A Special Offer

      For my fifteenth (or maybe sixteenth) birthday, I had one request.  I wanted “random crap.”  Full disclosure.  Those were my words.  I don’t remember everything I got, but I believe my family was more than obliging.  My sister got me an Elmo digital clock keychain and threw in some brightly colored scraps of paper.  I was fully satisfied.  

  Years later, as a semi-grown up person, I still thoroughly enjoy well-compiled randomness.  I think that’s just how my mind works.  Maybe that’s why I became an English major.  “Yes students,” my mental professor (argyle and all) says, “A research paper is, in essence, a random pile of facts strewn together in such a way that you convince your audience that you have proven something altogether new and cohesive.”  After receiving the compliment of my academic career - a note on my 12-page final essay in a very challenging literary theory class - “This is the best undergraduate research paper I have read in a very long time”, I realized my love for stringing together random crap was a true calling. 

  And I’m certainly not the only one.  Recently, I’ve found a new curiosity in “Subscription Boxes.”  I’m sure you’ve seen them.  Here’s how it works.  You find a genre of box that meets your interest.  It is much like subscribing to Vogue if you like fashion or Sports Illustrated if you’re the office manager at a health clinic (oh, I do make myself laugh).  If you have an interest, there’s a box for you.  Then, after choosing a subscription length (usually 1 month to 1 year) and forking over your credit card, you get a nice, neat, box of random crap mailed to you for the aforementioned length of time.  I’m not trying to be facetious.  The company you subscribe to literally puts together a bunch of stuff meeting your interest (hiking, knitting, cat herding etc) into a box each month and mails it to you.

I’m being partly sarcastic and partly ONE HUNDRED PERCENT serious when I say how cool is that?  The sarcastic bit is really asking, “why on earth would you want to pay money for a stranger to mail you a bunch of stuff you don’t even know if you’ll like?  What if it’s all junk? Just a bunch of crap?” The one hundred percent serious part of me has so many reasons (okay, at least two).  First, we like to identify ourselves with stuff.  “I am a runner” turns into having running clothes, running shoes, running stuff in general.  Being a writer, a painter or a dog lover all equate to other accessories.  All arguments of capitalism aside (that’s for a later blog, I’m sure), this psychology makes a lot of sense.  When we see ourselves a certain way, we try to help others see us that way, too.

Second, we like to imagine that there is someone out there who gets us.  I think this was my true wish that year for my birthday.  I wanted to make it seem like I was carefree, like it didn’t matter to me if my family got me a bunch of random crap.  But what I really wanted was to see how much they could get it right, how well they knew me down to the trivial, inconsequential stuff.  With the boxes, we like to imagine that someone is out there and they know who we are and what we care about and can just send it to us in a box.  

Here’s the really cool thing.  God does all of the best parts of this and does it with no strings attached.  Before I go too far, I’m not saying “Life is like a box of random crap.” Just go with me for a minute.  Imagine that every single day, not just a month or a year, God presents you with everything in life: all the things you love, all the things that make you a better person (even when it’s hard), all the joy, all the sorrow and all the random stuff that goes on in our daily existence.  We subscribe to life and God gives us so much of what we need and knows, to our deepest self, who we are and where we belong.  We don’t have to surround ourselves with stuff to be Christians.  We don’t have to spend money.  Jesus offered himself on the cross, paying the ultimate price for our sins, long before we even had a chance.   God’s offer is open to us every day and in every experience and is free of cost.  But just as having the right shoes doesn’t make you a runner if you don’t use them, God’s grace and love (even though freely given) can only be truly realized when we accept them.  We are called to believe we are God’s people and then, as Christians, show that love back to our world.  

So you’re invited to take part in this special offer.  Why wait? 

Are We There Yet? Getting Closer to God

I saw a sign the other day that made me laugh.  It said something to the effect of “The one thing that binds us together as humans, regardless of our age, race, religion or social status is that, deep down, we all believe we are above average drivers.”  Now, if Jimmy John’s can forgive me for this terrible paraphrase, I can forgive them for this crass generalization.  

You don’t know me, Jimmy John’s.

I am a terrible driver.   Certainly, I would not say that I am “above average.”  Maybe I should say I’m a decent driver with terrible confidence.

Living in New Jersey for four years had its advantages - I never had to drive.  Either the resources I needed were close enough to get to on foot or, if not, there was public transit that could take me where I needed to go.  My university even had a public bus system spanning 3 towns.  Let’s just say, I got spoiled.  Then, moving to Wisconsin, I had a wake-up call.  The grocery store closest to me is a little too far for comfortably toting bags.  If I want fancier groceries or more variety, the next closest store is definitely too far.  If I’m looking to have some fun, I can take the Metra to Chicago, but it doesn’t come as frequently to my town (Kenosha) as it does to other towns south of the border.  You get the picture.

Eventually, the choice was laid clear before me.  I could either live the rest of my life within a 3-mile radius (a prospect which gets gloomy even to a self-proclaimed home-body), or I could get back behind the wheel.  It took a long time - more than a year of living here - to get up the courage to drive.   But soon enough, driving three or four blocks turned into applying for and driving to a job in the next town.  Then, as I started making new friends, I drove to towns 45 minutes away.  My swearing off of highway driving didn’t last much past a couple of serendipitous (i.e. unintentional) re-routes from my GPS.  This past summer, I was able to leave a job that wasn’t working out (one that was in a close driving distance) for a job as a camp counselor at Lutherdale Bible Camp in Elkhorn - an awesome opportunity that led me to where I am now: your chaplain at University of Wisconsin Whitewater.            
It seems so odd to me now, looking back, to think that I would have let so many opportunities pass by because I thought myself incapable of doing something.  Sure, I am still cautious when I drive, I always have to wear my glasses and sometimes I slow way down to make sure I’m not about to run over those stupid construction cones.  But, in general, I’m past the point of letting fear stop me from doing what I want.  

In our faith lives, we need to break down barriers between us and God.  For me, God is in experiencing the world, being around new people, doing new things and taking adventures.  How much would I have missed out on if I had let my fear of driving turn into an obstinate refusal to do so?  It had, for so long, been just that; I would get in arguments with my husband about my ability to drive saying things like “you know I don’t see well” and “do you want me to die just so we can have some groceries?”. That last argument would sometimes get so out of perspective that I would go as far as to blame him, saying, “Why can’t you just go to the grocery store? Can’t you make time to help around the house?”  So, in so many ways, my fear of driving was separating me from the love of God.  Not only was I missing out on a lot of rich experiences, but I was ready to sacrifice my relationships to save my pride.  

I won’t go as far as to say I’m “above average” in driving, nor will I say that I am close to perfect in fixing all the things that separate me from God’s love (and it certainly isn’t for God’s lack of showing love, either).  But I am improving and I want to share the good news that we all can know God a little better.  

This week, I invite you to pray (one sure-fire way to strengthen our relationship with God) about those things which keep you from experiencing all of the gifts of the life you’ve been given.  What are you afraid of doing? What have you put off? What - if you can dig a little deeper - have you blamed others for  that is really a reflection of a way you blame yourself?  I pray that you will know God a little better each day as you find new ways to know yourself and all you are capable of.  

You're Invited

     Each month during the 2014-2015 school year, the Lutheran Episcopal Campus Ministry will celebrate, strive for and embody a word or phrase of the Christian faith. September's word is Invite. This is a great word, especially as UWW's newest students arrive to campus, eager to do and become something new. It is a privilege to invite students, new and old, to join us in Faith, Fellowship and Food (ah, yes, the first Spaghetti Meal is September 14th) and to welcome them into the Christian community on campus.

     Inviting others to partake in something we know to be special is an exciting thing. But with this privilege comes a responsibility to open our arms just a little bit wider. Thinking in every day examples, when you invite a guest to your home, is your work done? Do you expect to gain a friend without offering your home address, opening the front door and offering a refreshment? Probably not. When we invite others to Christ's table, we joyfully grow our community for that moment, but to truly show Christ's love, we also need to be genuinely hospitable.

     Whereas invitation can leave room for difference - the inviter and the invitee, the host and the guest - hospitality can erase difference by setting a standard of servanthood. I think about this important relationship (and important difference) this week as the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, along with leaders in other denominations, called for a nation-wide, interfaith response to racism. This call comes after members of an African Methodist Episcopal Church were shot and killed in June 2015 by a white racist during a Bible study (read the full letter from The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori here). Clergy from many faith communities took the call and talked with their congregations about racism in our culture today, a brave beginning step to what has been and will be a long conversation.

     The Presiding Bishop's invitation for people of faith to be open with one another about our experiences with racism allows us to invite one another into conversation. Invitation is contagious. When hospitality follows the invitation, when servanthood and a shared respect for one another are fostered, invitations grow into a lasting, positive community in Christ. It stops mattering who is host or guest, rich or poor, majority or minority and only matters how we can serve one another in Godly love.

     At LECM, we invite you to share all your stories and experiences with us. As Jesus invited us to his table and shared with us everlasting life, may we be inspired to live in fellowship with one another and invite each other into conversation every day.