And what does the Lord require of you?

I had lunch on Friday with my friend Pam. We've been friends since 8th grade, and together came to faith in Christ just as the Jesus Movement wave crested and began to recede. Our oldest children were born just a week apart. Our now-antique cats, Mike and Phyllis, came from a couple of litters of kittens born at Pam's house.

Pam has been an educator for all of her adult life, and I've always admired the sandpaper way she would put her hands on her hips and ask her administrators why they were doing what they were doing, and then come up with an innovative, red-tape free way to actually help her kids. She has always been the voice for her students, though her forthright manner hasn't always endeared her to the powers-that-be. She's remained remarkably unmotivated by a need for approval by those in authority over her, and at one point, even volunteered to take a pay cut in order to keep an educational program in place for another year because she knew it had life-changing potential for her students.

So you know what happened next, don't you? After many years teaaching at this school, the program was cut. And so was Pam.

"Justice" is a word swirling (at last) through the evangelical community in recent years. When Pam and I first began following Jesus, the word was either shaded with informational images of God sitting behind a judge's bench, declaring us "not guilty" due to the finished work of Christ, weighing deeds - or of those from more liberal, social action churches participating in C.R.O.P. walks or joining the Peace Corps. Now we evangelical/charismatic members of the Body of Christ are starting to realize that justice isn't just a descriptor of a theological truth or the domain of them thar lib'rals, but our birthright as members of the kingdom-revolution.

A few years ago, I read (somewhere, can't remember where) that the anger in us is wired to the beautiful and just character of God. When we encounter unrighteousness, something rises up in us that says, "NO!" That "NO!" is there to direct us toward God in order to cry out for justice, and to drive us to live the Micah mandate: "He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God" (6:8). Anger can scorch everything it touches - or it can fuel a life that loves justice, mercy and humility.

A life like Pam's.

Eatin' good in the neighborhood

I just returned from the Wednesday afternoon farmer's market with:

• Dead ripe tomatoes (my addiction)
• Bi-color sweet corn
• Imperfectly shaped green peppers
• Peaches so ripe they exploded out of their skin when I bit into one
• Homemade pasta
• Asiago breadsticks
• Mixed olives in anise olive oil
• Locally bottled white Sangria
• Garlic-dill jack cheese made by a small WI dairy

I am very aware that this is what blessing tastes like. And I'm grateful...

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Thought-provoking post of the day: Shawn Blanc's Fight Spot post about leadership. He writes about an essential component for healthy leadership - and it's not what you'd expect. But he's dead on.

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Here's a website that'll probably crack you up - or at least, give you a grin, just due to its complete absurdity. These are people who have way too much time on their hands.

Ch-ch-changes

Make it stop.

When stuff in our lives goes through a radical rearrangement - meaning, we're forced into some sort of change - more than anything, we want the discombobulation to stop. We want the old normal. Or the new normal. Anything but this horrible confusion that leaves us feeling like we're bobbing around in the middle of a stormy ocean wearing only a Looney Toons inflatable swim ring.

Make it stop.

One of the most helpful books I ever read on the subject of transition was placed in my hands shortly after I'd resigned from my staff position at the church and just before we decided to move back to Chicago. It was, of all things, a business book called Managing Transitions: Making The Most Of Change by William Bridges. Though the book is written to coach businesses through organizational change, it is actually one of thsoe books that seems to apply to just about everyone.

That book put language on a couple of things for me. First, that once an organization enters into its institutional phase, it will calcify or die. There is no way out of this death phase even though the institution may seem on the surface to be very successful and productive. Change and rebirth must happen, even though they run absurdly counter to the force of gravity and the establishment of "success" that catches hold when an organization becomes established.

The second thing that this book helped me to understand is that grief is a core part of transition. Mourning the passing of the old regime means wandering through the various expressions of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) on the way to the new.

My old cry used to be "make it stop". This "make it stop" half-prayer was comprised of: Man, I want the comfort of the way things used to be, even if they sucked that way. I'm angry and sacred that those days are gone. If only I could try harder somehow, things would go back to "normal". I'm so bummed that things feel so messed up.

In other words, "make it stop" seemed to have all the elements of grief except for acceptance.

So I am discovering that I'm in the market for a new kind of prayer as I navigate transition. Anyone have any good ideas?

July 19

Harry Jerome Marks

July 19, 1933-July 19, 1997

Ten years ago today, my father died on his 64th birthday, losing his 17-month battle with leukemia. There were so many events I would have love to have shared with him, so many funny stories he would have loved to have shared, and moments from my kids' lives he would have relished. He was a pretty simple guy - he loved a good steak, Johnny Carson, fixing stuff and telling stories. And humor. He was one funny guy, though those who lived in the same house with him knew all of his punchlines.

So, for my dad, who taught me comic timing and the ability to tell a story, here's my favorite Harry story:

I wanted to learn to drive so much I could taste antifreeze, so as soon as I got my learner's permit, I bugged him to take me out driving. He took me to an empty parking lot and then around a few neighborhoods the first time out. I didn't kill anyone, so he must have decided that I was ready for prime time.

Literally.

After dinner one night later that week, he drove us over to another parking lot, this one near the intersection of Lake and the Edens expressway. "Switch places," he told me. "You're driving on the expressway." It was the tail end of a Chicago rush hour. He settled into the passenger seat, lit another cigarette, and directed me toward the entrance ramp of the Edens.

"Get on," he said. I had no idea how to merge, or what to do about not running headfirst into those huge trucks. I was screaming that I couldn't do it and that I would get us both killed. "No you won't," he said. "Sink or swim."

We didn't die, though I saw him lighting one cigarette off of an already-lit one, something I rarely saw him do. He had nerves of nicotine.

When I was teaching my three kids to drive by gripping the passenger door in a death grip and gasping like a beached alewife (or screaming at them in sheer terror), I thought of my dad. Just about every time we got behind the wheel.

And I wished I could tell him so. I miss him more now than I did when he first died.

Happy birthday, dad.

M.I.A.

Where are they?

Where are the 18-30 year olds?

We know they're not attending standard-issue church. And they're mostly not attending the alternative churches developed to "reach" them. This issue has been analyzed and analyzed some more, by people way smarter than I. That's not the purpose of this post.

The Good Shepherd leaves the 99 (who are sitting in pews, slick auditoriums, and rented elementary school gyms) to find the 1. He doesn't chase down that renegade sheep in order to tell him that resistance is futile. The passage in Scripture simply tells us that the Shepherd hunts down the sheep and rejoices when he is united with it.

Perhaps because I have 3 young adult children - or because my little day job is at a place full of young adults - or because I read young adults' blogs, listen to the music they create, and observe and learn from the way they dress and interact with the older world - - -

- - - I admire them. I admire their passion, their willingness to ask questions, their creativity and facility with technology, their honesty, and their desire for risk and authenticity. I know that a few are starting churches and home fellowships. I know there are others who've cast their lot with other alternative types of faith communities (urban monasteries, discipleship schools, service organizations) because they want to DO something, rather than be passive spectators. Most of them are not interested in our slogans, org charts and pre-chewed cud.

There is a generation of sheep wandering. When I pray for them, I hear a soft bleating in my ears.

This morning, Bill and I were chatting with a nice man our age who asked, "If Paul and Peter came back and visited our churches, what would they think? Once they got past the technology, would they be happy with what we're doing? Singing? Proclaiming? Would they even recognize the message? Why?"

With all my heart, I believe that many of the 18-30 year-old wandering sheep may have wandered because they're looking for the Shepherd. They're not finding him where we've been telling them we've been keeping him.

Agree? Disagree?

Simply: a prayer

Turn your eyes upon Jesus

Look full in His wonderful face

And the things of earth will grow strangely dim

in the light of His glory and grace

This is my prayer for my children, my son-in-law and grandson...and for my husband and myself. What else is there to ask for?

List du jour

A near-perfect grandma day: Sitting in those butt-numbing chairs in an 76 db McDonald's Playland, watching your almost four-year-old grandson run and laugh, then going to the grocery store and letting said grandson sit in the front of one of those mutant shopping carts that looks like a fire engine while you shop, then watching some hideous cartoons on TV (when did newer cartoons become so visually ugly? And why?), then going to church with grandpa where the child hated the loud worship music but loved the bright kids' area, then hanging out together blowing bubbles at dusk before I tucked him into bed with a story and a prayer.

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Best post I've read in a long time: This Cerulean Sanctum entry, discussing the constant complaining about one another in the body of Christ going on in the blogosphere, over radio airwaves, in print and most especially, in person. I was simultaneously convicted by this entry (God knows I do more than my share of carping) and cheered (Dan Edelen's intelligent analysis is almost always fiber-rich food for thought).
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Dumb idea: Going to Taste of Chicago on a 97 degree day while on a new heavy-duty diuretic.


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Most under-used resource in my life: extended time with God. I discovered again in Kansas City how powerful it is to simply sit all day with an open Bible, a journal, and a desperate and impoverished soul. I read through Leviticus - an unusual choice, to say the least, but I felt strongly that this is where God wanted me during my time there.

Author Chris Tiegreen writes about Leviticus in his book Creative Prayer: "Sometime during a reread of that strange legal document, I began to smell the smell of sacrifice. The vision of a constant stream of blood flowing from that altar began to impact me. The aroma of incense, the sound of bleating, and the hazy air rising from burning flesh filled my disturbed heart. The busy rituals of preparation seemed to say to me over and over again that there was once a vast, tragic rift between me and my God, and there are two things I can never, ever take casually: my sin and his holiness."

In a place like the International House of Prayer, where there is so much worship going on, maybe Leviticus is exactly where I needed to be, for exactly the reasons Tiegreen describes.

Just my size

When I was about to turn six, I really wanted a Barbie house for my birthday.

When I sixteen going on seventeen, I remember crushing on a pair of Frye boots, and insisting that they would be the birthday gift of my dreams.

When I was twenty-nine (for the first time, as I often joke about being 29 again every year), I am pretty sure my birthday list included major appliances.

Sitting on the bubble of turning 48, all I could imagine wanting this year was a trip to Kansas City to touch base with some friends and spend time at the International House of Prayer. My husband Bill loves this place even more than I do, and we've always, always visited here together. But the last time we were able to do that was two years ago. Moving, book writing, job changes, stuff with our kids and life all managed to wallpaper our schedule with committments requiring us to be present in Chicago.

When Bill asked me a few weeks ago what I wanted for my birthday, I said, "Really, all I want is to go to KC." Through a crazy chain of last minute events, Bill said, "Go. Happy Birthday."

When I write that, it looks like I nagged like an acid-filled dripping faucet, but I didn't. I just said it. And Bill gave me the gift that cost him more than the price of the rental car to get me here. He's a man that could use a vacation, and craves long chunks of time with the Lord. And this the gift he gave to me.

It would be perfect if he was here to share it. (Next time!)