Car(apace)

Even after two years of sliding gracefully through stop signs and spinning in place while attempting to exit our well-glazed parking space, my husband and I had continued to question the necessity of a new set of snow tires. Was it really worth 1000 whole dollars just to be able to stop when we wanted to stop or go when we wanted to go? Then came the first genuine snowfall in November, which sent us van-skiing down a steep hill toward a busy intersection right in the middle of rush-minute traffic. That thrilling brush with disaster ended the debate. We wanted to live through another winter. So we slimmed down our bank account, handed over a hefty chunk of our savings to the hardworking folks at Les Schwab, and drove away, accompanied by the reassuring crunchity-crunchity-crunch of metal studs against ice.

And then the snow promptly quit falling. We spent nearly all of the last two months wearing down our shiny new studs on perfectly clear roads.

I'm usually the only one around here who's dreaming of a green Christmas, but the complete cessation of snow this winter has had me wondering whether that fat wad of cash would have been better spent on something useful like, say, a lifetime supply of washable markers. But then all it took was one more good snowfall and a slippery drive up a hilly country road to convince me that those new tires were worth every last penny.

Snow tires or no snow tires, however, I was grateful to avoid any extensive traveling this winter. Three years ago, as you may recall, we flew to Phoenix for Christmas, and in the process of missing our first flight on account of impassable roads, driving back home past stranded cars to buy all new tickets, spending the night in Spokane both before and after our flights, and staying at two different houses while we were in Arizona, I both packed and unpacked suitcases for our entire family six times.

Combine that with the experience of loading and unloading the portable crib, transferring and retransferring car seats, rolling and unrolling sleeping bags, slipping and sliding around the highway in winter storm conditions, and hurrying tiny children with tinier bladders through crowded airports, and you'll understand why holiday travel has, for me, lost most of its luster.

My inner pragmatist would be more than happy to swear off all holiday traveling adventures until the entire family is old enough to not only be out of diapers and car seats, but also to pack their own suitcases—and to help push the van out of a snow bank, should the occasion arise.

• • • • •

When I was a kid I used to enjoy winter travel, usually because it meant spending Christmas with my multitudes of cousins. Long road trips were always as much a part of our holiday traditions as Grandma Kvale's roast turkey, Uncle Ken's egg nog lattes, and Aunt Marilynn's "Hyill-hyill-hyill!" laughter emanating from the kitchen. Each year my family would open our gifts early and then pile into our boxy Toyota Tercel wagon for the drive to Tacoma, to my grandparents' house on the hill.

As we neared our destination in the evening, after six hours of sharing the back seat with my little brother, I would watch expectantly through the window for the brightly lit star my grandfather always set atop the roof—high enough to be seen from the freeway.

When we finally arrived at the house, I loved to run up the spiral staircase to the guest bedroom. From there, through the age-rippled window glass, I could glimpse ten thousand red brake lights and ten thousand white headlights forming a peaceful rolling stream along the interstate below.

After experiencing the speed and intensity of city traffic, the transformation seemed  surreal. Who, seeing that view, would consider the possibility that tragedy could, at any moment, interrupt that graceful slow dance through the fog? As bright and cheerful as a string of Christmas lights, rows of cars, trucks, and buses glistened under the pink-orange glow of the sodium vapor street lamps. What danger could there be in such a lovely procession?

• • • • •

As a child, of course, I never gave the road conditions so much as a second thought. I had implicit trust in my father's driving abilities and never once suspected that there might be even the slightest hint of danger in all that winter driving—not with my dad behind the wheel. Deep in the recesses of my mind lay an early memory of our brand new car being struck by an elderly lady's land yacht, but that did not shake my firm belief that accidents were distant events that happened in other places to other people.

My first true encounter with the hazards of winter travel didn't come until I was a teenager when, due to an impassable blizzard, we were forced to spend New Year's Eve in an Ellensberg Motel 6. As we set out along an ice-encrusted Interstate 90 the next day, we found ourselves watching in tense amazement as the pickup truck immediately in front of us slid out of control, started into a slow-motion spin, ricocheted off the median, struck another car, and then slipped, missing us by what seemed like inches, into the shallow ditch next to the freeway.

That's when I began to wonder if there was, perhaps, something slightly ridiculous about that annual trek over the ice and through the mountains. I began to understand that even the best of drivers can do nothing to prevent black ice, or drunk college students, or wildlife crossings. (I once watched my brother's Suburban collide with a swooping owl.) Scary things happen on the road—things beyond our control.

Every Christmas of my childhood had sent us weaving our icy way around the Palouse hills, through the Columbia gorge, over the mountain passes (chains or snow tires required), and along roadways blasted out of the rock with countless sticks of dynamite. We zipped through snow and ice and rain at historically unprecedented speeds, passing mere feet from other vehicles that raced along at equally breathtaking speeds. One unexpected bump, one careless flick of the wrist, one brief error in judgement, and goodbye family, goodbye beating hearts.

We—all of us—have been living on the edge, and yet most of us hardly consider whether this whole wintertime travel business is a good idea. In fact, most of us hardly think about driving at all, regardless of the season. Even when conditions are at their worst, we remain largely undeterred.

• • • • •

Last Monday the "check engine" light blinked on in our van, but for an entire week neither I nor my husband had time to take the vehicle in for a checkup. What was wrong with our engine neither of us knew, and on the way to school one of the kids nervously asked me if I thought our car might explode. I laughed and said I sure hoped not. How often does that really happen anyway? In my ignorance, however, I couldn't make any guarantees. But did that stop us from going where we wanted to go? Not at all. The kids must be educated, and the groceries must be hauled from afar. Driving is a luxury that most of us really cannot live without—not even at our own peril.

And it is perilous. Not to sound panicky or anything, but, well, you could die out there, you know.

As a mom with young children, I read and hear a lot of buzz about the terrible risks we take with our kids when we vaccinate them, or don't vaccinate them, or feed them foods tainted with high fructose corn syrup, or expose them to chemical pesticides, or (perish the thought) let them catch a breath of second hand smoke. But honestly, I suspect that all of those potential dangers pale in comparison to the kind of overt danger we face just driving our little ones to the mall—let alone across hundreds of miles of frozen freeway—on a snowy January day.

Stop and think about it. If there were any other behavior-related cause of death that was comparable to traffic collisions, the national outcry would be deafening. More than 6500 American children die—and tens of thousands more are injured—every year as a direct result of motor vehicle accidents. If that grim statistic were associated with a drug or a chemical or a tainted food product, you can imagine the backlash. If we could blame a corporation or the government or some other high profile scapegoat for knowingly gambling with the lives of these innocent victims, we'd all be writing letters to congress to make them stop, demanding fines, prison time, and heads on a platter.

But the thing is, even after hearing all about the risks involved, we're the ones voluntarily buckling our very own children into our minivans everyday. We're too busy stressing out about the the trans-fats that the children in the back seat are absorbing from their drive-through fries to think about the death-defying means we took to arrive at the drive through in the first place. We don't even blink when a fully loaded eighteen wheeler comes hurtling toward us at 60 MPH. We fret and worry about long-term hypothetical risks and completely ignore the immediate—but apparently acceptable—risks that are racing along in the lane next to us. Have we lost our minds?

• • • • •

If I'm reading the numbers right, traffic accidents kill more children in a single year in this country than the total number of US military deaths (combat- and non-combat-related combined) in Iraq during the three years from 2003 to 2006. Just a stone's throw from our home in Dallas, a drunk driver swerved out of his lane on Highway 183 and sent a gasoline tanker plunging off of an overpass, where it burst into an white-hot inferno and transformed the stretch of road next to the IHOP into a charred mass of unstable rebar and concrete. A few too many Budweisers and one careless driver had effectively detonated what amounted to a roadside bomb.

But I, just like everybody else, was back behind the wheel—on that very highway, no less—the same day. There was no question that the fire-blasted overpass would and must be rebuilt. Most of us read the headlines, shake our heads, and then cheerfully strap our little ones back into their car seats without a second thought. It's simply a risk that we've grown so accustomed to that we rarely think of it as a risk at all.

Most of us, after all, would rather not revert to the old covered wagon routine for bringing home the weekly mountain of groceries, let alone for heading across the mountains to visit grandma—especially during the winter months.

• • • • •

Driving at any time of year, of course, is risky—particularly if you live in a college town like mine, where roughly a third of the population consists of impatient, inexperienced, and irresponsible drivers.

Just a few months ago, a speeding car ran a red light and nearly collided with me as I was on my way home from my boys' school. And while I was in college, I had not one but two cars totaled by 17-year-old drivers—one that suddenly turned left directly in front of me on a residential street and hit me almost head-on, and one who ran a red light at an intersection and slammed into my front end with her uninsured orange Ford Bronco. Neither of those accidents happened on icy roads, and they both occurred years before anyone had ever heard of texting while driving. I've been an extremely defensive (translation: tense) driver, and an obnoxiously jumpy passenger, ever since.

• • • • •

What I've come to realize is that every time we go zipping merrily along the highway toward an oncoming car, we are defying sudden and violent death. Who of us doesn't have a few dramatic car-crash (or near-miss) stories to tell about a friend or a loved one—or ourselves?

I've spent a blazing hot afternoon stranded in the middle of a fallow field in Central Washington with my radiator punctured by a rusty, half-buried tiller—and with only a 300-pound Spanish speaking junk man and his great dane to keep me company. I've had friends hospitalized after being struck by incautious and intoxicated drivers. I've attended the funeral of a young man who fell asleep at the wheel on his way home from the university. One of my college friends lost her new husband to a wintertime car crash. The lives of the sister, brother-in-law, and baby nephew of one of my high school classmates were taken all at once by a drunk driver. Limbs and hearts have been broken on nearly every roadway in America.

And aside from the terrible human cost of driving, there are all kinds of animal casualties as well. Ten years ago, on a trip from New Orleans to Monroe, Louisiana, my husband and I drove past countless dead dogs, cats, possums, turtles, and even small alligators—a veritable natural history museum of roadkill. I know multiple people who have struck deer on the highway. The streets where we now live are polka-dotted with crushed squirrel carcasses—but then again, perhaps dead squirrels are an argument in favor of the deadly power of cars? In any case, as long as we persist in our driving habits, all sorts of traumatic events are likely to occur again.

So the question is, what keeps us going back for more?

• • • • •

Driving is, frequently, a mere matter of convenience. Even when walking or biking is a viable option, we choose driving as a quicker and easier way to get from point A to point B. Let's face it. Sometimes we're just lazy.

But often, driving is not a matter of convenience but of necessity. Unless you live in New York or Chicago and have nowhere to go beyond the fixed train routes, alternative forms of transportation are hard to come by. You might try to absolve yourself of fossil fuel guilt by taking the bus, but that does nothing to keep you off the busy roads. Besides, as my shocked children immediately discovered, buses do not have seat belts. Most American cities were not built for foot or bicycle traffic, much less for a horse and carriage. And for those of us with multiple kids and gallons of milk to haul across town, we need some kind of vehicle to help.

We also drive out of a sense of obligation. Because modern transportation has made it possible to visit distant friends and family, we feel that we must. Nobody with a functioning vehicle and some money for gas can legitimately say, "Sorry, Grandma. 100 miles is just too far to travel for Christmas."

And, in spite of the obvious dangers, most of the population isn't hitting the road in search of an adrenaline rush. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm not naming any names, but I know some people who  like to take a drive to relieve stress. There is, in fact, a whole genre of driving-for-the-love-of-it songs, typified by Willie Nelson's "On the Road Again." And even I can be carried away by that easy, free-wheelin' feelin' of watching the yellow center stripes flick past to the rhythm of a good-mood soundtrack. You just better hope that a stray moose doesn't wander across your path while you're, in the words of Son Volt, letting the "wind take your troubles away."

That brings me to what is, perhaps, the central reason for our automobile habit: it makes us feel free. "A car in every driveway" is still very much part of the American dream, and individual autonomy is arguably the reigning American value. According to American Public Media, the city of Los Angeles is home to nearly twice as many cars as drivers. It sounds ludicrous. But for us Americans, a car is more than a tool; it is a status symbol. It is more than a status symbol; it is an extension of who we are. To own a car is to hold a sense of power, independence, and importance. We select the time of departure. We set the speed. We choose the music. We decide where to go, and when to stop, and why. We are kings and queens ruling over our own little steel-and-rubber worlds. This might explain why sweet little old ladies can turn into cussing hussies when they get behind the wheel; on the highway we are tiny independent states vying for dominance, and pity the brazen fool who attempts to invade our territory. ¡Vìvà la vehicle!

So, while we may drive for convenience, necessity, pleasure, and the grand illusion of freedom, I have to wonder if even these motivations, powerful as they are, can fully explain our decision to accept the risks involved. Why are we so overwhelmingly willing to play the odds?

• • • • •

The odds themselves are, obviously, part of the answer. Even in the wintertime, you're not statistically likely to die on the way to grandma's house. For every trip that ends in a deadly crash, there are a million more that reach their destination in perfect safety. The bet is a fairly safe one. But that doesn't change the fact that it's our lives that are on the line. Even if there are a million empty chambers in the revolver, Russian roulette is still the game we're choosing to play. (C'mon, kids! Give it a spin!)

Why not stay off the roads whenever possible? Why take the gamble when the stakes are so high? For many, ignoring the risks and trusting blind fate are the best reasons they can offer. But for me the overarching reason is probably best summed up in a quote that I've heard attributed to General Stonewall Jackson: "My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle [or behind the wheel] as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me."

In other words, the risks we take are never governed by impersonal chance. They are never automatic or meaningless. Which is to say, they are not, in the ultimate sense, risks at all; every outcome was fully planned before we were born.

The well lived life is not the one spent locked indoors, wearing a crash helmet, and popping vitamins. It is spent loving our kids, and visiting our friends, and doing our work with the confidence that comes from faith: Yea, though I drive through the turnpike of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.

This naturally raises deeper questions about the unfathomable relationship between God's sovereignty and human responsibility, but I will let the theologians and pastors expound that one more fully. I will simply say that I believe God uses indirect means, from Roman crosses to snow tires, to accomplish His ends, and that there is no contradiction between trusting God and buckling our seat belts. We are not called to express our faith by being stupidly suicidal but by living each day as we ought, in spite of the apparent danger. We can drive to school or go to battle assured that in God's hands we are as safe there—or as doomed—as in bed.

So, while purchasing expensive new tires was part of being a good steward of our family's lives, and while I may have been grateful to stay comfortably at home for the holidays, there is, perhaps, no better time than during the Christmas season to recognize that evading death is not the point of living. This life is not meant to be lived for the sole purpose of its own preservation. That momentous birth in Bethlehem was all about taking up a mortal life in order to lay it down. Because of this, we are free to take risks, even deadly ones, in order to fulfill our duties and in order to love others—which is, after all, essentially the same thing.

We Are the 99 Percent

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

These are stark and disturbing claims, are they not? The above is the summary statement on the home page of the "We Are The 99 Percent" website, a blog where supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement can post their stories of worry, deprivation, and suffering at the hands of the wealthiest 1 percent of the American population–the 1 percent who own and manage some of the world's largest corporations.

A tale of two Americas

I confess that I have not been following the protests closely. But the protesters' signs are big, and their complaints are loud, so it would be hard to miss their point: Corporate moguls are selfish moneygrubbers who couldn't care less about the little guy. They would rather line their own pockets at the expense of the other 99 percent of Americans than consider the economic hardships the rest of us are enduring. And while we dig ourselves deeper into private debts, they cruise carelessly above us in their private jets. Somebody (Congress, are you listening?) had better make them give back some of what they've taken from all of us.

By now, of course, we've seen plenty of opposing commentary highlighting the benefits these corporations bestow upon us Americans, and I know that I myself have enjoyed many of the goods and services that they provide. But let's grant, just for the sake of argument, that these corporate billionaires really are nothing but heartless financial dictators who would rather starve a child than lose a dollar. Let's say that they truly do care more about the bottom line than about the bread line. Let's grant, in other words, that the ugly portrait that the protesters have painted of these Wall Street Scrooges is perfectly accurate. It's not a pretty picture, is it? Wall Street has some serious penance to pay.

But now, just for a minute, let's shift our focus away from those bloodsucking CEO's and back on the protesters themselves. They are the 99 percent. Their signs say so. And they have been painting a portrait not only of Wall Street but also of themselves. You can see it on their website. You can read it in the quote up above. The contrast couldn't be starker: The 99 percent are suffering. They have no rights. They are, to put in their words, getting nothing.

Nothing. Let's meditate on that.

How impoverished, exactly, are 99 percent of the American people? How accurate is the self portrait these protesters have been painting? What if, for the sake of perspective, we took away their paintbrush and instead handed these 99 percent a mirror? What, I had to wonder, does it look like to get nothing? What does suffering look like in the US of A? What does it mean to have no rights? Well, I've got eyeballs, and so, I hope do you. So pull up on Google any Associated Press photo of the Wall Street Protesters and tell me what you see.

Living with nothing

What I see over and over again is a gathering of apparently clean, healthy, well dressed, well fed individuals carrying cell phones and digital cameras and being respectfully allowed to take over city streets to voice their opinions—even in spite of their violation of minor laws about the acceptable use of public spaces.

What I do not see are swollen, malnourished bellies. I see no open sores or untreated diseases. I see no dirty rags or disintigrating shoes. I see no one being beaten or shot or arrested merely for voicing their opposition to the status quo. Nor am I seeing that sort of thing on the streets where I live—or on any American street, for that matter. So, while appearances can be deceiving, just on the face of it the claims of the 99 percent seem suspect.

That's not to say that nobody is suffering, that nobody is underfed, that nobody is being crushed by corporate greed. That's not to say that some Wall Street corporations haven't taken merciless advantage of some of us American citizens. I do believe that more and more people in our country have been struggling to make ends meet in recent years. I might even count myself among them.

I myself have known well enough what it's like to be uninsured, to go without certain luxuries, to live "paycheck to paycheck." Our family spent several years in which my own kids were eligible for Medicaid. Just this past year we lost some of our health coverage due to the economic downturn, and even now our family fits squarely within the definition of "low income" according to federal guidelines for a family of seven. I am the 99 percent, I guess. So it's not that I think these people are completely delusional when they say that times are tough. But the question is, tough compared to what? 

I have no doubt that among the Wall Street protesters there are individuals with legitimate grievances. But do they represent the 99 percent? To ask it another way, for every 100 people in these United States, are 99 being robbed and cheated and trampled upon by Wall Street? I found that hard to believe, so I decided to do a quick search of the internet to find some reliable statistics that might show what life among the 99 percent is actually like during these dark financial times.

A better summary?

Don't get me wrong. I understand the rhetorical power of hyperbole, but is our plight truly as bad as the "We Are the 99 Percent" crowd describes—that 99 percent of Americans are, in essence, homeless, sick, starving, poisoned, unemployed, or "working long hours for little pay and no rights" and are "getting nothing"?

Exaggerated claims like these are, in part, what prompted the government of North Korea, of all places, to issue official public statements claiming that these dire conditions in the United States now prove that capitalism has failed us. Would you, the 99 percent, prefer to emmigrate to North Korea, that great land of economic equality, in order to enjoy the wealth and freedom that it has to offer? Would you trade your American poverty for their prosperity? Yeah, me neither. 

I'm not saying that we couldn't do better. I'm not saying that Wall Street is guiltless or that poverty—even relative poverty—should be ignored. What I am saying is that, before we decide to condemn greed, we might want to take a look in the mirror; before we march through the streets lamenting our poverty, we might first do well to learn what poverty actually looks like in this country. Our "necessities" look surprisingly like luxuries to most of the world's population.

If we compared our poorest citizens to the wealthiest one percent of the rest of the world, I suspect that we might be astonished by the resemblance.

As most of us know, legitimate statistics can be used, and routinely are used, to cloud the truth. So I fully realize that the following percentages are unlikely to paint a completely accurate portrait of American life. What I do hope to prove, however, is that these statistics bear very little resemblance to the portrait painted on the We Are the 99 Percent website.

If nothing else, I hope that after reading the statistics below the response that we come away with is gratitude. We Americans, we 99 percent, have been given far much more than we realize. Thanksgiving is coming up. Allow me to help you get ready:

According the US Department of Energy (2005), of all Americans at poverty level or below,

99.7% have a refrigerator

97.9% have a TV

95.2% have a stove and oven

81.7% have a microwave

74.7% have air conditioning (Really? I am now slightly envious of 74% of poor Americans.)

72.3% have one or more VCRs

66.8% have more than one TV

64.9% have cable or satellite TV (!) 

64.8% have at least one DVD player

63.9% have a clothes washer

53.1% have a clothes dryer

54.5% have a cell phone

51.7% have both a VCR and DVD player

38.2% have a personal computer

29.3% have a video game console

29.3% have internet service

28.4% have a computer printer

24.2% have more than one DVD player

22.7% have a separate freezer

17.9% have a big screen TV

(I should add that these percentages are even higher among poor families with children.)

According to the USDA,

85.5 percent (101.5 million) of U.S. households were food secure throughout 2010.

Food secure—These households had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members.

According to National Geographic,

Americans on average have the largest homes of the 17 countries surveyed.

97% have hot running water

94% have a reliable source of heat

82% have air conditioning

85% regularly eat chicken

79% regularly eat beef

79% of Americans drive cars alone (So that's why the carpool lane is always empty during rush hour!)

67% have a dishwasher

57% have 3 or more TVs

48% have their own washer and dryer

19% have 3 or more cars per household.

16% of American homes have 10 or more rooms.

According to Pew Research:

96% of 14- to 29-year-olds own a cell phone

85% of all American adults now own a mobile phone

76% of Americans own either a desktop or laptop computer

47% own an dedicated MP3 player such as an iPod or Zune

42% of Americans own a video game console

And lastly, according to the CIA World Fact Book,

the current average life expectancy in this country is 78.3 years, compared to a global average of 67.2 years. (Throughout much of Africa, you would be doing extraordinarily well to reach age 50.)

After looking at what the majority of us really do have, I think we would do well to rewrite the summary found at the beginning of this post. If we are being honest, most of us could sign our names to something more like this:

We are the 99 percent. We drive our own cars. We have free K-12 education. We watch TV. We play games on our cell phones. We take hot showers regularly and turn on the AC in the summertime. We eat meat several times a week. We wear new clothes and have machines to wash them for us. We live long and prosper. We are the 99 percent. 

Earth Day

One Good Friday, when I was a child, we attended the Tenebrae service at our Lutheran church, and while we sat in our pews a storm rose outside. The wind began to blow wildly, and while Christ made his way to the accursed tree, every tree on the hills around us was made to bow and bend. Hail, King of the Jews. The sun went dark. The windows shook. The clouds shed tears. Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. From the steeple at the center of the circular sanctuary hung a large wooden cross on a chain, and as the rain lashed the roof, the steeple began to vibrate. As those wind vibrations worked their way down the chain, the cross began to hum. To buzz. To moan. The wood itself seemed to cry from out of the depths—a basso profundo wailing. Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani? I remember the chills I felt as the massive Bible was slammed shut and the lights flicked off, the creak and groan of the wooden pews as we filed wordlessly out of the service, the whip of cold air as it snaked its way through the glass doors, biting at our heels, making me shiver.

Truly this was the Son of God.

That Good Friday storm was one of the more dramatic events of my church-going life. In retrospect I have wondered what physics were behind that mourning cross. More than physics, perhaps. That the storm blew in at the perfect moment, that a cold Canadian front met with a mass of wet southern air at that precise geographical location and sent the wind swirling in just such a way as to communicate grief through the glass, down a chain, and into that heavy wood seems almost unbelievable. As unbelievable as the death of God. But I was there. I was a witness. And I do believe.

Today is Earth Day. Today is Good Friday. On this day, two holidays—two holy days—collide. Today, Evangelical pastors and Greenpeace activists share the same hope: the hope that the earth will be saved.

We Christians and we earth-lovers want this world to be redeemed from destruction. None of us want it to go up sulfer-scented flames. I, for one, would rather not turn the wetlands into a trash heap. I'm all for biodegradable grocery sacks, and I don't mind the green glow of my compact fluorescent bulbs too much either. I do have a mandate to care for creation, but by composting my potato peelings, I am not, ultimately, saving the world. We all want to restore paradise, to bring heaven to earth. But at this point the Good Friday and the Earth Day visions diverge. Today we preach our respective gospels to the dying:
    Christ was crucified.
    Plant a tree for your tomorrow.

And yet, in a twist of irony, the salvation of the earth does, as it turns out, depend upon a tree—a tree that was planted on a hill outside Jerusalem two millennia ago. Creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

There was an earthquake that day on Golgatha. Seismology played a roll at the crucifixion, but something more than plate tectonics was at work; the earth itself was taking part in Christ's passion. There was a storm on that Good Friday of my childhood. Perhaps a meteorologist could explain the peculiar atmospheric fluctuations that arose that dark evening when the earth, again, acted out its passion play. Was climate change behind it? Should we try to prevent those conditions from arising in the future? Somebody, after all, paved paradise to put up that church. But that church—that cross—is where the heavens met the earth that day. And where heaven and earth are joined, paradise is restored.

The cross, that deadly collision of heaven and earth, is where the true lover of the world—He through whom the earth itself was created—bled to save it. If He did not come to restore the earth, then all the neighborhood recycling programs in the world be damned.

Good Friday is Earth Day, this year and every year. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Haircut

One warm afternoon when I was eight years old, I was skipping down the sidewalk under a row of black walnut trees on my way home from a friend’s house after school. As I passed a couple of boys in backpacks, I heard one whisper to the other, “Was that a boy or a girl?” I turned my head just in time to see the other boy shrug as he looked left and right before crossing the street.

There was no malice intended in that brief inquiry. Clearly, they thought I was out of earshot. But I, with my Dutch Boy haircut and my unisex corduroy pants, could hear those words with the precision of a freshly honed knife. With that simple overheard question, all my third-grade self confidence dropped with a crash into my gender neutral sneakers and shivered into ten thousand sharp-edged pieces.

From that day until the day I graduated from high school, I avoided getting my hair cut short.

• • • • • • •

What makes hair so important to our self perception? To the perception others have of us? According the Apostle Paul, it’s meant to be a glory and a covering. It’s a means of pursuing beauty. But it’s also a way to distract ourselves from pursuing beauty of a more lasting kind. It’s one of the first identifying features we use to describe other people, and it has a remarkable capacity to either attract or repel.

Just this weekend, after dropping off two of my kids at a birthday party, I saw a woman walking through the Safeway parking lot. She wore a cute white coat, a pair of trendy boots, and carried an armload of carefully folded, environmentally friendly, reusable grocery bags. She also had one of the worst cases of bed head I’ve ever seen. On account of her hair alone, she looked, to put it bluntly, like a mess—like she’d had, if not a terrible life, then at least a terrible morning. She looked like someone who deserved my pity.

Odd as it seems, hair has a way of telling a story; we use it to show the rest of the world who we are and who we want to be. According to one recent survey, the average American woman will spend roughly 2 ½ years and $50,000 on her hair before she dies. Apparently we think our hair is a worthwhile way to invest our time and money. And maybe the returns are substantial enough to justify the expense; a person’s “do” is often all the signal we need to tell us whether she is headed for a night on the town or a day at the gym—whether she is one of us, or one of them.

Hair is, in fact, behind many of the snap judgments I find myself making. One look at a woman with a pink Kool-Aid dye job, or a mane of carefully highlighted layers, or a slicked-tight chignon, or straight, down-to-the-rear tresses can leave the impression—accurate or otherwise—that this person is insecure or confident, ambitious or socially inept. It seems a bit strange that I, who spend relatively little time on my own hair, would instantly attach such significance to what other people have done with theirs. Does it prove that I am shallow? Mercilessly judgmental? Astute? Could it be that some poor woman’s bad hair day has kept me from making a new friend? Is it possible that the lady in the Safeway parking lot had her Saturday morning act together more than I did? Or did I accurately assess the truth about her from one quick glance at the back of her matted head?

• • • • • • •

During my last year of high school, I had spent months wanting to change my look. I would stand in front of the mirror, pull up the ends of my long hair and fold it over on itself, letting the bottom of the loop hang down to my jaw, giving me an amateur preview of the style I wanted. I would raise and lower the looped hair, trying to decide how drastic an amputation this should be.

I was partly excited and partly terrified as I finally picked up the phone and scheduled my haircut for the day after graduation.

When the day came, I sat waiting in the salon chair, all nerves beneath my black cape, watching in the glass as a girl with acrylic nails and “Tammie” stamped on her nametag twisted and clipped the top layer of my hair into loose coils around my head, transforming me into a kind of brunette Medusa. Across the salon, a lipsticky woman with squares of foil sprouting haphazardly around her face stared at my reflection, if not exactly turned to stone, then temporarily transfixed as the last snake of my hair was held in place.

“Okay, girl! Ya sure about this?” I turned my eyes toward Tammie and nodded, feeling my heart beat rise. I watched her raise the scissors, felt the cool metal against my skin, heard the first definitive ksssht of blade against blade.

Oh gosh. Oooh my gosh. What had I done?

When that first foot-long snake of hair slithered to the floor, the woman with the foil seemed to revive from her state of petrifaction and dropped her lipstick mouth wide open. “Oh honey,” she said with a loud East-coast accent, “Oh my gaaahd. You are so brave! I could never just go cold-turkey short like that.” My eyes made contact with hers in the mirror, and I saw her shake her metallic head in disbelief. “You are so brave,” she said again.

So brave. Something about those words calmed my jitters and made me feel almost heroic, a sort of side-kick to my acrylic-nailed Achilles. With a repetitive click and hiss, she cut down snake after snake while I looked on with growing approval.

When Tammie was done and the blow dryer was turned off, she passed me a small hand mirror and spun me around to give me the full, 360-degree view. I liked what I saw. So did my foil-framed admirer. “Oh wow, that is so cute!” she said, “You are so, so brave!”

For weeks afterward, I would find myself stopping by the bathroom mirror just to see if I was still satisfied with the new look, half afraid that I’d find nothing but an older version of my crushed Dutch Boy self staring back at me. But each time I looked, I liked this girl—this young woman—better. I felt somehow grown up. Sophisticated. People I had known for years would pass me by on the street without recognizing me, and, when I said hello, would repeat some variation of the foil lady’s shock and admiration. I reveled in their reactions at the time, but in retrospect, I wonder what else they could possibly have said.

The only person who has ever reserved the right to criticize what I’ve done to my hair is my grandmother, who let me know in no uncertain terms that she had liked it better long. But hair, to my grandmother’s relief, turns out to be a renewable resource, and for the past 15 years I have let it grow and cut it off at roughly annual intervals, shocking my children, dismaying my grandmother and pleasing myself every time. I might like to think that these periodic drastic alterations prove that I am so brave. But really, it’s just that I’m no good at fixing my hair; when it gets unwieldy, it has to go.

• • • • • • •

Just a couple of months ago, I went to get my hair cut at the local beauty school. (Risky, maybe, but it’s hard to argue with a five-dollar shampoo, cut, and style.) I’d intended to go sooner, but with other priorities getting in the way, I had left my hair to grow until it reached past my shoulders and was spending its monotonous daily existence as an inartistic—but highly practical—ponytail. So when I sat down in the salon chair and explained what I wanted, my student stylist, was timid about cutting my hair back as far as I’d described. Not once, not twice, but three times I had to ask her to cut it shorter. After an hour under her scissors, it was still an inch longer than I’d hoped, but I decided it was close enough. I paid my five dollars, threw in a tip, and walked home.

When I entered the house, my sons received the new me with varying degrees of enthusiasm. “You look ridiculous,” one of them told me.

“Whoa,” was all another had to offer.

And my youngest child, who always has a flair for flattery, assured me, “You look beautiful, Mommy.” I play to a tough crowd.

I remember, though, how the same alteration startled me the day my own mother cut her hair short when I was little. It took several days to convince myself that, in spite of all appearances, she was still the same person.

• • • • • • •

Even knowing what a powerful effect hair can have, I usually hate taking the time to fiddle with it just to make myself presentable, which is why I like a low maintenance style best—and which is why it’s probably a good thing I don’t have daughters. With five kids (who sport no-nonsense buzz cuts) keeping me busy, there are plenty of occasions when I skip the hair routine and spend the day looking like more of a mess than that lady from the Safeway parking lot. At least she had trendy boots. I, meanwhile, schlep around in my slippers until lunchtime trying to get ahead of the laundry.

But still, even if I am less than gifted with a blow dryer, I do appreciate a good hair day. It’s a lovely feeling to step out of the house with a fresh haircut and a sense of having faced the enemy and prevailed. Nevermind that the enemy was nothing but a bad case of bed head.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Better is a neighbor who is near than a brother who is far away.

—Proverbs 27:10

I live in my childhood home. There is something charming—and almost anachronistic—about raising my own children in the same house my parents bought when I was nine years old. I know every corner of this century-old farmhouse by heart, and every room holds memories in its walls. I am comfortable here. But as familiar as this house is, we are, in many ways, living in the middle of unfamiliar territory. A foreign world lies outside our doors.

Of course, it’s not as though a whirlwind has pulled us from our foundations and given us a yellow brick road where the sidewalk once was. Our street, in fact, looks almost as it did twenty-some years ago. The buildings themselves have hardly been altered; their structures, their yards, and even their paint colors are largely the same as they have been for two decades. The difference, rather, is their occupants. Most of them have been replaced. A couple of familiar faces remain, but after 17 years, they no longer recognize me.

The residences on our block—including ours—are mostly rentals or "starter" homes, which means that the people who are here now won't be for long. We’ve spent three years trying to learn the names of most of our neighbors, and within that short time, several of them have already moved on.

We rarely see many of our neighbors, and with so few of us likely to remain for more than a year or two, putting forth the effort—and it is an effort—to meet them feels almost futile. Some will never even make eye contact before ducking hurriedly into their house-shaped bunkers. They live in hiding, and then they leave.

* * * * * * * *

Twenty years ago, meeting our neighbors seemed easy. With so many kids sharing the same block, spontaneous encounters were practically inevitable. There was a time that children formed a part of the landscape, a time when I could recite the names of the occupants of nearly every house within view of our front yard.

I could tell you that the neighbor in the white house across the street would step onto his front porch at five o'clock each night—you could almost set your watch by his appearance—and call for his son John, stretching his short name into two long, operatic syllables. And John, with the blond rattail flying out behind him, would race his bike home for dinner.

In the fading red house facing ours lived two little girls, younger than I, whose father owned Southside Mini-mart down the alley. I envied them. They could skip over to their father's business after school and have their pick of free candy.

Two houses down, with their mother and the hard rocker step-dad they called Tony, lived Chris and Jennifer, unkempt in their oversized Def Leppard t-shirts. They smelled like dirt.


And at the end of the block was a family with three children who attended our Christian school. They had a friendly brown and white dog named Ginger, and their mother taught me how to sew Barbie skirts by hand.

But for all our quotidian interaction, we never grew close to the people around us. We knew their faces, and we knew their names. We said "hello" when we met on the street, but we never so much as shared a meal. We never really knew them.

Most of these people are gone now. I don't know where. Or why. Or how long ago. Maybe some of them are dead. And, to be honest, I have a hard time caring.

* * * * * * * *

Ours is a small college town, so the student population is in constant flux. As unsettling as that can seem, it's at least to be expected. What distresses me more is how rapidly the rest of the population turns over.

I often wonder what subtle effects our modern nomadic lifestyle has had on our society. What would our neighborhood look like if the people in it had stayed? How much different would our attitudes and expectations be if we knew we couldn't just pack up and leave every few years? And what investments would we be willing to make in our relationships with the folks next door if we expected to find them still living there in twenty years?

* * * * * * * *

Twenty years ago, those casual encounters with our neighbors cost us nothing; it likewise cost us nothing to say our casual goodbyes. Because forging friendships with our immediate neighbors requires more from us than it once did, it’s just possible that those friendships will seem more valuable in the end. But what, exactly, will it take to reach these people in the first place?

Most of us are just not home enough to regularly bump into one another. We spend too little time in our own yards. We're busy. We may have collected enough virtual "friends" to keep us from feeling the need for the kind with flesh and blood. We invert our sense of community by allowing Blogger and facebook to turn our private spaces into public spaces and iPods and cell phones to convert our public spaces into private spaces. Even when we do find ourselves forced into some kind of neighborly small talk, our fragmented culture has made common experiences next to impossible to find.

Bleak as it sounds, the only sure-fire way of making contact and forming relationships with these disparate individuals seems to be disaster of some sort. A massive windstorm this fall knocked out power and downed several trees around us, damaging a number of nearby homes and vehicles. Destructive, yes, but also an easy and natural topic for conversation. It provided an opportunity to finally meet some of the people on our block. I even had a chat with a man on the corner who had the top half of a giant pine tree resting comfortably on the roof of his camper. Before that day, I had never so much as seen his face.

My husband does a much better job of making friends with the neighbors than I do, but even so, it hasn't been easy. Sharing food has been somewhat successful—excess garden produce in summer, hot cross buns at Easter, homemade cookies at Christmas. A couple of neighbors have even accepted our invitations to dinner, but we have a long way to go before we could say we know them. When we tried to share a plate of treats with one man across the street, all he said was, "No thanks," and shut the door in our faces. Maybe he thought we were trying to poison him.

These people could be suffering some horrific trials in their lives, and we would be blissfully unaware. And tragically unable to help them—tragically unable to love them.

We've all heard the story of the Good Samaritan. We've all gotten the message that "Love your neighbor as yourself " doesn't literally mean to love your neighbor; it just means, as the old rock song suggests, to love the one you're with. But what if loving my neighbor actually meant loving my neighbor? As in, the person next door? The one with the Buddhist prayer flags and the political bumper stickers covering his door? The middle-aged single lady who plays the cello? The young couple that leaves for work in the pre-dawn hours and comes home at lunch to walk their tiny dog? The former police officer with the gorgeous flower garden? The registered sex offender whose front door was inexplicably smashed to slivers one night? What about those neighbors? What would it mean to love them?

Unless some of them stick around, we may never find out.

* * * * * * * *

I, too, have been a nomad. I may live in my childhood home, but I've taken a long time to arrive back here. As my facebook "friend" list reflects, I have put down shallow roots in other states, in other countries, only to pull them up again and be transplanted elsewhere. But there are fibers in that soil, traces of me, that I've left behind with every move. Those transitions, however necessary, are never entirely painless.

I'd like to say that we'll stay comfortably rooted forever in this house, but that may not be up to me. And honestly, I have the same wanderlust as those around me, the same hope for something bigger, something better, something we can call our own. Our family is growing, I tell myself, and we'll need more space. I truly do want to hold some kind of principle of rootedness, to maintain a deep sense of belonging to a place, but on this point my principles and my desires work at cross purposes. I don't think we'll ever leave town. At least I hope not. But even if we stay here in this neighborhood until our dying days, I can say with almost prophetic certainty that most of my neighbors won’t.

It’s our modest hope, however, that in the meantime we will build a few friendships here that will cost more—and be worth more—than a shallow hello.

Have Mercy on the Morons: A Plea on Behalf of the Misinformed

How do you know what you know?

That may seem like a pretty basic question, but it's a question that few of us are ever pushed to ask, let alone answer. It is a question, however, that has begun to bother me more than a little in recent years.

Of course, there are certain basic and unprovable assumptions that I must hold by faith as a Christian. Or even as a human being. Not every statement is up for debate. Whether we believe that God, or reason, or science, or Bono, or our own gut feeling is our ultimate standard for truth, we all have a place where the buck stops. All of our reasoning becomes circular when we get down to our most foundational beliefs.

I believe in the God of the Bible, and that necessitates that I reject any statements—however compelling—that directly contradict that belief. If someone asserts that theft is actually a good idea when you can get away with it, I can reject that statement without losing a single night's sleep, because it flatly defies the eighth commandment. Easy. But beyond the clear teachings of the Bible is a myriad of assertions that are anything but easy to assess. They require a degree of knowledge and wisdom that most of us will never attain. These are the kinds of questions that make me wonder how we really know what we "know."


A Matter of Trust
It's not that I lie awake at night worrying about this, and I have no plans for taking up the study of epistemology in my spare time. But honestly, every time one of my well intentioned Facebook friends posts another link to some piece of revisionist history, or alternative medicine, or political conspiracy, or any other article claiming to expose "hidden agendas" and "things the corporations don't want you to know," I feel like tearing my hair out.

It's not that I believe all these articles must be wrong. They may be absolutely right. Or mainly right. Or a little bit right about a few things. But therein lies my frustration; with the seemingly infinite number of "untold stories" out there, it's frequently impossible to know which stories to believe.

"Every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses" (Matthew 18:16). But what about all the times when the witnesses—even the "expert" witnesses—present conflicting evidence? When both the prosecution and the defense can call upon the testimony of two or three persuasive witnesses, how do I decide who makes a more convincing case? Daily life lacks the formality of a courtroom, and there are times when my decision cannot wait. I, of course, pray for wisdom, but often I must render my verdict while knowing full well that I have only part of the story and a few tidbits of sketchy evidence.

If, for example, somebody tells me that my government has lied to me about a particular event in the Middle East, I have to choose whom to believe if I am going to cast a "responsible vote." If there's been a cover-up, it is, well, covered up. There are many things I simply can't know. Do I trust the embittered soldier who was there? The apparently competent general who was also there? The commander in chief who saw the top-secret intelligence reports? The civilians who were affected on the ground? The talk radio host who interpreted the information? The NPR reporter who was embedded with the unit? The news anchor on Al Jazeera? The political blogger who scours the Web for possible leaks and insider stories? How do you know what you know?

I bring this up not because I want to start a discussion on foreign policy. I most certainly don't. And I don't want to sound like a relativist who thinks that all views are equally valid; I believe there's a vast gulf between truth and falsehood. I bring this up because I have found myself increasingly at a loss in sorting through the wildly differing "facts" littering my way as I try to navigate through life—especially through life as a parent.


The Curse of the Over-Informed Parent
In case you hadn't noticed, nearly everything we do for our kids requires careful thought. We need wisdom to sort through the barrage of opinions and studies and information and advice. Studies can be wrong, statistics can be twisted, and people on both sides of an issue can be less than objective in their approach. But the problem is, nobody I know has the time or resources to exhaustively research every possible option presented to us as parents. And because these decisions involve our kids—our future—emotions surrounding these choices tend to run rather high.

A typical mom might be disinterested in politics, apathetic about eschatology, bored by artistic trends. But bring up the topic of, say, childhood vaccines, and boom!  Watch the fireworks begin.

It's so very easy to assume that other parents who have made decisions different from our own have simply failed to understand the issues, or are too lazy to do their research, or have motives that aren't altogether pure. Maybe they've been brainwashed by propaganda. Maybe they haven't seen the shocking episode of 20/20 that we saw. Maybe they haven't talked to the right people. Maybe they're just stupid.

Or maybe, just maybe, they know something that we don't.

We can all agree on certain primary issues—that we should feed, clothe, educate and care for the health of our children. But the secondary details involving how we do those things can vary widely among wise and respectable people. We may all be diligently researching our options and still come to opposing conclusions. And that should hardly come as a surprise. We have studies and statistics bombarding us on every side, but rarely do they form any kind of consensus or any sense of certainty. As tidy as the word "data" may sound, the reality is anything but.


Expert Worship
We may have a pantheon of experts just a URL away, but the Cult of the Expert is a demanding and dizzying religion. First, we all slavishly follow the ex cathedra pronouncements of anybody in a white lab coat and a "Doctor of" diploma framed on the wall. But then some fringe heretic has the gall to stand up and point out that butter actually seems to be better for us than margarine after all and that the AMA and the USDA and the AAP have made some disastrous mistakes. We read the 95 Nutritional Theses nailed to the laboratory door, and our allegiances begin to shift.

Disillusioned by white lab coats, we turn with Reformation zeal to the unshaven nonconformist in Birkenstocks and a broomstick skirt who would expose for us the lies told by the priests of the old order. Down with the establishment! Let's pass out tracts! Let's evangelize the nations with the latest findings, baptizing them in the holistic name of the Protein, the Fat, and the Carbohydrates! Do I hear an "Amen?"

But wait a minute. Now the expert in the broomstick skirt is the establishment, and certain preventable diseases are seeing a global resurgence, to boot. The Holy Writ of the Expert must again be revised. But who will be our prophets and our priests now that nine out of ten nutritionists no longer agree? Which expert's Kool-aid are we going to drink next?

We could spend the rest of our lives chasing after the next "shocking revelation" offered up by the expert-du-jour, only to have each "important new study" undermined by the next.

The fact is, we can't run some kind of in-depth investigation into everything we hear. Not even close. And even if we could, we would still have to make faith-based decisions about what evidence to believe and how to interpret it. "Proof" is only as solid as the assumptions that underlie it. Even if I saw something with my own two eyes, I can still only know it happened if my own two eyes are trustworthy. (And that may be a very big "if.")

So the easiest solution is to turn to the Expert (blessed be he). He will tell us just what to do. No wisdom necessary. And when his advice fails us, we can blame, instead of ourselves, the evil pseudo-expert—the informational heretic—who led us astray.

But the real solution is, I believe, to remember where our true authority comes from and to realize that no earthly expert has a monopoly on knowledge. The data, however good and helpful, must be taken with a grain or two of (unrefined, natural Baltic Sea) salt.  The world is a messy place made up of messy people with messy motives, and while true knowledge about the world is attainable, exhaustive knowledge is not.

The older our kids get, the more I am amazed by the number of decisions we are required to make on their behalf. And the more decisions we have to make, the more I realize how much I just don't know. Socrates was on to something. I may not go so far as to say that I know nothing, but what I don't know definitely outweighs what I do. By a lot. Tons, actually.

This is why I have sometimes found myself wishing that an angel from heaven (a different kind of expert) would simply appear and tell me exactly whom to believe about things I'm told to do (or not to do) for the good of my children. But this is not going to happen, so we must proceed as wisely as we can with what information we can find in the time that we can set aside to find it. And in doing so, we must all—experts included—recognize that we have a whole lot left to learn. Additionally, we who are Christians must not lose sight of where the beginning of knowledge lies—with the fear of the Lord. That's our starting point. Whatever other knowledge we pursue must be built on that foundation.


A Toast to Ignorance
Even before they are born, I'm given conflicting information on all kinds of topics. Here's one bit of advice that's been printed everywhere from public bathrooms to health manuals: "Alcohol and pregnancy do not mix." The "experts" have a litany of scary statistics implying that an unintentional sip of grape juice gone bad could leave your unborn baby mentally impaired. So pregnant women nervously chew their nails wondering if they've ruined their child's life by drinking an entire cocktail before knowing they were expecting. But (as always seems to be the case) that's only one side of the story.

There are also scientific studies and statistics (mostly British) that have "proven" just the opposite—that children of women who drank "moderately" during pregnancy actually had brighter, better adapted children than those of women who had completely abstained. And some of these studies allege that it's fear of litigation that has (understandably) led most American obstetricians to advocate the total-abstinence policy, fearing that women will interpret permission to have a drink as permission to go on a month-long vodka binge.

So what to do? Better safe than sorry? Or better lighten up than stress out? Whom to believe? British doctors or American doctors? OBs or midwives? Your mom or that lady from the church potluck? I've tried to read a fair bit about this one, and the more I've read, the more I feel like reciting "eeny-meeny-miney-mo" is probably the best means of deciding the issue.

Sheesh. Please pass the shiraz.


Love and Let Live
I have more to learn than is humanly possible if I am going to make what might be called an "informed decision" about almost anything you can name. And so, I am guessing, do most of us. That is why I am writing this—not as a rant but as a plea for mercy. Share what you've learned for the good of your neighbor, and wisdom can be the result. Beat your neighbor over the head with the cold, hard facts, and somebody is going to get hurt. And it just might be the "facts" themselves that suffer.

In this messy world, charity is the necessary antidote to the idolatrous worship of expertise. Let us hear with gratitude—let us even seek out—what the knowledgeable have to say, but let us not bow down and kiss their feet.

If you see me nibbling on a Chicken McNugget; if you see me, with my pregnant belly, sipping on a mojito; if you see me taking my children for a vaccination; if you see me voting for the wrong candidate (shame on you for peeking); if you see me buying goods from the wrong store; if you see me doing anything else you would never, never do, I beg you to withhold your scorn and instead show a little mercy. I promise to do the same for you.

Of Mice and Men

Another one bit the dust, but not before he had chewed his way through a package of ramen noodles and littered my pantry shelf with shredded plastic and nasty brown pellets. That was the night before last. But even after annihilating that one furry intruder, I could still hear the sounds of scratching and skittering behind the drywall as I lay in bed last night, keeping me awake into the wee hours. Mice in the attic. This is something new. And not at all welcome.

This old farmhouse has had a record winter for mice. It's not unusual for one or two find their way into our warm and well-stocked pantry during the coldest months. But this year I lost count at nine. For most of my life, I'd never had a terrible aversion to mice. I never wanted one as a pet, but I didn't hate them either. But now that we've disposed of the umpteenth squashed mouse of the year, I am convinced that the only good mouse is a dead one.

Our particular mice have been harder to catch than most. They are sly. At first they led us to believe that peanut butter was the sure-fire bait to lure them in. But no. After days of wreaking havoc in my cupboards with nary a nibble on the peanut buttery traps, we discovered that these unique rodents have international taste: sushi nori, pepperoni, ramen, chow mein.

But we're on to their little games. We now catch mice by offering them seaweed and Slim Jims and Asian pasta. I kid you not.

I liked Ratatouille as much as anyone, but regardless of their gourmet taste, these creatures must die. Apologies to the squeamish, but really they must. Those "humane" mouse traps are for sentimental sissies who watch too many cartoons. Sorry kiddies. Mickey is NOT your friend.

Mice. They live in darkness. They sneak around behind closed doors. They carry disease. They trespass. They steal. They destroy. They breed. Apart from their size, what makes them any better than rats? I'd rather have spiders. At least spiders don't eat my chow mein noodles.

Why, oh, why have all the children's stories—even the great ones—portrayed mice as the dear little friends of humanity? Please tell me if you know. Aesop seemed to be fond of them. Beatrix Potter put them to diligent work saving the poor tailor of Gloucester. C.S. Lewis portrayed Reepicheep as a brave and noble beast.  And Walt Disney launched mousehood to new heights of fame and glory. What did these people know that I don't?

As far as I can tell, the only trait that has led us to exonerate these beady-eyed little burglars is that they are cute. Small and furry and cute. That's it. If I'm right, then here's the obvious, though disturbing, lesson to draw from this phenomenon: If you are cute you can get away with just about anything, and people will still adore you. Now I ask you, is this a lesson we want to teach our children?

I submit that we need to protect our young people from harmful messages such as this by censoring and eliminating all stories and movies that portray mice as lovable and dignified. Burn your copy of Stuart Little. Pitch those Mickey ears right into the rubbish. I will be picketing with my "Cuteness Does Not Equal Innocence" sign downtown this evening. Please join me. And make sure you write to your senators, demanding that more federal funding be directed toward the much-needed research and development phase of building a better mousetrap. Mice are a menace and a threat to traditional morality and national security. Do your part to spread the word.

Thank you. (And Happy April Fool's Day.)

Too shy shy

An unfriendly man pursues selfish ends; he defies all sound judgment.
—Proverbs 18:1

Yesterday at church, two of my boys walked right up to some adult members of the congregation to shake hands and greet them with a friendly hello. It's a seemingly insignificant gesture of kindness, but around here it's a big deal. It's worthy of a sticker on the reward sheet when we get home. Going out of their way to be friendly is not easy for my kids, but we work on it. A lot. That it takes practice is something their mother knows all too well.

When I mentioned in a previous post that I have a tendency toward being a recluse, I wasn't kidding; it's a predilection I've had to fight hard against. I relish moments of "alone time." But these days, alone time tends to be pushed aside by "kid time," and "husband time," and "church time," and "school time," and "sports time," and all the other "times" that come with having a growing family. And that's as it should be. But sometimes the level of noise and activity involved with having four little boys—who spend a significant part of each day thundering through the house making martial sound effects—can be rather overwhelming and exhausting.

Even social events as joyous as weddings have left me feeling so drained afterward that I've been tempted to sit in a quiet corner with a mug of tea and a book for the rest of the day. I recall being sent to my room as a child (after having a spat with my brother) and feeling like I'd just been handed a free pass to solitary bliss. I used to dread my own birthday parties.

Yep. Introvert. That's me. Recognizing my introverted personality type was easy. Recognizing that this personality type came with some serious pitfalls was another thing.

It may seem obvious, but somebody else had to give me a (metaphorical) kick in the head before I discovered that my "shy girl" demeanor had ethical ramifications. I never wanted to be lonely, but putting myself forward in a social setting was, for me, the emotional equivalent of running blindfolded along the edge of cliff—not a risk I was willing to take. Right up through high school, I was under the impression that shy is "just who I am."  

But then one day, shortly before starting college, I had a conversation that utterly shook my "shy girl" self-perception.

I was at some sort of informal event at my pastor's home, and I ended up chatting with my pastor's wife during the course of the evening. I don't recall the preceding dialog, but as we talked, I mentioned, only in passing, that I'm "just shy," and that "I don't like introducing myself to strangers," which, to me, seemed like a fairly neutral statement of fact. I guess I expected this good woman to nod sympathetically and let the comment slide past. But she didn't. She stopped me before I could go on.

Now, here's the inspirational, Hallmark card bit of this story: With a calm smile, she told me, "Well, Hannah, maybe you just need to get over yourself."

That was it. And then our talk proceeded to some other topic.

But ouch. What was that supposed to mean? Those may not have been her exact words, but it was something very close. And what she had said cut me—like a surgeon's knife.

She wasn't being rude. Far from it; this was love at its boldest. She clearly knew me better than I knew myself and was simply throwing aside the "personality" lingo and exposing the heart of my "shyness" problem—a problem that I had not particularly wanted to see. Of course my parents had encouraged me for years to be more friendly. But hearing someone else tell me so was a shock. Perhaps this was a real issue that I needed to deal with.

"Well, Hannah, maybe you just need to get over yourself." Maybe... All right, more than maybe.

Why wasn't I willing to go out of my way to introduce myself? Before, I would have said that it was simply "because I'm shy." Nothing wrong with that, right? But as soon as my pastor's wife said what she did, I realized, to my chagrin, that there was, as a matter of fact, something very wrong with that. The truth is, that my unwillingness to shake hands and start a conversation was not just a personality quirk. It was a failure to love my neighbor. The sad fact was that I cared more about my own comfort zone than about making other people comfortable; I was more concerned about protecting myself from seeming foolish than about risking a (very minor) embarrassment in order to show love to those around me. If I didn't feel like being sociable, then I thought I was justified in ignoring my duty to love other people. I guess I was just too important to look out for the interests of others.

I wasn't being "shy." I was being selfish. I needed, in short, to get over myself.

Those words had hurt. A lot. They wounded my pride. But "faithful are the wounds of a friend." She knew exactly what I needed to hear. And, as I was about to begin college with a bunch of total strangers, the timing could not have been better.

I'd like to say that ever since that day I've been a willing handshaker to anyone in need of a friend. But, even after 14 years, I'm still working on it. Getting over myself is probably going to be a lifelong pursuit. But that it is a pursuit at all is something I can be very thankful for. Discovering that my shyness might be a temptation to fight was a huge revelation, like seeing myself in the mirror for the first time. And now that I have four children, friendliness—love in the little things—is a trait we are constantly encouraging in them as well: Smile! Shake hands! Say thank you! Tell the nice lady your name!

I realize, of course, that one's personality is not infinitely malleable and that for an introvert to suddenly attempt to become the life of the party is going to be an uncomfortable scene for pretty much everyone. But insofar as one's personality—introvert or extrovert—comes with a certain set of temptations, those temptations must be resisted; personality type is never a valid excuse for sin. Blabbling thoughtlessly to strangers is not an urge I've ever had to resist. My temptation is, rather, to lose patience with the constant noise and clamor of the children God's blessed me with. My tendency is to pretend not to see the unfamiliar and unattractive face of the lonely-looking lady over in the corner. That, for me, is the struggle—to overcome my own discomfort in order to bestow love.

That unexpected word of advice from my pastor's wife didn't magically turn me into an extrovert, nor will it ever. I'm definitely still an introvert—a home body. I may not feel like saying hello. But, over the years, those tendencies have lessened. By God's grace, I enjoy large social gatherings far more than I used to.  I do like my own birthday parties these days—now that I'm too old to have them every year. However, I'm far from turning into a party animal. And to this day, going out of my way to meet new people gives me a case of the butterflies. But thank God that I had a friend and teacher wise enough to show me that doing what I feel and doing what is right can be two very different things. And I'm thankful to be able to pass on that stark bit of wisdom to my kids: Maybe you just need to get over yourself.