’tis the season

I’ve been out driving a lot lately, familiarizing myself with the various backroads and dirtroads that twist in and around this area.  Today I hopped out of my car and walked along the road for a short distance…until I came across a bunch of bear scat, dropped in various places along the roadside and full of berries.

Apparently it’s “bear season” around here.  Not in regards to hunting them…but in the fact that they are now around and more common than other times of the year.  We had some snow in the mountains last week, and with the incoming cold at higher elevations, the bears gradually make their way down to lower ones where the berries can still be found hanging on to their respective bushes. 

 So when fall arrives, so do the bears. 

a journey to be more simple…I hope.

Well, we’re moved and settled into the new community.

We’re living in the church’s first parsonage, built in 1912 and affectionately referred to by many as “the Cottage.”  Evidently they didn’t need closets back then, as the house is compltely devoid of any.  Houses were MUCH smaller, too.  But we love it.  Just moving into it was an exercise in just flat out getting rid of stuff: furniture, clothes, trinkets, junk that we’d been holding onto and didn’t need.  But it took something like this to actually go through it all and get rid of a bunch of it, because we simply didn’t have the space for it.  It’s been a really nice step toward simplicity (how appropriate that I started reading Foster’s Freedom of Simplicity just as we started the moving process?).

I hope this continues to be a new path we take in regards to how we live, and how much we live with.  For a while now I’ve wanted to have a smaller footprint in regards to the amount of waste I create, how the surrounding environment is affected by our living structure, how much and what kind of energy I use, etc.  The Cottage is a good first step…hopefully the first of MANY I hope to take.  I want to live more simply and friendly, and I’m not sure if it’s easier or harder to do in a place like this (so far, it seems that many people who live this far out in the mountains tend to be of the ‘we need to fight and subdue nature’ mindset).  Last week I was mowing our lawn with a reel mower (which I’ve used and loved for three years now), and the church groundskeeper came by and said there was a tractor/mower in the garage that I could use.  I told him I preferred the reel and didn’t the little bit of extra time and effort it took to use it.  “Alright, if you actually enjoy it,” he said.  “But it’s there if you change your mind.”

I think I’d rather downsize my lawn (which we rarely use, anyway) before I upsized mowers.  Something that requires so much water and care and naturally goes into dormancy when it’s hot and dry out (which is when we ironically try to keep it the most alive)…is that really the best way creatively tend and order the creation?  I actually did some research this past summer on the history of grass lawns.  Evidently, they were initially a symbol of wealth and high social status.  At the time, most people didn’t own much land, and so the gardens they grew and harvested food from were often planted right outside their doors due to the small plots of land most people could afford.  As the wealthy acquired more land and the land was turned into an estate, lush grass lawns were put in place, and the subsistence gardens for the estate were planted at great distances from the house to communicate the wealth of the person and their ability to spread out.

I really started thinking about this, and I wondered if this is still at play in modern suburbia.  I mean, how much time do people spend manicuring their lawns?  Why is it so important for so many to be the ‘pride of the neighborhood’ with a green, lush lawn in front of their house?  When it came down to it, status and attention seemed to be the only real reasons I could come up with.  But what if we chose a different paradigm, once that took into account our specific locations and watersheds and environments?  What if we tried to create islands or bridges of habitat around our houses for populations of native wildlife?  No animals I’m aware of (including many insects and invertebrates) really thrive in a monocultured swath of manicured grass.  Short of playing tag and kicking a soccer ball and playing catch (which do have their place, don’t get me wrong), lawns aren’t really useful for much, and especially aren’t complimentary to the environment.  But what if we planted our lawns with various trees and shrubs, especially native ones that are well-suited for the native climate and didn’t require that much additional water (if any)?  What if we decided not to simply be encroachers on the birds and lilies….but neighbors?  What if we used water with native fish and salmon in mind (that require decent river flows in order to spawn and ‘produce more of their kind’)? 

This summer we had a clothesline.  I used to think those were for people who either didn’t know that dryers had been invented, or just couldn’t afford one.  But one day I decided to hang our laundry on the line (after reading an article in Better Homes and Gardens about how dryers don’t always get rid of viruses and germs and whatnot…but the UV and ozone from natural sunlight does).  I don’t know any other way to put it, but the practice of putting clothes out to dry just seemed…spiritual.  There was something almost worshipful about it, about the action of light through fabric and movement of sheets in the wind.

It seems this sort of life allows a greater awareness of the presense of God, and in the end, that’s my goal.  I desire an immense understanding of the weight of glory, an understanding that compels me to become an active and incarnational tool for God’s shalom, for the healing and restoration of His creation and our relationships to it and each other.  It’s such a huge thing, yet seems to hang its peg on something so simple as putting sheets on the line.

from rural to…more rural?

Look to yourselves, ye polished gentlemen!
No city airs or arts pass current here.
Your rank is all reversed; let men of cloth
bow to the stalwart churls in overalls:
they are the doctors of the wilderness,
And we the low-prized laymen.
In sooth, red flannel is a saucy test
which few can put on with impunity.
What make you, master, fumbling at the oar?
Will you catch crabs? Truth tries pretention here.
The sallow knows the basekt-makers thumb;
the oar, the guide’s. Dare you accept the tasks
he shall impose, to find a spring, trap foxes,
tell the sun’s time, determine the true north,
or stumbling on through vast self-similar woods
to thread by night the nearest way to camp?
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

A couple weeks from now we’ll be moving to a new community called Plain.  I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it’s going to be like there, what the culture is about, who the people are.

This past winter we had some pretty big snow, and at one point some lines went down under the weight.  Plain was one of the communities that lost power because of it.  I was at a local Starbucks and heard a local lineman talking about the incident and how it took two days to fix the lines, primarily because they had gone down in a such a remote and hard to reach area in the mountains.  For two straight days the people in Plain were without power in the middle of winter…and there wasn’t a single phone call made.  They didn’t complain.  They didn’t freak out.  They just got through it.  Contrast that with a windstorm this last spring and some lines that went down in one of the biggest cities around here (and large sections of town remained with power) and the near countless phone calls the power company received.

It seems this new community has a sort of rugged independence about it.  I’m told that people live there because they want to.  They made a conscious decision to live there in semi-isolation from the larger towns and communities of the area.  I’m not sure how or if this will play out.  Will it be a helping hand in forming community, or a hindrance?  Will relying on other people (or even accepting help) be seen as a weakness, an affront to their very DNA? 

In previous entries I’ve talked about trying to create a center, a common space.  Even in the confines of my small town it seemed hard…but in a place like this?  How does that happen?  And does it need to?  Do you need to get everyone together regularly under one roof, or is a nebulous network of relationships enough?

I’m looking forward to serving with the pastor of the local church there (there’s only one, so it is very much a non, or should I say multi, denominational church) as he is really about community.  He doesn’t want to create a church community within the community…but a community.  To to live and work and serve in such a way that everyone benefits, and hopefully, many are drawn to follow the way of Christ and help in bringing about healing and restoration and new creation.

a shift in the way things were

I recently came across the following article at ePodunk:

World More Urban Than Rural

The world passed a big demographic milestone this week. On Wednesday, May 23 [2007], the earth’s population became more urban than rural. From now on, the average human will live in a city instead of a farm or village.

While the date is symbolic, the trend couldn’t be more important. Sociologist Ron Wimberly at North Caronlina State University and two colleagues began with United Nations estimates predicting that the world will be 51.3 percent urban by 2010. They calculated the average daily rural and urban populations from 2005 to 2010 and the tipping point came last Wednesday, when an estimated 3,303,992,253 people lived in urban areas and 3,303,866,404 lived in rural areas.

This transition happened in the United States between 1910 and 1920. Our growth since then has been almost completely urban. Between 1950 and 2000, U.S. cities gained 127 million people, while rural areas gained just 4 million.

The lesson in all of this is interdependence. In the US and around the world, small towns and open spaces provide cities with clean air, water, food, and other natural resources. In return they get urban garbage, air and water pollution, and have higher rates of poverty. “Cities must depend on rural resources,” said Wimberly. “The question is, what can the urban majority do for poor rural people and the resources upon which cities depend for existence?”

If all of this makes your head hurt and you just want to get out into the country to think it over, the majority of the U.S. population is still rural in Vermont, Maine, Mississippi, and West Virginia.

the mite

This whole resignation and switching to a new position thing has been terrifying.  For the most part, I have not enjoyed it.  I am excited about my new position, but this whole arena of raising personal support is humbling.  At times it just feels humiliating.  It’s always stressful.

Tonight we were invited over for dinner at some friends’ house.  When we came out and got in the van to go home, there was an envelope laying on the driver’s seat.  Inside was a card from someone we know, and inside the card was a few hundred dollars worth of grocery gift cards. 

We were stunned.

And we know that the person who gave us the card is not at all what you would consider rich or well-off.   As far as I know, this wasn’t just a handful of disposable income she was throwing our direction.  It was a chunk out of her life.  She gave what she had in order to take care of us, to bless us with something practical and tangible. 

Jesus called his disciples over and said, “The truth is that this poor widow gave more to the collection than all the others put together. All the others gave what they’ll never miss; she gave extravagantly what she couldn’t afford—she gave her all.”   (Mark 12:43-44)

[dis]connection

I spent this past weekend in Seattle.  The first night in the city I stayed with an old friend from high school, and we spent the evening catching up, hopping from one of his hangouts to the next.  My friend is single, and I asked him how the search was going for a relationship and whether it was easy or hard to meet a girl in a city.  My assumptionn was that it would be easier: with so many people coming into contact with one another, it seems logical that you would run into more people, have more opportunities for meeting people and getting together.  But my friend said that he only tends to frequent a handful of places, and a lot of other people tend to do the same…so you end up seeing the same people all the time.  In the midst of this, mini-communities tend to form around these places (even if not everyone there knows one another).

By the end of the night we ended up at an English-style pub called The George and Dragon.  My friend mentioned that this, too, was a place he frequented.  He told me that during the week there are actually quite a few older British folks that frequent the place to hang out, converse with others, watch a football (soccer) game.  During World Cup season it’s almost standing room only.  But on Friday and Saturday nights (which is when we were there), a younger crowd tends to fill the place.  As we were sitting there, surrounded by white walls and dark wood trim and a vintage poster of Winston Churchill above my head, I started thinking about what a center of community a place like this serves to be.  It’s a gathering place.  It’s a place where people show up regularly and networks of friends and people brush together and interact and sometimes interconnect.  It’s a space that allows people to come together, that encourages it.

The next day I was with some different people, and one of them made a comment about how the suburbs “kill your soul.”  They talked about how seperated people were there and how disjointed everything was. 

“It’s just stripmalls and houses.  There isn’t any culture there.”

Within twelve hours I went from a place where people were regularly coming together and creating a culture of interaction and art and music, to a place where everyone keeps to themselves in a culture of uniformity and individualism.  You might know the person living across the culdisac from you, but you don’t actually know them.  And it somehow feels empty, hollow.  It drains you.

So as I drove back over the Cascade Range to rural home and community, I thought about how that applied generally to where I live, but specifically to how the Church functions in that sort of a place.  Where I’m from, we don’t have places that you can just walk a few blocks to.  Sure, there’s a small downtown, but nothing that really creates a common space for people.  People are forced to drive into nearby towns and smaller cities to find this sorts of places.  Everyone here is spread out, distanced.  We live in a small river valley, surrounded by the same mountains, but we go somewhere else for connection.  Outside of high school sports, there isn’t really any sort of culture that people seem to be apart of.

So in this kind of culture, one of rurality and distance, both among and as one of “the hill folk”…how do we create times and spaces for connection?  How do we help facilitate the genesis of a connection culture, one that encourages and helps give birth to a shared creativity and vision of what it means to be a certain type of person in a certain type of place? 

keep the home fires burning

“The tales must be told and retold, or the memories slowly die.” 
- Conn and Hal Iggulden, The Dangerous Book for Boys

I think this plays out so often in rural areas like mine, memories and stories are passed down from year to year, from person to person.  Sometimes they become small legends.

In high school I was on the wrestling team.  I wasn’t very good.  I was around 5 ft. tall and as a freshman weighed 85 lbs.  Most of my matches for that 4-year stretch of high school athletic participation ended in me lossing: always to a pin.

But a few times I won.

One time in particular was at a tournament my junior year.  I pinned every guy in the tournament bracket and took first place for my weight class.  I don’t know what was going on with me that day, but it was like something clicked and I just knew what to do and everything just seemed to be in this intense groove.  I got a medal and the fame and glory of being written about and having my picture taken for the local newspaper.  And then, for the next season and a half of the sport, I proceeded to lost almost every conceivable match.

About a year ago our family went into the local pizza place, and already having dinner in there were the parents (and aunts and uncles) of one of the guys I was on the team with.  They saw me and said hi and asked how I had been since high school…and then mentioned that just a couple nights before they had been talking about the day I one that tournament.  They then asked what happened, what was going on that day and why it didn’t happen again after that. 

I said I didn’t know. 

They said it sure was fun to watch, this scrawny guy taking it to every wrestler he went up against.

I said, yeah, it was a pretty cool day.

Then the conversation fizzled out, as there wasn’t much else to say about it.  But I walked away wondering how my day at that tournament actually came up in the conversation of these people on some random night….ten years after it happened?  What’s the purpose in that?  Why was it so memorable, something they needed to keep telling?

It’s important to people around here, to not forget stories and people.  When we first moved back to town, we rented a house.  Anytime we told someone where we lived, the person we were talking to would say: “Oh, that’s so-and-so’s old house.”  The list of people who had cycled through the house grew longer and longer with every Change of Address form we filled out.

Why is it that these memories, these placards upon rental houses and high school wrestling tournaments, are so integral to life and community?

I did it.

Last night I resigned from my position as youth pastor.  The road before me has never looked so absolutely (un)clear and as it does right now.

“Why should all virtue work in one and the same way?  Why should all give dollars?  It is very inconvenient to us country folk, and we do not think any good will come of it.  We have not dollars; merchants have; let them give them.  Farmers will give corn; poets will sing; women will sew; laborers will lend a hand; the children will bring flowers.”

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

the processional

Well, it wasn’t long before our daughter realized that there was one less pheasant chick in the box than there had been the day before.  It happened while I was at work, and I pulled into the driveway to see my wife fishing a bag out of the garbage (the one I had put the chick in the night before) and our daughter, red-eyed from crying, carrying across the driveway to our front porch.  It was insisted that we give it a proper burial…which, evidently, falls under my jurisdiction as dad.

So yesterday, on a blustery April day, we held a small funeral service in our backyard.

The chick was put in a box (fittingly one that once contained a pair of Diego the Animal Rescuer shoes).  It wasn’t enough to just bury it: we had to put some sort of marker in place so that we wouldn’t forget where we buried it.  So we fashioned a cross out of wire and poplar branches.  The processional across the yard and to the burial site proceded as follows:

One of the twins was in front, holding the cross high above his head.  Our daughter followed him, carrying the box.  Bringing up the rear was our other twin and myself, each of us sharing the load of carrying the shovel. 

We got to the site, I dug the hole, and then we took a couple minutes for each person to say something about the deceased bird.  Comments generally consisted of the bird now being safe and able to sleep and that it’s a good thing we wrapped the box with tape so our cat couldn’t dig it up and eat it.  We then filled the hole up with dirt (a role the boys had both been anticipating).  After that was finished the two of them ran off to another part of the yard to play in the dirt, and my daughter and I placed the poplar cross into the ground.  Being 5 years old, I wondered how she was processing the whole thing and whether or not she would have questions or if she was dealing with some profound sense of grief about the whole experience and how exactly I was going to try and explain the concept of death to her…but once the cross was in the ground, all she was wanted to know was if she could go ride her bike in the driveway.

I was talking to a friend about it, and he grew up near Los Angeles.  He said that he doesn’t really remember anything dying in the city, and that death just seems to be an inevitable aspect of living in the country, and sooner or later you’re confronted with it, whether it’s a pet or something being butchered or whatever. It’s sort of all around you, and as a kid, you don’t really have any choice but be introduced to it fairly early on.  I agreed that he was probably right.