Nothing But Fancy

I have been thinking a lot about how to love others.  This weekend I traveled to Tallahassee for a dear friend’s wedding.  Over the course of the weekend I spent some quality time with a few people who have played a major role in my spiritual, intellectual, and emotional development.  Yet at the same time, I have missed out on spending quality time with some of the people I love most.

Both the reuniting and missed experiences have made me realize — my love for those dearest to me aches like the opposite of a massage.  Massages are uncomfortable on the surface but deep down they feel good.  Love for another person feels good on the surface but deep inside there is an ache that makes you wonder how love could possibly be what God calls us to do.

I am taking a course at Vandy’s business school about Social Enterprise this semester.  During almost every class I am jumping in my bones with ridiculous excitement about the opportunities in this emerging field!  A social enterprise uses a business approach where the primary focus is to make positive social change, instead of to make profits for share holders.  The profit is either put back into the enterprise or distributed to the people who are impacted.  The most well known example of a social enterprise is Grameen Bank, but there are countless others who hold the idea of a “double bottom line,” meaning an inherent social as well as financial value.

Yesterday our professor sent an email about Jacqueline Novogratz’s efforts in a social enterprise called Acumen Fund which is working on a project called Jamii Bora — an affordable housing project outside Nairobi, Kenya.  This is a piece of her email:

“Recently, I visited a development with 750 constructed houses along with thriving shops and a full-fledged school. More than 240 families – or about 1,300 individuals – have moved in, and many have painted the trim on their block houses, and planted gardens in backyards. Most thrilling to me was visiting Jane’s home, for I had spent time with her a year ago in her temporary dwelling in the Mathare Valley slum (here’s  my TED talk on her journey).  Her house was beautiful: trimmed in orange and green with sunflowers touching the roofline, it seemed a palace compared to the shanty where Jane had spent her life.”

After reading the email I watched the TED talk and discovered that this organization is truly doing amazing, sustainable, and authentic things to help people suffering from poverty.  I also love the idea of poverty presented in the video as measured beyond income.  Dr. Doug Meeks expands this idea beyond the physical domain and into emotional, relational, cultural, and spiritual domains.

Jacqueline wrote a book that was released yesterday called The Blue Sweater. I’m looking forward to reading it when classes slow down because I must continue to learn how I am going to change the world like Jane and Jacqueline — one step at at a time!

How does a person who… works 37.5 hours per week, has 9 credits of grad school course work, is training for a 1/2 marathon on Feb. 13th, and moved into a new house last weekend… have time to sleep or breath?!  I’m not sure… but I’m desperately trying to figure it out.

I have been told that the meaning of life is to find truth in the mystery of every passing second.  If life were a game of racket ball…  I am the beginner racket ball player watching the little blue ball of time fly past my heartfelt swing, only to pelt me in the back.

A song that was relevant to me when I was younger for a different reason, is replaying in my head… lyrics from This Mystery by Nicole Nordeman:

This routine is nice and clean from dawn to dusk
I rise and rest, I do my best
When will it ever be enough?…

Do You wish, do You want us to breathe again?
Say goodbye to the lines that we’ve colored in
Brown and grey from day to day
Do You cry, do You hope for all things made new?
Try and try to invoke us to live in You
That we might be the hands and feet of this mystery

My favorite sacrament of the church is Communion/Eucharist.  I grew up spilling grape juice down my dress and looking forward to the biggest chunk of Hawaiian Bread that they served at the summer camp I attended.  I have heard so many communion meditations (shorter sermons on Communion Sunday to keep the United Methodist’s happy), but never one that addressed the significance of the bread and cup that Jesus spoke of during the passover meal.

While reading for my New Testament class in The Historical Jesus in Context edited by Amy-Jill Levine (my professor for the course), Dale C. Allison Jr., and John Dominic Crossan, I learned that the bread which Jesus said, “this is my body” (Matthew 26:26) was called Aphikoman.  This piece of unleavened bread is set aside at the beginning of Passover and saved to be eaten last.  The Greek word Aphikoma comes from a word meaning “to come or arrive” which proposes a reference to a person who is coming or the Messiah.  The cup that Jesus says “this is my blood” (Matthew 26:28) is the third cup of the seder meal.  These are the scriptures that accompany the third cup in the reading of the Haggadah (the reading that accompanies the seder meal):

“Pour out Your wrath upon the nations that know You not and upon the kingdoms that have not called Your Name.  For they have devoured Jacob and laid waste his dwelling place” (Psalm 79:6,7).

“Pour out Your indignation upon them.  And let the fierceness of Your anger overtake them” (Psalm 69:25).

“Pursue them in wrath and destroy them from under the heavens of the Lord” (Lamentations 3:66).

This context is extremely significant to the meanings we prescribe to Jesus’ message and teachings!  Why am I just now learning this in Divinity School when I’ve taken communion in Church my whole life?

It would like for all the information that I encounter in Div School edify and strengthen my faith.  I would like for the information that I encounter in church to edify and strengthen my faith.

I’m not sure which is more difficult.

Three years ago this month I moved to Nashville!  Who lives in Florida their whole life and moves to Tennessee in the middle of winter?!  Me.

The first two winters I spent in a bit of funk wanting nothing more than to come home to a hot bath and blankets!

While I still love my hot baths and winter is still my least favorite season, I am beginning to appreciate some of it’s finer qualities!

Por ejemplo:

Snow flakes really look like the elementary white paper cut-outs!  As I scrape the frost off of Rhett I am enthralled by the crystal like patterns on my windshield!

When I drive on the interstate I want to point and scream about the icicles dangling on the highway cliff/hills.

The freezing weather makes me more aware of the blessing that I have the opportunity to get warm and there are so many who do not.

Snow days give me opportunity to get everything done that I have not made time to complete.

Tea is wonderful to drink anytime, especially with dear friends… but warm drinks taste more delicious in the winter!  Yet, I spend more time with a burnt tongue (I need more patience).

Art of the scarves… they are the most practical accessory (unless you consider a purse an accessory) and the bright colors liven all the winter neutrals!

I bought a pair of underarmor pants and when the weather is above freezing, I’ll go for a run.  40 degree weather produces the BEST snot rockets!!

Best of all, I am closer to the mountains to hear their call to come skiing !

Other ideas to fall in love with winter?

This past Thursday in my Hebrew Bible discussion class, we talked about the Aqedah or the binding of Isaac in Gen 22:1-24, where Abraham agrees to sacrifice Isaac per God’s request without any objection.  Our teaching fellow has never asked a “faith” question.  However, in more or less words she asked if this story makes us question our faith in a God that would test a human to sacrifice another human or propose murdering one of his followers.

One of our class mates mentioned the love he has for his own children and that it was not about God needing to know Abraham’s faithfulness as much as it was about Abraham and Issac and their experience.  I mentioned that I worship a God I can trust, not a God that I can understand or control.  Another classmate mentioned that this text is a way of explaining some of the toughest questions in life, without giving half-baked answers.

I left class feeling pretty good, but later when I thought about our discussion and what I said, I had a huge check with reality.  Have I really given up understanding or controlling God and do I really trust Him?

Recently I have been a bit of a hot mess.  Turning 25, being in Div school, having a real full time job, having a group of friends who love and care about me… makes me feel like I should have all my shit together.

I think God is asking me to take myself for a walk, bring some fire wood, and get ready to for a sacrifice of something dear to me.  Unlike Abraham… I’ve been dragging my feet hoping to get all my ducks in a row so that they can walk perfectly behind me.  Now that I’m to the place of sacrifice I see that he wants me to sacrifice not only the ideas I have about myself, but also the ideas I have about Him.

This morning for Children’s Sabbath Sunday we sang the song, “Prayer of the Children” by Kert Bestor.  We began rehearsing it weeks ago.   Much like all the songs we begin in Church Choir, I expect the theology to be simple and self-centered and music to be generic.  But this time we sang the first lines:

Can you hear the prayer of the children
on bended knee, in the shadow of an unknown room?

Yes, I yelled from deep within my being and kept singing…

Empty eyes with no more tears to cry
turning heavenward toward the light.
Crying,” Jesus, help me
to see the morning light of one more day,
but if I should die before I wake,
I pray my soul to take.”

I can hear them, I have thought about their prayers, cried about their prayers, and prayed their prayers with and for them.

Can you feel the hearts of the children
aching for home, for something of their very own.

If there were one kind of poverty that I would eradicate, it would be cultural poverty.  There are countless people who feel they do not have a place that is home or where people know their name.  I want to listen their story and appreciate their music, dance, and creative arts- to give them a name as an instrument of God.

I have never been able to get through the whole song without that feeling in my nose and tears falling down my face.  Even this morning when we sang:

Angry guns preach a gospel full of hate,
blood of the innocent on their hands.
Crying,” Jesus, help me
to feel the sun again upon my face?

For when darkness clears, I know you’re near,
bringing peace again.”

tears flowed down my face and somehow — I have to believe — I will help bring peace to all God’s children and end social poverty.

You can listen to the song on YouTube here.

Riding on planes has grown on me over the years. I guess it’s the economist in me that sees the benefit far out weigh the cost. I am a window seat girl. I will ALWAYS choose the window over the isle. The reason is obvious, I love the view.

I think the views are more beautiful on stormy days. The plane plunges through the flashing clouds, shaking with the force from the atmosphere and then, almost as if the plane knew it would find it’s rest, it perches above the clouds looking down in arrogance at the lowly puffs of water. The plane usually meets the gaze of the sun and the phenomenal juxtaposition of the grayish clouds and the rays of the sun make it impossible to focus on anything but trying to take in the view.

Tonight we reached our perch as the sun was setting. Orange glow radiated through the thin layers of clouds as if a wide fire caught specific areas of the sky. I just sat there staring and thinking about how much God must love pilots and people that fly in planes. Wait… I start to smile… It looks this beautiful every night, regardless of who is watching. God is creative and beautiful simply because he could be nothing less – not for pilots or people in planes. To think, the view above the clouds has always been this beautiful and God loves pilots and people in planes enough to let us see it.

Wednesday night the national tour of Wicked premiered in Nashville!  I got in line with about 90 other folks in Nashville to win lottery tickets — 2 front row tickets at $25 each.  I promised my roommate, Ash. B., that if I won one of the nights I would take her for her B-day.

I was there early, Nashville draws the lottery 2 hours before hand, not 2 1/2 like NYC… actually I ran there and arrived in a sweat because I thought I was going to miss it.  Regardless, I put my name in the black cauldron and prayed for the best.  Ash B. was on her way but couldn’t find parking and just as she arrived, they called out the first name.  That name was not mine.  Nor was the next, or the next, or the next…

Nancy Hawthorne.  WWOOO HOOOO!  I screamed!  I ran to the front, did a little victory dance and was all smiles as I accepted my little green button and gave them my $50 cash for 2 of the best seats in the house!

The show really IS as wonderful as you think it could be.  The talent was AMAZING.  Alpheba, Marcie Dodd, was phenomenal.  Every note was right on and her acting really captured the whole character.  Galinda and Alpheba made a great team.  Their duets meshed so well together, you could tell that (even if they have diva personalities) they wanted their combined voices to sound better than the individual.  (Galinda and Christine Daaé  are my favorite characters on Broadway – in another life I will perform both musicals on Broadway.)  Galinda, Heléne Yorke, did a quirky and fun job with the part and she has a dynamic voice.  Seeing the show from the front row was an experience that I will never forget.  The Broadway theatre has a much more intimate feel (TPAC is gigantic)… but the front row is incredible.  Don’t buy $55 cheap seats… that’s not the way to see it… there are so many nuances that are just too good to miss.  AND, if you’re going to spend $150… go see it on Broadway, the venue is much better.

The next morning when I got into work, Jerry (my boss) said, “I saw your huge smile on News Channel 5 last night!  Congratulations on winning the ticket lottery!”

I’m glad that all of Nashville experienced my victory dance!

When I step foot in the divinity school I feel like orphan Annie in Daddy Warbuck’s house.  I want to run through the halls singing, “I think I’m gonna like it here!”  The thing that stops me is a future professor engraving me in their mind forever as the “first year musical psychopath. ”

I still have all the excitement and not the overload shock that some of my fellow students feel because I’m only taking one class.  Yes, unbelievably, the Board of Higher Education and Ministry will not let the little publications/office assistant off of her job for more than one class worth of time to get higher education for future ministry.  Therefore, I’m working full time and taking “Into to Hebrew Bible” with Douglas Knight.  (Despite the fact that he’s a Vanderbilt Rock Star Professor… he did not show up to class with an electric guitar… disappointing, being that we’re in Nashvegas.)  Regardless of the number of classes, I am so thankful for the opportunity to begin this journey and I pray to be a good steward of this remarkable gift!!

Besides the opportunity to combine my spiritual and intellectual domains in a grand and glorious grad degree, my favorite part of the journey thus far has been my INCREDIBLE colleagues.  It’s phenomenal to meet person after person that desires to change the world, pursue social justice, and eradicate poverty.  Due to past experience, I believe that God always finishes the things that he starts… to think that God will finish His goal through and in each one of us makes me want to explode with joy!!!!

Yet, with all of this excitement and joy there is still something deep inside of me that is unresolved and uncertain.  It’s not wondering if Div school or Vandy is right for me… It’s deeper inside of me, deeper than I can articulate with words… but it’s there and I feel it… mostly when I turn off the the noise and sit in the silence.  It’s deeper than I can reach and God is reaching it… these are words I read tonight from Henri Nowen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love:

“You are not yet there, but you are moving fast.  There will be a bit more pain and struggle.  You have to dare to live through it.  Keep walking straight.  Acknowledge your anguish, but do not let it pull you out of yourself.  Hold on to your chosen direction, your discipline, your prayer, your work, your guides, and trust that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear.”

Love conquering all of me.  That’s what I hope this journey is about.