Monday, May 11, 2015

Extraordinary.

The rhythm of writing again has felt like that moment in the beginning of a yoga class when the instructor makes you sit up straight and take slow and even inhales and exhales, breaths that simultaneously relax you and make you realize how shallow your breathing gets during long, stressful days. It is both conscious and unconscious, the realization that breath requires attention, but not total control.

Even though things are busier than ever these days, life feels like the cycle of yoga. It is about becoming aware of where things are stressful and learning to laugh through inconveniences, to live truthfully, and to appreciate the spontaneous ways God is always showing up in the world. Perhaps it is naivety or a little bit of stupidity, or maybe it is just learning to live with loosened grip and to stop taking life so seriously.

My friend and roommate Maddie has gotten me into the habit of watching the movie “About Time” regularly since we started living together. We don’t do a lot of TV watching, but when we do, it is probably that movie or an episode of Gilmore Girls. About Time is possibly the most precious movie ever, causing you to love Rachel McAdams even more than you thought humanly possible and to have a soft spot in your heart for the awkward guy with the huge crush on said rad girl. It is charming in the love-story sort of way, but is also the type of movie with just enough of a glimpse into the realities of life that you can’t help but watch it multiple times and see yourself in it. The ending is my favorite, the moment when the guy who spent his whole life travelling in time to create the perfect life realizes that life is too beautiful to try and orchestrate it himself. That what seemed mundane and ordinary is actually the best part of being alive.

My pastor gave a sermon yesterday about the cycles of water and wind throughout the Bible. We moved from Genesis to Revelation, seeing that the “Tohu Bohu” of chaos found in the waters of Genesis 1 are located next to the wind, or “Ruach” of the Spirit. From the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus to the baptisms in the gospels, where the chaos of water exists, there the Spirit of God is also, making sense out of the disorder.

The themes of tohu bohu and ruach make sense within both the biblical narrative and also within the script of my everyday life. I move about in the waters of life’s chaos, shallow gasps turned into deep cycles of breath and rhythm only by the ruach that sweeps over life and my soul. Without such wind, the water literally feels like a flood, telling me life is chaos, and it’s better to try and tame it than float in it.

And who could blame us to think this way, really? We watch other people’s lives unfold on Instagram and feel the pressure of living exciting lives, framed by cool pictures and great success stories. We want life as extraordinary, not just ordinary.

But perhaps the most extraordinary thing about your life and the world is that amidst the chaos of ordinary there is a ruach that rushes over the tohu bohu. That in the middle of caring for a family or working a job you hate or trying to figure out what to do with your life there is a ruach that blows over the chaos, reminding you of presence – both God’s and the invitation for you to be present today.

Life sometimes seems so ordinary that I think I would be the time traveler who rearranged moments so they were more ordered or exciting or picture worthy. Because when it seems like there is a possibility that I can control the waters, my humanity will always choose power.

I am continually reminded that the more I try to control things, the worse they get. I become more powerless when I try to make life my own show, when I try to direct the cast and determine how the credits will roll. When I try to create a perfectly scripted extraordinary life, I am always disappointed by the outcome.

Life is messy.
Life is unpredictable.

And to our disappointment, sometimes life feels entirely commonplace and ordinary. The ordinary is dull, it is overwhelming at times and sometimes causes us to hurt deeply.

But in the midst of the water, the tohu bohu, the chaos we sometimes see as ordinary life, there is never the absence of the ruach. Even when life causes us pain, when it feels unfair, or when it feels like it is dragging us along the ground, there is never the absence of the presence that hovers, that creates calm, that creates meaning out of mundane.

It means that in the tohu bohu of your morning commute or your terrible boss or the same frustrating friend or news of illness that there will always be the ruach that reminds us everything matters, nothing is meaningless and we must pay attention to the presence of the wind. That we must sit up straight, take orienting deep breaths in and out, remembering our frailty and our absolute dependence on the Spirit of God when the water seems to overpower us.

The breathing helps me remember that life is precious, even when it feels repetitive or unreasonable or makes me want to scream into a pillow. That no moment, ordinary or extraordinary, is absent of the ruach that hovers over the tohu bohu. While it doesn’t give me the director’s chair, it gives me peace.

Life is inevitably chaotic and uncertain and repetitive. And yet, each breath is the extraordinary reminder that God hovers like the wind, making life absolutely sacred. We breathe deeply and know that our souls might be well and that each minute of life is extraordinary.

Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say,

it is well.

It is well with my soul.


Meg

Monday, May 4, 2015

Why I Stopped Writing.

There are plenty of reasons why I stopped writing. Some are more obvious. Some make the silence harder to explain.

It’s like when I went from running twenty-five miles a week to running zero the next. When you stop having a need to do things, it’s easy to quit what used to be significant in your everyday life.

It’s not that I needed to write, necessarily. As the last few months have proven, I don’t need to write to survive. Part of writing felt like keeping a repeated, bothersome line on my to-do list, labeled “Process your life and share it with others.” When I’m in classes demanding personal reflection and deep thoughts, sometimes the last thing I want is another assignment of self-care. Some of it is the reality that

the language is tired

and frankly,

SO AM I.

I stopped writing because sometimes it feels like there is nothing to write. That everyone else is already tearing apart current events or ranting about the church or writing a sob-fest blog that I can’t fight my way through to finish.

What do you write when things in life seem silent? Not in the sense that life is quiet – but when it is actually so busy you barely sleep and teeter between too many commitments and when human interaction itself becomes rushed because there simply isn’t enough time to do all the things you said yes to. What good is it to write about the stressful, hurried, frantic run-around twenty-four/seven? The busyness tells me as the writer that there is no time for writing; and so all remains is silence, the faint buzz of life lived so fast that there is nothing much to hear at all.

To be honest, some of the silence has made me resentful of many of the practices that I have grown up with. Some of the frustration with the silence has made me abandon some of what I used to consider essential to my life. One such thing being writing.

This silence has felt like what Frederick Buechner calls someone with a bad head cold, one who has lost his or her sense of taste and smell. I think the day I stopped writing I lost the connection to the taste and smells of many of the most meaningful parts of life.

The loss of the sense of taste and smell is enough to make anyone put down the pen and put away the paper. What do you write when everything tastes and smells like nothing? Not in a super-depressed, the world is ending sort of way. But in a way that feels like life somehow lost some of its wonder and pixie-dust-while-dancing-in-the-rain sorts of vibes. When routines and to-do lists make sure that things get done and you get where you need to be and the paper gets turned in. Yet even the most magical of days can feel simply like survival.

I wonder if God laughs at us when he watches us choose the head cold life over letting things heal and finally living with true senses of taste and smell. Maybe it is less like laughter and more like sadness. Who is happy when they look at the soul frustrated by silence, the soul who blames it on the God they think created it? It’s like God offers the rest that will finally kick the cold, and I’d rather live with the congestion and misery of a runny nose. Self-pity party for one, please.

Writing feels hard because I am trying to write through a nasty head cold that makes everything feel irrelevant and the stress of stringing together thoughts makes the click to Netflix an easy alternative. But part of the problem may be my own willingness to not wash the germs off my hands and to instead continue to infect myself with the virus that ended the creative wonder that first led me to write. Such a state is no place to remain, regardless of how long I may have been here.

Perhaps the writing begins again when I can say fewer YES’s and more NO’s, when I can rely less on the crowd to follow and instead be okay to explore on my own or lead despite not fully knowing where we are going. And maybe it begins again when I put away the check-lists that I tell myself need to be done today and I really start to listen to the people I get to exist with everyday.


Maybe the words will begin to flow when I stop trying to be the one who controls the party and

start

dancing.

Perhaps the words don’t come from perfectly crafted ideas and well-organized schedules but from spontaneous friendships and unplanned events and new beginnings that I couldn’t plan or see coming. They sprout when I can stop the game of going forty-nine thousand miles an hour and participate in the world unfolding in unexpected ways. When rhythms are defined by paying attention and being kind in places that surprise both others and myself.

Maybe the greatest writers aren’t those who tell others about their head colds but who instead recognize the illness that rests in their own souls. Then, maybe, words will be less like chores and more like treasures.

Let my soul be reminded that every party demands great dancing. That marvels exist in busyness and in slowness, that no part of life is void of God’s excellent mystery. Let my whole heart, mind, and body be reminded that the writer is the vessel, not the main attraction. And let that be worth writing about.


>>Meg

Monday, December 29, 2014

The Stories of Millennials: Why We Are So Bored (Part Two)

"When is he going to be done with his homework?! I'm booooooooored."

I laughed. When an eight year old surrounded by toys and books and a huge outdoor space tells you this five minutes after iPad games have entered no-zone for homework time, you're in trouble. I laughed and told him there is plenty to do, rattling off some games to play or all the running around he could do. The response? A sigh and a stomp. "I'm boooooooored."

I thought this scene was a little on the dramatic side, priding myself on not being that person anymore. So glad I have outgrown the eight year old side of me who loved to complain of boredom despite having plenty to do.

And then I found myself on break from school, and more than a few times I found myself thinking about how I was bored. I had lots to do and people to talk to and things to explore. But I was much happier letting my boredom suck me in.

What does a Millennial do when they're bored? It sure isn't what my grandparents would do when they were bored. When I'm bored, I put on a TV marathon, or scroll Instagram, or sit for HOURS on my laptop until my eyes blur. It's gross, yeah. But it's excusable. We're Millennials. We're bored.

What happens to a Millennial who has the world at their fingertips, with access to nearly anybody world-wide, with the ability to download thousands of movies, songs and books to watch, listen or read in mere seconds? It's obvious: we get bored. There's nothing on, there no one around, there is nothing to do. In a world infinitely more connected than any previous generation, we're also the first to get bored and restless. When we live in a stream of media and social networks and one-click shopping, how could we possibly find ourselves bored? I don't know. But we are.

This is the story of the eight year old I watch and the personal story I live many more days than I would care to admit. We are so shaped by the imagination of our cell phones and Google searches that we are unable to lament the loss of our own creativity and imagination. Why work hard discovering on my own when I can be given the information in a few keys and clicks?

I recently went on a walk through the woodsy outdoors of my family's home, and stopped often to notice many of the elements I have easily forgotten about life. For the first time in months, I listened to squirrels rustling through crisp, fallen leaves and heard birds calling out to one another from the tops of trees. It was real and alive and totally silent, yet totally captivating. I don't know how long I was out there, staring at barren trees and stomping through muddy grass, but I was not bored. Still? Yes. Quiet? Yes. But not bored.

I think part of the millennial story of boredom tells us if we aren't moving or doing or accomplishing than we are bored. The line is drawn distinctly in the sand; you're either highly engaged in being busy or you're painfully, watching-paint-dry-kind-of-bored. But my walk reignited a part of my imagination that had been lost and forgotten under my Facebook feed and text message marathons. It was a silent moment of wonder; highly alive, yet not through normal over-stimulation of my social media. I wasn't bored. My imagination was finally being used again.

Call it weird, but there is something infinitely more interesting and life-giving about running around in the rain or playing a side-splitting board game with friends than spending the evening watching a movie or stalking great Instagram photos. I feel more alive when I call an old friend and catch up on life than when I race through six seasons of my favorite show on Netflix.

Maybe it is just the spice of life that comes in a little variety in my day. Or, maybe it is life offering me a different story.

You see, I don't think anything about life was created or designed to be boring. I don't even know if I believe that boredom is a real element of life outside of choosing it. I think boredom is a millennial story that traps us into thinking life isn't as exciting as it really could be. That maybe another movie or more time on BuzzFeed or a new Snapchat will make life a little less boring. It is like we think boredom is an annoying fly you just can't get away from. So we fill our lives with anything that will mask the presence of boredom.

Is your life the number of likes on a profile picture or the laughs you get from a TV show? I personally am bored with what technology and my smart phone offer me these days. Once you get a taste of being alive, really alive, those moments of playing in the snow or dancing ridiculously around your living room or staring someone in the eye and telling them you love them, you can't go back to the old story. Once you take the risk or read the book or prepare a homemade meal for family and friends, you can't be okay with what your laptop can offer you.

I hope that any millennial reading this would stop to think of their own story of boredom, reflecting on the ways we have been trapped into thinking boredom is a part of life. I personally can't think of a bigger lie, believing that elements of life aren't as exciting as we hoped they would be. When Facebook shapes my imagination, the conversations around the table may seem dry compared to how many conversations I can keep going online. When Instagram shapes my vision of a good picture, I can't be okay with the blurry and dark capture of a moment with those I love most dearly.

What narrative do you live? To me, life isn't boring. It is wild and dynamic and wonderful and scary and sometimes painful - but it is more dynamic than anything you may find online. It is messy and imperfect and sometimes slow. But it is life, and it offers you a new story. Take a walk, laugh a lot, create and make a giant mess. Taste the water and know it is real - life is a wonderful adventure and is anything but boring.

Meg

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

On Doing Work Well.

When I was four, I wanted to be a nurse.

When I was nine, I wanted to be a professional soccer player.

When I was fourteen, I wanted to be an architect.

When I was twenty-three, I wanted to...go to grad school and write books and be a professor and hang out with rowdy teenagers at youth group. And be a travel photographer and open a bakery and own a home for fostered youth.

Don't we all have these scattered, run-on sentence dreams for our lives? Don't we want to want to be a whole lot of things with our short-lived lives? I do. We have tons of interests we want to follow through with, tons of interests that end up running together to create lists as long and complicated and unrelated as mine.

And somewhere along the way most of us have, or desperately want, a thing. Our one thing we love more than all the others, the passion that lights us up and keeps us from sleeping at night. The thing that makes us stand out, like "Hey, there's the musician!" or "Look, it's the girl who kills it at tennis!" Yeah. I want that one thing.

But I can't say I have ever had that one thing. I like a lot of things. My interests from four until twenty-three range on the spectrum of left-brain to right-brain, high job security to living in my parent's basement. But until recently, few have grabbed my attention in its entirety and shaken me with a "You must do this!"of intensity. And when they do, I am not quite sure what my reaction should be. It goes something like this.

Strong, unavoidable alarm in head: "Hey!! YOU! You should write. Maybe a blog, maybe a book, maybe a magazine. Maybe your to-do list so it stops floating in the dead space of your head. Regardless, WRITE!"

Me: (Delayed response): ...Okay. Sure.


But then what? So I agree to stop silencing the passions and interests and things that bug me, but what do I do with them after that?

I think part of the issue I face is that in my attempts to listen to all of the passions grabbing at me, I don't hear any of them very well. Tell me it's not difficult to think about pursuing a master's degree in theology when you'd love to renovate an old house on HGTV or travel the world with a coffee blog. It is rather challenging to be twenty-three and wondering how long you let all the options stare you down with the intent of winning the contest. When does it end? I eventually throw in the towel and allow type-A self to take over. Me? Young, overachieving extrovert? I CAN DO EVERYTHING!

So I take on the job and I start the books and I enroll in full-time school, wanting to be a whole lot of everything, and please, don't act as surprised as I do when I fail at most of them. I'm tired. I can't give any of them one hundred percent, and I am no closer to having a thing as when I started.

When I try to be everything, I end up being nothing.

But what else is a twenty-something supposed to do? We're told not to be the statistical 65% of college graduates who move home, aimlessly dreaming about their thing on their mom's couch as they breeze through twelve seasons of Friends. We are told we are lazy or noncommittal or boring if we don't have our thing by our twenties. And so I don't blame my generation for being scared out of their brains, chasing everything with the hope that something will stick by the late twenties. We're pressured to figure things out, to decide if we indeed are the four-year-old projection of ourselves, nursing people back to health, or starting on the field for the nine-year-old vision of life. And what a dilemma, when you're twenty-three and staring at your life and wondering what the hell the thing for your life is.

I recently grabbed coffee with an old professor from college who has tracked with me from freshman year through now, always sharing the best of book recommendations and plenty of advice on steps in life. He asked how the grad school journey was so far, and I honestly told him it is great, but a little overwhelming. It opens so many doors and thoughts and options for life, but also reminds me just how scary it all is when my thing seems to be missing. He nodded understandingly. He told me the story of his own life at twenty-three, shifting between three interests and jobs and wondering what he was doing and where he was headed. The best advice he was given then was something I got to hear as well: he was advised to picture his life at thirty, seven years from that very moment. Picture where he was, who he was with, what he was doing, the things he did with his time. And once he did that, he was told to work backwards. To not try and move from twenty-three, but to work year by year back from thirty. What did he need to be at twenty-nine that was preparing him for that life of thirty? And what about twenty-eight prepared him for twenty-nine? Soon, he was back at twenty-three, with a set of goals that was much less daunting than the projected life of thirty. After my professor retold this story, he had me do it. He had me verbalize it, thinking specifically and concretely, adding the details and not missing a thing. And then he told me my job is to work backwards.

And that is when I started to breathe again. It was less about having all of the answers, but sitting in the questions for a bit. I've started to be less afraid of questions, appreciating what they reveal to me about the world, myself, God, and others. That piece of advice was just enough to push me into the realm of questions, sitting with the dreams of twenty-three, but asking myself what I really want at thirty.

It made me realize that those things are not built in a year, and for most people they are not built by twenty-three. And my professor reminded me that these questions are meant to free me, not to bind me or make me lose my mind with anxiety. What are the steps to thirty that unwind themselves down to twenty-three? You have an idea? Good. Take those things, those many things that are the blocks to be built upon each other, and stare them down. Give them a good look over.

But then don't walk away. Don't let them sit, unravel, or slowly die under today's busy schedule. Pick them up, examine them for what they are, their complexities and nuances and difficulties. Because if this conversation of mine changed anything, it was my perception of how things are developed. If I want the thing, I have to practice it. I have to want it, I have to be willing to take the baby steps, I have to be willing to do work well. And sometimes quietly, with no immediate results.

It is common sense, really, but how many of us stop to think about the daily, practical enactments of these things that are necessary to be truly good at something? A good athlete practices their sport daily. A chef bakes or spends time with food everyday. It becomes so habituated that they are finally able to excel, learning from mistakes, mistakes only learned through trial and error. If you want to write, you write every single day. And through that process, refinement happens. You write better, you realize your quirks, your instincts, your defaults. And it slowly becomes so a part of you, you can't think in terms of a day without this thing.

Part of what coffee with my professor taught me is that the life I want demands embodied practices today. It demands that I do my work well, now. When it is frustrating, do your work well. When it is rewarding, continue to do work well. In what you like and what you don't like, do work well.

When do you do your best work? It is with the things you love? Good. Pay attention. Listen to what snags your heart, and listen well. Think long and hard of life at thirty (or fifty...or eighty...) and work backwards. Where do you want to be? You get one step closer when you take the things you must do, clear away the ones you must not, and do them well. Ask questions and be okay without answers. Learn from your mistakes, do your work well and do it honestly. What sorts of things will you discover as you trace life backwards? Dig in. Go deep. Say yes to the things you must, and be okay with saying no to the ones you need not. Regardless of your thing, engineer or songwriter or grad school student with a heart for young people, do your work well. Do it daily, admit your mistakes, grow from the daily routine and habit of whatever thing you must do. And may each day of doing work well reveal to you another tick in the one-of-a-kind creation that is you, opening up the window just a hint further to reveal a view of the God who created you. May his grace and peace flow in your circumstances and your things, dunking you further and further into his love and invading kingdom.

Meg

Monday, December 8, 2014

The Stories of Millennials: Time Shaped by Technology (Part One)

Millennials have engrained within them a unique sense of time.

We are the kids who were born on the cusp of the internet revolution and most of us were a part of the original cell phone boom. We know what the first generation iPod looks like, and we even remember the classic colored iMac desktops. AIM? Yes, please. We may remember the early days when dial-up was a thing that took so long but was so worth it, but it may be drowned out by the high speed effortless connections we live by today.

Today's fast-paced world is not being lived only by millennials, as my parents would attest to. My mother and I had a phone rant recently about our pushy cable and internet providers always insisting we need faster, bigger, more flashy. The technological pace amazes my parents and yet to most millennials, a push toward the fastest and most immediate is a part of our cultural DNA. We live and breathe by immediate Google results, instantly downloaded movies, and a constantly updating Instagram feed. In our lifetimes, there has been no need to wait, and if connectivity continues as it is, there will never need to be.

Speaking as a true millennial, I love technology. I love growing up in the time of such rapid developing media and opportunities to connect worldwide. As a person who has travelled quite a bit and has lived all over the country, I love the ways my computer connects me to my friends and family who are far away. I love that I can instantly broadcast this blog post to multiple social media websites and I love that Netflix is a thing. I enjoy that when I type "cereal" into my Google search engine, 84 million results come up in .15 seconds. Life is very fast for a millennial. I have to wait very little for anything.

And because most of my life has evolved next to the rampant presence of technology, I know little else. I think that is why conversations about technology with my parents and grandparents are so hilarious. While I laugh when my grandparents struggle to figure out where the on button is for their computers and how to check their email, me and my millennial friends rotate between six social media apps at one time while texting and downloading three of our favorite albums. We are connected and quick and are able to keep pace with the changing times. And I wonder how that shapes our understanding of and participation in our local church communities.

Because we move at such a rapid pace through our technological practices, it is no wonder than many of us yawn at the thought of sitting through a 60 minute church service. We do what? Stand and sing a song with outdated PowerPoint slides (or worse yet, a hymnal)? Sit and hear a message from a pastor for over half an hour? Spend time after service mingling with the other congregants? Who has time for that? That is a pace much slower than my search engine can kick out, and my Facebook news feed can update from my smart phone. I don't have time to wait for other people, for a church service schedule, for the slow demands of religious life. Sabbath? Yeah right. I can't not check my phone for ten minutes, much less an entire 24 hours. I am a connected millennial with the world at my fingertips. I don't have time for Sunday School or a Bible study, and I certainly don't have the patience to deal with others in coordinating a small group or a volunteer position. I can't fathom such a rhythm, and neither can my millennial friends. Our rhythm is fast, our rhythm is now, our rhythm sure as hell can't wait for the movement of God's Spirit in the local church body.

When I come to accept that what we practice shapes who we are, I am not surprised that my practice of a technological pace for life makes it impossible for me to practice a rhythm of time and waiting that God narrates to me. I live so connected and move so rapidly that I am intensely fearful of biblical practices like Sabbath and waiting faithfully on God. Why should I wait when I can gain access instantly online? Why wait for God's wisdom and voice when I can find thousands of voices and opinions shared through social media? Before I know it, God and the Bible and the meaning of the church become drowned out by the voices and words on my screen.

What would it look like for millennials to practice patience and living into God's rhythm and pace for life? Would we stop viewing church as outdated, boring and irrelevant, and start to realign ourselves with the truth and wisdom only found in slowing down and learning in the times of waiting and slow movement? Perhaps only when we stop trying to make church faster (competing miserably with the pace set by our technological forces) and start to live slower can we truly align ourselves with God's invading kingdom. Do we want God to answer our prayers with 84 million results in .15 seconds? Or do we want to be shaped by a rhythm of peace and patience and trust that God's timing and answers are better than anything we can instantly deliver on our own?

To my millennial friends who find church boring, I give you this. Church is not boring when viewed outside of your world so shaped by the instant delivery of your technologically connected world. When you stop living by that clock, you can begin to see that church is not meant to outpace your Twitter feed or your group text message replies. Church and faith and religion are an entirely separate pace, one dictated not by you but by the God who created you. And it only begins to make sense when you stop trying to fit it into your fast-paced world and start living within its counter-cultural rhythm shaped by God's breath and motion.

I personally do not think millennials will fill church pews by shaping church to be just like the technological forces, because Facebook and Google will always do it better. We try and be relevant but always fall short. While ingrained by the lifelong practice of instant technology, we are dared to reimagine life under a different marker of time. Do you want to remain on the treadmill of rapidly changing media and technological powerhouses? Or do you dare to imagine life as dictated by God's vision for time? The catch is this: God will not fit into your preconceived box of time and rhythm. He won't always answer you quickly and sometimes he doesn't answer in the ways you expect. He asks you to follow him and catch his rhythm, living in community that is slow and weird and sometimes so backwards to the time dictated by our cultural contexts. It is daring and awkward and doesn't align with what I have been raised to understand as normal. Yet it opens us to a new world, one shaped by God's kingdom ushered in slowly, unexpectedly, and entirely abnormally. A world of goodness and true life, a world that welcomes God's reign.

When I am looking for it, my everyday life is constantly waving at me to slow down and pay attention, to adopt God's movement of time. This happens through people, random frustrations, detours from the normal path. They are immediate reminders that while our lives run efficiently (enhanced by our internal technological clocks), they are lived well with a few interruptions. When my pace is cracked, specks of God's timing are allowed to poke through. It happens with my neighbors, with the people who sit next to me on long airplane rides, and with my closest relationships. Fast doesn't always mean good. To move with the rhythm of God is a much slower dance, one that may seem a little outdated or irrelevant or slow to the world, but one that reveals an entirely better way to live.

We as millennials have the choice everyday to live by different practices. May we be people shaped not by instant technological gratification but by the slow breathing in and out of God's presence and activity in our everyday lives. May we enter patiently into the community of church, embracing its awkwardness and slowness and peacefully enjoying a new clock and a new calendar. And may this open our ears to God's whispers, heard only when we say yes to his timing and movement.

Meg


Tuesday, November 25, 2014

The Stories of Millennials: What Our Practices Form Us to Desire

This begins a four part blog series on today's Millennial and the stories their lives tell.

I first got the bug to do this when I started researching some of the themes and trends of churches who are engaging my generation well. I heard from young and old voices alike; but wondered why most of the conversation is coming from older adults. While it is helpful to hear about our generation from their perspective, I also think we have quite a bit to say from our own lives. There is plenty to be said about my generation and what keeps us from going to church or pursuing faith. Some of it can be blamed on others, but a lot of it has more to do with the face staring back at us in the mirror.

So I decided to do the introspective work in my own life and the general Millennial age group. Why don't we go to church like generations before us? What lifestyle shifts have been made, and what common practices are gone in our lives that used to characterize young people? Something has changed; the empty pews in our churches speak louder than any book ever could. Why don't Millennials go to church? The answer is not a simple one, and can't be blamed solely on bad worship music or a boring pastor. Our default is to look to the church and find its raging flaws and attempt to rearrange in order to comply with the changing needs and desires of the younger generations. Ask any church that does manage to have a thriving population of young people why they are good at retaining the young faces, and they will probably share success stories of rockstar musicians and hipster pastors who preach "relevant things" and locally sourced coffee bars after each service. And they're right. It has worked, in a sense.

The problem, to me, is that this model of church is not shaping people to have sustainable faith. The times have changed, yes. Technology has emerged and our nation is much different and the world does get more and more complex every single day. I recognize this tension and sense the difficulty of speaking truth into the lives of my peers and myself. The church does not have to be only fog machines and electronic dance worship; but it also does not have to be hymns and clerical collars either.

When I consider more deeply the Millennial church dilemma, I am less inclined to blame the church for not doing "enough" to reach my generation and draw them into the faith community. I think the deeper issue is that changing culture and the development of new practices, habits and cultural liturgies have shaped us to desire less of the true church and more of our own stories.

A few such examples of our own stories:

Desire. We as Millennials are self-centered and shaped by our own visions of how life should be and what makes it good. We chase what we think will bring happiness and pleasure and fullness. Just as humankind was presented with the option to choose God's intention or the serpent's temptation,  we choose to live the story of desire that sounds the best to us. My generation is notably more consumed with money and status and fame than ever before. We are consumers bent on pursuing what we think will make us happy and fulfilled, but we never can quite get enough. This self-consumed mindset doesn't necessarily make us inclined to the selflessness demanded of the follower of Jesus. Desire trumps such formation, and we chase cars and gadgets over the front row seat in the participation in the church community.

Empire. Particularly within our nation, we as Millennials are particularly inclined to live into the story of identity found in places, groups, and people rather than God. We equate earthly prosperity with God's blessing, and live into a story of manipulation of power and resources. This story shapes us to use power to sustain such "blessing" and hoard it for our own needs and wants. We are not concerned with being a people within God's kingdom, where state and country has no divisive power. We would rather live the story of earthly prosperity that favors my group over yours and wields power over those who do not fit into our people or place. When following Christ demands that we lay down such a story, our nationalism seeps through and makes it challenging to lay down such a formative story.

Religion. Perhaps most interesting is the fact that Millennials are interested in being "good people" and we are one of the most social justice-driven generations yet. We are concerned with helping others and supporting good causes. While not bad, this shapes many of us to live within the story of being a "good person" who does the right thing and follows all the rules. As long as we are moral people, God is on our side and we are living "the good life." We wear the t-shirts to support our favorite causes and we take a two week trip to serve the poor abroad, and somehow think this is our ticket into God's favor. Yet, we are often so inclined to follow the rules and perform the rituals that they dry up and lose meaning. The act of religion can seem like a worthwhile and meaningful story, but boxed in as the do's and don'ts of being a good person they fail to have true meaning. It is an easy jump to conclude that Millennials walk away from church when we live encased in a story of religion and fail to see the true politic we are called to embody as a part of God's narrative.


No matter the category the Millennial might find themselves living into, our stories reveal our deepest convictions about the way the world is. We may well be living one of the three stories above, but even greater is the fear that Millennials have determined how to live outside of the realm of story. We don't even bother with the story anymore; we make our stories be whatever we want them to be.

What are such Millennial stories blanketed under the "non-story" titles (as we all know calling something by a different name doesn't change what it actually is)? What are the real driving forces in our lives, the habits and practices that determine our stories and shape what we do with our lives? Once we get a handle on that we may finally begin to answer the question of our missing generation from the church community.

As I thought about the practices and stories of my generation, I realized I have quite the obvious bias being a Millennial myself. I have grown up with these stories and can't quite tell the difference between them and others. I ended up talking with my parents, who could much more easily extract the stories of my generation as distinct from theirs. We talked about a lot of our common practices as Millennials that freak out my baby boomer parents. We talked about media and technology and our busyness and elements of my everyday life that they have adopted but still find strange. It was weird to hear their observations on my stories because they are so normal and ingrained in my life that I have a hard time imagining life any other way.

But with my collection of Millennial stories I want to explore what it looks like to pick apart each story and its practices, just to see what it would look like to live out another story. What happens when these stories are deconstructed and we see just what direction they point us to? What if the redefinition and realignment of Millennial practices and stories is what we need to understand why we go (or do not go) to church?

Over the next four blogs, I am taking a Millennial story and determining its main practices that factor into such a narrative. I myself am the guinea pig who is subjected to the same stories and want to know how much my story is adrift from God's true overarching narrative. I don't want the story of desire or empire or religion, but the counter-story that God teaches us to embody through practices that remind us who is actually in control of everything. God's counter-story is alive and at work, despite many people who choose to live into their own narrative. We must first examine what we practice in order to shape what sort of story we live into.

I can't tell you the black and white, cut and dry reason why Millennials are not going to church. Maybe it is your worship music or your sermons or a bad website. Maybe church is not "relevant" enough for young people anymore.

Or maybe there are stories in life that have captured our attention and practices and are shaping us to desire what is not God or his kingdom. And that is the heart of what is defining my generation.

Let's explore, let's expose, and let's be people who can reimagine life captured by God's story.

Meg

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

On Dreams.

I have an internal list of questions I keep as a part of my repertoire when it comes to conversation. I have my go-to's in awkward social settings, I have my extra weird ones for the teenagers I hang out with every week. I also have my total favorites, the ones I like to regularly ask my friends and also have asked of me. One of said questions has come up in two social settings in the last week, prompting me to really think about my answer to the question. As I have been asked this question over the years, my answer changes frequently, or narrows and broadens during different times of life and learning. I'll quit with the talking in circles and clue you in as to this question that keeps creeping into my life these days. It goes as such:

What is your dream?

You know, like the one thing you can't stop thinking about, the one passion you have, the ways in which you imagine and visualize and see the world. What kinds of things, borrowing a favorite line from a childhood movie (although originally about love but works in my mind for dreams), are your "Can't eat, can't sleep, reach for the stars, over the fence, World Series kind of dreams?" That, in a sentence, is my ultimate description of your most captivating dreams for life. 

And no joke, it has been asked of me TWICE in the last week. I normally think of that question as a once every few months, with my closest friends sort of a question. It is not a regular for me, but in both settings in which I was asked the question, I was made aware of how little I allow myself to process through and deeply ask myself the answer to that question. What is my dream? How is it different than six months ago? How is it the same? What has this time of my life shown me about the true heartstrings of my dreams?

Here's my instinct when it comes to dreams. I allow them to be subconscious streams of thought that never get processed or looked at straight on. Why? Well, dreams are a big and somewhat scary blob of unknown or uncertainty floating around in my head, which is reason enough to avoid introspection about them. In my true Strengths Finder form, I also really want people to like me, so sometimes I am prone to shape my answer to the question depending on who I am with and what they would approve of when I describe my core dreams. I typically find the task of verbalizing my dreams a daunting process with no concrete conclusion. Hence, I don't do it much.

But as I have learned to articulate it as honestly as I can to the people who recently asked it of me, I begin to see my dreams in a little less muddy water than before. What was entirely mud-ridden and cloudy a few months ago is a little bit easier to articulate now. What I couldn't even say to myself or even to another person is slowly formed into words and sentences out of my mouth. The more I do the difficult task of formulating ideas of my deepest, most true dreams of my life, the more I understand God and the call he has placed on my life. In thinking of the can't eat, can't sleep dreams that never stop knocking on my heart, no matter how much I try to ignore them, the more they wreck me. They pull me into the depths of what really makes my heart beat, what makes me upset, what draws me to action. They reveal to me my strengths and gifts, and if I am looking through the right lens, I begin to notice the faint fingerprints of God all throughout my desires and dreams and gifts. There is no convincing me otherwise: once I begin to pick apart and examine my deepest dreams, the more I see the working of God and the ways he has wired me to live out my story within the greater narrative he is writing.

I also can't say enough about the impact of listening to the dreams of others. Listening is an art form my generation badly needs to practice, for in listening we not only learn about others, but we also learn a lot about ourselves. I find that in listening to the dreams of my friends and mentors, I can begin to see how our dreams interact and are similar, and also how they are different. It is simply another way to process through what dreams have your heart, the reach for the stars, over the fence ones you can't get away from. 

Just because we do not take the necessary time to process through and think about our dreams does not mean they do not exist. You are an integral part of a great story, and you have been made to dream and do things that no one else can do. You are a created being with all sorts of dreams that nag your heart, all whispers from God that point you in the direction of your most true self. 

Whether it is your own stubbornness or fear that keeps you from inquiring about your own dreams, or a family member or significant other that stands between you and your most true dreams, may you pull down the walls and ask yourself what your dreams are. What are the things you can't get enough of? What makes you most alive? What or who can you not imagine life without? What engages your mind, body and soul, and invites you into a rhythm of life pattern by God's movement in the world? What scares you, what dares you to think bigger, to not think within existing models but to create new ones? My bet is the more you ask yourself these questions, the more you are able to step into a life so grand you can't help but live out your deepest dreams.

May you have the courage to ask this question of yourself and of others. May you create the space to probe your deepest dreams and desires and learn the ways God has wired you for a special purpose. May you explore your biggest dreams and not settle for no or for ordinary or for good enough. May you live the dreams placed in your heart by the God who made you and not the culture that surrounds you. And may your dreams be can't eat, can't sleep, reach for the stars, over the fence, World Series kind of dreams.

Meg

Pages - Menu