Context
I’m in Houston today, so I visited the Rice University campus, which is right across the street from the Texas Medical Center. Rice has a wholly contiguous campus that is surrounded by a hedge. The hedge is not physically imposing enough to prevent anyone or anything from coming on campus, but it does clearly delineate the borders.
I graduated from Rice twenty years ago, so of course I see changes whenever I go back and visit. For example, sometime after my departure the Texas Medical Center built a really ugly building just beyond the Rice hedge.
Commentary
I was planning to go to church this morning, but instead I was moved to visit Rice. As I was walking around trying to figure out what drew me there, I saw this much-taller-than-everything-around-it, windowless building and was somewhat afraid that it might be on the campus itself. But no, as I got closer I realized that my beloved hedge was standing guard, keeping me from having to think that some of my alumni giving might have contributed to this monstrosity. As I sat on a bench facing away from both the ugly Med Center building and the hedge I started thinking about the protective aspects of communities.
Rice is an interesting place to go to school. It's an academically challenging but close-knit community. For four years Rice gathers people together and tells them that inside the hedges, it’s safe to be smart and obsessive and all-around different from the norm. In spite of the fact that the hedge is a puny little thing, I still felt shielded there.
It’s not just a shield, though. During those four years (or five or six or whatever) Rice tries to prepare you to go out in the world and accomplish something, not only by making you smarter, but by giving you the emotional tools to answer some of the crap the world throws at you. Four years of being told it’s great to be a nerd makes you likely to continue to believe it even twenty, thirty and forty years later.
I am blessed that I continue to have two communities that work the same way for me even today. My marriage is one. People get and stay married for any of number of reasons, but both my husband and I have come to treasure the refuge aspect of our relationship. We feel like we really can go out and do battle with all the problems of this world because we know someone will love us at the end of the day. Or sometimes in the middle, when we really want to scream! At its best, our marriage is not a hiding place, but a place where we can both rest and be reassured that we are capable of facing the next challenge to come.
My Quaker meeting is another such community. We're a pretty heterogeneous group in terms of religious beliefs and values, but we hold sacred the idea that everyone should be safe at the meeting. Not unchallenged, not coddled, but safe. It's a place where a person may hear a hundred times, "that's different from my experience," but will never hear, "you're wrong to think that way." So we get to examine the Spirit of God within us in an atmosphere that celebrates that Spirit and inspires us to go share it with the rest of the world.
I think everyone would benefit from belonging to these types of communities and I'd like to give you some advice about finding and/or building your own. Unfortunately, I can't. As far as I can tell, I came to both of these communities by the grace of God. So instead I'll pray that God provides you with the gift of a supportive community as well. I'll also invite you to come to our Quaker meeting at 10:00 a.m. Saturday mornings at Charlie Cook's Art Studio, 3500 Texas Blvd., Texarkana, TX. My marriage is not accepting any new members at this time.
What did you see today?
4/14/2007
I heard a "just" prayer
Context
A couple of other Friends and I volunteered today at the Randy Sams Shelter for the Homeless in Texarkana, Texas. While we were there, another woman who was volunteering from the Partnership Church of Texarkana asked us to gather and pray with someone. That woman said a prayer out loud that included the word "just" a lot, e.g "I just want to thank you, Father," "I just pray you'll heal our friend," etc.
Commentary
I don't know where the "just" style of prayer comes from, but I first started hearing it about twenty years ago. I wonder if it came from the 1970's "Jesus freaks." The cadence of it sort of sounds like an invitation to mellow out and rap with God. Prayer as casual conversation instead of a big deal.
I find "just" prayers a little jarring. I don't think God has any trouble listening to them, but the very casual sound that may make them attractive to some repels me. I think prayer is a big deal. When someone uses the word "just" a lot, it sounds like they haven't really considered what they're saying to God, they're "just" throwing stuff out there. God loves us and listens to us always, but shouldn't we love Him enough to put a little thought into what we're going to say?
In fact, given that God does love us, another problem emerges. When I say "I just" in everyday conversation, it's usually a fear response. I want to say something, but I think I'm going to get in trouble for it, like "don't get mad at me, but I just don't think four-inch heels are appropriate for horseback riding." It's a phrase with a built-in cringe.
If this is the case, "I just" is a wildly innapropriate way to talk to God. Jesus uses a metaphor of God as Father, but hopefully we all understand that God is better than any earthly father in that He always wants to hear what we have to say When I pray I say, "please," or "if it's Your will" to God in order to be respectful, but I don't grovel. I'm a child of God; I get to ask for stuff with confidence that He will always listen and provide what I need.
What did you see today?
A couple of other Friends and I volunteered today at the Randy Sams Shelter for the Homeless in Texarkana, Texas. While we were there, another woman who was volunteering from the Partnership Church of Texarkana asked us to gather and pray with someone. That woman said a prayer out loud that included the word "just" a lot, e.g "I just want to thank you, Father," "I just pray you'll heal our friend," etc.
Commentary
I don't know where the "just" style of prayer comes from, but I first started hearing it about twenty years ago. I wonder if it came from the 1970's "Jesus freaks." The cadence of it sort of sounds like an invitation to mellow out and rap with God. Prayer as casual conversation instead of a big deal.
I find "just" prayers a little jarring. I don't think God has any trouble listening to them, but the very casual sound that may make them attractive to some repels me. I think prayer is a big deal. When someone uses the word "just" a lot, it sounds like they haven't really considered what they're saying to God, they're "just" throwing stuff out there. God loves us and listens to us always, but shouldn't we love Him enough to put a little thought into what we're going to say?
In fact, given that God does love us, another problem emerges. When I say "I just" in everyday conversation, it's usually a fear response. I want to say something, but I think I'm going to get in trouble for it, like "don't get mad at me, but I just don't think four-inch heels are appropriate for horseback riding." It's a phrase with a built-in cringe.
If this is the case, "I just" is a wildly innapropriate way to talk to God. Jesus uses a metaphor of God as Father, but hopefully we all understand that God is better than any earthly father in that He always wants to hear what we have to say When I pray I say, "please," or "if it's Your will" to God in order to be respectful, but I don't grovel. I'm a child of God; I get to ask for stuff with confidence that He will always listen and provide what I need.
What did you see today?
4/13/2007
I saw a list of best-reviewed sports movies
Context
Rotten Tomatoes is a website that compiles movie reviews and gives each film a score base on the number of negative and positive reviews. Lately they have taken to compiling Best and Worst lists including the recently-published Top Sports Movies.
Commentary
This Rotten Tomates feature appealed to me immediately because I like both sports and movies. However, I was puzzled by the fact that even though these were the best-reviewed sports movies, the critics took great pains to point out on several of them that the plot was not very original. I find this a bizarre standard to use for any kind of storytelling. I believe movies are made and books are written to illustrate universal human truths and frankly, there's a limited number of those to go around. I think it's particularly unfair to judge sports movies this way because most sports movies have the exact same plot: underdog overcomes enormous odds and triumphs. It's why we go see a sports movie, for crying out loud!
I think the critics are looking for originality in the wrong place: what makes a great sports movie is using that same timeworn plot and still creating an unexpected reaction in the viewer. For example, I love the movie Remember the Titans. One of the reasons is because I find the Denzel Washington character is admirable, but not particularly likable. I'm not used to thinking the hero of a piece is kind of a jerk, and this is a pretty brave choice in a film that contains exactly one bankable star. Or take Field of Dreams. Every time I sit down to watch that movie, it looks like it's about baseball, and yet I end up thinking about something besides baseball when it's over. Now any movie that gets my brain moving gets a plus in my book, but Field of Dreams usually makes me consider something different every single time!
My favorite sports movie, beating out Remember the Titans by just a hair, is Major League. OK, silly slapstick comedy, same old sports movie plot, where's the surprise reaction there? Just this: every time I see the formerly-isolated "Wild Thing" come on the field to the adulation of thousands, I cry. Buckets. You want to know what's worse? I've seen this movie five or six times and I still cry every single time. I know what's coming, I can probably quote a great deal of the surrounding dialogue to you, and I still react. That's movie magic!
So the moral of the story is, it's not what you show your moviegoing audience that matters (sorry ILM!), it's how you help them see it differently. Hmm, is there a recurring blog theme in there somewhere?
What did you see today?
Rotten Tomatoes is a website that compiles movie reviews and gives each film a score base on the number of negative and positive reviews. Lately they have taken to compiling Best and Worst lists including the recently-published Top Sports Movies.
Commentary
This Rotten Tomates feature appealed to me immediately because I like both sports and movies. However, I was puzzled by the fact that even though these were the best-reviewed sports movies, the critics took great pains to point out on several of them that the plot was not very original. I find this a bizarre standard to use for any kind of storytelling. I believe movies are made and books are written to illustrate universal human truths and frankly, there's a limited number of those to go around. I think it's particularly unfair to judge sports movies this way because most sports movies have the exact same plot: underdog overcomes enormous odds and triumphs. It's why we go see a sports movie, for crying out loud!
I think the critics are looking for originality in the wrong place: what makes a great sports movie is using that same timeworn plot and still creating an unexpected reaction in the viewer. For example, I love the movie Remember the Titans. One of the reasons is because I find the Denzel Washington character is admirable, but not particularly likable. I'm not used to thinking the hero of a piece is kind of a jerk, and this is a pretty brave choice in a film that contains exactly one bankable star. Or take Field of Dreams. Every time I sit down to watch that movie, it looks like it's about baseball, and yet I end up thinking about something besides baseball when it's over. Now any movie that gets my brain moving gets a plus in my book, but Field of Dreams usually makes me consider something different every single time!
My favorite sports movie, beating out Remember the Titans by just a hair, is Major League. OK, silly slapstick comedy, same old sports movie plot, where's the surprise reaction there? Just this: every time I see the formerly-isolated "Wild Thing" come on the field to the adulation of thousands, I cry. Buckets. You want to know what's worse? I've seen this movie five or six times and I still cry every single time. I know what's coming, I can probably quote a great deal of the surrounding dialogue to you, and I still react. That's movie magic!
So the moral of the story is, it's not what you show your moviegoing audience that matters (sorry ILM!), it's how you help them see it differently. Hmm, is there a recurring blog theme in there somewhere?
What did you see today?
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