Moon lodges, space amoebas, and bare feet

My sister Hannah and I went to the Firefly Gathering last week. It's basically summer camp for hippies (and their kids!) Here is their website. Overall, it was a pretty cool way to spend a couple of days. I didn't ever quite feel like I fit in with most of the crowd, but most people were super friendly and I learned a lot of cool stuff, and more importantly, I think, I'm inspired to go out and learn even more on my own. I had an idea of the crazy hippie vibe I'd be stepping into for a few days, and I tend to veer that way in some things some times, but this was easily the most surreal couple days ever. I'm not quite sure how to sum it all up, so I'm going to try a series of lists. I didn't take a lot of pictures, as it wasn't really the kind of event where people are taking pictures of everything, but I'll share the ones I've got.

List Number One -- Things that were inspiring, refreshing, fascinating, or otherwise really cool:

1. Not wearing shoes for four days. I left them in the car and went barefoot.
2. Little kids running around naked and playing in mud without being told to put clothes on or wash up.

3. Sleeping in a tent in a pine forest.
4. Earthy looking mothers breast feeding infants (and almost-two-year-olds) without anyone being uncomfortable or insisting they wear one of those little cover-yourself-up-lest-we-be-offended breastfeeding capes.

5. Meeting and learning from people who could go out in the wilderness and live entirely off the land, trapping and fishing and hunting and finding water and building shelters. Civilization hasn’t left many of these folks around, but I’d like to count myself in their number some day.

6. Being able to learn and experience skills and knowledge our ancestors had for thousands and thousands of years but that in the last two or three hundred years we’ve lost, like making fire or tanning hides or identifying medicinal plants.

7. Men in kilts. Men without shirts. Men with beards!

8. Un-judgmental hippies, like Natalie Bogwalker, the woman who runs the camp and who taught the hide tanning class I went to. She’d make comments like, “Yeah, I used to think ‘Oh, I need to do this the primitive way! But I’ll tell you, this PVC pipe has made my life so much easier. I figured my 20s were for idealism, and now in my 30s I can be realistic.’”

9. Kids running around fighting with sticks and swimming in the lake and climbing things, with no parents in sight. Parents looking for their missing children calmly and without panicking, knowing they’d find them eventually and that kids are supposed to run around and play without their parents. I hope I can be that kind of parent.

10. Natalie Bogwalker, the hide tanner, told us that she had recently butchered a lamb for her friends’ wedding feast. I just loved that it was a ‘feast.’ People in the Bible always seemed to be having wedding feasts, and doesn't a feast sounds so much more joyful and exuberant than a ‘reception’?

11. I went to a class called “When the Shit Hits the Fan” that was supposed to be about how to survive after we reach peak oil/find ourselves in a massive economic collapse/reach the earth’s carrying capacity and suffer a severe drop in population/the apocalypse happens/other nasty disaster scenarios, etc. etc. It was supposed to be about all this before it veered into batshit crazy land (more in List Number Two), but the point is that I realized how woefully unprepared I am to survive without all the infrastructure and services we take for granted. Like if my water and my power went out, and we ran out of gas so I couldn’t drive and the grocery stores were looted and empty, what would I do? I’d like to not feel so helpless, so this list item falls under the category of inspiring/terrifying me into learning more on my own. It also made me want to buy land and learn to shoot a gun.

12. Learning about some edible and medicinal wild plants. This is something I totally am going to learn more about on my own. (This is Indian Tobacco, or Lobelia. You can use it as an anti-spasmodic if someone's having an asthma attack.)

(Not my photo. http://www.prairiemoon.com/image.php?id=2480&type=D)

13. When (part of) our culture puts so much effort into pretending that men and women are exactly the same and should do exactly the same things (What a waste if a woman chooses to stay at home with children! She could be doing REAL things with her life!) because the only real difference between the sexes is genitalia and the habit of leaving up the toilet seat, it was refreshing to hear people acknowledge (even celebrate) that traditional cultures have always had a division of labor, and that women are designed to care for children (hence the breasts) while men then tend to feel more driven to go hunt and fight and things like that. Not that I plan to spend my life barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, but when so much of our culture insistently ignores real life because it's contrary to one ideology or another, it was nice to see a value system/ideology/what-have-you that is actually BASED on reality, instead of trying to deny it.

14. I made a blanket pin out of copper. It started out as two pieces of copper wire, and look how it turned out! Ha!


List Number Two -- Things that were silly, a little obnoxious, straight up crazy, or otherwise less cool.

1. Hannah and I accidentally attended a moon lodge (we were told we were going to a discussion group). There was a fire, and a woman called Sangoma leading the circle and asking people to “bring things to the fire.” We sang songs (“I have the infinite eternal inside of me…!”) and people talked about their chakras, or about having too much empathetic energy, or about African traditions surrounding the moon goddess. Hannah and I wanted to be respectful, so we sat and nodded and held hands when asked. There were ten or twelve women there, and everyone was incredibly serious and sweet. After we “released the directions” by turning to face North, South, East and West and addressing the spirits (or something) of each direction, I walked away being really thankful that my faith is so much simpler than all the ritual and chant and ceremony and complicated collection of goddesses and spirits and energies that these women looked to for meaning. I can’t imagine going through every day feeling like it was up to me to piece together a spirituality for myself, or to tap into the spirit of whatever, or that if I didn’t do this cleansing ceremony or that healing ritual, I’d be trapped by thus and such negative energy. That’s the great thing about being Reformed though. No having to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, no earning anything, no brownie points with God. As the song goes, grace is an amazing thing.

2. The guy who led our “When the Shit Hits the Fan” class veered off at one point from talking about bug-out bags and strategic community building, to talking about the reptilian humanoids who are ruling the world. Basically, there are reptiles that shapeshift into humans who control everything. The Bilderberg Group? The Illuminati? All put in place by the reptiles. The reptiles came from another dimension, or from space (or both?) and they pull all the strings. You can wikipedia a guy named David Icke to get the full story. It’s basically insane. The wikipedia article suggests that the whole idea is perhaps “Swiftian satire.” I hope to god that’s true. We also learned that space is like an ocean with giant miles-long amoebas living in it that suck our energy. Before he could tell us about the space amoebas though, we had to imagine a white protective bubble around us. To keep out the space amoebas, obviously.
3. There was a lot of jargon at Firefly. I could go on about other kinds of jargon that drive me crazy, like the church jargon that says things like “The Lord placed it on my heart…” or uses the single word “walk” to mean “Christian faith, life and daily experience.,” or using “gift” as a verb, as in “God has gifted him with so many talents.” To be perfectly honest, the Church has a ton more awful jargon than the good hippie folk I met, but there were two terms I heard more than once that just made me go “Eh?” One was referring to a woman as a “female-bodied person,” which was odd to me because I heard it from the same people who were talking about women caring for babies while men went out to hunt. Can’t we just say ‘male’ and ‘female’? The other one that I heard a LOT was people referring to their husbands, wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, as their “partners.” Straight people with wedding rings on. If you have a wedding ring, I assume you have a husband or a wife. I don’t want to be someone’s ‘partner.’ That makes it sound like the person you’ve committed to spending your life with is on about the same level as the guy who owns the other half of your real estate business. This is why I totally understand why gay people aren’t satisfied with “civil unions.” You want a wife or a husband, not a partner. So I don’t understand why straight people, who CAN ACTUALLY GET MARRIED, would insist on using a lame, businessy term like “partner.” Is marriage just too mainstream?

4. Judgmental hippies. A lot of people seemed to have a constant need to insert into conversations or discussions the things they DON’T do. As in “Well, I don’t eat canned goods, but if I did I bet that would be tasty.” Or “We don’t have electricity, so we lit candles for the ceremony.” Or “I don’t shop at the grocery store, so I haven’t eaten cereal in a while.” There are some situations where, sure, that’s relevant. But mostly nobody else needs to know that you don’t eat canned goods. Just say “That sounds tasty” and leave out the not-so-subtle judgment.

5. This could go into the jargon category, perhaps, but there was only really one person I heard use these terms so I didn’t want to blanket the whole hippie community with the embarrassment that SHOULD come from making up words. “Shero” instead of “hero.” “Herstory” instead of “history.” Please, please please, just use the English words. I’m all for referring to humanity as “humankind” instead of “mankind,” and I appreciate when pastors say “sisters and brothers” instead of always “brothers and sisters,” but there comes a point when you just sound ridiculous. Please just use the language we already have. It works just fine, as is.


I totally want to go again next year.

Bad Christian T-shirt Puns

I got my new issue of Christianity Today in the mail this afternoon, and they've got several articles about worship - what it should be, how it looks in the modern church, etc. One piece is an interview with a professor at Grove City, a gray-haired little guy with wire rimmed glasses, a buzz cut, and a bow tie, who has written a book called Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns. T. David Gordon is his name.

"Many believe that kind of [pop-influenced] music is more 'seeker-friendly,'" the interviewer suggests.

I guess I just really liked his response:

"But it's like reaching the rich young ruler by throwing money at him. . . I'm not so sure that accommodation to an individual's consumerist preferences is consistent with the gospel call. . . I'm not sure we should say, 'Well, what kind of music do you like? After all, we're just worshiping God here, and we have no standards other than what you like.' Saying 'it's all about you' isn't the way to go about evangelism. It might be better to say, 'You may wonder why we sang a hymn today written by Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century. We do it because we think it's a good reflection on what our Redeemer did. We don't really care whether it's new or old.' That might cause a person to say. 'Here's one institution in the entirety of our culture that isn't driven by consumer preference. Isn't that curious?'"

He put into words something that kept bugging me when I was church shopping last summer: our culture's obsession with consuming product after product after product has filtered into even our churches and our worship. Organizations whose motivation is profit, economic engines chugging along trying to make a buck, naturally bend to the whim of the consumer, as it's the whim of the consumer that determines the success or failure of their ultimate goal: making money. But what is the ultimate goal of a church, small 'c'? Getting as many bodies into pews every Sunday as possible? Growing big enough that you need four services and a satellite campus? Drawing thousands every Sunday by offering the most attractive spiritual product? Should faith be treated as another consumer good, when the ultimate success of the Church, big 'C', is not determined by consumer behavior, or by how many people prefer the Christian brand over the Jewish or Muslim brand in a blind taste-test.


I never liked those Christian t-shirts that make bad puns out of brand names. Besides the fact that they're sometimes embarrassingly cringe-inducing, I think what always made me pass over them at Christian youth events was that they seemed to be saying, "Hey! There's nothing wrong with a consumer-driven culture where our goal is to consume more and more, and where we identify ourselves with the brands we wear. Just make sure your brand is 'Jesus!'"
Shouldn't the Church's approach to culture be something more substantive than taking whatever we find around us and subbing in Christian words for the cuss words, and pictures of sunsets and butterflies for pictures of sexy women? Obviously the t-shirts are silly and innocuous, but I think Mr. T. David Gordon is on to something in suggesting that the Church should be something qualitatively different from its surroundings, something not driven by every marketing trend and consumer preference. Something that seeks the beautiful and the true, and not just the cool or the comfortable. No?

Do you know who Sarah Josepha Hale was?

Because I did not.

I'm embarrassed to admit that if you had asked me yesterday when Thanksgiving was first established as a national holiday, I would have had no idea. Today, in my internet meanderings, I discovered that it was officially declared a national holiday by Abraham Lincoln, in the middle of the Civil War, of all times. Cool, I thought, way to go Lincoln!
Then I meandered through the internet a little more, and discovered that it wasn't Lincoln's idea at all. A woman named Sarah Josepha Hale (who wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb) had spent 17 years writing letters to presidents trying to get one of them to make an official proclamation that the last Thursday of November would be a national day of thanksgiving. (FDR changed it to be the fourth Thursday so that the Christmas shopping season would be longer.) She wrote editorials in her magazine about a national Thanksgiving holiday, and finally Lincoln listened to one of her letters and voila, the whole country eats poultry, bakes pies, and watches football at the end of every November.
And so, for your cultural edification (and as a little reminder of how much more eloquent and literate people used to be), here is Lincoln:

By the President of the United States of America.

A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth.

By the President: Abraham Lincoln

I guess when you ask...

So I'd been feeling kind of church-less and un-rooted this week. I finally (yeah, should have done this sooner) prayed and asked God to find me the perfect church. I'd been going to this one for maybe two months or so, and it just hadn't felt permanent yet. I'd emailed someone about joining a small group and hadn't heard back, and I felt like everyone I met on Sunday disappeared the next Sunday to be replaced with more people whose names I wouldn't remember and whose faces I wouldn't recognize next week. So, I prayed. And hey, guess what happens when you actually DO that?

The day after I prayed I woke up and the guy had emailed me back about small group - they're just getting started but hope to start meeting this week or the next.

Then I find out that a friend from college who recently moved out of Charlotte went to Hope (this church) for three years and loved it and the people there. And he knows the guy with the small group and tells me he and his wife are lovely people.

Then I went to Hope this morning. The sermon was on this one idea that God has been pounding me with all week. The pastor reads the EXACT scripture that has kept popping into my head all week (Luke 12: 31). There's a baptism, and the dad reads this unbelievably beautiful "blessing" thing for his daughter that's, AGAIN, about the same idea. (And man, I'm a weeper when it comes to dads reading beautiful blessing things to their little baby daughters - sheesh.)

Then we sing two of my favorite songs at the end of the service (How Great is our God, and Be Thou My Vision).

And then the couple sitting behind me invites me to lunch with two more of their friends from the church. And they're just cool as can be and so friendly and legit, not friendly in a fake-churchy way.

Okay, thanks God, I get it. Church = found.

Fantastic Weekend.

This was a good trip. I’d been feeling nostalgic about Chicago lately, and missing parts of my life there, and contemplating in that back-of-your-mind kind of way what it might be like if I moved back some day. When I drove away in April I wasn’t leaving anything behind that I hadn’t loved for the time I was there. There were things I was moving away from, but not to escape them, just to grow up from them. So I was afraid that I’d get off the plane on Thursday, drive through the city, go for a drink, walk around my old neighborhood, and wish I still lived there. But I don’t, and that’s a really good feeling.

Since graduating from college I’ve felt kind of pulled from one place to another, without feeling like I could ever safely start to put down roots in any one place. Maryland was always a temporary stay, and although at first Chicago felt like it might be permanent, slowly that idea showed itself to be less and less likely. I told myself I wanted to move to North Carolina because I wanted to live in a place I felt could be permanent, but I’ve only been in Charlotte since July, and that’s not a lot of time for a place to really be home. Missing Chicago the last couple weeks was kind of unsettling, in an actual sense of feeling not-settled anymore, but being back for the weekend was just what I needed to feel settled again.

Everything was just as I left it – maybe some people had lost a little weight, my friends’ kids were six months bigger, new businesses had opened, new construction had started…but it was comforting to know the city was still there, and that my presence or absence makes very little difference. Comforting because it means I can go away for as long as I want to, and come back, and it’s still there. Nothing is happening that I’m missing out on. I think I’m always a little paranoid about missing out on things. Not that I really thought the city would disappear Brigadoon-style, but our egocentric selves have a tendency to imagine that if we can’t see things, they stop existing. It’s good to be put in our place sometimes. It’s good to feel small.

I heard a speaker talk last week about how we have such a hard time holding on to God’s promises to us, really trusting that he wants to give us good things. The guy was speaking in the context of relationships, and how often we hold on to relationships we know aren’t what we need, or even what we want, because we don’t really believe that God wants us to find the intimacy we’re looking for. We try to grab hold of what little of it we can get on our own. I think the same idea holds true in so many other areas of life, and I know for me it’s been a struggle to really hold onto the promises God’s made that convinced me to go out on the biggest damn limb ever and pick up my whole life and move it to Charlotte.

I had a great time this weekend, catching up with friends and spending time with people who mean a lot to me. I got pistachio gelato at L'Appetito with Shan.

We dressed up for Halloween (Shan was an owl, I was Mr. Rogers) but I failed to take any photos of our get ups, and will have to get them from Shan. I went to Covenant on Sunday, got brunch at the Bristol with my fantastic small group ladies and stopped by Pastoral later for some fancy cheese. I got to enjoy the 146, 77 and 50...none of which I can say I missed especially. Waiting for the bus though at least gives you the chance to look around and enjoy the outdoors...which was GORGEOUS and cool and the leaves were all yellow and blowing all around.

I think what’s even better about this weekend though was that God relented a little bit, and gave me a little reminder of why I really should trust him after all. I didn't freak out and want to move. I didn't notice all the things in Chicago I miss in Charlotte - in fact, I missed things in Charlotte that I realized I didn't have in Chicago. I’m still thrilled to be in Charlotte, I’m still excited for my future there, I’m still thankful for my time in Chicago and grateful for everything it taught me, and I’m still ready for whatever’s next!

Last Tuesday in Chicago

I’m not really the blogging type, but enough people have asked me to keep them updated after I leave Chicago that I thought it might actually be worthwhile.

The last week or two have been a series of ‘lasts.’ Last day at the nature museum, last day at work, last day at church, last day teaching sunday school (at least I got a nice picture of my class). Now it’s gotten to just be my last Sunday in Chicago, my last Monday in Chicago, last Tuesday, and will continue thusly tomorrow with Wednesday. I’m not much good with the ends of things.

But as much as endings suck, I feel good about my move. And I don’t really believe that whole parts of your life really ever end as permanently or completely as it sometimes feels like they do. Everything I’ve gained the past two years is still with me, and the relationships I’ve formed here will change of course, but I’m not moving to the moon. I have made great friends, and enjoyed a incredible city for almost two years. And if Charlotte doesn’t live up to that, I leave. No harm no foul. But I am finally starting to trust that God has better plans for me than I do, so I’m pretty excited to find out what they are.

There’s a sacred harp tune we sang on Sunday that I’ve always loved, and that’s been playing through my head the last two days. The one verse goes like this:

Why do we then indulge our Fears,
Suspicions and Complaints?
Is he a God, and shall his Grace
Grow weary of his saints?