborns, and toddlers, and teenagers, and parents and grandparents.

We’ll probably all need to give twice to see such things happen.  And we should.

Cultural Sabbath Busters

Today I was on hold on the telephone, trying to reach a hospital-based doctor.  And I was subjected to multiple advertisements of the exemplary services of said hospital.  And although I was gratified to know that if I ever reach 550 pounds, there is a jumbo MRI that will hold me, and that their breast imaging is second to none, I was speechless at the concept that… drumroll please… I can have brain surgery today and return to work tomorrow. Is that a good thing?

It IS impressive.  But is it desirable?  Hell no.

If we as a culture have gotten so self-important and work-obsessed that brain surgery doesn’t deserve or warrant a day with one’s feet up… then we have problems.  Which we do.  So that’s not much of an argument.

C’mon people… can the world spin without us for a day, or even a week?  Can we rest just because God ordained (and commanded) it, and it feels good?  Can we see the benefit that comes from seeing that we are not essential to the sun rising and setting.  Really… do you want to be responsible for such things?  I am pleased if I’m nonessential.  I don’t want the world-bearing responsibility.

When it snows here in DC and the government excuses all but essential personnel from coming in, there’s a certain loss of luster and prestige in being seen around the neighborhood.  ”You’re nonessential?  How pitiful!”

The only time in my life I ever felt like I could say no to requests for, let’s say, a dozen brownies for the proverbial bake sale was when I had cancer.  I actually enjoyed saying, “Oh, I’m sorry I can’t help you.  I’m having a breast removed that day.” Sick sense of humor?  Yes… but also a sad reality: I don’t otherwise feel justified in saying “No… I choose not to help in that way today” or “I need a day off” or — heaven forbid — “I have a custom of taking a day for Sabbath each week.”

I actually enjoyed being in the hospital a week with my cancer surgery.  I believe that my beloved Dr. Sanzaro orchestrated that possibility, knowing that I had three small children at home… but also a week alone in the hospital afforded me the space and time to reflect on having cancer and it afforded a bit of welcome sabbath (magazines, books, sleep, good music).

Don’t those brain surgery patients need a minute to process brain surgery, or whatever illness precipitated the need?

Or don’t they relish being able to say, “I can’t run the xerox machine tomorrow.  I had brain surgery.”  Try it.  It works amazingly well… unless technology continues to mitigate against sensible and God-given gifts and rights, in which case we may get to the point of “We offer brain surgery during your lunch hour.”  Ugh.

The Cost of Generosity in Corporate America

I want to buy a baby present for young friends.  Several couples actually.  And yet I want to tell them that the crap will weigh them down.  All the paraphernalia isn’t necessary.  What do I wish I had had for my kids when they were little?   More time. Less activities.  Less stuff.  Less peer pressure to have and do and be.  Not wipe-warmers.

But they didn’t register for my advice nor for my agenda.  So as I select a gift, do I give ‘em what they want, or give ‘em what I think they need.  I chose the former.

Which costs dearly.  Registries… God help us.  I’m Scrooge-y today.  Yet it’s not the cost of the gift that’s a problem.  I chose within my desires and means.  It’s the cost beyond it.  It’s the cost of getting an email (2.3 seconds after handing over my VISA number) saying “Welcome to the Babies R Us Family.”  I can’t think of a family I’d less rather be in.  Corporate. Huge. Logo-ed.  Exploiting a giraffe through their parent company.  Ok… I’m going too far.  Nothing wrong with the giraffe (Geoffrey, isn’t he?).

But it is a dubious distinction to be wedded to or born into (or however I got into) the family.  And I want a divorce.  I want to opt-out, but I never really wanted to opt in.  I just wanted to buy what my friends wanted.  And it isn’t made, as far as I know, by some cool, progressive, crafty gal or guy who sells at my beloved Crafty Bastards Crafts Show in DC each fall, or I would have put in an order and bought local, bought real, bought human… and probably experienced some real community and conversation instead of  feeling kidnapped by corporate America and buried under a pile of friendly, chatty, inviting emails welcoming me to a family.

Ranting middle-aged woman.  That’s what I am.  But it deserves a rant.  AAAGGGHHH.

Knowing Prosperity when It’s Here

I love Jeremiah 17:5-9.  Let me start by sharing it with you:

		This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength, and whose heart turns away from the Lord.  He will be like a bush in the wastelands; he will not see prosperity when it comes. He will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.
		But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.
		He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.
		The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

I don’t know why I say I LOVE it; it’s hard and convicting and — as it says — I don’t even know my own heart enough to know when I’m judging myself aright as to my motives and motivations.  Like that verse where Paul says, “I have a clear conscience but that doesn’t make me innocent” (1 Corinthians 4:4).

But I do love truth.  And it does set us free.  And the truth is that a jubilee mindset isn’t possible when we think that we are the ones suffering and in need of a hand-out instead of knowing that prosperity is here, right now, and not missing it, and living as a prosperous one.

Heard a John Piper sermon yesterday in which he said that our spiritual gifts are the means by which we deliver grace to others, translating the vertical experience of receiving from God into the horizontal experience of administering grace in its various forms, or being a branch that serves as conduit for the power from the Vine, or loving with the love first given to us.
Jubilee implies bounty shared, debts forgiven, abundance acknowledged and enjoyed.  Jeremiah makes me think that that’s impossible without trusting God more than trusting man.   Parched bush… drought-free, leafy green tree.  Two different realities.  Two different mindsets.  Jubilee demands trust in God.

“Holy Crap, It’s Us”

I think it was Becky Garrison who said this, in the documentary Ordinary Radicals.  It’s been a while since I watched it and although I haven’t forgotten the point of it, I can’t quote her exactly or explain the context perfectly.  But the bottom line is that when we are praying for God’s will to be done on earth. we should be assuming we’ll be part of the answer for how it’s done.

When we are looking at global or local disasters or heartaches and thinking “someone should do something,” and we wonder who will, we always have to come back to “Holy Crap; It’s Us.”

“Us” who are responsible.  ”Us” who have the ability to do it (or to do something).

How do we use the power we have?  And even if we think we’re not powerful, one mighty weapon the average American does wield is influence.  Or access.  Or both.

Reading newspaper stories this week about families in DC who are losing shelter housing in the wake of budget cuts and wondering, frankly, why it’s okay for me to have a house and not invite families in.  But … well, honestly… not exactly wanting to invite strangers in.  Feeling grateful for order and calm and quiet and control in the wake of all of my children leaving home.  Yet I should be implicated somehow, shouldn’t I, by virtue of taking the gospel seriously?

And yet what should I do?  What access or influence do I have?  What programs could I support financially?  What one person could I help?

The fact of a problem being bigger than I know how to solve doesn’t mean I can’t (or shouldn’t) do SOMETHING.

Holy Crap… It’s Me!

Santini, Conroy, Forgiveness and Prayer

A friend told me that Pat Conroy’s The Great Santini was the first book that ever brought him to tears.  And I love Pat Conroy, and I wanted to understand my friend better.  So I read it, timed to finish it by the day that Conroy’s latest, South of Broad, came out.

And the ending wiped me out, a real paean to forgiveness and prayer and grace.  Can I quote?  Do you mind?

The background:  the narrator, Ben Meecham, is a high school senior who has had a conflicted boyhood at the hands of his Marine aviator father, whose love is shown with fists and small graces alike.  Ben still feels love for his misguided and dangerous father, and somehow Conroy masterfully makes that believable and likely.  When Bull Meecham (“The Great Santini”), the father, dies in a plane crash, Ben is partly relieved, partly grief-stricken.  And the book ends with his attempts to pray:

“And he realized that he lived in a Santiniless world now and he trembled when he thought that he was, in many ways, relieved that his father was dead.  It made him angry that a burden was lifted from him at his father’s funeral and it made him suffer…. Ben Meecham wanted to pray but he was afraid he was not worthy of prayer.  But he was even more afraid that he had no belief in prayer.  Yet he had belief in wonder, and in the next twenty-five miles of black Carolina highway, he thought:

“Can a boy begin a prayer with the hatred of his father in his heart?  Can that boy walk up to the altar of God and can he lay that hatred out?  Can he spew his hate and tell his sory?  Can he tell about beatings and humiliations?  Can he tell of the Marine who stormed the beaches of his childhood?  Can he look into the eye of God and spit into that purest source of light for engendering his soul in the seed of a father who did not know the secret of tenderness, a father who loved in strange, undecipherable ways, a father who did not know how to love, a father who did not know how to try?

“…. And can one boy who has said ten thousand times in secret monologues, ‘I hate you.  I hate you,’ as his father passed him, can this boy approach this singing God and can he look into the eye of God and confess this sin and have that God say to him in the thunder that is perfect truth that the boy has not come to talk to him about the hatred of his father, but has come to talk about mysteries that only gods can interpret, that only gods can translate? Can there be a translation by this God all strong and embarrassed, all awkward and kind?  Can He smile as He says it?  How wonderful the smile of God as he talks to a boy.  And the translation of a boy screaming ‘I hate you.  I hate you.’ to his father who cannot hear him would be simple for such a God.  Simple, direct, and transferable to all men, all women, all people of all nations of the earth.

“But Ben knew the translation and he let the God off with a smile, let him go back to his song, and back to his flowers on River Street.  In the secret eye behind his eyes, in Ben’s true empire, he heard and saw and knew.

“And for the flight-jacketed boy on the road to Atlanta, he filled up for the first time, he filled up even though he knew the hatred would return, but for now, he filled up as if he would burst.  Ben Meecham filled up on the road to Atlanta with the love of his father, with the love of Santini.”

This is a prayer as honest as the Psalms, which invite us to grapple and rant with a God who welcomes us even when all we have is a willingness to be made willing, a lack of aversion to redemption.  Enough.

Oh, and read Conroy.

Under Vows

Psalm 56:12, 13 says,

I am under vows to you, O God;

I will present my thank offerings to you.

For you have delivered me from death

and my feet from stumbling,

that I may walk before God

in the light of life.

There is great joy in these vows, which I approach gleefully and with gratitude most days.  This is the sort of gratitude that comes from getting out of prison and breathing free air.

Makes me think of another Psalm (31, verse 21): “Praise be to the Lord who showed his wonderful love to me when I was in a besieged city.”  I’ve lived in that fortress where the vows to God were legalism and shoulds, where I was sitting in a little wooden school desk chewing on my eraser, begging the Pharisees to teach me more.  It wasn’t a place; it was a mindset.

When recess comes, and you get out of there to play a little foursquare, and you see the hole in the fence and slip on through it, nobody’s going to entice you back in to that classroom.

And there’s a sweetness in vows that spring from having been introduced to freedom and light.  They are mine.

Burdens Not Optional

I was convicted today by a good article in the December 2008 Themelios journal.  Here it is:

http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/publications/33-3/the-gospel-and-the-poor

In this article, Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian in New York, is referring to St. Paul’s teaching in Galatians 6:2 (encouraging us to “bear one another’s burdens) and to Jonathan Edwards’ discourse, Christian Charity, when he says:

“Those who give to the poor out of a desire to comply with a moral prescription will always do the minimum. If we give to the poor simply because ‘God says so,’ the next question will be ‘How much do we have to give so that we aren’t out of compliance?’ That question and attitude shows that this is not gospel-shaped giving. In the last part of his discourse, Edwards answers the objection ‘You say I should help the poor, but I’m afraid I have nothing to spare. I can’t do it.’ Edwards responds,

In many cases, we may, by the rules of the gospel, be obliged to give to others, when we cannot do it without suffering ourselves . . . else how is that rule of bearing one another’s burdens fulfilled? If we never be obliged to relieve others’ burdens, but when we can do it without burdening ourselves, then how do we bear our neighbor’s burdens, when we bear no burdens at all?

I physically recoiled when I read this for I fall squarely in that category of folks who want to control how we give, manage the experience of sacrifice, and limit burden-bearing to something akin to signing up to carry someone’s Hello Kitty pink purse when the other needs me to help them roll a Sisyphian boulder up Mt. Rushmore, right over Lincoln’s craggy nose.

I’m willing to be willing to be changed. God help me.