Category Archives: community

Wondering While I’m Wandering

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Headed to NYC this afternoon to spend a few days with my sweet brother enjoying autumn in the city.

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Listening to Empire State of Mind & hoping that Alicia Keys is right–that the big lights will inspire me. Looking forward to sharing some of that inspiration here upon my return.

I’ve been noodling around with organization, content, and concept here on Hope of Things Not Seen. As the weather changes I’m itchy to get things a little more accessible, warm, and streamlined in this little corner of the internets.

What’re YOU looking for here? What do you want to read more about? What do you like?

Lessons on Self-Worth from Facebook

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Do you ever stop yourself from doing something good, because you know there’s something better that you could do?  (and then, end up not-doing the better thing and do no-thing instead?)

In The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin uses the example of her friends’ birthdays: she’d mean to send them a card, or call them on the phone, but either the day passed and she forgot, or pulling out stationery and finding a stamp, or digging up a phone number just was too high a barrier, and she’d let another birthday–and another chance to connect–pass by.

Her dilemma hit home for me: if I couldn’t think up some clever or especially meaningful thought or wish to share on a friend’s facebook page for his or her birthday, I just said nothing at all.  My mind got used to ignoring the little birthday candle at the top of my newsfeed every day.

Rubin swallowed her pride, gathered all the pertinent birthdays into a program with requisite email addresses, and vowed to send an email to each person every year on their birthday.  Sure, a card or a phone call would have been “better,” but if the barrier to those actions was just high enough to keep her from completing them, an email was definitely better than nothing.

On my birthday earlier this year, I noticed that it wasn’t the clever memories or sayings that delighted me as well-wishes showed up on my newsfeed all day.  The messages that surprised and delighted me most were  from those people with whom I hadn’t had contact over the last year, but who took just long enough to notice that it was my birthday, and to write two or three words on my wall.  Just knowing that they’d thought of me warmed my heart and I started to see what it is that’s meant when we say “it’s the thought that counts,” or “90% of life is showing up.”–I’m often tempted to think that something’s got to be personalized, or super creative, or fantastically complex to be a good gift, or to be a job well done.

In and of ourselves, who we are when we’re just sitting on the couch, our very presence–that’s plenty for most people.

God created us to be fantastic, personalized, creative people just as we are, without energy-sapping window-dressing, complicated choreography, or intense planning.  Just sitting on the couch, doing nothing, “contributing” (in an economic sense) nothing–we’re plenty.

Shame, on Downton Abbey

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Last night’s episode (4.6) pulled forward Lady Edith’s plot line; her lover still missing in Germany, her pregnancy confirmed last week (4.5), she decides the only course of action available to her is abortion.  It’s not a matter of having too many mouths to feed (a tension explored in Call the Midwife), or that the baby is even unwanted–Edith gives a heart-breaking line about loving the child as well as its father–but the issue of society.

Society, decorum, expectations–there are lots of names for the pressure cooker in which Lady Edith found herself, and I wonder how much has changed in the ensuing century.

For example, it’s difficult for me to imagine that not one young lady at Duke University, my alma mater, fell pregnant during my tenure there, but I never once saw a fellow college student carrying a baby.

What sort of world have we created for ourselves when young women come to believe that if they are found out to be sexually active (like Edith, like Duke ladies) outside of wedlock, they’d rather put themselves and their child through a permanent and harrowing experience like abortion than endure nine months of a protruding belly in public?

Commenting on Edith’s “indiscretion” last week, someone said, “She should have guarded her treasure!”  And, indeed, wouldn’t it have been best for Edith and her friend to wait to engage intimately until they were in the (relatively) socially and spiritually stable state of marriage?  Of course.  It would have been best for each of us to never have lost our temper with out parents, or to not lie to our best friend, or to face honestly our selfishness–but do we always guard our relationships and our character so carefully?

It’s easy to commit to supporting and celebrating life, but when the moment comes that you have to choose whether you’ll tell no one about the “mistake” you’ve made, or let everyone–your family, friends, strangers–see the Scarlet “A” on your chest (i mean, in your belly), it becomes much, much harder (for many young women, it becomes impossible).

Lady Edith, and myriad young women today, are subject to this debilitating shame.  Of course, it is selfish for shame to be prioritized over the life of another, but the culture of social consequences still strikes deep; young women confuse perceived sexual purity as more important than life itself.

The Unknown

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On Tuesday, here in Columbia, South Carolina, we began to batten down the proverbial hatches for Leon, the Snowpocalypse.  Most children were out of school (though the weather didn’t start till after school time, Atlanta’s is a cautionary tale), the roads were treated, the university and the government were closed.

Among those of us who gathered at work, diverse attitudes abounded.  I was soon struck by the variety of responses to the same news, and realized that a bit of what we were experiencing was how each of us–where ever the impending ice-meggedon found us emotionally that morning–dealt with change and uncertainty.  Of course, no sleep the night before, or a big deadline, or experience driving in snowy weather surely affected our outlooks as well, I was struck that the way we respond to small things may inform the way we respond to large uncertainties in life as well (then again, a death in the family and a possible snow day are rather different things).

There were those who greeted the possibility as a gift–an unexpected opportunity for something different, an adventure, a change of pace, a tool to knock us out of the “norm” and into whatever the day or the weather might have in store for us.

A few others of us looked at the sunshine, the empty, dry roads, and slivered our eyes, “Is there really weather coming?” we asked the skies.  The existence of the storm was doubtful, its effect unproven.  These folk were unimpressed-till-snowed-in; crossing the bridge if it happened to materialize out of the sunny skies, pragmatically focusing on the task at hand till then.

Though there weren’t any in our offices yesterday, I suspect (judging from the empty OJ, milk, and bread shelves at supermarkets) that another significant group was gripped with fear of the unknown.  Would it come?  Would it not-come?  What would happen?  The anxiety of an uncertain future was debilitating, and so they busied themselves laying in supplies.

For a Christian, there are bits of truth in each of these life-attitudes.  We need not fear or be anxious about the future, but we ought to be wise as serpents, shrewd in our decisions and prepared for unexpected events (thinking of the virgins and their oil lamps).  Of course, we ought not run about as a chicken sans-head; being so preoccupied with the unknowable possibilities of the future as to forget the task we’ve been set to here and now isn’t for the best interest of our earthly companions or for the glory of God’s kingdom.  Finally, life is indeed a joyful adventure, though hopefully we can remember that when the weather (or a day) is unremarkable as well.

The Simple Way – Trinity Bible Study – Proverbs 31 – Week 1

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Intimidating as Proverbs 31:10-31 is, describing the Woman Who Never Sleeps, we dove in with determination on Tuesday morning, armed with bananas and coffee cake.

We compared Colossians 3 and Proverbs 31, recognizing similar themes and exhortations–realizing that this Proverbs 31 Woman is not an actual woman who lived, but perhaps an explication of Colossians 3:17, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Noting that Scripture is meant to be read with lots of layers–we mused about spiritual meanings for our Proverbs passage.  Maybe “snow” in verse 21 referred to more than low temperatures–perhaps it could also teach us something about frigid, dark moments of our lives and the promise God makes to us, that we need not shake in those moments.

Reading Proverbs 31:10-31 here at the beginning of 2014, we wondered what sorts of resolutions the Holy Spirit might hold for us in the verses.  We committed to reading the short passage slowly and intentionally a few times over this week, musing what we might be called to consider in our relationship with God in the coming year.