Quote of the day

"There cannot be a crisis next week.  My schedule is already full."

- Henry Kissinger

Jon's wedding

A few shots from my brother's wedding:

Adam and me

vows...

Jon and Laurie, recessing down the aisle

My parents

the wedding party -- 18 attendants, plus flower/ring kids!

It was a wonderful day. I couldn't stay up for the whole reception because I'm a pansy, but I danced with aunts, uncles, and cousins, drank the homemade limoncello, and had an all-around good time.

off to Jon's wedding

I found a dress.
I have a black wrap to keep warm -- since it's going to be rainy and cool in St. Louis.
I've got an almost fully-formed sermon done.

And I'm very excited -- my little brother, getting married? Jon is three years younger than me. We were buddies, growing up: equal parts loving and annoying to each other. I was (just a little) bossy, and I liked to do things like make my sensitive little brother cry, or fake that my legs had become crippled one day after school, before our parents got home. Now that was bad. Damn acting skills. And yet, we walked to school together every day (in the city, where that is actually still possible), we watched cartoons together, we told jokes that only the other sibling ever understood.

And now my little brother is marrying a wonderful woman, who bosses him around (a little anyway, right Laurie?), laughs hysterically with him over their jokes -- they cook together, they throw parties, they play softball, they work out, they watch nutty TV shows, she goes to his band gigs, he goes babysitting with her... they're a wonderful couple. I'm glad Jon and I could be there for each other, growing up, and now I'm glad that Jon and Laurie can be there for each other, and that Adam and I can be there for each other.

Sometimes I think love is just all about luck. You can't earn a great partner, you can't go shopping for one at Sam's Club, you can be the best person ever and it doesn't mean that you'll have the luck to find another person to share your life with, or of course, even that your marriage will last forever. This is classically unfair.

But I give thanks for all the grace God gives, whether it's the grace of marriage, or the grace of a vocation, or the grace of friends, or the grace of a healthy body, or the grace of a talent or desire that can be fulfilled. And it makes me think of Herbert's poem -- since I'm Episcopalian, I often think of love or grace as like a table, set for us:

Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-ey'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.

"A guest," I answer'd, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord, but I have marr'd them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.

Where your treasure is...

From theolog.org (my new favorite site to cite, lately!)

Talking to the “end-times economists”

by Amy Frykholm

Last week, on American Public Media’s Marketplace, I heard something remarkable.

Reporter Sean Cole went on a lighthearted mission to check in with a few “end-times economists.” It wasn’t the content of what he found—that the DOW somehow coincides with “biblical...perfect completion,” and that the Internet’s “Rapture meters” are heating up—that I found interesting. What was truly unusual was the way that Cole ended his report. “Whether you're a believer or not,” he said, “maybe now is a good time to ask ourselves what we worship.”

It’s discouraging to see people interpreting everything that happens as prophetic fulfillment of some random verse of the Bible. But I was struck that Cole neither took these Christians' concerns too seriously nor poked fun at them—instead, he transformed them into ancient wisdom. Whether he intended this reference or not, it was easy to hear: “Where your treasure is there your heart will be also.”

Small update on the car

Mysteriously, my car has been working just fine. I was sure it would never start again. But then it did! I talked to a couple mechanics. One thought I needed a new clutch assembly. Another listened to my list of misbehaviors and said, "Hmm. None of those things sound related to me. And if it's working again, there's not much we can do to figure out what's wrong." The first mechanic also asked for my husband's phone number, in case there were questions he had that I didn't understand. Not sure I'm going back to that place.

So, we get a little more time to ponder our next step. I like the Honda Fit, and we might go ahead and make an investment in a new or slightly used one before the new year. Although it is going to cut a chunk in our budget! The nice thing about old cars is that they're paid for and they cost less to buy insurance for.

But the tricky thing about old cars is you're never sure just when they might stop working again. Needless to say, we're driving Adam's car to St. Louis tomorrow.

My brother's wedding

My brother is getting married this weekend in St. Louis. I'm officiating at the service, which will be wonderful, but it also means I have a little more to do to get ready! We're leaving tomorrow morning.

I have my "script" ready to go (with all the vows, blessings, etc.).
I need to write my little sermon -- although I have some bare bones to start with.
I have my stole and alb ready.
But I need to buy a dress!!!

I'm going to wear my collar for the ceremony, under the alb, but I want to change out of my professional clothing for the reception. Problem is, I just haven't gotten myself out to brave the stores until, um, today. And the wedding is Saturday. I had thought I would go all the way to Oak Brook to shop, to have more choices, but it's a 25 minute drive. Or I could take my chances with the Macy's here in Bolingbrook -- it's a small Macy's, but it's close, and surely they would have something??? Sigh.

Lucky thing about weddings is that when you're not the bride, you don't have to worry so much about what you're wearing.

Supporting kids and refugees in East Africa

A little publicity: This Sunday and next Sunday at St. Benedict, we're selling crafts made in Africa, through a mission organization called African Team Ministries that supports AIDS orphans, refugees, and school children in East African countries. Come on down and buy a necklace, some napkin rings, wooden sculptures of animals or nativities, and other fun stuff!

Public graves

My friend, Jesse Zink, is in South Africa working at an AIDS clinic and orphanage through the Episcopal Young Adult Service Corps.

But Jesse's recent blog entry on a funeral for a 10-month old baby really brings home the way people is most parts of the world live with death as a constant. He posts this photo of a row of empty child-sized graves, "waiting to be filled."

Can I imagine living in a community where there are empty graves, that I might walk by every day on my way to work, just waiting... prepared for the inevitable? And for children??? A not just a few, a long row of them.

In this country, most of us are cremated and blown into the wind; often, our deaths don't leave visible markers. Even at churches with columbariums (with niches for ashes) or memorial gardens, the markers for a death are small, often just a name plaque, and all but invisible to the public eye.

I'm not exactly an advocate for bringing back cemetaries, I am just noticing differences in how death is, and is not, a part of my life and our public life.

The view from our balcony

Our over the subdivisions toward the western horizon! Those bright lights on the right are a sports park, and the streetlight in the foreground is over the very-attractive garbage dumpster paddock next door.

Installation photos

Slideshow of my installation last month... here.

How important is it that Christians vote?

I read this article on a Christian Century blog this afternoon. It suggests that perhaps it doesn't matter if Christians vote. This is a hard idea for me to swallow. Much as I am sometimes tempted to stand dramatically apart from the culture in which I live -- the Amish have such a clear witness to their way of life! as do monks, whose way of life I have always been drawn to, and even the two years I spent working at Gould Farm was a kind of "life apart" -- I am primarily a student of H. Richard Niebuhr, who insists that Christ operates in culture, as much as Christ stands apart from culture. For instance, I'm not sure abstaining from voting will suddenly expose its "hypocrisy," per below. And yet, I think the author is right that Christians should stand apart from the mud-slinging and craziness of the campaign in these recent days. It's not about leadership or real issues anymore. Both of these men are good people and good politicians -- why are various sides of our country demonizing both of them? Mob mentality is a dangerous thing.

What would Nietzsche do?

By Christopher Benson

Instead of asking, "What would Jesus do?” I am inclined to take a subversive approach to the presidential election by asking “What would Nietzsche do?”

Consider this from Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human:

All political parties today have in common a demagogic character and the intention of influencing the masses. . .all of them are obliged to transform their principles into great frescoes of stupidity, and paint them that way on the wall. Nothing more can be changed about this. . . . one must adapt to the new conditions, as one adapts when an earthquake has moved the old limits and outlines of the land, and changed the value of property.

I face an existential dilemma: endure the “great frescoes of stupidity” painted by the political parties or vacate the voting booth. As this presidential campaign draws closer to Election Day, with sludge flying, I am seriously considering Nietzsche’s proposal “to keep out of politics and stand aside a little,” as he did.

When too many people are speaking, as in our bloviating 24-hour cable news and blogosphere, Nietzsche advises silence. He says that for the few conscientious objectors, “seriousness lies elsewhere; they have embraced a different concept of happiness; their goal cannot be embraced by any clumsy hand with just five fingers.”

G. Scott Becker concurs in an essay in Electing Not to Vote, saying there will be circumstances when “a sudden, widespread Christian abstention from the electoral process could serve to expose the hypocrisy that has seeped in it.”

I am persuaded that my discipleship is not incumbent on voting. Should I abstain from casting a ballot, I will do so expecting to emerge from silent isolation, as Nietzsche describes, and try “the power of [my] lungs again,” calling to others “like men lost in a forest,” so we can “make [ourselves] known and encourage each other; of course, when [we] do, various things are heard that sound bad to ears not meant to hear them.”

Christopher Benson recently earned an M.A. in liberal arts from the Graduate Institute of St. John's College. He works as a freelance writer in Denver.