The Truth's Superb Surprise

I've moved

2009-08-10T21:08:00.001-04:00

I'm now the chair of English and Foreign Language at Waynesburg University. jtrapp@waynesburg.edu.

Debra's January Series talk: 'Words Wear Out'

2008-06-03T11:32:00.003-04:00

For your summer listening pleasure: Debra's January Series talk that was sort of a "what we did on our summer vacation, I mean seminar" report.

need help for a student

2008-02-19T15:27:00.002-05:00

Advice needed in Christian publishing.

I have a capable and good writing student who wants to marry and have a family but keeping writing for the Christian market from home. So many of you are in that market. Can you give any advice for her about how to get started and what kinds of things to do?

Thanks.

Joonna

Update from Karin Boonstra

2007-08-24T13:43:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about our seminar and the people in it frequently of late. I love reading about the projects people are working on and I am often humbled by their achievements
and their wit.

Last fall I returned to teaching at the christian high school here in Ontario with a renewed sense of passion and purpose. That feeling has not abated.

I told my brother (who is also an English teacher in my department)that the seminar was transforming. Our discussions filled me with a sense of opportunity and possibility in my work with teenagers. At a time when I had lost some direction and enthusiasm our big picture discussions made me hungry to teach.

I came up with an awesome plan, I thought. I was going to organize a drama group that would serve children in our community, through hospitals and schools, by focusing on storytelling and literacy with drama as our medium. My students would write their own adapted scripts and we would take our stories and our affection into our community where paying for the arts is so often a struggle. Our group was to be called "Play It Forward."

The plan was to speak to the school in an assembly about my experiences in the seminar and the $100 project I had undertaken. Interested students and I would then meet and create a vision for how our group would operate. Shortly after I came up with this plan, I found about the money mixup. No matter, I thought, it never really was about the hundred dollars anyway. I just needed a new angle.

Then basketball season started (I coach jr. girls bb), and auditions for the school play I was codirecting (West Side Story) got underway, and one of my children started struggling in school and acting out at home.

It was around then that I realized that my most valuable currency right now is time, and finding a hundred dollar bill under my pillow won't change that. Perhaps that is why I am so in awe of the people in our seminar. They, like me, are busy professional people with families, and aging parents, and church obligations, and... How do they do it all? Are my priorities different? They must sleep less.

So, I stand committed to the vision. I'm still going to do it because it's an idea worth doing. I'm going to try again this year. And I'm going to forgive myself for not getting it done last year. And I'm going to be the most passionate, loving, knowledgeable, exhausted, smart-ass teacher I know how to be.

Nick's update...

2007-08-22T12:02:00.000-04:00

Hi, friends. Thank you to Debra for inviting us to contribute an update to the blog. Great to hear about Doug’s health. I feel we all had such a beautiful time together during our course on […..whatever it was about….]. I think of each of you quite often.

“When you have met at depth, you have met forever”. (Henri Nouwen).

I think that quote captures our two weeks.

A few small developments, then, with regards to myself...

My oboe playing is improving quite significantly. I have now been learning for two and a half years. Whereas I used to be able to practice only five minutes before my lips would hurt too much, I can now manage about 20 minutes. I have still been too stubborn to do what most oboe players (allegedly) do, namely, practice playing notes without sounding them. I feel it is so absurd to play notes without making noises that I just cannot stomach the idea. But I realize I will have to do this if I wish to improve technically. It will likely still be years before I can practice an hour a day with real sound.

An interesting addition in my life is that my father in law has given me his Canadian Stamp collection. I am extremely proud to be a Canadian, so I love this gift. It is a kind of “advance” on his Will. He has two copies of every Canadian stamp ever issued, namely, both new and used. He also has other very unique items, such as samples of the envelopes that were on each of the first airplane flights in Canada in the 1920’s that first carried mail to remote communities. (And there are many remote communities in Canada. But Toronto, however, is not all that terribly remote.) And he has, for example, envelopes stamped at each different post office in the province of Nova Scotia that ever existed. Many of those rural shacks have been dismantled. There have been over three thousand different postal outlets in the hinterland. This is a real nice stack of old envelopes.

I will not become a stamp collector like he has been, but all I really need to do is buy the new stamps as they are issued each year and simply add them to what has already been accumulated. This is the easiest kind of collecting. It could be called “gathering”. But I am also searching for stamps with errors or flaws, since that was a field within philately that he did not explore. The more I procure those blemished stamps, the more complete his original collection will become. E-Bay is fun for this. But those defective stamps can easily run into many thousands of dollars. A single stamp with a mistake on it can easily be worth 15 grand. May the Lord bless the owners of all these little scraps of paper!!

My little church is doing well (in my obviously biased opinion). I still love making and delivering sermons, but it is getting both harder and easier. Easier, in the sense that sometimes I literally write a sermon in two hours. On the other hand, afterwards I sometimes feel drained for two days and can hardly move. Furthermore, I often dread the actual event of preaching and would sometimes be willing to pay one thousand dollars to get out of it.

And then, naturally, there is the pastoral visiting and the administration. I have a very nice congregation, especially when they are all singing off the same page, which is the one where they claim (unanimously) to be in favor of individuality and diversity and to not be demanding unanimity. We are to tolerate even people who are intolerant of tolerance, said Jesus in one of his more intolerable comments.

I am reading a lot, which helps feed the preaching too, but that is not why I do it.

I recently read about the Christians who were against vaccination for small pox in the Netherlands in the 1800’s. The Scripture verse they kept quoting was “And Jesus Saith unto Them, It is not the Healthy who Need a Physician.”

My wife and my two teenage daughters are all doing well, but I am sure they would not appreciate being presented on what amounts to someone else’s “FaceBook”, so I will leave them out of this discussion.

May each of you have a great Fall season and a wonderful Advent and Christmas.

- Nick Overduin

$100 project update: Final report

2007-08-20T12:57:00.000-04:00

[Hi, friends! I posted the following on my blog.]

Last summer I participated in one of Calvin College's Seminars in Christian Scholarship about writing as Christian proclamation. We mistakenly thought that we each had $100 of funding to use however we decided. (Turns out that we had already used our allotted $100 for reimbursement of books for the seminar.) But we went ahead and decided to embark on a $100 project, in which each of us would do something creative and constructive with $100 and then write about it.

My $100 was "funded" by an interview article that I had worked on during my Calvin seminar, and I spent much of the following months wondering what to do with the money. Got some nice suggestions from commenters on this blog, with ideas for helping youth or elderly, sponsoring an essay writing contest, coffee for strangers, facilitating a community garage sale, environmental stewardship and the like. I definitely wanted to do something related to my suburban community, and I thought it would be appropriate to do something writing- or book-related, given the nature of our seminar.

I thought about ways to grow the money first. Something I do fairly routinely is sell used books on Amazon; I always get a kick out of finding a book at a thrift shop for a quarter that I can sell online for ten bucks. Last winter I was browsing a used book store and found a number of Anchor Bible Commentaries for six or seven bucks each. I sold some of them online for thirty and fifty dollars apiece. Should I calculate that into my $100 amount and declare that I had grown the money to $160 or so? But what about the inventory of books that I bought that haven't sold yet - do I need to deduct that from the balance? And shipping costs, etc.? After thinking through the accounting details, I concluded that I didn't want to mess with the potential entrepreneurial investment growth aspect of the project and would just keep it to a simple what-could-I-do-with-$100.

Something that occurred to me while reading The Kingdom Assignment is that people often used their $100 in ways consistent with their natural interests, gifts and opportunities. So I thought about the various community organizations and institutions that I interface with, and the obvious thought that came to mind was our local public library. We go to the library several times every week and always have dozens of items checked out and stacked up on our nightstands.

So I talked with folks at the library, explained the $100 project and asked if there were any ways I could use the money for some sort of special volunteer project or donation. I didn't want to just donate it to the friends of the library foundation or buy a brick on the sidewalk; I wanted to do something a little more personal and specific. I mentioned that I work at a book publisher and could purchase books to be donated. They talked it over at some meeting and got back to me, saying that they'd like the donation of books. So I gave them some current catalogs, and they looked through them and gave me a list of requested titles.

Because of my IVP employee discount, the $100 was able to purchase $250 worth of books (retail price), which in this case was 15 books, four of which I had worked on as project editor. And I was also able to donate another dozen or so overstock/slightly hurt books that were available for giveaway. The library carries numerous Christian books and even already had a few IVP titles (including my suburbs book), but I was glad to make more IVP books directly available to the collection.

So my $100 project flowed out of my work in Christian book publishing and benefited an institution in my local suburb that serves as a "third place" for the community and promotes literacy, reading and knowledge. I'm hopeful that random browsers will pick up these books on the new arrivals shelves and experience some degree of spiritual ministry through the content. I've always loved the fact that our books are like little missionaries that can go many places that we can't. I think it's theologically significant that Christians can work through existing community organizations (like public libraries) to be salt and light in our communities. We can work counterculturally through the church and other Christian organizations, but we can also work transformatively through society's own institutions.

So that's what I did with my $100. What did you do?

Al's 8-8-07 Post cont...

2007-08-09T09:37:00.000-04:00

The face of racisim, Sept. 27, 1962, Oxford, Mississippi

More on Paul Hendrickson

When he's at ACU (see my previous post), Paul Hendrickson will speak about his book that won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2000, Sons of Mississippi. In this book he delved into the lives of seven Southern sheriffs who were shown in a famous Life magazine photo gathered around one of their number who gestured with a billy club. The shot was taken the day before James Meredith with federal protection enrolled at Ole Miss in 1962.

This book is a beautifully written extended meditation on the photo, fleshed out with research. You can read it for the quality of the prose alone. Yet it is the story that matters as Hendrickson travels through Mississippi on a mission to find out what's changed and what's not changed between the races. It's in part the story of civil rights told from the oppressor's side, as appalling as that is at times. What comes through again and again is that evil is never total darkness through and through, nor is it walking around sprouting horns from its head. Evil actually goes to church and takes care of town widows (white ones) and bails people out of debt (fellow whites) and is well thought of in the community (white). Evil is a part-time profession that has full-time effects and, more than ever, I think any one of us but by the grace of God could be engaged in it.

Fini

Well, I've been a blog hog, so let me duck out of here before I take up more time and space. I do look forward to reading about the experiences the rest of you have been having (new baby! Flannery O'Connor's old home! cancer free!). This is fine stuff that's been posted so far and I look forward to more to come...

Catching a Breath, Catching Up

2007-08-08T20:22:00.000-04:00

"He was having his third cup of coffee as he wrote this..." - Editor

A year has passed. Another 365-day long comedy with this homo sapien (who has the initials A.H.) installed in his bit part in which he dances awkwardly around God. During the dance I shout my conceptions, misapprehensions, praises and doubts, love and annoyance, and many other thoughts and emotions inspired by Him.

It’s not a one-way street.

Over the course of my circuit there has been the usual raining down of insights, changes, curveballs, slip-ups, rescues (some of them softly and without my knowing it, others coming with a thunderclap).

Another year has passed. And I am trying to sift through the accumulated theological detritus, which is dizzying enough on daily basis without trying to look back upon the whole of it and ask, “Now what just happened?”

A year has passed. Something amazing occurred. But that’s been the story line from the beginning. Something amazing always happens. All of us have made another journey around the sun. By definition this seems to be a cosmic adventure...

Canine or Divine? Lessons from "Ugly Dog"

Just consider. We got this dog in March, at Joyce’s insistence, not mine. He’s the only pet we’ve ever owned except for an ill-fated alpha fish that Cole named Azul who one night committed suicide by leaping out of his bowl and becoming dry as toast and thin as paper on the tile floor.

Our dog had been at Rescue the Animals his whole life when we paid his ransom and took him out of his cage. Into our lives. One look at him and you knew why no one had ever adopted Bullwinkle. He was total mutt, always will be. There is no beauty in his outward appearance. The above photo hints at a coyote mixed with water rat with a touch of terrier just for laughs. Really he is road kill on four feet. But who is Bullwinkle? A kind, smart, gentle creature who never barks, seldom whines, communicating mostly with his soulful eyes and avid tail. He is the one who will patiently wait for you all day and wants only to be petted and petted and petted.

I’m not a sentimentalist or an animal person, I never even harbored a hamster as a kid, but I feel this ugly dog could be an angel in disguise. Bullwinkle teaches me something. Stop judging by appearances. Look for what lies deeper. Then laugh at the incongruity. How great beauty can be housed in such poor packaging. From now on I must make it a habit to throw away (mentally) the packaging. Find the diamond in the wuff… (couldn’t resist).

Behold a Bird

Another moment of cosmic amazement was at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers poetry workshop which I attended last month up by Lake Tahoe. The moment didn’t come in writing my required daily poem or workshopping said poem in the presence of an esteemed staff poet like Sharon Olds or Robert Hass while hoping he/she would love the poem and lean forward confidentially at the table and anoint me as the Next Great Thing in Poetry (it didn’t happen).

The moment occurred on one of the daily nature walks in early morning when naturalist David Lukas took us only a hundred yards behind the lodge and into the forest. A bird flew over, straight line, fast, sure of itself, and David looked up and said, “Oh, that was a Clark’s Nutcracker.” An impromptu lecture followed...

How the bird was identified by William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. How it collects upwards of 33,000 pine seeds during a brief window of time in the High Sierra summer. How it stores the seeds in caches of 5-10. How the Nutcracker can find all these seeds six months later as winter comes. How it tunnels to reach a cache beneath three feet of snow. How in some fashion— that no one can understand— it “remembers” where the seeds are and can “do the spatial math” to tunnel at the necessary angle (tunneling straight down would cause tunnel collapse) to intersect with the hidden seeds. How the seeds stolen by squirrels from the Nutcracker or never claimed by it often sprout into new Jeffrey pines, allowing the forest to flourish and extend its domain. How it is a perfect dance between the small bird and gigantic trees. How you can read about this in Made for Each Other: A Symbiosis of Birds and Pines by Ronald Lanner.

And I’m standing with my son beside me and a bunch of cotton and nylon garbed poets bumped up along the narrow trail and the light is filtering through the pine-needled branches above and the sky is blue the way all of California used to be, all of America used to be, from sea to sea, and the air smells clean enough that one notes that too, and I’m thinking all this for a bird and for a tree? Then what about me? What kind of miracle must I be? And I know then that all of us are involved in something far more profound than realized previously, and this is worth many poems indeed.

Quickly, Three Highlights...

In April I found myself graciously invited as the visiting writer at Dallas Baptist University where I gave a lecture on the state of Christian writing. My visual aids began with that photo of us standing outside of the Calvin library in July '06. Revealed to the world: “The secret summit”! Then I told of developments we’d discerned in genres and of some of the specific books we read together and our reactions to them. As I spoke, I hoped that our time together lived on for the benefit of others (and maybe somebody out there in the audience would read some of those great books Debra picked out for us…).

Also in the spring semester I was able to teach a new course, Christians and Creativity. (Funny how an odd book entitled Post-Rapture Radio ended up on the syllabus.) I required the students to exercise what a jazz musician friend of mine would call their creative “chops.” They had to respond to works of art in the local art museum, not with an analytical paper, but with something creative of their own. Called “A Night at the Grace” the project is described on-line with a posting of the films, stories, songs, paintings, sculptures, poems, etc. the students created. See: http://www.thegracemuseum.org/childrens/night_acu_2007.html Perhaps “Christian” and “creativity” is not an oxymoron after all?

Right now I’m working on setting up the on-campus visit of journalist/writer Paul Hendrickson for this October. He will be in Abilene to talk about an exhibit of photos from the Library of Congress. The significance of these pictures taken for the Farmers Security Administration from 1939-43 (the same project that funded Walker Evans’ famous work) is that they are in color. Indeed, they are the first color photos ever taken of America and they were lost for many years. There’s a coffee table book, Bound for Glory, of the work, with an introduction by Paul Hendrickson, and I recommend it highly. I’ve found that a sort of epiphany takes place when the history one has always thought of as iconic black-and-white is viewed for the first time in full color. Suddenly, I realize these were people just like me and the people I know today. The women wear red dresses. The men’s jeans are blue. Their children have canvas shoes with brown mud stains…

to be continued...

Joonna's update after one year

2007-08-04T14:36:00.000-04:00

Joonna's one year update.

I have just returned from a wonderful conference in the mountains of Colorado with AEPL--an organization which promotes "expanded perspectives" on learning, including spirituality. It's a great group and it was lovely to spend several days with Peter Elbow and others. From there I traveled to Milledgeville, GA, for an NEH Institute on Flannery O'Connor in her home town. Huge impact on me! I'm hoping to teach O'Connor in the Spring. I also have three people recruiting me for jobs at their respective schools from that institute.

I'm thinking of going on the job market this year. I'm a bit heartsick by some things that happened at our college last year, and I'm finding that I'm not getting over it. I wonder if it is time to go? I would miss the Christian College world, and I doubt that I would make a switch to another Christian college--although one never knows....

Sarah Gordon, former editor of the Flannery O'Connnor annual listened to my book project and actually became excited. She says that she will recommend it to U of Georgia Press if I can pull a proposal together. So, that's my next big thing. I do have a deadline of Sept. 1 for my Octavia Butler article. And I have to pull together a paper on Comenius for a conference at Calvin this fall.

At the Institute, I read one of my short stories and had the crowd laughing their heads off. That was nice. I'm thinking of applying to be editor of a journal in my field. It's hard to know what to do...

Most of all, I miss our interactions and think of you all often. My best to everyone.

Joonna

As of August ...

2007-08-02T09:21:00.000-04:00

Andrea and I are the parents of the most beautiful little boy, Benjamin William. Two nights ago, at 14 weeks old, he had his first 8-hour sleeping night! (Then, just to help us exercise the spiritual discipline of patience, last night he was up for a little while at 4:00 a.m.)

Here at CICW, we're celebrating 10 years since the founding of the Institute, whose work God has expanded and blessed far beyond anyone's expectations except his. I continue to help develop and manage our website, and do a variety of writing and editing projects for our publications series. I've also enjoyed starting a series of meditations on the Psalms.

I'm still trying to get a collection of my "On Language" columns published, with some encouraging signs.

My course in historical linguistics at MSU was a mixed experience, making me question whether I really want to pursue a degree in linguistics. I think I'm going to take the biblical languages at the seminary across the street from me and see if that's a better fit.

I still hope to do my seminar project idea someday, but I also hope somebody beats me to it.

news from Doug Walker

2007-08-01T21:14:00.000-04:00

Last summer's seminar continues to have a positive impact on me. For
one, my wife says the Alaska book chapters I've written since I attended
the seminar have been noticeably better than the ones I wrote before it.

For me, that's good and bad (it means more revisions await), but it's a
great reflection of how I benefited both from the extensive reading and
from our time together. Thanks to each of you for your part in that. I
hope to start looking for a publisher in the next year.

My last cancer checkup in April was positive, for which we thank the
Lord and many friends who have supported us in prayer. I did have an
apparently unrelated hernia surgery in March, so I've been to the
hospital more in one year than in the previous 20. But, I'm very
thankful that I can be active again now.

One result of the recovery times involved in both surgeries is that I
was slow to get my seminar/class project underway. However, God has
given me a deep interest in the process of business microloans and the
ways they can be used to transform the lives of women and others in
poorer countries. So, I made some contacts in Haiti to try to find
someone who would journal about the impact of a microloan (in this case,
my $100 gift as per our class project) on her life. Through a couple of
contacts I had some initial interest, but it's not happened yet despite
several emails. Part of the challenge is that many of those who would
receive such a loan are illiterate. However, I'm still hoping that this
will work out and that (better late than never) I can report on it
sometime in the next year.

I am serving as the Media Communication department chair at Asbury
College this fall semester. Our regular department chair is in China for
the semester, but I'll gladly return the title to him when he comes
back. During the year, we will be preparing 50+ of our students to work
in broadcast-related positions at the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing. At
this point, I am scheduled to work in one of the positions as well.

I would again like to thank many of you for your encouraging notes
during the year. I look forward to reading what others are doing as
well.

Doug Walker

Money Doesn't Grow In Dirt

2007-05-09T11:02:00.000-04:00

I finally bring my part of this project to an end and give the money away...

On Thursday, April 26, I dug up the $100. [See my October blog entry for an explanation of why it was necessary to access an earthen vault to retrieve the money.]

I considered claiming the funds somewhat earlier, but during the winter some fire ants built a mound atop the burial spot, and I had to wait for the poison bait I sprinkled to bring an end to their hellish activity.

Then we had snow on Easter morning.

This is not what the Easter Bunny normally brings to West Texas. It was still too cold to motivate myself to go outside and dig for dollars. Finally, spring arrived for real. The flowers in the garden where I’d placed the money back in the dry twig days of autumn began to bloom quite nicely. No longer could I excuse further delays.

With the money now in hand, I can look back and see that I’ve learned some things during the seven months it was in the ground. Here they are in ascending order of importance.

■ When burying money, especially cash, always protect it well. The Zip-loc bag I used was a good start, but… The bag should have been put inside some kind of metal or plastic box. Something mysteriously sliced a hole in the bag (a money grubbing grub?) and water got into it. The money that emerged 210 days later was dirty and damp and spotted with mold. There is abundant biblical truth in this. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy…” Matt: 6:19. It was a good object lesson to see the money so degraded. It made me feel almost physically ill as I tried to wipe off the currency and in my mind contrasted it with the crisp bills that had gone into the bag. What had I done? I had almost wasted everything.

■ The longer your money, your gifts, your opportunities are deferred, the easier it is to forget about them. For the first few months, not a week would go by without my thinking, “The money! I need to do something about the money.” This thought irritated me. It prompted me to scan possibilities for ways to spend the funds with something akin to divine wisdom. I thought (mistakenly) that hiding the money would function like having a rock beneath my pillow. I ought not be able to ignore it if I ever wanted to get a good night’s sleep. Instead, as I should have realized, the most human thing happened: I habituated to the money’s absence. Several months into my experiment it might occasionally come to mind, and then I would realize with a start that I hadn’t thought about it in weeks and I had been sleeping very well, thank you. If this continued, I might soon forget that shallow grave altogether.

■ What you do for God isn’t nearly as important as just doing something. Most of the time I’ve been involved in this project I believed that the only form of “success” would be to spend the money on some original idea that would somehow become self-perpetuating as it inspired others to do likewise. Just as Joonna and others expressed, the last thing I wanted to do was simply hand over the money to a homeless person or donate it to a charitable cause. Truthfully, once I read their accounts on this blog, I wanted to be like Debra and Nick and Al Hsu. I wanted to generate excitement and service to others and unexpected twists in the rendition of my plan that made it even better than anything I could have strategized. However, my wishing only led to a deep-valleyed procrastination as I insisted on doing things at a particular level of attainment that I now see was all about making myself feel good and important. Of course, I planned to give God credit, but everyone else would see that He had chosen me to do this great thing and…what hogwash.

■ Working together at this awkward thing known as the “church” often means supporting others who have already stumbled upon or been granted great ideas. I now believe a worthy way to spend the stash of money would be to shamelessly copy Debra and recruit students to teach poetry to disadvantaged kids. Or I could purchase Nathan’s book as Nick did and start a book study in our adult Sunday school class. Or I could play “tag” like Al. The point is that I don’t need to come up with anything new. All I need to do is find someone else who is already doing something brave and loving that “salts” humanity in places where people need it. [See my next and final revelation.]

■ The best thing that happened to this unfaithful-by-choice servant while the money was in the ground: God made me sensitive to what His people are doing. It was remarkable how often I began hearing of good works that others had already set in motion. Each time I would think, “Maybe I should invest in that.” Then, still enslaved to the misconception that this project was entirely about my imagination, my originality, I would say, “No, just giving them money is too easy.” Here are some entities I thought about directing the money toward:

Sanctuary Home ( http://www.sanctuaryhome.org/ ) This orphanage for children abandoned on the street in India was started by Amanda and Ray, a young couple in Abilene who learned about the need through Amanda’s email exchanges with an Indian minister. They began raising money to help the orphans, relying mostly on email and word of mouth. Soon they had enough funds for a building to be acquired, and the children were brought in. These are children whose parents have died from AIDS, heat stroke, cancer, cholera, snake bite, car accident, suicide, and the tsunami. Amanda and Ray finally made a trip to India in December and were amazed to see what has come to pass in less than two years, all of it set into motion by their working from the comfort of home.

Mission Lazarus ( http://www.missionlazarus.org/ ): Several years ago a young ACU business alum went to Central America intent on taking advantage of financial opportunities there. Instead, he saw the poor of Honduras and ended up moving to a small village there and putting all that he had into a place that serves mountain people by providing medical care and sustainable agriculture opportunities. As for his high powered business degree that was going to make him a bundle, he’s using that expertise to become a formidable fundraiser on the behalf of the Hondurans.

Dry Bones ( http://www.drybonesdenver.org/ ): This is a ministry to kids living on the streets of Denver. Some are runaways, some are homeless. Several of my students have worked with these kids during the summer and plan to return.

Eternal Threads ( http://www.eternalthreads.org/ ): This organization was started by a woman in Abilene who retired from being a flight attendant on international flights. Using her lifetime flight privileges, Linda Egle has been able to travel frequently to India and organize the importing of totes and lace crafted by village women. These attractive and useful goods are sold at church bazaars and fundraisers. The money raised is 100% returned to the women who use it to send their daughters to school. Without this ministry, most of these girls would become child brides in exchange for the dowry the poor family would receive. Some would be forced into child labor. Others would become prostitutes.

In addition… During these seven months, I also heard about 1) a woman at church whose house was burned down in a suspected case of arson by her husband and his girl friend; people at church were helping her, including offering her employment as a house cleaner; 2) wife met (and tried to help by offering rides) an immigrant family from Sierra Leone who came to Abilene to escape civil war; and 3) my eight-year-old told me about a family his class “adopted” for Christmas who had lost all that they owned in a fire.

Again, being among the dullest of the dull, it took all of the above to help me understand that there’s no need for me to start something grand from scratch with some kind of elaborate plan or hope to make it grow. There are people right in front of me that I can help out of my surplus which (if I’m honest about it) goes well beyond the $100 involved in this experiment.

Final Thoughts
This project has made me aware of how much I tend to err on the side of caution. If I don’t know what to do in life, then I “play it safe” (a misnomer if there ever was one), and do nothing. I don’t think God ever plays it safe. Safety is not the issue because whatever mistakes occur in the process of leaping into action can always be compensated for or corrected in some new dynamically divine fashion (case study: the Apostle Peter). The only thing that can’t be redeemed is stasis. It remains what it is. To be inert is to be dead to life and to the God who gives life.

So I’m going to take this money—plus more that I have in savings—and offer it to Sanctuary Home and a couple of students who are going to work with Dry Bones and two others who are going on an Intervarsity trip to work with the poor in India this summer.

*Here You Are, Thank You, 2007, pencil, crayon and pen, by Coleman Canon Haley, age 8 years, 364 days

from Lynn Japinga

2007-03-16T08:51:00.000-04:00

Hi, everybody. In honor of the roughly one year anniversary of when we received our invitations to the seminar, I have a request for you. Last summer the seminar occurred right before I started several months of preaching at my church as a sabbatical replacement. The readings that we did were extremely helpful and made their way into my sermons in several different ways.

We're in a pastoral transition now and I'm about to start an eight month stretch of preaching and I could use some fuel! So I wonder ... if you were to put together a list of Really Important and Provocative Books about the Christian Faith, what would be on it? What would be 1-5 books that you have found most influential/interesting/creative/entertaining? And a sentence or two about why? I don't want to define this too narrowly. I would not want to exclude, say, a biography about someone who was not particularly religious and yet whose story says something profound about the human condition. The same for fiction.

The Old Testament lectionary passages, to which I usually gravitate, are almost all drawn from the prophets, especially Jeremiah. The Gospel texts are from Luke, and the Epistles cover Colossians, Philemon, Timothy and Thessalonians. But I can find the commentaries.

What do you think?

Lynn

Type the rest of your post here.

$100 is replicating - God is funding

2007-02-05T11:12:00.000-05:00

One of my colleagues, a blogger whom I tagged with the $100 idea, just stopped by my office. He showed me an anonymous letter that he had just received that said, "TAG! You're it!" Along with a $100 bill. So he's going to use it for the food pantry he blogged about.

I am very encouraged. God is multiplying our efforts.

Brief Harry Potter Interlude

2007-01-30T20:39:00.000-05:00

This is a question I have for Joonna, but you're all welcome to listen in. My family and I have been speculating furiously about the next Harry Potter book, due out on a yet-to-be-announced date that is by definition far too long in the future.

Since we've been talking so much lately about what we think will happen in Book 7, I went back to look at some notes we took during the summer of 2005 when some seminary friends (including our own dear Jana) got together and we had a private symposium on HP. (To read those speculations, go here and scroll down to the post dated Sept. 5, 2005.)

So, Joonna, here's my question: Do you agree with Jana, who believes that the Malfoys are vampires??

All of you brilliant minds are free to comment on our speculations, some of which have already, I'm sorry to say, been declared false by J. K. Rowling in other venues.

Type the rest of your post here.

my update: $847.63*

2007-01-29T19:41:00.000-05:00

I'm either doing much less or much more than I planned.

Instead of $100, I'll be spending (approximately) $847.63 on my new "project": My wife Andrea and are expecting a baby, our first child, in June! (The 847.63 figure was at one point the supposed average cost per month of raising a child, and so that's what flashes on the cash register in the Simpsons introduction when Maggie is accidentally scanned; see www.snpp.com/other/papers/gs.paper.html). Call that a cop-out (am I "burying" my $100?), but soon I'll be too sleepy to argue with you.

I was tempted to symbolically put some money toward a writing- or reading-related investment for my child: maybe a complete set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or John Calvin's Institutes, or at least the Berenstein Bears. But I think I've already learned something from this pregnancy (or maybe I've just learned it from Debra's marvelous book, Great With Child, which has taught me much recently): writing, as a vocation, is secondary to living life itself.

For a while now, I've thought of myself as a writer first and everything else second. (Not necessarily in time and priorities, but in my identity--how I see myself.) I need to do something I've never dreamed of for the last 10 years -- be something else first, and a writer second. Of course, you can never shed the latter, and of course I'll keep writing, and of course if I don't write something about the child (especially about language) I'll feel incomplete. But this child needs me first as a father and only second as a writer; it needs me to approach its crib not with a project, but with the provision of its most basic human needs. My Plan B 'project,' accordingly, reflects a slight reshuffling of my ambitions.

However, I would really like for someone to steal my original idea: take a homeless person to a five-star restaurant. And then write a reflection on FEASTING. What does this feast mean to this person? How *impractical* is it to spend $100 this way, instead of donating it to a soup kitchen? What virtue or vice is there in our notions of what's *practical* in this case (teach someone to fish...) ? What does the Wedding at Cana tell us about Christ's lordship over feasting? (see this sermon MP3) (One person I mentioned this idea to asked if it was nutritionally OK for a homeless person to eat such rich food--I don't know!). Insert references to "beggar's feast," "Babette's Feast," and (careful of any messianic overtones) the extravagant perfume being 'wasted' on Jesus' feet. I really wanted to do this, but right ! now the only food cravings I'm attending to are my wife's. So I'd love to see someone pick it up and run with it.

I'm also delighted to see how Al Hsu's blog is spreading the $100 idea!

And finally, I can't even begin to say how humbled I am by Nick's post and project, and how determined I am to get to Toronto before the baby is born.

It was good to see a few of you at Symposium, and the rest of you remain in my thoughts and prayers.

Nathan

Lay Up For Yourselves Treasures in Heaven (Nick Overduin)

2007-01-29T12:06:00.000-05:00

“Buy Bierma’s book. I’ll even pay for it if you’d like.”

That, in essence, is what I did with my 100 bucks. Almost my entire congregation therefore decided to buy and read the new 2005 book, Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Connecting This Life to the Next, and there was also widespread impact outside the immediate community.

If you like short stories, you can quit now...

However, the longer tale is actually even more interesting.

The author of the revolutionary approach to the upper realms had kindly volunteered, at the conclusion of a 2-week course we both participated in, to come to Toronto some far off day in the future and speak to any people in my congregation who would read his new tome.

My initial reaction was timid and cheap. I immediately worried about how my church could possibly pay for mileage from Grand Rapids to Toronto, for example. Or would there be a speaker’s fee? My congregation is small, about 100 regular worshipers. I did not spontaneously and enthusiastically appreciate the depths of Nathan’s generosity. I was like people often used to say of my dad: “He always sees bears on the road.” We do revert to form, don’t we? A counselor once said to me “The apple never falls too far from the tree.”

Anyways, eventually I said “Sure, I’ll see what I can do to get people interested in your book.” (I had not read it yet. Poor Nathan – I sure took the fun out of his unguarded initiative!)

When I got home I read the book and found it scintillating and insightful, and also formative for world-view. Like an Emily Dickinson poem, it could literally change your general approach to life. I felt it was extremely worthwhile and well-written. I even quoted it at length in a sermon soon afterwards (something about the environment, if I recall correctly).

I had told my congregation that I was going to receive 100 free dollars from my course sponsor to randomly dispense with as I chose. “Does anyone have suggestions?” There was a bit of buzz about this, but not many ideas were generated. Eventually I decided to use my pot to subsidize the purchase of Nathan’s book for any congregant who desired help. Subsidies large and small would be completely confidential, I declared. This monetary backing had the consequence, which I had not fully anticipated, that it magnified in people’s minds the extent to which I was enthusiastic about the book. “Look at that, he’s even throwing money at it.” Even though I stressed it was not actually my own money!

Then, alas, I received the discouraging news that we actually would not be receiving one hundred dollars after all! I contemplated sabotaging the very doctrine of heaven, but decided against that alternative.

Instead I determined, along with my 16 colleagues in the course who were all pursuing projects of their own, to put my own personal money into the equation and replace my lost loot. It was also, in my unique career situation, pastorally important that I not reveal to my congregation that the money supporting my cause was now actually coming out of my own pocket. I felt that this revelation would corrupt the pastor/parishioner relationship and confuse all the normal parish dynamics. People might feel sorry for me. People might feel I was overinvested in an idea. People might worry that Nathan had bribed me to be his publicist. Whatever. I decided that true giving meant just keeping my mouth shut and supporting the project unselfishly. Like many of my classmates, I also seemed to have a sudden miraculous influx of one hundred dollars in my life, due to some ridiculous coincidence (in my case, a publisher remorsefully paid for an article they had posted on a website without my permission). So I genuinely didn’t care about the money. I kept up the pretense that I had been deluged with an unexpected handout.

Lo and behold, 42 people proceeded to order the book!! In such a small place, when you consider multiple readers and extended families, etc., that is basically the whole church. (“Who’s all on your list? O, I see my dad already ordered one, I’ll just read his, thanx”).

It took a long time for all the books to come dribbling in. They arrived at the massive bookstore two or three at a time, because they had to be requisitioned from remote warehouses all over North America. (“It is probably not a very common item” said the bookstore dealer to me with a tinge of embarrassment.) Eventually they got to know me in person, since I was constantly coming back to pick up a few more copies. They were leaving messages on my voice mail and eventually my email. This huge bookstore at a major Toronto intersection now knows the pastor from the church six blocks away. They also suspect his church is a cult that is very interested in heaven, but the pastor swears the book is not what you would think! I encouraged all the sales clerks to read it.

Because I ordered such a large quantity, and because I have a membership card at this store, I got a big reduction in price and cheap shipping. I put it all on my credit card, $647.64, achieving extra Air Mile points as well. (I deserve to keep that perk, I figured.) The final result was $15.20 Canadian per book. I did not feel like fooling around with quarters, dimes, or nickels, so I told my church “Pay me either 15 dollars, 16 dollars, or 20 dollars.” (Sixteen works in Canada because we have “toonies”, which are two-dollar coins.)

Many people paid 20. They wanted to be as nice and carefree as I seemed to be. There were also various people who quietly asked for diverse subsidies, including the total price. (I did not relate any personal disclosures even to the Deacons!)

Honestly? I don’t think I lost a single penny out of my 100 dollar investment.

I have scribbled messy lists all over the place, who paid what-when-where, but I have no desire to total everything up or collate my lists.

I’m a big picture person. I don’t care about details. I’m not like my dad, who always used to see bears on the road.

I used the constant flow of cash as a riotous petty fund. It was really cool to not withdraw any money from the bank for a long time. I paid off the credit card bill like I always do every month (my dad taught me that), and I stopped withdrawing cash. I think I got ahead, actually.

People are still coming up to me and saying “I don’t think I paid you yet”. I am too lazy to confirm. I think some people have paid me twice. (“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, declares the Lord.”)

I think that sometimes husbands and wives paid without knowing their partner had already coughed up. I could double-check that, but I prefer to store it as a mental pastoral note. (Visit them some day. Their communication may be off. Vice-versa, they may be really happy and not care too much about details.)

>A long-range benefit is that the congregation has discovered that it likes the idea of book-clubs. We might form a few of those. We might even invite the authors sometimes. Maybe we can even do something for the mileage. A lot of authors live right in Toronto.

Another long-range benefit is that friends and relatives from other cities have now read the book because my parishioners are excited by the practical insights and invigorating perspectives offered by the book. Readers have resonated with the ideas of hope, glory, earthiness, affirmation of urbanity, a cosmic sense of redemption, and many other features. One elderly relative far away, recently bereaved, reportedly was disappointed when she was about half way through because she was only looking for a comforting answer to one single question: Where’s my husband? Nathan writes about that very pastorally after page 122, so she must not have arrived at that section yet, which deals wisely with what theologians have often called “the intermediate state”.

A few visitors who ordered the book have not returned to church in the past four months and have left no contact information. I explained to my council: They may have gone to heaven.

One member of the church told me that an atheist friend of his had read the book because of all the excitement that had been stirred up in our church. Perhaps the visitors who have disappeared from our radar screen will meet the atheist in Moses’ library some day.

Lay up For Yourselves Treasures in Heaven.

I am having only one problem. Nathan hasn’t given me a date yet. He seems very vague about the particulars. Perhaps he is not coming at all. Perhaps it was a scam. More and more parishioners are asking me, “When he is coming?” I tell them honestly, “I don’t know.” I am concerned about the delay of the parousia. Maranatha, “come, dear Nathan.”

The Idea Spreads, from Al Hsu dated 1/26

2007-01-29T08:44:00.000-05:00

Friends -
I just found out that several other blogs picked up on my blog's invitation to join us in the $100 project. The Point, which is Prison Fellowship's blog for BreakPoint, calls it "The $100 Challenge": http://thepoint.breakpoint.org/2007/01/the_100_challen.html
and then Boundless Line, the blog for Focus on the Family's Boundless.org site, picked up on The Point's post with this one, "The $100 Experiment": http://www.boundlessline.org/2007/01/the_100_experim.html

Pretty wild. And each of these have spurred on further links and blogs with
people's ideas and suggestions.
http://thinkingonthemargin.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-would-you-spend-100.html

http://commongroundsonline.typepad.com/common_grounds_online/2007/01/the_100_challen.html

Al (Haley), look what you started!

Exotic by Albert Haley

2007-01-27T16:51:00.000-05:00

I should be working on my book chapter that has to be mailed to France on the 31st. But I don't wanna. Instead, I curled up and finished reading Al Haley's book Exotic. In the spirit of his review of Anita's book, here's some comments on Exotic.

It is one of the most surprising novels I've ever encountered. I especially enjoyed the pic of Al on the back inside cover--he's still our Al, but young, a full head of sandyish straight hair (sorry Al), and best of all--attitude. I love that picture.

Written in the early 80s, the novel is full of echoes and gems that recall the 70s to me--that time of hope, despair, love, hate, honesty, deceit, and a host of other contradictory emotions. The main characters of the book have little to identity with or even like, but I do. Like them, I mean. Butch and Rebecca Miller have few aspirations and many fears to match their primo educational opportunities. But they learn to lean on each other, to love each other, to enlarge their sympathies. Tresh, the sneaky and brilliant drifter who rarely thinks of anyone but himself is also compelling. And the Christian themes and ideas are as sneaky as Tresh himself, but they are there to help the reader make sense of the tumbling plot.

Al's descriptions are really vivid. After reading of a huge crowd gathered to listen to rock and roll, I left the book hot and sweaty, feeling as if I had been fondled and stomped by thousands. After reading of a journey through a dense jungle, I realized that the very tactile experience had again left its impression on me.

There's a scene in the book toward the end in which Butch begins to imagine what he wants to do when he gets out of the jungle and back home. He imagines giving a lecture tour with photos about "The Human-Rights problem in Manaya: A Personal Odyssey." But in his imaginings, he never thinks of the people and helping them,;it's rather about self marketing, appearing in People Magazine, movies, etc. This scene for me encapsulates what makes this book fun and rewarding intellectually. Gradually, the sad human condition of the oppressed and poor is revealed through this book, and gradually the reader realizes that Butch's attitude of indifference or exploitation is our attitude. We'll leave the book, put it down, and go about living in our little Christian world contributing to the devastation of others, all the while we live fairly well. The dedication of the book is to "everyone who visits Manaya this year." Everyone who visits the "Christian" country of Manaya would be anyone off on a self-serving trip or journey (even in the mind) who is oblivious to all the atrocities around them. Hopefully, the visit to Manaya will help wake us all up. But my guess is that we'll just "sleep on it" as Rebecca and Butch do in the epilog.

I won't soon forget this book, nor should I. Thanks Al. I'm so happy that this novel is now a part of me.

Joonna

An invitation to others to join us

2007-01-17T13:56:00.000-05:00

I was inspired by Deb's post to blog about her experience, and as I did so, I realized that one way I can multiply the effect of my $100 is to invite my blog readers to do the same thing and join us in our $100 project. Here's an excerpt from my post:

I'm very impressed with how concrete Deb's project was and the potential impact on young students. I still remember my first published work as a first-grader that appeared in my school district's "literary magazine," a poem that read, "Red is fire. Red is chalk. Red is like a finger talk." This was then followed by my third-grade contribution, when I was aspiring to be an astronaut:

In the solar system there are nine
Planets born at the same time.
Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, still far from the stars.
Uranus, Neptune, Pluto is last,
These are the planets, moving fast.

Of course, now Pluto is being demoted from planethood and other objects are now understood to be part of our system . . . but I find it significant that I still remember these poems, and somehow I've followed my vocational calling into Christian publishing. Anyway, kudos to Deb and her Calvin students for their initiative, and I hope they continue the effort in the future! And I'm still looking for something creative and missional to do with my $100. Any more ideas out there?

Actually, would anybody else be interested in doing this along with me? I was realizing that one simple way that many of the people at Stacey's church multiplied their money was to enlist friends and family members to join them in their effort. I didn't offer an invitation on my last post about this, so let me do that here, with every eye closed, every head bowed - if you, dear blog reader, feel the call of the Holy Spirit to use $100 strategically and intentionally for the sake of the kingdom, take the plunge and join the movement! Take this up as a new year's resolution or challenge. Let me know that you're going to do something along these lines in the next six months or so, and blog about it on your own blog. And invite others to do the same. Let's see what happens!

From Al Haley, dated Jan. 15

2007-01-16T13:46:00.000-05:00

Debra,
I'm deliberately hitting "reply all" as I want to go on record with everyone sitting around our virtual seminar table.
I think what you and your students did with the $100 is truly inspiring. It's exactly in the spirit of our two weeks this summer -- it was creative, it was faithful, it brought people together. It even involved a bit of risk taking.
Those poem excerpts! My compliments to the young poets.
Creating a printed booklet of the poems was the perfect conclusion to the project. For the kids to go home from school and show their parents or caretakers something they're proud of doing can't be beat. And years from now those kids will be adults and perhaps they'll find their work in a box in an attic, their first "publication", and who knows...?
I've lived with my hole in the ground long enough. Since it so happens, I'm teaching a "Christians and Creativity" course, I'm going to take advantage and try to make a comeback from my own four-month failure of the imagination. Our first class meeting is tomorrow and guess what homework assignment no. 1 is? Figure out something for your poor ol' prof to do with his buried money. Maybe one lesson we're learning from this project is that we don't have to generate ideas all by ourselves. We shall see.
Thanks again for the blog post and the shot of encouragement - al
PS: I like the idea of making the blog "open".

From Lyn, dated Dec. 12

2007-01-15T09:40:00.000-05:00

Hi, everybody. Hope you are all surviving the end of the year rush in church or academia or whatever. It's been a busy semester for me and I still haven't figured out the blog thing so I'm sending it this way and my apologies for some of you who may get multiple copies. Not much computer savvy in my brain. IF you are interested and need some extra reading material (HAH) my sermons from this fall are on the church website. www.hopechurchrca.org Click on worship services and sermons and scroll down to Aug-Nov 2006. Sermons feel flatter in print than in delivery (at least I hope they are better delivered!) but just wanted to prove to Debra and the money givers that I did something useful out of the seminar. :)
Merry Christmas to everybody ...
Lynn Japinga

My salad would like to meet Johnny Depp

2007-01-11T20:39:00.000-05:00

That's one of the wilder poetic lines my hundred dollars produced.

Here's what I did: I obliged my class of poetry-writing students to come up with an idea for how to spend the money. The first suggestions pretty much missed the spirit of the deal: "Let's throw the money at a homeless person. The sheer waste of it would be so poignant." "Let's build a zipline on campus." That's about when I shut down the class discussion and asked people to think about it and e-mail me later.

The next week, two women in the class independently came up with the same idea: to do a poetry workshop at a local elementary school. Now THAT, I thought, could be good.

So I worked with the Service-Learning Center at Calvin and contacted a teacher at the Montessori public school downtown: multi-ethnic student body, good share of at-risk kids, lower socio-economic profile, and not much funding for the arts. My students and I visited the school for two one-hour sessions on separate days. Each of my students worked with two or three fifth-graders. We had lesson plans and everything. After the two sessions, we took the "manuscripts" back to Calvin and turned them into a pretty nifty chapbook. We used the hundred bucks to make plenty of copies for everyone. The copy bill came to $106.25.

When I brought the books to the teachers, they were so entirely thrilled. I suggested that we have a "coffee house" day so the kids could perform their poems for each other, and the teachers loved the idea. They're planning the event for later this month. They're inviting parents, serving cocoa and cookies, asking everyone to wear black turtlenecks and berets.

Honestly, I'm amazed how well this all turned out. My students went into it rather reluctantly. They were scared and uncomfortable, and ever so slightly resentful that I was requiring this of them. I worried too: what if this is all a disaster and my students decide it was a waste of time? And am I really doing service here? Or am I making my students do it, using them as a buffer between me and my own fears?

As it turned out, I did wind up working with the kids myself as one of my students couldn't make it one of the days. And I had a good time. My students did, too. Some of them wound up loving it. Others didn't like it, but had to admit that it was a good thing. Not every fifth grader was into it, but overall they did great. In the end, they just wanted us all to come back again.

Meanwhile, the teachers are so proud and pleased they can't stop thanking me.

So all in all, I'm just humbled. What we did was not that big a deal, but we made a little difference. Maybe, for some kids, an important little difference. Everyone--me and my students and the kids-- came out of this with a new (or renewed) sense that being able to say something in poetry is a kind of power, and that feels good.

I could have done all this without the money. And I probably will do it again, and nag my colleagues to do it, too. But the money got me to bug my students, and they got an idea, and that got us all moving. Spending the money to actually create the books was a smart decision, I'm glad to say. Having something to hold and show others makes it REAL. All of you know the sly pleasure of seeing your words in print.

Here are a couple of the poems I especially liked from our "collection."

Dear Mr. President
by Shanice Alexandra Steele

Dear Mr. President, I have to talk to you.
Dear Mr. President, why can't kids drive?
Dear Mr. President, why can't I go to the stars?
Dear Mr. President, when I get into office I will rule the world.
Dear Mr. President, soon it will be Mrs. President.
Dear Mr. President, can I get a call?
Halla, Mr. President, Halla to all.
(3 weeks later)
Dear Mr. President, why didn't you write me back?

Useless Things
by Jayla Cage

Talent w/o singing
A party w/o dancing
School w/o teachers
Music w/o singers
Boys w/o girls
Hair w/o curls
Soap w/o dove
A heart w/o love

Today I have another thought

2007-01-05T17:11:00.000-05:00

Okay. So I posted recently about how pleased I was about the use of my hundred bucks. Today as I prepare the financial report for the organization I donated to, I feel like I copped out. You know? So here was this new organization that I cared about without any funds--it seemed right. But, now, I think it seemed easy.

Now as colleges are sending us memberships and we have a thousand bucks in the bank, I am thinking I took the easy way out. I didn't do "the assignment." Why didn't I send the money to my students in far away lands who are always writing for extra money? Why didn't I give it to my colleague who struggles to make it on one salary? Why didn't I donate it to our food bank? Why didn't I take it to New York with me and give it to a beggar?

Is this the way it always goes? Do we always second guess ourselves and find ourselves unworthy?

But honestly, my hundred bucks isn't going to make any big deal to this organization. Why didn't I buy a bunch of songbooks so that I could host acapella singings at my house? Why not donate it to the barbershop chorus I'm in--we are strapped for funds, and we do lots of good things in the community. Arghghghghghg!

Why do I suddenly feel like Charlie Brown. Why is the Christmas tree I always buy such a runt?

I'll be eager to here what everyone else is up to. I wish this had an alert function so that people would know that someone posted......

Why am I so whiny? Is it because school begins in 4 days?

By the way, I'm reading Al Haley's book Exotic and loving it. Interesting novel so far. I'll write more later when I'm finished.

Your friend--Joonna

money update

2006-12-22T12:11:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone. Grades are in, and I'm pooped. But I wanted to post an update regarding the 100 bucks I invested in the Iowa Network for Women in Higher Ed. With that seed money we begin sending letters and making plans for developing our organization further. We now have three hundred dollars from three colleges in Iowa subscribing to our organization. And we are planning a conference in conjunction with U. of Iowa on women. So it is going well.

I also said yes to running for a national position with AEPL, an organization dedicated to studying the connections between spirituality and learning. And I won--so I'm the national program vice chair. Not sure what that means except it means a lot of work. But I credit my association with INWHE for giving me the strength to say yes. A success story I guess.

One other note. One of my students quoted a fine writer from Christianity Today in her term paper. That writer was Agneiska (sorry I'm not spelling this correctly!). You can't imagine my joy and laughter!! It is so good to know you all and read all your work now that I have faces and smiles to go with it.

Best wishes and merry Christmas to you all.

Joonna

Talents in the Ground (a Rationale)

2006-10-17T08:02:00.000-04:00

So why bury my $100? Actually, to my way of thinking, it’s the Bible’s fault:

For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money. Matt. 25:14-18

Over the years I’ve noticed that Scripture tends to take the side of underdogs—shepherd boys, an unwed pregnant teen, the jilted women and crippled men. After so much exposure to this mind-boggling anti-heroism it has become my own pattern. When I read one of Jesus’s parables, I reflexively start to see things from failure’s side…

The guy who built his house on the sand was probably in too big of a hurry to get a roof over his head to do much site investigation, a mistake any doofus with a dream and poetential oceanfront view could make. At least he wasn’t one of those weekend carpenters, full of promises who never ever really gets things done. This guy set to with his hammer and he built himself a house—for as long as it lasted.

And the man who stored up all that grain in the barn and then died without benefiting from it. I want to at least give him credit for being a really good manager of crop yields. He was not a lazy grasshopper; he was just an ant for whom this time the clock ran out.

The prodigal son? Is it so awful that he refused to be a good boy and stay with his father and older brother? If he had, I imagine him feeling a lifelong dissatisfaction sitting on the porch as the sun went down each day. Perhaps the prodigal was like someone I know too well who could not initially swear loyalty to God, much less the church. The young man I’m thinking of first had to find out for himself, experientially not theoretically, that the grass truly is not greener on the other side. In fact, he learned that a steady diet of verdant vegetation will infest your soul with worms.

Maybe I just want to give these sorts of illustrative biblical failures and foul-ups a second chance because I sympathize. I still need a daily shot at starting over and getting things right with God. Call it my keen reliance on the divine do-over. Amen.

When it comes to the parable of the talents, it’s not that I desire to fully emulate the unwise slave. After all, when the master returned this slave received a horrible rebuke, even eternal condemnation (“cast into outer darkness”).

What drives my madness and my back yard digging is that I think I know this erring slave a little bit. I know his fear of doing the wrong thing and how it can make him so falsely prudent that he sees a hole in the ground as his best ally. Better to mess up there in the shadows and the dirt than out in public where if he loses all the master’s money everyone will see his out-turned pockets and the glaring shame reddening his face.

I suppose it’s possible too that he might have imagined he would dig the money up in time to find some way to gain a return before it was too late. He might have even thought he was composting his options, that they would ripen in the soil of his subconscious and one day he would be ready to open the hole, pull out his stash of coins and finally invest wisely on behalf of his master. But perhaps he never got around to acting upon his plans. Or the inspiration failed to come before time ran out.

The hole in the ground, and the waiting that goes with it, is a definite risk.

I’d better have something to do with this money by June 1.

Al Haley (and a Hole Lotta Money)

2006-10-16T16:40:00.000-04:00

Oct. 15, 2006

Today we buried the money in the back yard.

My 8-year-old son had the garden trowel. I had the money inside a Zip-loc bag. Cole dug in the flowerbed where the West Texas clay was least hard. The money inside its plastic prison looked green and vulnerable as we shoveled crumbles of dirt over the face of Ulysses Grant. I placed a flat stone on top. This marker will help me find the money again, and it’s supposed to also keep squirrels from digging up the money and doing who knows what with it. Install a satellite dish in the mesquite tree and start watching 24/7 Chip and Dale cartoons? More likely they might gnaw the bills (the General Grant fifty, 2 twenties, a ten, and a bonus two-dollar bill). In a flash they could turn them into ribboned confetti, which though festive would not be a hoped for outcome of this project.

October 16, 2006

This morning it is raining. Heavily.

Rain is a big deal in arid West Texas. We go for weeks with the sky remaining an unblinking, uncompromised blue minus even a breath of clouds. The sun bakes the ground into cracks. The weeds turn crisp. To date we are one inch behind in the modest annual rainfall we normally expect of just over 20 inches.

But today’s rain is changing that. I listen to it drumming on the roof as I type this. I’m thinking about the money in the back yard. The rain is seeping past the stone, the surrounding mulch and it is beading up on the plastic in the darkness underground. The money, hopefully, remains dry even as the moisture sluices past it toward the deeper stores in the earth. Underground rivers and lakes lie at well appointed places beneath the surface of the land. The money I’ve placed in the ground is inert potential whereas the rain is liquid life. The rain is actively looking for a seed, a snarl of roots, a crust of mineral, a speck of dirt, a touch of warmth. With autumn upon us, it’s too late for this particular rain to bring green to the yellowing and browning land. It is, however, insurance for the spring when the farmers plant their wheat, cotton, and corn.

Tomorrow the sky will clear and the puddles will start to disappear. The rain will be gone, its effects not yet known or complete. So some day could be the case with the money, I think.

Joonna's current writing projects

2006-10-14T00:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I have no publications to write about. But hating to be left out, I'd thought I'd create a label "New and current writing projects" so that we could share a little about works in progress. I've currently got 4 articles out at publishers, waiting to hear back.

1--An article on Octavia Butler and how she uses gothic conventions in her science fiction. This has passed two levels of review and is in the third level which will determine if it gets in the anthology.

2--A creative non-fiction piece at Big TexT on the physical and spiritual places of West Texas and Northwest Iowa.

3--A creative non-fiction piece at JAEPL. A teaching narrative.

4--An article with an anthology on M. Night Shyamalan

But the thing that excites me just now is an opera libretto. It's a feminist and spiritual reimaging of the Dracula story. A friend in Mississippi is a composer, and we just decided to do this--to finally stop dreaming about it and plunge in. I'm sitting in Karen Baker's husband's playwriting class to spur me on. I have about 20 pages so far and will probably get a whole draft by Christmas. Doing something a little further away from scholarship is really energizing.

What is energizing the writer in the rest of you?

happy to share about my new thread in article

2006-10-11T14:24:00.000-04:00

Dear friends from the Seminar: I am happy to report that Christianity Today has published a follow-up I wrote to the respondents of my earlier article on their "Out of UR" Leadership blog site. The follow-up is generating really good conversation -- thoughtful, spiritual, wise, enjoyable, challenging, etc. There is more response to the follow up than there was to the original article.

Debra, this whole exercise in writing definitely came from the course you gave, if you need to point to "results", etc.

Kind regards to all. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas, etc.

Nick Overduin.

recent publications

2006-10-02T14:10:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the new blog! And thanks, Joonna, for bravely posting first.

Once you are on the blog, look to the upper right for the little "new post" button. Click on that and you will get the posting window. Very simple. Please feel free to ask questions if any function isn't clear. You can ask me or Ron at ron.rienstra@gmail.com.

Also, if you would like your contributor name to link somewhere other than where it now links, just send me or Ron an e-mail to that effect.

When you post, try to fill in a word or two in the labels window at the bottom right of the posting window. Maybe we could agree to use "money" as the label for anything having to do with our project. Once you have used a label, it will be available to choose from the next time anyone posts.

Meanwhile, I am wondering if folks could take a minute to post notice of any recent publications. Jana has posted some great snarky and insightful reviews to her blog (use her link under Contributors). Hope you're all keeping up there. But there's more from this group. Let's hear it.

Al and I have a couple things in the latest Ruminate magazine, a new literary journal. It's a print journal, but they have samples online.

Others?

News from Joonna

2006-10-02T13:43:00.000-04:00

The posts have been wonderful. Truly. I have to tell you all a story about Karen B. The other day, and pardon me if I've already written about this or she has, we were at a meeting of the faculty. Later I saw her and she said that all she could think was--could we just have our Calvin group back to work and think together with? One does miss the oasis we found in the desert of the summer.
Yes, I'm swamped as well. Unbelievably. Karen and I have had practically no time even for lunch together. But the work is good and mostly fulfilling. I think I've found a use for my 100 bucks. It's not glamorous, but it seems right to me. I'm the treasurer of a new group which is just getting started. The Iowa network for Women in Higher Education. We find ways to foster the growth of women into positions of leadership in all Iowa colleges. Of course, we have no start up funds. So, I'm opening an account this week, and using my hundred bucks as the seed money. We need to apply for non-profit status and do mailouts. Now we have the money to at least get started. Who knows where this will lead? I hope the organization grows....I'll keep you posted.
On another note, my husband was laid off his job this last week. He is looking, but he is also 55 years old. He seems to be fine, but he hides his feelings very well. He really, really loved his job at blue Bunny ice cream as a programmer/analyst. My first thought was that I better not give up a hundred bucks for such a project, but then I rethought and felt that I needed to trust that all things would work together for good as promised. So, I'm still in. And I have the relief that I have thought of something to do with the money.
I miss you all.....we need a reunion!
Joonna

A Dream

2006-09-30T17:26:00.001-04:00

There was no school today and we all got to sleep in. Big deal, right?

It was a big deal, because while listening to Morning Edition, I drifted and dreamed of all of you.

We were gathered in a classroom, each one sitting at a desk. It was the kind of classroom and desks that high school students find familiar. Debra was our teacher - located somewhere out of my line of site, presumably at the front of the room. Each one of us had come with something prepared to read - a poem had been assigned. I, of course, felt unprepared, unworthy and anxious. (typical performance anxiety dream)

Debra asked us to share and the first person, Agnes, I think, began to sing her poem. (Some of your faces were obscured, but your voices were recognizable.)

“Oh no, I’ve got it all wrong,” I thought. “Lyrics. rhyme scheme, melodic, verse and refrain. These are songs. I clearly missed the directions on this assignment.” (Mine was rhymeless and would never fit into a song.)

Then quite suddenly, as if by magic, (in dreams, it’s always sudden, always magical) an acccompaniment track began to play, in just the right key, with just the right instrumentation, and just the right time signature/rhythm to fit the poem being shared. I turned around and noticed that the room was full of people now. Our group had grown to include acquaintances from from the other parts of my life. Complete strangers were in attendance, too. Apparently each one had something to offer.

Karin B. began her poem and amazingly, it was in the same key and similar rhythmic structure as the previous reader. It was lovely, lyrical, sparkling. The song progressed and with each reader’s contribution, I became more anxious. My poem was meant for speaking. It could not be sung. Vinita began to move up and down the rows, handing out looseleaf notebook pages of handwritten material. It turns out that Nick was not in the room, but he had submitted something in writing. Thoughtful and intense, it was not meant for singing either. I felt better. Vinita whispered encouragement to each person she passed. I felt even better. The poem/song continued and improved as one voice after another added unique rhythms and the music track altered to accommodate individual changes.

“Hey,” I thought. “This is really good.” And then I woke up.

Of course I woke up before I had to read my work, so I have no idea what I wrote. Neither can I remember the details of the song. But I think that what I saw and heard in the dream was in some way a glimpse of perfection. We are in fact, part of a holy song, created for us, created by us. Sometimes we are in sync. The rhythmic flow is energizing and gracious. Sometimes we are out of tune and need to listen to find our voice again. Sometimes we offer an alternative. The beauty of this song is that it belongs, as we all do, to God and somehow, some miraculous way, whatever we contribute adds to the harmony.

I should sleep in more often.

Really Good News

2006-09-09T11:00:00.000-04:00

You people are even more wonderful than I’ve been giving you credit for, and I’ve been giving you credit for a LOT!

I never expected all this laughter, and I’m so grateful.

Al’s comment sums up how I’m feeling about all this right now:

“Isn’t this God’s first superb surprise for us? Yes! We thought this would be easy, that we’d just have to figure out how to spend the funds, but God says, oh, yes, you provide the first fish and loaves, okay? You don’t mind, do you? There’s precedent for this, you know. And I’m laughing.”

I think Al means that he himself is laughing, but it almost sounds as if he means that God is laughing. And I think that’s right. God is laughing, having a little fun with us. Maybe one of the things I personally have to learn to do is laugh about money. This is pretty hard for me.

I am thinking right now that we encourage one another to go ahead anyway with our project and let the first step be finding the money somehow, expecting it to come your way in by some surprise or coincidence or providential something. Still, of course this is optional. After all, how on earth would we REQUIRE this of one another??

Here are some excerpts from your e-mails over the last 24 hours. (We really should post the full e-mails from everyone so we have a full record of all this. Would you each be willing to do that? Or I will.) Also see Andy’s blog post below.

From Al H:
At 9:08:30 I’m reading on the blog that this is quote “really bad news.”
At 9:08:45 I read “There is no money for our project.”
I start laughing.
At 9:09:15 Still laughing.
LAUGHING
Some of it is relief, of course. Everyone is okay! It’s just money we’re talking about…
And the money. Why should there be money? Isn’t this God’s first superb surprise for us? Yes! We thought this would be easy, that we’d just have to figure out how to spend the funds, but God says, oh, yes, you provide the first fish and loaves, okay? You don’t mind, do you? There’s precedent for this, you know. And I’m laughing.

From Debra A:
The theme of “not enough money” is the throughline in the plot of my life. And as for the loss of $100.00 that I never had to begin with, well… Oh well. My project is still important to me and I can do it with equipment I already have on hand. In fact, I want to do it - perhaps all the more.

From Agnes:
And so: let this money coming and the way it will be used be a surprisingly joyful thing. Let the quest evoke laughter, be like new wine.”

In my desk drawer I have $60 (Cdn) extra cash because I withdrew from my ATM not seeing and immediately forgetting the $60 I’d withdrawn two days earlier.

From Karen:
A few days ago, I got a check in the mail. It was for my initial participation in the study. It is for $100. It is still sitting on my dining room table waiting for me to decide what interesting thing I will do with money I was not planning on. It is in reading Al’s and then Agnes’ email that it became clear to me what I will do with my check.

Nick:
I will be getting 100 dollars American for the piece on the Leadership Blog. Found out about that just before hearing that I would be deprived of the Lilly funds.

It is obvious via coincidence and conscience that I have been condemned not to enjoy the Blog cheque.

Bang for the Buck

2006-09-08T10:14:00.000-04:00

Until the business of the new semester hit me (as it always does), I too had struggled with how I might spend my $100 with the hope that somehow having the money in hand might help. The project awoke a competitive spirit within me. I pictured a one-upmanship of good deeds. If only my $100 could bring peace to Middle East - I'd love to see one of you beat that!

My first thought upon reading the bad news was one of relief, then disappointment, and then the thought - maybe I'll do it anyway. Somehow the idea of spending $100 was broken free from competing with 15 other people in a game to see who could do it best. Maybe that's because it would be "my own" money and freed from the accountability of spending Calvin's money. I think there's a lesson here.

Anyway, I haven't found an extra $60 or $100 in my desk drawer yet (change from doing laundry only amounted to $0.83 this week). Finding and spending $100 will surely be an interesting story for each of us.

Andy Keck

Really Bad News

2006-09-07T14:57:00.000-04:00

Dear friends,

There’s no good way to say this, so I will simply say it.

There is no money for our project.

This is a result of a mistake on my part. I’ll explain what happened and then propose some possible ways we can choose to deal with it.

Last February, Jamie Smith wrote me and asked what I wanted to do with the $1600 follow-up money that came with each seminar grant. At the time, he gave me the choice between doing a follow-up project of some kind or giving each of you a $100 voucher (effectively) to buy books. I chose the voucher, wanting to spare you the book expenses as much as possible.

When you were all here, Jamie asked again what I wanted to do with my $1600. He had apparently forgotten that he had given me a choice, and I had completely forgotten that I had already made a choice back in February somewhere in California. So I merrily proposed the question to you all, we came up with our fabulous project, and you know all about that part.

Then, last week, when I requested that the Seminars office cut some checks for you, Alysha figured it out: we had already spent all the money.

I am so sorry. I am embarrassed and ashamed and very very sorry.

So what do we do now?

Well, there are several options that I can think of. Perhaps you can think of more.

1) We forget the project. We chalk it up to a fantastic idea that ran into an obstacle and we move on with our other projects. This will involve some grief, but it has the obvious benefit of resulting in one less thing to do.

2) We seek funding from some other source. If we could think of a good source quickly, this might work. Any ideas?

3) We go ahead with the project, but use our own money. I was thinking I could sell my son’s old quarter-size violin for about $100. I could use that money. Or we could use our own money but make it a smaller amount. In this scenario, our efforts to scramble together some money could become part of what we write about, part of the interest of the project.

I am honestly not at all sure which option I personally favor. I am hoping to listen to our collective wisdom.

Please think about this, pray some, and post your suggestions.

Many thanks for your good graces, in which I still hope I am…

Debra

Clever Little Title (Actually the book I've been Thinking About)

2006-09-03T16:44:00.000-04:00

Okay, so I’m trying this again, hoping to get it into the main index....I’m so inept!

Yes, my clever little title as requested. Not clever at all. But in response to Debra’s post, I’d have to say that the book I keep thinking about is Dwelling Places. I’ve given my copy to my colleague who teaches farm literature. I’ll let you know what he thinks later on. I’ve been trying to find time to read the rest of her novels, the other books I picked up during the seminar, and Al Haley’s books, but the press of the semester is killing me. I just finished writing a 35 page grant to fund a year of leave for myself for thinking and time to write. We’ll see. But I couldn’t help being struck by the thought that here was this huge pile of paper that bascially toots my own horn--yes, I’m great and promising and fastastic; give me money! But all the while, I kept thinking of Vinita’s farm family, losing everything but each other and nearly losing that along the way. Karen has told me lately that she is drawn to people with simple faith, who meet tragedy and loss without a huge overblown intellectual sturm und drang. Simple faith. I’ve been thinking about that and the way it sort of winds around the narrative in Dwelling Places. I wonder if the appearance of the gothic is actually those moments when simplicity doesn’t help wend the way though the morass of pain. But then in the end, those gothic and dark moments of not knowing and not understanding are conquered by love and family witnessed in the scene of the family sitting on top of the graves in the beauty of the evening.

I’ve been thinking of doing an article on these novels eventually. And who knows, if I could convince Legacy to publish it, that means people who teach the literature of women writers might just pick one of those novels up for use in a class. It might help sales. Who knows? We’ll see, I’ve four articles out at journals now, waiting to hear if I need to do revisions, so it might be down the road.

I think Dwelling Places is my book of the year.

I can’t seem to get spell check to work--argh.

Joonna

Write on the Money

2006-09-01T13:27:00.000-04:00

The seminar grant that brought our group together in July of 2006 also came with follow-up money: $1600 of it. The purpose of this money was to assist participants in bringing their projects to completion and publication. Some seminars make the money available so that participants can apply for “mini-grants”—three hundred bucks to get them to a conference, for example—and other seminar groups give themselves a deadline incentive—a hundred bucks when your paper gets submitted for publication. But what did we want to do? Something different. Something surprising. After all, we are writers and we don’t like to be predictable.

Then one of us—all right, it was Al Haley—came up with this idea: We divide up the money evenly, a hundred bucks each. Then we do something useful with it, and write about what happens.

The trick, of course, is defining “useful.” We wanted to do something that would somehow multiply the money—literally, figuratively, imaginatively—beyond the original amount and beyond ourselves. We wanted to do something surprising in keeping with our seminar’s title: “The Truth’s Superb Surprise.” And that’s where the fun began.

You, visitors to this site, are welcome to keep an eye on what we are up to. The project begins September 1, 2006, and will conclude (or at least pause for breath) on June 1, 2007. We will report on the project right here.

For more details, read on.

Inspirations for the project
• The parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30)
• The minister who took $5000 and gave church members $100 each to spend in ministry to others (this has become something of a trend in churches)
• Andy Crouch’s Christianity Today column “We’re Rich”
• The film Pay It Forward
• The Pay It Forward Foundation

Purpose
• To provoke us to pray for divine guidance and wisdom
• To cause us to see opportunities and needs we might not have noticed and respond to them in the spirit of Christ
• To lead us to write about a common experience
• To enable us to share our words and thoughts with one another and the public

Phase One: Work in Progress
1. Each writer receives $100 by September 1, 2006
2. Writers communicate with each other through our seminar blog.
3. We establish a web presence announcing and describing the project to the public. We promise an update on the project in the spring, at the midpoint of our project and some presentation of results by June 1, 2007.

Details
On September 1, the clock starts running. The $100 may be spent on anything. What we have to keep in mind is that we will write about what happens to the $100. Of course, what other Christians judge as “faithful” use of the money most likely will be well received; however, frivolous failures can be instructive as well (e.g., the fool who built his house upon the sand…) and are not precluded—so one of us could spend the money on a pedicure and massage or a couple rounds of golf and write about whether it brought her closer to God or the gods of vanity. One of us could spend the $100 on Jerry Jenkins’ writing workshop (would it help him double his talents as a writer?). Our guiding principle is that the use of the money be creative and startling to ourselves. This is where we will try to rely on prayer and God speaking to us through daily circumstance (as Marilynne Robinson reminds us so well in her Sojourners interview

During Phase One, we pledge to document what is happening. This could be a matter of jotting down notes about ideas for spending the money, early results, doubts, plagues of insomnia, etc. Some of this we will share with each other on the blog. All of it will be fodder for our final public web presentations in June.

Phase Two: On the Web
By June 1, each of us will have thought of a creative way to publicly recount or meditate upon our personal journey with the $100. This can be in the form of words, video, sound or some other amalgamated medium that can be posted at the website. There is no expected standard product or word limitation. The project may inspire a poem, a sermon, a short story, Rev. Lamblove-style jottings on the back of a cereal box, a musical mash-up, personal memoir, or… The books we’ve read for the seminar and the conversations we had during our time together will be figuratively smiling over our shoulders and suggesting a rich array of creative possibilities.

Phase Three: Beyond the Web
Once results are in and posted at the website, one or more writers may wish to develop the collective story further by writing magazine articles about the activity, making presentations at conferences, using the episode as a part of their teaching, or… It could be particularly instructive for others to think about how this sort of project intersects with more than one community—the community of writers who are working together on the project, the individual communities each of us have returned to and where the $100 is spent.

The text on this page is adapted from Al Haley’s original project description created for seminar participants.

About this Blog

2006-09-01T01:17:00.000-04:00

In a culture full of people who long to be spiritual but have little vocabulary for spiritual things, how can we use the power of language to testify to what we as Christians believe and experience? Avoiding triumphalism, defensiveness, and dogmatism on the one hand and mere yeasty yearnings for transcendence on the other, how can we tell the ancient mysteries of God in fresh and relevant ways? How can we practice and model the habits of “scrupulous inquiry” that a life of faith promises to teach us?

During the summer of 2006, 17 people from a variety of disciplines including publishing, academia, and the pastorate met on the campus of Calvin College to explore these questions. Our time together was part of Calvin’s Seminars in Christian Scholarship program and our seminar was funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc., under the auspices of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship.

This blog is a follow-up forum to our seminar in which we hope to continue to inspire and challenge one another. Our goal is to find ways in which each of us, according to our particular gifts and place in life, can practice excellence in the literary arts and “put all things in God’s account,” witnessing in the broadest sense to contemporary audiences—the curious, the lurking, the committed, the confused, the self-satisfied, the hurting.