Home from Hutchmoot

I've been at a thing called Hutchmoot over the weekend.

What is Hutchmoot?

This is a hard question to answer.

Thursday night Andrew Peterson described it as church summer camp without all the bad parts.  Another time someone called it "feasting as an act of war."  To me it was swimming in an ocean of words, beautiful words.

Hutchmoot is a community above all else.  It is community for people who love words in all the various ways they come to us-- in books, in poems, in songs, and in art.  This community gathered together from all regions of the United States.  Many of the participants were actual artists, but many were there, like me, because they love words.

We began on Thursday evening with a delicious meal and great conversations with strangers who would become known. The chef came out to share with us a piece he wrote that explained the origin of the menu (he did this every evening).  It was every bit as tasty and satisfying as the actual food.  The program afterwards consisted of performances of music and readings that drew us together with a sense of wonder at the beauty and craftsmanship we were seeing and hearing from each artist.

On Friday and Saturday there were sessions on a variety of topics, and they were held in classrooms named for the favorite authors of the organizers: Lewis and Tolkien, Berry and Buechner, Sayers and O'Connor, among others.  I attended "How to Be a Poem" led by John Pattison (whose books I am definitely going to put on my reading list).  It was based on a poem by Wendall Berry called "How to be a Poet," which you can read here.  As Berry explains his craft here, Pattison led us to think about how this poem might relate to the way God is shaping us into a work of art, a poem, to be put on display for others, and how we might participate in this process.

I also attended a session called "The Consolation of Doubt" which was all about the writings of Frederick Buechner (whom you should check out if you haven't read anything by him starting with Telling the Truth).  This class was led by Andrew Peterson who spoke eloquently about the influence of Buechner on his life.  It was also led by Russell Moore who is the President of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  I see many of his blog posts on FB, and it was great to get to hear him in person.

One of the highlights of the weekend was an open-mic event for poetry reading.  About sixty people showed up to either share a poem they had written or one they loved.  I wasn't sure I would like this and thought I might end up wishing I could tunnel out of the room, but it was very enjoyable.  There was an equal number of men and women who shared their poems, which surprised me a little.  There were poems on a wide variety of topics, some profoundly sad, others hilariously funny, and everything in between.  Hearing them made all the difference; poetry is made to be read aloud.

And so here's what I came away with...

One of the speakers referenced the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand.  He brought up an idea of the scarcity that the disciples saw in the situation and the abundance that Jesus brought to the scene.  I guess I had always thought of this scarcity/abundance in financial terms.  But this weekend I came to terms with my own view of the place where I live as a place of scarcity.  I spent four days in a place of abundance and left thinking, "What if I can change?  What if I can stop looking at my town as a place of scarcity and begin to see that there is abundance here too?  What if I can make a place for it and foster it, this abundance of thought and words and art?"

What if...

What I'm Reading

I spent the last three weeks in Canada just relaxing and enjoying our home away from home.  I did a little work too, but mostly I had lots of free time to read a lot of good books.  Here are some of the highlights.

An Hour Before Daylight by Jimmy Carter was a memoir of his days growing up in Plains, Georgia during the Great Depression.  He gave lots of details of his life on a farm, his relationship with the black sharecroppers who lived all around him, and his devotion to his daddy.  President Carter is a gifted writer and I plan to read some of his other books in the future.

Another memoir was Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  Although they grew up during the same time period, Angelou's experiences are in stark contrast to the life described by Jimmy Carter.  She has some beautiful descriptions of the people who surrounded her and impacted her life.

Quotes:
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision.” 

“Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.” 

On the religious side, I read Jesus Outside the Lines by Scott Sauls.  The subtitle for the book is what sold me on it:  A Way Forward For Those Who Are Tired of Taking Sides.  It couldn't sum up better how I feel about a lot of the issues we face on our Facebook feed every day.  He tackles many of these issues with grace and understanding, and I really appreciated his tone, even when I didn't necessarily agree with him on a particular subject.

Quotes:
"Our loyalty to Jesus and his kingdom must always exceed our loyalty to an earthly agenda, whether political or otherwise.  We should feel 'at home' with people who share our faith but not our politics more than we do with people who share our politics but not our faith.  If this is not our experience, then we very well may be rendering to Caesar what belongs to God."

"My friend Darrin Patrick...once said that it's naive to give yourself credit for hitting a triple if you were born on third base.  He also said that it's equally naive to expect a person who was born in the parking lot to get to third base without your help."

Right before we left Will purchased Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.  I have heard Tyson speak on several talk shows, and I always find him interesting so I asked if I could take it along.  Will agreed, and Phil and I both read this during our stay.   He talked about the wonder and amazement he feels about his studies of the universe and his excitement about all that we are learning from our exploration of space.  But he said that he was able to ponder these big ideas because his life is not consumed with having enough food to eat, finding clean water, and just trying to survive.  He made the point that we need to care for each other better all around the world so that everyone can have the opportunity to think about bigger and deeper ideas.

Tyson's amazement at the universe was very striking to me.  Here is a man, an atheist, who does a better job of marveling at the wonders all around us than most Christians do.  Shouldn't we Christians be at the front of the line when it comes to being awed by the things we believe our great God has created?  Having grown up in a culture that has always been very suspicious of science and its claims about the universe, I think I've been robbed to a certain extent of my ability to wonder at such things.  What a shame!  I want to find a better balance in my thinking between faith and science, so that I can marvel at the universe like Tyson does.

My friend Alex loves science fiction and fantasy, so he gave me Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card.  It was an excellent YA fiction book that kept my attention throughout.  Alex loved the action part, but I loved Ender's mind and the thinking behind all his actions.  Great ending too!  If you have a middle school age child, this is a great book and the first in a series about Ender.

Right before I left for Canada I finished this book, The Book of Joy  by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.  I learned a lot from this book and am still thinking about how to apply what I learned from these too.  Of course I'm not a Buddhist, but I thought both these men had many important and helpful things to say about learning to live with a great sense of joy in your life.  It was  a really delightful book, and I highly recommend it.

Quotes:

"Discovering more joy does not, I'm sorry to say, save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak.  In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily, too.  Perhaps we are just more alive.  Yet as we discover more joy, we can face suffering in a way that ennobles rather than embitters.  We have hardship without becoming hard.  We have heartbreak without being broken."

--Desmond Tutu

Finally, I listened to several podcasts.  My favorite was this one from the TED Radio Hour on NPR.  It was called "Beyond Tolerance."  The title comes from the idea that tolerance is not the goal, that we need to move way beyond just tolerance.  For example, if a couple has been married 40-50 years you don't want them to say that they've just tolerated each other all these years.  Although I didn't agree with all the speakers, I felt very engaged by what they had to say.  The most thought provoking idea came from Verna Myers on how we could have a better conversation about race and other important issues:

"If you were just the least bit more curious [about them]...

       If you didn't trust your own story so much...

               That's a start."

Maybe you'll find something here that will strike your fancy.  Happy reading!

A Sermon On Racism

Last month I heard my first sermon ever on racism.  It was related to the events in Charlottesville which happened back in August,

before Harvey,

before Irma,

before the NFL controversy.

Before the news cycle moved on as it always does.

But I can't stop thinking about something I should say, so I'll say it now.

I grew up in downtown Indianapolis in the early 1960's.  My family owned and lived in a duplex in a working class neighborhood.  I went to my neighborhood school that was only a couple of blocks from my home.  Most of the kids in my elementary school classes were white, but there were several African American students too.

But in the late 1960's my family did what lots of families of that time did.  We moved to the suburbs.    It was just a part of the middle class dream to have a place in the suburbs.  Nonetheless, we were part of white flight.  The new school I attended was 99% white.  The new church I attended was 100% white.

Phil and I moved to Dunlap right after college.  Very early on I remember seeing several events that were very racist, things I had never seen up close before.  There was a KKK rally and other times members of the KKK even took up money at the red light in the middle of town. (It was common practice by several community groups to take up money for their causes at the red light.)  I remember smirking about these things and thinking they were kind of amusing because it was so weird.  I couldn't believe these things were happening, but it didn't really bother me or make me think I should do anything about it.

Now I look back and think, "How could I do that?  Why didn't I think, 'I can't live in a town where people let this happen.'?"

I could think that way because no one I knew personally was thinking any other way. I lived in a culture that believed in being separate from those who are different from us. When I arrived in Dunlap there was nothing in my background that would have made me sensitive to the racism I encountered.

I'm very glad that things have changed in Dunlap over the years, although there is still much that needs to change in this area.  I'm also glad that my children and grandchildren are growing up to give much more thought to the subject of race and their relationships with those who are different from them.

So, given my background, it's not very surprising that I just heard my first sermon on racism.  But it is quite unsettling.

The sermon my pastor preached last month was based on Matthew 15:21-28 , a passage that can be somewhat disturbing.  

21 Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22 A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”

23 Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”

24 He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”

25 The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

26 He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

27 “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

28 Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.

Prior to meeting this Canaanite woman Jesus had just fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish.  Five thousand Jews.  Jesus tells her he can do nothing for her because he has come to serve one particular group of people, a chosen group.  He tells her he can't give her what she's asking for because she's a dog, a Gentile.  As much as I want to soften this in my mind because it is Jesus talking, I can't get over how offensive these words are.

Now this woman is asking for the crumbs, the leftovers, of which there are plenty.  The fact that there were twelve baskets left over from the miraculous feeding speaks of the abundance available in God.  Jesus is amazed by her faith and heals her daughter.

But the next thing he does is quite interesting.  

Jesus goes into a region that is mostly Gentile and preaches and teaches.  The people are hungry and exhausted, and Jesus decides to feed them.  Once again there is a small amount of food to distribute, but this time four thousand are fed.  Seven baskets are left over.  Seven, a number of completion.  So now Jesus commits himself to the spreading of the Gospel to all people, even Gentiles.

Jesus had an encounter with a real person who changed his perspective on what he was supposed to do, who he was supposed to serve.  Even though the plan all along was to include the Gentiles, Jesus opens the door for this maybe sooner than he expected.

I struggled to write this piece for a long time.  I kept thinking, "What's the point?  What do I want someone to get out of reading this?"  And finally I think I know.

It's not some earth-shaking discovery.  It's something we all know.

It's all about relationships.

A ministry that I follow and support has a saying:  "There is no significant change without significant relationship."

It's true, even for Jesus.  His thinking and actions didn't change until he met someone who spoke to him and engaged him in conversation, someone who needed His help.

So we have to speak up and challenge people's thinking about race and any other labels we use to separate "us" from "them."  And we have to seek out and intentionally develop relationships with those who are different from us.  We have much to learn from them.

I'm preaching to myself right now.  Ideas are forming in my mind about what I need to do next.

What about you?

Hashtag the Pirate

We always like to have some sort of skit at the beginning of chapel in the evening to make the kids laugh.  Sometimes we are successful, and other times not so much.  Because our theme was Treasure Island, Phil & I got an idea for a bit involving a pirate that grew into many good laughs over the summer.  We got the idea from watching Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show.  Jimmy has a regular bit involving guy in panda suit.  It's called Hashtag the Panda.  You can see some of the bit here.

So Hashtag the Pirate barged into the chapel every evening to wreak a little havoc.  Sometimes he challenged campers to games of skill.  Other times he kidnapped someone on the staff and held them for ransom.  He lobbed "cannonballs" on us from the loft of the chapel.  When asked why he was doing all this his answer was, "Because I'm a pirate."

Sometimes he made some of our friends walk the plank.  Fortunately we were ready for him, and we sent a submarine to save them.

During the last week we were trying to come up with some new things for Hashtag to do. (You get tired of doing the same bit every week.)  As we talked at the dinner table, someone mentioned sword fighting.  One of the staff kids, Alex, jumped all over that.  He spends a lot of time thinking of characters for video type games, the weapons they might use, and the moves they might make.  He will demonstrate them for you at the drop of a hat.  So we created a storyline that involved Alex fighting Hashtag.   When I asked Alex about the skit after it was over, he was beside himself.  "That was so exhilarating!" he told me.  It was one of my favorite moments of the summer. 

Another time I loved was our snack time entertainment on Thursday nights of camp.  Hashtag would come in and we would call up different campers to dance with Hashtag.  Random music would play, and they would all dance to whatever type of music came up.  At the end everyone who wanted to would get up and dance with Hashtag to "Cotton-Eyed Joe."  I don't have any great pictures of this because all the motion makes them very blurry.  But I did get a couple of the slower waltzes he did with some of the girls.

Hashtag ended up being quite a hit with all the campers.  All summer a host of different staffers played Hashtag, and the kids were always kept guessing about who Hashtag really was.  Hashtag even got mail once from a camper who said she knew who Hashtag really was.  Hashtag became a great part of our activities and our conversations, and I'm really glad he joined us for our summer fun.

The Story of My Haikus

I’ve been writing haikus.  Maybe you've noticed.

There’s a reason.

Christy and Ryan
Christy is crying because it is time to leave
and this is her last year as a camper.
But she found out she can come back next
year on staff!

Ryan and Christy are long-time campers, and they always bring lots of fun ideas with them when they come.  They came for Teen 1 week of camp and cooked up the idea of writing haikus.  Once they started, they got on a roll and couldn’t stop.  

They decorated their cabin with haikus and wrote one for every person in their cabin. 

They wrote one for the kitchen staff.

  

And they wrote one for me.

I'll have to explain about Hashtag in another post.

After I received their haiku, I wrote one back to both the girls.  When they received it in the camp mail I could see both of them reading it and counting on their fingers to see if I got it right.  (Some of you have been doing it too.)

So that is what got me on my haiku writing kick.  That and just being in this beautiful place.

For those of you that don’t know, the definition of a haiku is as follows:

1. a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five, traditionally evoking images of the natural world.

   • an English imitation of this.

I have found the natural world around me very inspiring this summer.  It always is, but I’ve spent more time noticing, paying attention.  And as I experience these moments, thinking about the writing of the haikus has made me focus on the experience in a deeper way than I might otherwise do.  Listening for the sounds, thinking of a specific word that really expresses what I’m seeing, paying attention to all my senses in the experience, has made all the difference.

Each year people, campers and staff, bring us gifts of talents and thoughts that bless us.  Ryan and Christy gave me a great gift this summer.  I am thankful for the treasure it has been for me.

What I'm Reading

I just finished reading this Pulitzer Prize winning novel.  I don't read enough fiction (Phil tells me) and so I went looking for something interesting.  I will tell you that it took me about 60-70 pages to finally get drawn into the plot of the story but in the end it was very satisfying.

The main character, John Ames, is a minister who is in his seventies and who is going to die shortly.  He has a seven-year-old son for whom he is recording some of his own history and that of his family because he will not be around to give his account to his son when he is of age.  The main plot centers around the minister's godson and namesake, who has turned out to be quite a rogue and a source of heartache to his family and to Ames.  It is a recurring plot in literature which you find in Legends of the Fall and A River Runs Through It and lots of other pieces.  And it is a common occurrence in families, so it resounds with people.

As always, I found a couple of passages and quotes that I liked, so I'll share them here.

"I believe that the old man had far too narrow an idea of what a vision might be.  He may, so to speak, have been so dazzled by the great light of his experience to realize that an impressive sun shines on us all." (Oh, I have known a few people of whom this is true!)

"The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning.  Light within light.  It seems like a metaphor for something.  So much does... It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence.  Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience. or marriage with friendship and love..."

Recalling an article he read from 1948 (it seems to me appropriate for today):
"...It says 95 percent of us say we believe in God.  But our religion doesn't meet the writer's standards, not at all.  To his mind, all those people in all those churches are the scribes and the Pharisees.  He seems to me to be a bit of a scribe himself, scorning and rebuking the way he does.  How do you tell a scribe from a prophet, which is what he clearly takes himself to be?  The prophets love the people they chastise, a thing this writer does not appear to me to do."  (I see many scribes today but not many prophets who love the people they are rebuking.)

"Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it.  I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave-- that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hand and to do nothing to honor them is to do great harm.  And therefore, this courage allows us, as the old men said, to make ourselves useful.  It allows us to be generous, which is another way of saying exactly the same thing.  But this is pulpit speaking.  What have I to leave you but the ruins of old courage, and the love of old gallantry and hope?  Well, as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame again."  (I am so struck by the beauty of this passage but it may need more context than I have given it here.)

Happy Birthday, Phil Kiper!

Phil caught these walleye at
Tims Ford this spring.

Today we are spending another birthday apart since Phil is already in Canada for the summer.  I will be joining him in June.  I decided to share a piece inspired by him as I am so thankful for many things he adds to my life every day.

My friend Corrina is heading up an effort to write daily devotions for people hiking the Appalachian Trail.  In order to give people a taste of what this would be like and get them on board for this project, she has asked several friends to write pieces with Lake Junaluska (a Methodist retreat center) in mind.  She had a list of sites from around and about the property and each of us was supposed to select one.  Having never been there myself, I chose the lake... because I've spent a lot of time sitting beside a lake.

The other ideas in this piece come from conversations I've had with Phil about what fishing means to him, how he thinks about it, and the challenge it is for him physically, mentally, even spiritually.

Here is the devotional:

I have spent many hours sitting beside a lake and wondering at its beauty.  I revel in the shimmering reflection of the sunlight upon the water.  I enjoy the cool breeze that wafts my way.  I like the adventure of paddling along the surface in a canoe or on a paddleboard.  As I sit gazing at the water I see the head of a turtle emerge, or I hear the “plip” of a fish snatching a bug off the top of the water.  I see the ripples emanating from the spot, and it reminds me that there is much more going on here in this place than I can see from the surface. 

There is a whole world below the surface of the water.  A world where creatures are born and live out their lives.  A world where life and death battles take place every hour of every day.  A world hidden to our eyes.  It is a world that is alive and active whether we are tuned in to it or not.

My husband is a fisherman, and he focuses on the hidden world below the surface.  His boat is equipped with electronics that allow him to look for fish in the depths of the lake.  Because he has invested so much time in fishing, he has learned where the fish are, what weather will provide the best conditions for fishing, and what baits work to attract the type of fish in that particular area.  And because he knows all these things, he has become a very good guide and has been able to give many friends the best fishing experience of their lives. 

In the same way, there is a spiritual world that remains hidden to many people throughout their lives.  It is just as alive and active as the physical world in which we live, but unless people choose to see it, it will remain unknown and unexplored.  Our job as spiritual people, as spiritual guides, is to tune people in to this other reality.  Just as my husband guides people to explore and engage the world below the surface of the water, we are to help them see the clues and read the signs that reveal God’s work and purpose in the spiritual world. 

In order to do this, we must invest our time and effort in learning for ourselves how God works and reveals Himself to us.  We must develop the conditions that allow us to experience God in the circumstances of our own lives. And as we do this, we will be equipped to guide people to experience the invisible spiritual world in which God is always fully present and accessible in a meaningful way.

Hillbilly Elegy

I just finished reading Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance.  I always know it's a good book when I can't stop  thinking about it once it's finished.  To give you a summary of the book, here is the information on the book jacket cover:

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis-- that of poor, white Americans.  The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside.  In Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hanging around your neck.

The Vance family story began with hope in post-war America.  J.D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love" and moved to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them.  They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility.  But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America.  With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility feels.  And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.  Everyone who teaches school in our area should read this book in order to get just a glimpse of what some of their students go through on a daily basis and the effect it has on them.  I wish I could have read it when I was teaching fourth grade years ago.  Even though I was somewhat aware of the lives some of my students led, this inside look would certainly have added to my empathy for some of my toughest kids.  Even as a teacher of gifted children, I had extremely bright students who were coming from homes very similar to what J.D. described.  Some of them made it into the middle class.  Others did not.

Phil and I have recently been trained as volunteers in a juvenile court system program called CASA, court appointed special advocates.  In this program we are assigned children who are under the Department of Children's Services (DCS) protection.  Our role is to sort through all of the people involved in the child's life and advocate for a permanent placement that we believe will be in the best interest of the child.  The goal is to stay with this child throughout the time they are under DCS supervision in order to make sure the child doesn't fall through the cracks and get lost in the system.

Part of our training involved spending several hours observing juvenile court.  It has been quite an education, and in this setting we have observed many families who look like the family in this book.  It is easy for people in the courts (and teachers) to grow cynical in helping these families, but this book makes it clear how the system continually stacks the deck against these people. So Phil and I hope that we can interact with the people we come in contact with in such a way that we give them hope and a chance to make it out of the troubled situation that has brought them to court.  We want to think that anyone we meet might be a possible J.D.

The author makes a couple of other important points.  He firmly believes that blaming the system will never get you anywhere in life.  Everyone makes choices, and the consequences of those choices are the things that make our life what it is, good or bad.  J.D. also says that along the way he had key people in his life who made it possible for him to survive, and eventually, to thrive in the life that he has made for himself.  His story made me very aware of the difference one person can make in a child's life.

Another thought that I took away from Hillbilly Elegy is how fortunate I am that this is not my family's story.  My grandfather grew up in Kentucky and raised his kids there.  All of them left Kentucky just as J.D.'s grandparents and parents did and made it successfully into the middle class.  Many of my cousins are college graduates and have great careers.  But my family was not dysfunctional like J.D.'s, and I will always know that to their faith in God and their decision to live according to biblical principles played a part in their success.

Hillbilly Elegy gave me lots of insight, and I continue to think about the things I learned.  I hope many of you will check it out because, if you live here in Dunlap, there are people all around you who are struggling, and they need your empathy and understanding if there is going to be any hope of turning their lives around.

(If you're a person who is bothered by bad language, this may not be the book for you.  Mamaw Vance cusses like a sailor.)