Day Twenty Three: Three Days Till Shane Claiborne

Sunday Jen and I are driving down to Waco to listen to Shane Claiborne, the guy who inspired our resolution to live simply or at least the guy who showed me that it could be a transforming ministry and not just a protest against consumerism.  I have been looking forward to this for a while now for two reasons;
1) I had to miss Shane Claiborne the last time he came to Texas because he spoke at a social justice conference on a Sunday morning when I was teaching and
2) He’s preaching at “Church Under The Bridge,” a worship service for the homeless which I have been fascinated with since I was in seminary but until this Sunday have not been able to attend.
I don’t know what he’s going to say.  I don’t really have any expectations.  I’m just excited.  I’m sure that I’ll see a few of you out there.

Day Twenty Two: I Bought Groceries

I realize that this is not a huge deal. Grocery shopping for most people is a mundane task that is abhorred yet grudgingly performed. This would be the case for me as well if I went grocery shopping on the weekend when the grocery aisles are packed with screaming children, militant soccer moms and indecisively slow shoppers. During the weekend, entering the grocery store is like entering the seventh circle of Hell. I can’t wait to get out of there. But on a Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 the grocery store is… well, pleasant. There are no angry people, no screaming children. There are still indecisive shoppers, but who cares? On Wednesday afternoon, the grocery store transforms from a place that you are rushing to get out of into a place that encourages culinary creativity. It is a marvelous experience. I was worried about sharing this information for fear that thousands would discover the secret to a pleasant grocery shopping experience, but with a readership of six I think my worries are unfounded.  Hope to see you at the grocery store.

Day Twenty and Probably Twenty One: The Gospel According to a Kleenex Ad

Jen left on Saturday to lead a week long mission trip in Mexico so I’ve been lonely for the past couple of days. For the past two nights after I get home from work the first thing I’ve done, after greeting the animals, is turn on the TV to combat the silence of an empty home. Today, no sooner had the TV warmed up than the Kleenex ad came on. The one where a guy sits down on a blue couch on street corners and listens to people tell their story and then hands them a tissue when they get emotional. It’s a great commercial. One of those commercials that I watch and wonder why isn’t the church doing this? Not necessarily getting people to cry and then handing them a Kleenex brand tissue, but going out into the world and listening to people, inviting them to share their story.  
How often do we actually listen to one another?  How many times have you been speaking with a friend and are more focused on what you’re going to say next then on what they’re saying?
The truth is we live in a society that encourages us to be ruggedly individualistic and this has led to us being extremely self focused.  We no longer reach out to others for help because it either shows weakness or we don’t feel like anyone cares.  We just have to do it ourselves.  And we’ve created a multi-million dollar self perpetuating “self help” industry that points out flaws that we all have and prescribes “quick fix its” that we can do by ourselves to fix these flaws.  The catch is that these “repairs” only make us more aware of other flaws that we all have but because of our sense of rugged individualism we think these flaws are particular to us and not shared by the rest of humanity.  We’ve gotten to the point that we live in a world of 6 billion people and we feel as though we’re going at it all alone.
And I think that the Church has to take some responsibility for this.  We are called by the Great Commission to go out into the world and share the Good News.  We are called to tell the story.  The funny thing about the story is that it is our story as well.  The Gospel is not limited to the story of Christ, it is our collective stories, all of our stories believer or not.  If we truly believe that God is active in our world, that God is involved in all of our lives then that means that God is present in all of our stories whether we are able to see God or not.  And that means as Christians we are called not only to share the story as we have experienced it, but to listen to the story as others have experienced it.  We are called to listen.
Unfortunately, it takes a guy who receives his paycheck from the Kleenex Corporation to do an advertising spot where he goes out with a couch into busy street corners and asks people to share their story to make us aware of this.

Day Sixteen: Beer and a Stolen Chair

One thing living simply does is lead to thievery.  That was my solution to the office chair dilemma.  I stole.  Really, it was not so irreprehensible as that.  I resorted to resourcefulness.  I simply went across the street to another building of the church and took an old office chair out of a storage closet.  Although it’s not as comfortable as a new office chair with multiple points of articulation, a rollerball massage and three heat settings it does the trick.  As for the art, I’m still on the look out because multiple people have commented on my barren walls though it seems to me that they would be happy that I didn’t spend money on decorative frivolity such as mass produced office art.
As for beer, the Gingerman has obtained one of the twenty barrels of Kentucky Bourbon cask conditioned winter warmers produced by Rahr Brewery and I was invited by one of my friends to come and partake.  He even offered to buy out of respect to my Lenten resolution.  This would indeed make enjoying this exclusive beer perfectly legitimate to the letter of the law but I would still be participating in consumerism by purchasing and consuming, though indirectly, a product which certainly falls out of the sphere of necessity.  And maybe it is out of a nagging sense of guilt from “consuming” only two days ago (though in my mind it was perfectly acceptable under the circumstances), or maybe it is because I have already made plans to attend the Metro-Board dinner, a dinner celebrating the many missions of the Church in the Metroplex, but I will not be consuming this “incredibly limited supply, once in a lifetime” beer.

Day Fifteen: A Chair is not a Chair

The problem with working is…
Okay.  So there are a lot of things inherently wrong with working, mainly that it’s work, but it has also created for me yet another quandary:
I have moved offices as previously mentioned.  The office that I find myself in now is wonderful.  It’s spacious.  It has plenty of storage.  It has a great view of a little garden planted by children at VBS last year.  It is practically perfect.  But the paintings on the wall have been removed as well as the desk chair.  I am writing this entry from an uncomfortable pale blue low boy.  Now I grant you, this is the chair that I ask guest to sit in when they visit, but as an all day work chair, it sucks.  If I had been in my office for more than a couple of hours today my back would be so stiff that I could hardly move (I assume this because my back is beginning to stiffen up as I write this).  So here is the dilemma, am I able to buy an office chair and some paintings to go on the wall?  I have no answer to this as of yet, but my back is beginning to hurt to the point that I need to get out of the chair.