Being Known

If all of your modes of self-expression through style were taken away--clothes, home, car--how would people learn about you? Through your actions? Your hobbies? Your idiosyncrasies? What sort of information would they collect? How would they know your favorite color is green and that you like west coast jazz? Would it matter whether or not they knew? Maybe they would know you by your family or your church or your clubs. Maybe you would be part of a whole. Would that bother you?

If you lived in a slum in Nairobi and your entire worldly possessions consisted of two shirts, a skirt, a broken comb, and a battered water jug would you feel a greater or lesser need for self-expression? Would people think of you as the woman who liked to sing or the man who was clever with his hands? If parts of you remained unexplored due to lack of opportunity, does that mean you would never make to Maslow's famed self-actualization? Never be wholly you? Never able to be known by yourself or others?

What do you want to say about yourself to the world? How do you want to be known?

My Latest Reads

The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society 

by Henri Nouwen

Chapter 1: Ministry in a Dislocated World

Mysticism and revolution are two aspects of the same attempt to bring about radical change. Mystics cannot prevent themselves from becoming social critics, since in self-reflection they will discover the roots of a sick society. Similarly, revolutionaries cannot avoid facing their own human condition, since in the midst of their struggle for a new world they will find that they are also fighting their own reactionary fears and false ambitions.

Jesus was a revolutionary who did not become an extremist, since he did offer an ideology, but himself. He was also a mystic, who did not use his intimate relationship with God to avoid the social evils of his time, but shocked his milieu to the point of being executed as a rebel.

Chapter 2: Ministry to a Hopeless Generation

…Christian leaders who are able to be critical contemplatives are revolutionaries in the most real sense. Because by testing all they see, hear, and touch for its evangelical authenticity, they are able to change the course of history and lead people away from panic-stricken convulsion to the creative action that will make a better world.

Contemplatives are not needy or greedy for human contact, but are guided by a vision of what they have seen beyond the trivial concerns of a possessive world. They do not bounce up and down with the fashions of the moment, because they are in contact with what is basic, central, and ultimate. They do not condone that anybody worship idols, and they constantly invite their fellow human beings to ask real, often painful and upsetting questions, to look behind the surface of charming behavior, and to take away all the obstacles that prevent us from getting to the heart of the matter.

Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes

by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien

When the "me generation" became Christians, we baptized this egocentrism. We now felt guilty for spending all our money on ourselves. So we gave it to the church. Mainly to our own local church. The church growth (megachurch) movement was led by baby boomers and populated with the "me generation." We built modern cathedrals with children's ministry spaces that Disney would covet. We still gave (and give) money to missions, but preferably for a trip that includes me. We sing the (beautiful) praise chorus, "It's all about you, Jesus." Who are we kidding? It's all about Jesus--as long as it's in a service I like, in a building I like, with people I like, with music I like, for a length of time I like. At some point in this generation, "Take up your cross and follow me" changed into, "Come to Jesus and he'll make your life better."

Just Do Something:  A Liberating Approach to Finding God’s Will 

by Kevin DeYoung

…God wants us to sit at His feet and read His Word so that we can live a life in the image of His Son. God doesn’t tell us the future for this simple, profound reason: We become what we behold. God wants us to behold Him in His glory so that we can be transformed into His likeness (2 Corinthians 3:18). If God figured out everything for us, we wouldn’t need to focus on Him and learn to delight in His glory. God says, “I’m not giving you a crystal ball. I’m giving you My Word. Meditate on it; see Me in it; and become like Me.”

Note: I’m not convinced of this “become what we behold” statement, but I like the thought of this paragraph. God does not tell us the future because He knows that it is better for us to focus on Him.

The Stoic Type

Well, I thought two weeks of illness and lack of internet were good excuses for not posting, but then my (admittedly clever) friend who is bursting at the seams pregnant and corralling a two-year-old wrote this wonderful blog post about William Wilberforce, unjustly forgotten hero of the seventeenth century. My new excuse for not posting is that I'm too busy coming up with better excuses for not posting. 

Me this past week (minus the snow)

Good Art is Honest

Lately when touring art museums  I have been inspired as much by the pre-twentieth  century artists' creativity as I have been by their creations. This will be a given for some of you, but in younger years, I did not so readily appreciate how these artists were pioneering styles and techniques. In an age before photographic reproduction and art supply stores, they were inventing entirely new ways to depict what they viewed. Our modern eyes unknowingly see the compilation of centuries of work in ads, movies, comics, and even technology. Perhaps Seurat was the grandfather of pixels and Warhol the step-uncle of anime. Next time you use your kids as an excuse to watch a Pixar film, think of Vermeer delicately mixing his own paints in the elusive Dutch light and Van Gogh forlornly cutting sunflowers for a still life after yet another country girl refused to give him her hand...or an ear.

Manet's Bar at the Folies Bergere

Klimt's The Kiss

Degas' The Four Dancers

Picasso's Child with a Dove

Quoteables X

Text from my sister who lives in Northwestern Texas: "Got an oil change and a car wash. Got back in my car and it was playing country music. Shakes head."

My youngest sister describing her friend: "She reminds me of you actually. When people are doing silly or stupid things...she doesn't engage. She just sort of watches with a bemused smile on her face."

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, even though I am a lot younger than you, I haven't met anyone that I would consider being in a serious relationship with -- and I have MUCH lower standards than you!" ~ Anonymous

Me: "I'm not free on Friday. I have a movie date."
My friend K who charmingly but perplexingly persists in assuming that 92% of my male acquaintances ages 15-72 are secretly in love with me*: "OH!"
Me: "Don't get too excited. It's with a middle-aged man and his wife."
K: "Oh..."

*I know, I know, it's odd, right? But don't you wish she was YOUR friend too?