Christian Awkwardness (1)

For the past few years, I’ve been wondering, what is it that makes Christians so awkward?

At first, I thought it was their weird language, Christianese. Christians throw around terms like sanctification, tribulation, salvation, fellowship, and hallelujah. Does anyone else use words like this? Ever? Christians may ask you questions like, “Have you been born-again?” “Have you invited Jesus into your heart?” “Do you have eternal life?” What? Then, if you meet some smarty-pants Christians, they’ll talk like they’re from another planet. They might talk about the propitiation of Christ’s sacrifice, our sinful concupiscence, the antinomian controversy, amillenialism vs. premillenialism. These cats may study soteriology and pneumatology, and they may bring up two of my favorite terms: supralapsarianism and infralapsarianism.

To which most people respond, What the hell are you talking about?

“Well, it depends on which hell you are talking about. Gehenna, Hades, or Tartaro?” says Mr. Educated Christian.

But the more I thought about it, I realized every field of study has its own lingo. Mathematicians talk about asymptotes and the anti-derivative of a function and a regular dodecahedron. Business people talk about procurements and the elasticity of demand, and they have acronyms like CFO, LLC, and CPI. Those things considered, I guess theologians can use their own lingo if they please.

But if it isn’t the lingo, what could account for this Christian awkwardness?

March Madness

I love to play with words. And ideas.

March is madness. I mean, in what other month do we describe the weather as a lion or a lamb? And college basketball, oh yes, Cinderellas still make it in the Big Dance. And yes, every year I am amazed at how horribly my bracket turns out. It is truly madness! Incomprehensible madness!

But what about today’s holiday? Could it also fit in with the theme of madness? It does happen in March, after all.

So, let’s look at what we have to work with. We have a Saint called Patrick, a pot of gold, a four leaf clover, a leprechaun, the color green, Ireland, luck, and lots of beer. Lots and lots of beer! How does it all go together?

Well, Ireland is green, and so are four-leaf clovers. Good start, eh?

The saint was a Catholic, and Catholics like beer. Another connection. 😉

Leprechauns are the weirdos who put their coins in a pot of gold at the end of rainbows. Another!

And, if you drink beer you increase your chances of getting lucky. Right?

I’d love to leave it at that, just for the sake of comedy. You know me, though, I have to dig deeper and try to find the truth of the matter. So, as I was digging, I learned that getting lucky and drinking beer have not always been the focus of the holiday. Irish pubs actually used to be closed on two days of the year–Good Friday and St. Patrick’s Day. I also learned the traditional color associated with Saint Patrick was not green, but blue. As for Patrick, the clover had something to do with him, as you can see in the icons or stained glass images of him. But if you look carefully, you’ll notice he wasn’t carrying a four-leaf clover. It was a three-leaf clover. Supposedly, he used a clover to try to explain the Holy Trinity.

I appreciate his effort, I guess, but I’m not going to follow in his footsteps. Trying to explain the Trinity is madness as well. Cheers, anyone? “To the Madness!”

Old Men

The other day, an old man boarded the bus. After paying his fare, he quietly thanked the bus driver for the ticket and sat down in the nearest seat. He shifted to find comfort, then crossed his hands on his cane for support. He didn’t look around, he didn’t say a word. He looked straight ahead, appearing content to stay alone in his own little world.

I wanted to get inside. I wanted to know what he was thinking about his surroundings, about his life. I wanted to know if he was living in the moment or if he was relishing in the past or if he was looking forward to the end. Was he thinking about how Portland used to look when he first moved here 60 years ago? Was he thinking about how he used to fill up his own car with $2 and drive the countryside, not spend $2 for a bus ride to the nearest supermarket, or $2 for a half gallon of gas? Was he thinking about the weather, hoping for the next sunny day?

Old men have always intrigued me in this way. They seem content to stay quiet, to only speak if spoken to, to not worry about their clothes matching and the like. They seem to know how people work, how life works. They aren’t surprised. They aren’t rushed. They aren’t worried. They go about their day in their own unique way.

I want that.

Home

The word “Home” can bring any number of responses to mind. For some, it brings back the smell of mom’s chocolate chip cookies. For some, it brings back memories of playing with dad, catch in the yard or hoops in the driveway. For some, it brings back harsher memories. Maybe home reminds us of a yelling father, an alcoholic father, or an absent father. Maybe home reminds us of stained carpets, dirty dishes, cans of beer, and cigarette butts overflowing the ashtray. Perhaps you never wanted friends to come over because you were ashamed of your family. Or, perhaps you always wanted friends to come over because you had so many cool toys and games to show your friends.

Home, for me, consists of three pieces:

First, there is a landscape. That landscape is the Pacific Northwest. I love the mountains, the evergreens, the waterfalls, the ocean. These things soothe my soul in a way that words can’t express.

Home also includes a group of familiar faces and places. This home resides in Indiana. It has faces like mom, dad, bro, Behr, so on and so forth. It has places in Montgomery County, in the Upland and Marion area, in the greater Indianapolis area.

The third component of home, for me, resides in books. There, I meet the wisdom of ages past. I meet the men and women who have made a difference. I meet the ideas that have shaped our government structures, our economic structures, our social structures. I meet the good, the true, the beautiful.

Somewhere, I think the three of those will converge. But I haven’t been there yet…

Weather (3)

In that poem I was talking about–the one about people being like trees–the poet uses another striking image. He says wicked people are not like trees. Wicked people are like chaff.

For those of you who live in Indiana, you know what the poet is talking about. Chaff is the husk from grains or corn. It is the shell you peel off of the wheat. It is the husk you peel off of the corn. Chaff is the worthless stuff. It has no use. You can’t eat it. It doesn’t produce anything. You can’t watch it grow. It doesn’t hold water or sunlight. Chaff falls by the wayside. It is blown away in the wind.

There are times you may stand around admiring the height or beauty of a tree, especially if you live in a place like Oregon. Trees are huge out here. In Oregon, you may even get carried away and start to hug a tree. But that’s beside the point. The point is, when was the last time any of us stood around admiring a piece of chaff? And how many of us long to be a wicked person?

Weather (2)

I just realized the last line of the previous post could have been read in two ways: 1. You could think that I will continue my thoughts tomorrow; 2. You could think the rain causes people, specifically me, to procrastinate. Either way you read it, you’re correct. But let’s move onto my third thought about the rain in Portland.

The rain makes me think about a poem. If you’ve ever started to read the Psalms, you’ve come across this idea of a man being like a tree. A tree needs water. A tree needs sunlight. A tree needs dirt. A tree needs strong, deep roots. When you look at a tree rising up toward the heavens, what you often don’t think about is that there is a whole lot going on below the ground. We don’t have to be botanists to know this is the case. For trees, and for us, much of life is going on beneath the surface, below what the eye can see and beyond what the hands can touch. This hidden life is hardly known by anyone else, but, in some ways, it determines what we see going on above the ground.

Life above the ground is active as well. But this part is visible to all. Here, we see the trunk, the branches, the leaves, the fruit. We see the weather, too. Sometimes, life is harsh. The snow is weighing down on the branches, causing a snap. Maybe it’s been raining for weeks or months at a time and as much as we don’t want others to see it, they see it. It’s all over our countenance. We hear it in each other’s voices. We know what seasons people are going through.

But let me ask a question, when are we growing? Only in the sunshine? Or are we growing in the rain, too?

Weather (1)

In case you didn’t know, it rains in Portland. Often. Menudo. Vaak. Souvent. Spesso. (Depending on if you speak Spanish, Dutch, French, or Italian)

When it rains this much, I start to think:

1. There are a lot of depressed people. We Portland folk simply are not receiving enough Vitamin D. When the sun doesn’t come out for weeks at a time, what do you expect us to do? Take supplements? I think not. We’ll bask in our depression, our coffee, our books, instead.

2. It is because of the rain that Portlanders roll up the bottom of their skinny jeans. It’s not so much that we want to look cool as much as we don’t want the bottom of our jeans to be soaked. Same with the knit hats and the hoodies. We just want to protect our hair. Umbrellas? Psshh.

3. The rain makes me think…I’ll get to that tomorrow.