#YOLO

Saturday Night Live featured this Digital Short on this week's episode.  In it they spoof the "battle cry of this generation"....YOLO (for those who have been living under a rock...this is short for "you only live once").  

The idea behind the song is that instead of living on the edge, because you only live once, you should be more cautious and plan more for your future.  Of course they meant this as a joke and took it to the extreme (3 guys sitting in a room wearing straight jackets); however, how many of us have looked back on the stupidity of our youth and wished that we had done less reckless living and more careful planning.  Maybe there aren't as many of you out there as I think, but if you are anything like me this is true for you.  

At the Chillipepper 2013 conference I attended this weekend with my middle school students, the speaker on Saturday night shared a similar idea.  He spoke of growing up in the church and regularly attending retreats such as the one we were on.  It became clear to him after attending several that the speakers shared a common theme.  They would always end the last night with a story of a student whose life was cut short and then the speaker would question the outcome of their future after death...asking the question, "What if you died tonight?" He then went on to say that not once did he have a speaker ask, "What if you don't die tonight? How will you live the rest of your life?"  This was not really even the point of our speaker's message...but it was definitely what I latched on to.  

So many times, as Christians, we focus too much on what will become of us after death.  We have this view of the kingdom of God that is far off or not yet.  We spend our days worrying about who is in and who is out.  How often do we heed the words that we recite each Sunday in church..."thy Kingdom come."  If we focus too much on our life after death, we some how trivialize our life before death...the one we are living right now. 

I hear my students say YOLO and wearing t-shirts with it printed on them.  As they do, what they are really saying is do what you want because you only have one chance.  Too often, this manifests itself in a negative way.  My goal instead is to challenge them to say, do what you can...to serve, to love, to be present in the Kingdom of God here an now, because you only live once.

Whether you are a Christian or not, we could all stand to turn our focus off of ourselves, and on the other. Life is short, and I want mine to mean something now.

The Best Church Service I Have Ever Been To

"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines
of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yesterday, I was grateful to find more uplifting quotes from Dr. King on Facebook than invective language toward the president on the day of his Inauguration.  As I sat reading them, I was reminded of the best church service I have ever been to.  When I was in Seminary, I had the privilege of participating in a Fall Break study trip that took us to various Civil Rights museums and places of importance all throughout the South.  We visited Dr. King's boyhood home in Atlanta and sat in the pews of the church he grew up in. We listened to the stories of a man who also grew up in that church and who was sitting in one of those very pews listening to Dr. King preach on the Sunday that 4 little girls were killed by the bomb that went off at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  He told us that Dr. King was a peaceful man, but that on this Sunday he was outraged and distraught that 4 more innocent lives had been taken as he pounded his fists upon the pulpit.  We visited a small non-federally funded museum in Selma that had notes taped to a wall from those who came through the movement together.  There in the middle was a crumpled paper with words scribbled on it, signed by Rosa Parks.  In the back room their were police uniforms behind glass still stained with blood from what had occurred there years before.  We marched across the bridge in Selma together, hand in hand.  Our last stop was Birmingham. We attended church at 16th Street Baptist and went to the Rosa Parks museum.  It was the week of the anniversary of her death.  We were invited to a coffee house that night for an open mic tribute to Rosa Parks.  This was not on our itinerary but we decided it would be well worth it to go.

Upon our arrival, we were instantly aware that we (the other white students on the trip and myself) were the minority in this particular setting.  At first, it felt like a bit of an intrusion on our part...that we were participating in something that didn't belong to us.  We sat and listened to a band sing songs of freedom, a young woman shared in spoken word her thoughts about the Civil Rights movement and Rosa Parks, a team of guys shared a dramatic pantomime, and on and on throughout the night.  Before the night ended, one our guys...a white guy, made his way to the stage.  He sat behind the keyboard and began to play and sing.

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see...

From this he moved into "My Chains are Gone" and even Mary Mary's "Shackles off my Feet."  Slowly, someone from the crowd joined him on the guitar, and then the bass, and then the drums.  They played and sang together and the crowd had suddenly gone from us and them...to a single body swaying together to what felt like the tune of freedom.  In that moment, I could see through the tears in my eyes the Kingdom of God.  That was the BEST church I have ever been to, and it wasn't on a Sunday it wasn't in a building with a steeple.  It was in a small corner of the world, and nobody else even knew it was happening.  It felt like I was a part of something important in that moment...something that I will never forget and because of it I am eternally changed.

I'll close with this excerpt from Brian McLaren's book, which I am currently reading/listening to.  He sums up far more eloquently that I ever could:

As Douglas Wood’s profound children’s story Old Turtle and the Broken Truth makes clear, “God loves us” is only a fragment of the truth, a dangerous fragment, in fact; it must be reunited with “God loves others too.” We live within a relationship of diversity without division: we are made on the same creation day as the reptiles and cattle, for example, and we are formed from the same dust. All living things are different but related; distinct but united. Similarly, male and female are not two warring factions; one is not superior and the other inferior: we are different but related, distinct but united. This creation, then, is a garden of harmony, not a war zone of hostility. It comes equipped, not with oppositional religions that divide, but rather with a naked spirituality that includes and unifies all things in one fabric of creation. Trees and rivers, sky and stars declare God’s glory for everyone; exclusive temples and members-only cathedrals are unnecessary. And so, according to our doctrine of creation, we are created by God to live in harmony with God and with all creation in all its wild diversity. We are created for harmony with one another, meaning “one with the other,” male with female, us with them, in dynamic unity without uniformity— different but not divided, distinct but related and unified.

McLaren, Brian D. (2012-09-11). Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road?: Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World (pp. 103-104). Jericho Books. Kindle Edition. 

Love God...love others.

Awful-looking Women

Earlier this week, the 700 Club's Pat Robertson really stepped in it when he answered a teenage boy's plea for advice.  The young boy was looking for suggestions on how to encourage his video-game playing dad to notice his mom and spend more time with her.  Robertson's advice was less than encouraging as he suggested that perhaps the onus was on the boy's mom for allowing the "romance" to die due to a lack of keeping herself up.

Upon hearing this, my immediate thought was one of disgust that this man could turn a boy's sincere concern into something so trivial.  Then I began to think of all the women in the world who were married to men who failed to notice them for one reason or another, and were left feeling as if they weren't pretty enough, or young enough, or skinny enough.  As women, we get that enough from the outside world; do we really need to feel that kind of pressure from the men that we have committed ourselves to?

After watching this video I thought of my own husband, and couldn't help but laugh.  What would our marriage look like if he required certain standards regarding my appearance?  Well, according to Mr. Robertson...we would probably have very little romance left.  Even before we were married, he knew that if he were to pay me a visit after a certain hour of the evening I would be sporting my old sweatpants and t-shirt.  I do feel for him sometimes, but then again it is the times when he stood beside me, despite the fact that I was truly "awful-looking," that I knew how much he really loved me.  Before we were married, our minister and friend, Brandon Russell, asked us when we knew we loved each other.  For me, this was not a story I wanted him to include in the ceremony.  While we were dating I had a severe ear infection, complete with some not-so-appealing ear crud.  My incredible husband came by every day, rubbed my ear, and even cleaned it for me a couple of times.  This was when I knew he loved me.  How could he not, to perform such a disgusting task and still think I'm beautiful?

This also reminds me of the strong and beautiful women in my life.  I think of the times in their lives when they have risked being "awful-looking" for the sake of something amazing.  Whether it be during child-birth or caring for the sick and dying; or when they have spent every moment of their days so concerned for everyone else that they leave nothing for themselves.  This is what beauty looks like.