Until this last week, I’d only known an ‘avatar’ to be an image used to represent a person interacting with others in an on-line game or chat room.  Needless to say, this word is finding a new place in our culture.

Those more culturally literate than I would have associated ‘avatar’ with the human incarnations of Hindu deities, often portrayed as half-human, half-animal.  ‘Avatar’ comes from the Hindu verb ‘to cross over.’  Those who have already seen the Oscar-nominated, highest-grossing film of all time will make the connection.

Avatar, the movie, is set several hundred years in the future.  Industry, for those on planet Earth, has grown increasingly dependent upon resources that can only be found off-planet.  Jake Sully, a paraplegic war veteran, is hired by a mining company operating on the distant world of Pandora to help them with a special project.

The plot starts to look like Dances with Wolves.  Pandora is inhabited by giant humanoids called the Na’vi who dress like Native Americans, and generally commune with nature.  Of course, the mining company wants to extract an insanely precious mineral right out from underneath the Na’vi home. Continue reading »

I’m about the last person from whom you’d ever hear a warning about getting too much of a good thing. My friends argue about whether I’m a perfectionist or a maximalist. I usually argue for the latter. I really don’t need everything to be perfect and I don’t take it personally when it’s not, but I do constantly find myself asking whether there wouldn’t be some way that we could improve what we’re doing or making or partaking in.

To be fair, I’m not always the one to catch myself over-compensating for things that are not quite good enough. I’m thinking that the very idea of ‘good enough’ is my kryptonite. It robs me of my super-power, the ability to make just about anything better.

Virtue or vice seems to depend on one’s perspective, and the most startling perspective to come my way lately is being bandied about by Barbara Ehrenreich in her latest book, Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America.

Honestly, the first time I heard it, I found the title troubling. I think positivity is one of my personal attributes. Whether or not you agree, it is something to which I aspire. In fact, I’ve often thought that negativity was one of our deeper social problems.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess to not having read this book, but I have heard her share her thoughts on the subject in two separate public-radio interviews.

Last week, Fred Utter re-introduced me to that ‘Magic Eye’ thing that was so popular in the nineties. You know the funky carpet-pattern looking photo collage that supposedly contains a 3D image if you can just look at it the right way. Well it actually does occasionally work, but you have to hold the picture close and focus on it close, without bringing your eyes together as you normally do when you’re trying to look at one point. In relaxing, and allowing each eye to take in a slightly different image, a third image appears, in three dimensions. Enough said.

Ehrenreich is trying to do a similar thing. In observing several seemingly independent cultural tendencies, she has perceived a single pattern. Continue reading »

Almost every day at work, I hear one of my life’s favorite sounds–recess at the elementary school across the street–hundreds of kids having all kinds of fun. Then I hear one of the saddest sounds–the bell that calls them all back to class. Why did we ever let them take recess away from us? I think it’s time to bring it back.

Seriously, how much fun was that? Sure, I know there are bullies and fights and not getting picked to be on the team you want, but that stuff happens off the playground too. Drama and trauma aren’t the exclusive realm of the playground. But man, there’s a lot of fun stuff that never happens unless you have some regularly set-aside time to play with others.

The other Sunday, a bunch of folks from the church went over to carol at the Northaven Retirement Community. From two years old to over seventy, that group had fun, especially singing to the 80-plus crowd who will always show up to hear a choir.

Honestly we were a somewhat unruly bunch. Not that everyone at Northaven likes to color inside the lines, but we had kids roaming ALL around, wanting to be held, then not, then deciding to go help Harumi play the piano, then deciding not to sing. My favorite was to see several of our youngsters helping Rob direct the singing.

Some adults get cranky amid such antics, but not our group and not Northaven either. On this day, it was grace abounding. Unless I was missing something, it seemed like every one of us was just enjoying ourselves.

I wish more of my life was like that. I mean, haven’t we all wanted to direct the choir and play electric guitar and drums at one time or another–so much that we just acted like we were, even though we didn’t really know how to, or didn’t have anyone that would actually let us do it for real?

Continue reading »

Conventional wisdom says the right time to celebrate the new year is January.  To be sure, that’s when our Gregorian calendar changes and our attentions turn toward the year ahead.  But that’s backward from the way we mark the passing of our personal time passages.  This March, I’ll celebrate my 40th year of living, but in truth, I’m already living in it.  Am I only to celebrate upon its completion?

Advent time is screwy.  It’s liminal time, in-between time, not-quite-but-just-about-time.

For Christians, it is the beginning of the new year.  The season of Pentecost ends with a celebration of Christ’s reign as a different kind of sovereign.  Advent takes us all the way back to the beginning of the Jesus story as his world and ours prepare for his coming. Continue reading »

The spiders around my house are looking healthy and fat these days. When I first moved out here, they looked exotic and frightening. In Indiana, it was mostly Daddy long-legs. I used to diligently sweep them all out of sight.

At some point, I called a truce. I asked them to stay out of my hair and not to crowd out the doorways or windows. Now, if they spin their webs out of the way, I leave them alone. I gently move the inevitable encroachers to better spots. I’ve learned to tell individual spiders apart and must confess to esteeming the more diligent and crafty among them. I see now that I am the host of these little creatures guarding my house from annoying insects.

I’m still a bit squeamish around the Hobos. This is the time of year they try to get inside to lay their eggs. I’m not cool with the ones that can really hurt me. I’ve had enough pain for one year. Continue reading »

What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then? Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I’ve always been a fan of Candid Camera. My stomach was sore for days from laughing so hard at the episode where the construction site porta-potty was secretly mounted to a fork-lift. Viewers watch worker after worker suffer varying degrees of puzzlement and consternation upon opening the door to a world now 12 feet below them. Of course, the subjects eventually spot the camera and small crowd splitting their guts over their plight and it’s smiles all around.

Humor is healing. We’ve known this intuitively for some time, but it wasn’t `til the 1970’s that scientists began to acknowledge a connection between our frame of mind and our bodies ability to heal. Norman Cousins may have triggered the revolution. After being diagnosed with a terminal illness, he checked himself into a hotel and had films of Candid Camera and the Marx Brothers brought in. He literally belly laughed himself back to health. Intrigued by his widely shared story, scientists began studies which later confirmed his conclusion. The new science of psychoneuroimmunology was born! Continue reading »

There’s a kind of power that comes to students who understand their stake in the questions they ask. I remember well the day at Manchester College when I ran into some students from a school out East. They were traveling around the country to share their experiences with student-led classes.

“Student led?” I asked. Was I hearing them right? Why would a school let students lead a class? Weren’t we here to learn from our professors?

They shared the story of their own student-led class experience. I was fascinated by the process they used to get together and decide what they wanted to study. The whole thing was making me laugh-not the way one laughs at something ridiculous, but more the way one laughs at a clever friend’s description of an event that you were at, but hadn’t found funny at the time, but now can see was actually hilarious.

I don’t think I’d ever spent time thinking about what I might want to study, if I actually got to choose entirely on my own. That realization started me down the rabbit hole. Endless possibilities! Continue reading »

When I asked Tom Mullen, one of my favorite seminary professors, to preach at my ordination service, I expected him to be clever and profound; but when he titled his message, ‘Unfit for the Ministry’ I wondered if choosing the faculty comedian had been wise.  Was my vocation to be in jeopardy just as it was getting off the ground?

My first pastorate was in Indiana.  Out East, when people learn you are a pastor, they tend to smile and commend you for your willingness to serve the church.  I knew Seattle would be different, but I didn’t know that honestly answering one of people’s first questions upon meeting me would end so many conversations before they’d begun. Continue reading »