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26.4.10

oh i have been to heaven.


In church on Sunday, my pastor preached from Revelation.

When I was little, it was a sermon on the end times that made me have the whole "come to Jesus" time that most children of Christian homes experience. I remember asking Dad if jesus would come back to the USA, too - despite not knowing much about Jesus, I knew that he had lived in a foreign land.

When I was in middle school (and I'm not ashamed to admit this), I read the whole of the Left Behind series, and temporarily became a dispensationalist. I was also terrified that I'd get "left behind," so I probably recommitted my life to the Lord about once a week to make sure everything was okay and I'd still get to go to heaven.

When I got to college and learned about the various eschatological theories in my theology classes, I didn't know what to make of them. The brief discussions of Revelation didn't seem to make much sense to me, and the book has remained an incomprehensible and impenetrable mess of metaphor to me.

The American Church's relationship with Revelation is much the same way. If pressed, a lot of evangelicals would probably espouse a literalist belief in Revelation, not dissimilar to that espoused by LaHaye and Jenkins in their popular series. As a Church, we tend to be heaven-focused, waiting for that end time when Christ will come back and everything will be restored.

My pastor pointed out, however, that this focus can be disastrous. Sure, having a heaven-focused mentality reminds one that this world is finite, that the problems we have day in and day out will pale in comparison to the joy that we'll experience in the future. That can be emotionally reassuring, and faith building.

However, when our focus becomes solely the afterlife, we forget that life here really matters too. A saying that is repeated but never truly understood is that "eternal life starts now." What that really means is that what you do in this life, here on earth, actually matters. Heaven, as far as we know, is pretty far off, but we can begin to work the kingdom of God here, now, on Earth, rather than just blissfully staring forth into the clouds waiting for Jesus' return.

When the desire of heaven begins to trump our life on Earth, we have a backwards faith. Part of the beauty of being a Christian is being restored in right relationship to God, and to our fellow humans. And that second part means working against injustices, it means righting things that God despises, it means being his kingdom here on earth. Even as we pray, "Your will be done, your kingdom come," we are bringing the kingdom of heaven back down to earth and applying God's restoration plan.

The particular example that my pastor pointed out - one that is appropriate for the South - is the idea of racial injustices. The passage he was preaching from was Revelation 7:9-12. In that passage, John, the author, discusses his vision of people of every tribe, nation and tongue coming together to praise the Lord.

Let me repeat: EVERY tribe. EVERY nation. EVERY tongue.

God's kingdom is not just open to white American evangelicals, though to hear some talk, you might think that. God's kingdom and grace is available to all of us.

That is truly a beautiful picture. When we arrive at heaven, there will be Indians and Pakistanis, Palestinians and Israelis, German and French people, North and South Koreans, Irishmen and women, Scots, Englishmen and women, Canadians, Americans, Venezuelans, Cubans, Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese. People from all over the globe will be represented in a cacophony of praises! What a glorious picture!

Not so much if you don't believe that any of those other races are as privileged as the white race. Or otherwise. It won't be so fun then if you harbor a belief that some humans are somehow less than you.

This extends beyond mere racism. This picture of heaven covers all injustices - I believe that I will come face to face with the child who made my clothes, and picked my coffee. I believe that the warmongers will come face to face with the women and children damaged by violence. I believe that the Church will get see all the people hurt, abused, and damaged by good theology spoken poorly.

But I believe also in restoration. This picture of heaven is a happy one - everything restored to its right order, grace abounding and mercy renewed. This glimpse gives us some hope that God's justice will be wrought.

So, what, then, is our call for justice here on earth? Our job as Christians, dictated to us by the Lord's Prayer that Jesus gives us, tells us to pray for "[God's] Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." If eternal life starts now, immediately, then our call is one to justice. If we are called to pray for God's kingdom now, immediately and in immeasurable power, then we are called to work in God's restoration. Prayer is not an inactive process - by praying thus, we are contracting with God to live in accordance with his restoration plan, to let Him work in our lives, and to restore his justice to the world, not sit back and wait for it to happen.
If we truly desire heaven, we must participate in the restoration of God's kingdom on earth.

If we truly want grace, mercy and justice, we must work in God's name to restore his justice to the earth.

If we truly look forward to time with the Church, we'd better start learning how to live in community now.

There's a great new song by the David Crowder Band that's been lifting my spirit lately. It's called "Oh Happiness!" and while I normally cringe at any implication that faith = happiness, I have to recognize the vision within this particular song. The repeated line is "Oh happiness! There's grace enough for us and the whole human race."

That is truly a fantastic thought.

Grace enough.

Mercy enough.

A restoration that will be enough.

Even as we fight injustice, even as we get frustrated at the lack of movement, even as we experience new travesties everyday - in the form of racist laws, people ignoring the hurting, and ethnic cleansing and violence - we can still rejoice that there is grace enough, there is love enough, there is mercy enough for the whole human race.

And we are instruments of that grace.

Do you believe that today?

16.4.10

Mattering

"Even if it's a dumb story, telling it changes other people just the slightest little bit, just as living the story changes me. An infinitesimal change. And that infinitesimal change ripples outward--ever smaller but everlasting. I will get forgotten, but the stories will last. And so we all matter--maybe less than a lot, but always more than none." - Colin Singleton, in An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
Through the past few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about the direction of this blog. Right now, I'm sitting in sort of a limbo between having relevant-to-my-readership Japan updates (I leave in about a month) and this odd dull period where all I'm doing is grading and reading leisure work (and applying for my visa).

So where does that leave this blog? Without spending all my time commenting on politics, I feel like I end up repeating myself a bunch of times on the same subject (hmm, sounds an awful lot like teaching...). Inspiration seems to have eluded me of late, and I just haven't been in the mood to write.

But then I read some more John Green, and thought again about why I write.

First, a story.

When I was little, I had a dream of getting a typewriter (I'm old school) and writing the next great American novel (like so many of my current fellows in the English lit world, I imagine, but not necessarily the dream of a typical five year old). In middle school, I met one of my best friends, Karen, who wrote short stories and novellas that were enchanting, all about wolves and magic and different worlds. When I couldn't write like that, I decided my future career was clearly not to be a writer. After all, if I couldn't write fiction fantasy novels like those I enjoyed reading, what worth would I be as a writer? Every attempt I had at writing didn't turn out immediately like I imagined it to be - it was often a clearly plagiarized version of whatever novel I happened to be reading that week.

Despite not thinking of myself as a good writer, I was always a voracious reader. I remember walking down the halls of my elementary school in first grade, looking at the third grade dioramas of the Boxcar Children series and thinking, "Oh I loved that book! That one was good!" Most of what I picked up I devoured. I remember reading Jack London's Call of the Wild and White Fang in fifth grade. In sixth grade, I read tons of fantasy novels, branching into Anne McCaffery, Stephen King, John Grisham and K.A. Applegate by the time I hit 8th grade. When I found a series I liked, I immersed myself in it. In the reading pages contests in 8th grade, no one was even close (it didn't hurt that I read the 1090 page book It by Stephen King that semester).

What I didn't realize was that all this reading was affecting my ability to write. Being a good reader encouraged me to be a good writer.

During my sophomore year of high school, Mrs. Votaw, my advanced English teacher, sat me down and explained to me that I was immensely enjoyable to read. I could say things in quick, concise ways, and for the first time I heard: "You are a good writer."

That compliment was like a talisman that I carried through the rest of high school. Even suffering through AP Lit and Comp junior year where discussions consisted of "Okay class, what happened in this chapter?" I knew that I could string together words in ways that could were fun to read. Senior year, I struggled under the harsh comments of my AP English teacher, who frequently made us write our bad sentences on the board and then criticized them in front of the class (I realize now what a good teaching technique that is, but I always took the criticisms much more personally than my classmates). I was proud of my writing, and definitely thought I had reason to be.

For once in my life, I felt like I mattered.

Somewhere between senior year and freshman year of college, though, I lost some of that confidence. I decided English wasn't my thing, and God had called me to religious studies, rather than writing. I was going to be a pastor! Or a motivational speaker! Or something! I hadn't even registered for freshman comp because I figured I'd pass the AP test and not have to do it.

I was wrong, of course. I only got a 3 on the AP test, meaning by USF standards that I would, indeed, have to take LAR 111, or "Western Heritages," a kind of morphed reading/writing English-y class required for all freshmen. I dropped the math class I'd registered for, and got into the last section of comp that I could...two days before the start of school.

That class changed my life.

If I could pinpoint any singular college class that changed the direction of what I knew I could do, and how I could "matter" to the world, it was probably that class. Dr. Greg Dyer, a gregarious man who sat on the desk and called himself a cyborg (seriously, he said "I'm a cyborg. Can anyone tell me why?" in class one day), encouraged me to write and made me recall that encouragement I'd received from Mrs. Votaw way back during sophomore year. While I shudder to think back on some of those papers I turned in, Dr. Dyer consistently complimented me on my writing, all the while critiquing it (I had a bad habit of starting every paper with a quote. You can imagine how boring that got after awhile).

I remember one paper in particular. This paper was supposed to be "persuasive," so I wrote on the idea of evangelism - at the time I was getting heavily involved in Campus Crusade for Christ and was convinced that evangelism (as in, street evangelism, meeting strangers and telling them about the Lord) was one of the foremost duties of a Christian, so I wrote a paper about how even if you don't have a "gift" of evangelism, you're still called to do it.

Dr. Dyer commented on that paper that not only was it well-written, but it was "deceptively simple and convicting."

Wow.

Not only had I written something that fulfilled the assignment completely, but I had actually persuaded the teacher on something. That's not something you do everyday. It was then, in that moment, that everything clicked. Writing was "it" all along. Writing is my gift, my skill, the thing I'm good at. Mom had been telling me that for years, but now I finally, really, truly believed it.

That realization prompted me to take more English classes, and though I never switched my major, I exercised my chance to write and to write persuasively at any given opportunity. I went to Oxford University on a study abroad because I wanted not only to experience a different world but to write more. An essay or two a week challenged me to write more and to do so quickly.

Writing was and is my way of "mattering" to the world.

I discovered that my words could move and convince people and change things. Though most of what I'm trained in is academic, I often expanded my audience beyond purely academics and talked to a broader demographic. My papers on No Country For Old Men, or John Locke expounded upon human ideals and how these things apply to one's life. The perception of evil in McCarthy changes how one can live their life, even if it's just in infinitesimal ways.

Writing and reading and, more importantly, narrative, changes lives.

But again, as I've stated before, it's a struggle for me with the desire to be famous for my writing. My writing is, ultimately, not an ability I have produced myself, but rather a natural talent I have taken the steps to hone. I owe my ability to persuade to all those who have gone before me, to the Spirit which guides my words and inspires, and to those situations around me which prompt my thinking. Writing is no longer my own personal way of "mattering" to the rest of the world, but merely the lens through which infinitesimal change is effected. My happiest moments with this blog are when it gets re-tweeted, shared, and passed on, because it means that there is potential change.

...

So, long way round, this blog initially started as a fund-raising tool for India, and now has become a platform through which I try to affect change. It is how I remind people of what matters, and how I remind myself. "Why I Write" is just as important as "what I write" and if you will continue to allow me a platform, I pray that my story will continue to be that of the crucified Lord, the Jesus who sacrificed himself for those who don't deserve it, and thus began (or finished?) the truest narrative in history: The story of Love.

And I hope you all are able to join me in telling that story.

14.4.10

Playful Things On the Interwebz

After a series of serious posts, I feel the need to bring some funniness and lightness into your life. Or maybe just into mine. So the following is a compendium of some of my favorite websites around the internet, many hilarious, some thought-provoking, all good. (Warning: Some of these contain swears. If you're not comfortable with that...well, don't click).


That should be good enough to keep you occupied for a little while. Enjoy. I'm in the midst of preparing for Japan, packing things together and finishing up teaching/grading/answering student (first time I typed that, it came out "stupid") questions/writing the final. Whew.

PS: Maureen Johnson's twitter is well worth following, twitterers.

13.4.10

What Matters More

Large parts of who I am as a writer, as a Christian, as an academic, and as a person were developed growing up. And I would be in complete denial if I said that I was finished, that I was completely done, that I know who I am and how I fit into the large scheme of things.

I most certainly don't have a clue, and realizing that has been one of the most liberating things ever. There are things I hold dear, things I know for sure, and things I unsure of. All of these, wrapped up together, create who I am. Nothing more, nothing less. It would be rash and, well, stupid, of me to proclaim that who I am exists only in certainties, and only in the things I know I hold dear, when so much of myself is also wrapped up in the not knowing, the not seeing, the not having an answer.

I am as much what I know as what I don't know.

One of those things I haven't known what to do with for years, at least not with certainty, are the church's teachings on homosexuality.

And no, for the record, I'm not about to drop a big bombshell or anything. I am very much a heterosexual female, and that is one of the things I know with certainty.

But the way the church reacts to the issue of homosexuality is one that has created a struggle for me. The church's typical stance on the issue is strongly anti-gay. Homosexuality is a sin, and therefore homosexuals themselves are some of the worst of sinners. I remember keeping the knowledge that Ian McKellan is gay from my dad for months, because I thought it would keep him from wanting to see Lord of the Rings.

In high school, I knew several gay/bisexual people - one of which was my best friend. I found out that she was bisexual via the internet during my freshman year of college, and how I reacted is one of my biggest regrets. She was afraid to tell me because she knew the church's stance on homosexuality, which, at the time, I parroted, and so when I confronted her about it, I didn't do so in a loving manner. I am not proud of that moment in my life. It was one of the things that made our friendship rocky (but I'm happy to report it has been somewhat repaired).

As another one of my best friends struggled with the possibility that he was homosexual, instead of being there for him and listening, I grew uncomfortable, told him that the Bible speaks against homosexuality and I'd pray that God would put him back on the right path. Again, another friendship essentially ruined by my own lack of critical thinking about the issue.

In college, as I lived in the little bubble that is private Christian college, I encountered very few gay people, decided not to study the issue, and therefore, never really reached a theological stance on the topic.

Moving to Waco brought the issue back, somewhat, to the forefront. One of my good friends here did his senior thesis in college on homosexuality in the church, and had come to the conclusion that homosexuality itself is okay, and that our first response as Christians needs to be not condemnation but loving. The rise of Westboro Baptist Church also brought forth the question of whether or not I could, theologically, agree with at least part of their stance: Do I still consider homosexuality a sin?

To answer honestly: I don't know.

What I do know is this: Homosexuality is unique in that it is something that it becomes such a part of the person that to say "love the sinner and hate the sin" becomes completely absurd. To say "I am going to love you without accepting/acknowledging the fact that you're gay" is like saying to a Hindu holy man "I'm going to love you, but I'm going to ignore the fact that you're in this hugely important religious position." It is such a large part of a person's life that to ignore it is to ignore who they are, something I cannot agree with.

So is there a middle ground? Is it possible to still hold on to a supposedly Biblical stance on homosexuality (one that I do not know whether it is necessarily supported, but that is an entirely different issue) and still exhibit the love of Jesus?

I don't have an answer.

I can't tell you whether homosexuality is a sin or not. I can't tell you whether or not condemning homosexuality is Biblically supported. I cannot tell you a Biblical case for or against homosexuality, whether it is a matter of orientation or choice, whether or not one can "outgrow" it (though, therapy to "cure" homosexuals has been notoriously condemned by psychiatric and psychological study as being much more harmful than good in terms of a person's mental health), and I cannot tell you what stance the church should take on it.

Despite my years of theological study, this is one (of many) that I have never been able to settle upon.

What I do know, though, is that, whatever we reaction we have, if we do so in the true, kind, loving grace of Jesus Christ, then we do the right thing. The tradition of condemnation, of turning away, of reacting with disgust and fear to homosexuals fails to show them the love of Jesus.

Jesus did not come to die for those already righteous. He did not hang on the cross so that we could condemn others in his name. He did not drink vinegar and have his side pierced so that we may picket soldier's funerals. The church needs to step up, say, "Okay, let's drop the debate, and just love people the way Jesus taught us to."

Simply, it is a matter of what matters more. Does it matter more to me that there are millions of people working in sweatshops to produce my clothing than the fact that the person next to me on the airplane may be a homosexual? Does it matter more to me that I show everyone around me - drunkards, rapists, gays, the homeless, even the slave-owners - the same love, mercy and grace that Jesus first showed me than whether or not said person should be condemned?

I sure hope that they would show the same mercy and compassion to me.

_________
This blog post inspired by thoughts raised in Derek Webb's Stockholm Syndrome and Jennifer Knapp's announcement in Christianity Today that she is gay and has been in a same-sex relationship for eight years. The interview is well worth a read.

7.4.10

Margo Roth Spiegelman and Other Paper Things

Two years ago, I needed an extra course to take during January term at my undergraduate university, the University of Sioux Falls. J-Term courses are month long courses that are essentially free rides - tuition is included in the fall semester, and the courses are often fun electives not offered at other times throughout the year. For example, this past year I would have loved to return to USF for J-Term, just for the chance to take Dr. Hitchcock's class on the theology of Harry Potter. Harry Potter!

Uh. Anyway.

My senior year, I decided to take a course on banned books in young adult literature, which turned out to be a great decision. My teaching and discussions have returned to the idea of censorship and young adult literature time and again. But that's not been the most lasting effect.

Through the course of the class, I was introduced to young adult author John Green. Green writes young adult literature, and is famous on Youtube for vlogbrothers, a channel he and his brother started after deciding to do text-less communication for a year. I have been following this channel for over a year now, and was excited to hear that John Green himself would be speaking at a bookstore in Austin this Friday (naturally, I'm going).

But here's the catch.

I've never read one of his books.

I knew about his writing through the class because a classmate did a presentation on him. I knew about vlogbrothers because I have awesome friends. But I'd never thought to pick up one of his books and read it. I always thought I should...y'know...later.

But later became now. I thought, if I am going to see this author speak, I might as well start one of his books. Paper Towns came highly recommended and seemed to be his most popular, so, while at the Sioux Falls Barnes and Noble (shortly after I did that blog entry about being home, in fact), I picked up my very own copy of Paper Towns.

And last night, at about midnight, I finished my very own copy of Paper Towns.

Other than breaking through that mental block I've had for the past few weeks that hasn't allowed me to read anything longer than 50 pages, Paper Towns reminded me of why I like books. Authors can get across an interesting, meaningful and important point using metaphors, using narrative - in other words, using techniques that break down barriers we have in our minds.

We are narrative creatures.

We like being able to tell the story of an event, and we make fun of others when they are unable to tell a good story ("And then I found five dollars," anyone?). We interpret things through narrative and metaphor. Like it or not, we interpret everything through the idea of metaphor and simile. It is at the heart of how we talk about God, of how we talk about each other, and how we talk to and about ourselves. John Green himself comments in a video about Catcher in the Rye: "One of the reasons metaphor and simile are so important to books is that they are also important to life."

I could write endless pages of arguments for why you should help the poor (and I do) and to some extent, they are persuasive. But they are not nearly as persuasive as the parables Jesus told to his own disciples and followers in the first century: the Good Samaritan, the rich man and his servants, the Prodigal Son. There's a reason we refer to Christ's time on Earth as "The Gospel Story." The use of the word "story" doesn't mean that it is a fictional account, or that it is purely metaphorical, but merely that it is a narrative (a true one) by which we understand our faith and salvation. C.S. Lewis often referred to the Gospel story as "the one true myth."

Clearly, narrative is important for our lives. One of the reasons I love literature is that it gives us an opportunity to experience that story and see, in a brand new light, the metaphors which guide our lives.

Paper Towns is no exception to that rule. In telling the story of Margo Roth Spiegelman, Green takes us on a journey through understanding and narrative of other people's lives. "Paper towns" refers to, on the surface, a town that exists only on paper - a copyright trap for cartographers used in the beginnings of the 20th century. Such towns still appear on maps today, as Green's author note suggests, considering he found just such a place in my home state of South Dakota. But "Paper Towns" is also a metaphor for the places in which we build our lives: we are fake people, presenting ourselves as others want to see us, putting up this paper front that is solely concerned about the story we are going to tell with our lives, and not about how we truly see each other. As Margo Roth Spiegelman comments when she is explaining the concept of a paper town to our main character and narrator, Quentin: "All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. And the people, too. I've lived here for eighteen years and I have never once in my life come across anyone who cares about anything that matters."

As the book unfolds, we're taken further and further into the metaphor of these paper people in their paper towns, "burning the future to stay warm." We soon realize that Quentin is himself an unreliable narrator (at about the same moment that Quentin himself realizes this). He has been telling stories about himself and about his friends for his whole life, and he realizes that he has misrepresented and mis-imagined a large part of his own narrative, namely in the person of Margo Roth Spiegelman: "Like a metaphor rendered incomprehensible by its ubiquity, there was room enough in what she had left me for endless imaginings, for an infinite set of Margos."

Namely, we create people in the image we want them to be, instead of as they actually are.

A dear friend once told me that a relationship of his ended when he realized he was more in love with the story of the relationship than with the actual person involved. He was, in essence, "burning the future to stay warm;" he was more concerned with the narrative that they were telling than what was actually happening.

The movie (500) Days of Summer picks up on this same theme: Summer is supposed to be an annoying blank canvas of a character because that is how Tom sees her, as our humble narrator. There is no depth to her because he only sees her as he wants to, never as she actually is, and therefore we don't get to experience the real "summer," but instead merely a byproduct of Tom's longing for a narrative to order his life around.

Toward the end of the novel, Quentin goes on a road trip with several of his high school friends, and they play a game in which they create back-stories about the people on the road around them - a metaphor for the novel's major theme of creating people in our own image. Quentin comments: "There are so many people. It is easy to forget how full the world is of people, full to bursting, and each of them imaginable and consistently misimagined."

Think on that last phrase: people imaginable and consistently misimagined.

It is easy to create a narrative for someone you don't know very well, and we are very good at keeping people at a far enough distance that they can create a narrative about us and we about them.

It is easy to love your girl- or boyfriend when you imagine them to be the fulfillment of that longing you've had for a long time.

It is easy to hate your boss when you imagine that they are just a bad person.

It is easy to be indifferent when the person on the street is imagined to be lazy, evil, or fitting into some other narrative.

It is harder when you allow that person to be who they are, and you don't imagine them in a different narrative, but instead in the narrative they live.

Green doesn't stop there, however. Rather than merely misimagining other people, we must take it a step further and literally imagine ourselves into them. It is, as the cliche puts it, walking a mile in another person's shoes. Quentin writes, "But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists."

That last metaphor is not a mistake and not merely a Woody Guthrie reference. Imagining one's self into another person means that we understand them, we make an effort to see them as people with mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters. They become real, and we can no longer desire to control them. We can no longer manipulate them into the narrative of our own lives; instead, they have a narrative, a life of their own, of the kind which we must respect and value, merely because it is a life so like our own.

Once we understand that those around us are people - which is the ongoing struggle throughout Paper Towns - once we get that people are people, children are children and we all have our own narratives, our own stories to tell, and that each of these stories intertwines beautifully to grow into many leaves of grass, all interconnected below the surface by the mere fact of being of the same ilk, of the same root...once we grasp that, we can truly love one another. Violence suddenly becomes absurd. War becomes meaningless. Dictatorships fail. Fascism collapses.

And love reigns over all.

______

You can find Paper Towns online, in book stores, or at your local library (assuming they haven't banned it).

4.4.10

He is Risen!

On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.' " Then they remembered his words. - Luke 24: 1-8

3.4.10

all these places feel like home.

As I write, I'm sitting at my parents' rather large dining room table, watching my dad wrap old dishes in newspaper and put them in a box. I have seen more old things from my childhood in this brief stay at home than I ever recall seeing during my college years. My parents are in the process of packing to move from the small apartment they've lived in for the past 10 years to a new house on the south side of town, farther into Lincoln County than they were before.

This is weird.

Though I spent most of the last 10 years not living at home - dorms on campus, a house in Oxford, England, and most recently, an apartment in Waco, TX - it still feels as though this apartment is home. I lived here all through high school. This is where I came home to during college to do laundry. That couch in the corner is where I was first informed that I was getting a car for Christmas, and I came running down that hallway to tell my parents that Baylor had accepted me into their graduate program. For the longest time, this has been home.

"Home" is a strange concept for me, and probably for any 20-something in America today. Most of us leave the place that has been home for a long time at 18, and rarely return. Many of us live in the same houses from birth to age 18. Even with the increase in divorces and single parent households, many of us have a good conception of what it means to be home: family, friends, a familiar area, and not having to pay to do laundry.

By this definition (excepting the last qualification), I find myself having homes everywhere.

When I came back from Oxford, I wrote of this same phenomenon: My home had recreated itself on Crick Road in Oxford, England, and everything that had been familiar now had to be re-learned.

With each trip home, I find myself relearning the city I spent the first 22 years of my life in. Sioux Falls has changed in many ways, adding more businesses, more people, and more diversity. My "home," in some respects, no longer looks like the home I knew and loved (and occasionally hated).

People move. People migrate. People create new homes.

This is one thing I've learned growing up. Whenever I pictured my future, I usually saw myself settled down somewhere, probably still in Sioux Falls, owning a house, with a grill on the back porch, and a steady job teaching somewhere. In that thought, I had two kids, a loving husband, and a house I'd decorated myself. Oh yeah, and this was usually what I pictured when I thought of age 25.

Obviously, this is not the case. Instead, 25 will find me making a new home, 9,000 from the dream one, in a one bedroom apartment on the coast of Japan.

And I couldn't be happier.

Home, for me, now extends beyond that building on 57th street, that apartment on fifth, or that house on Crick. Home is instead, as cliche as it is, where the heart is. And moreso, home is where, while things may not be comfortable, things are right.

In India, I felt comfortable and at home for a good part of the journey because I knew it was right.

In Sioux Falls, though everything is familiar, there is enough uncanniness that I don't feel right. I am no longer comfortable here. And that is because I have outgrown my home. I am now much more comfortable walking the streets of downtown Austin than I am sitting in the cafe of a Barnes and Noble in Sioux Falls. I feel like an alien, a visitor, someone who no longer belongs.

Once a person realizes that their home is elsewhere from where they grew up, one must also fight the urge to think of those in their hometown as provincial, as narrow minded, as small. Forcing oneself into uncomfortable situations - like moving to Waco for graduate school, or moving to Japan to teach - can give a person a growing experience that other people have not had the opportunity to do. Every time I come home - and this is a bit of a confession - I have to fight the urge to be supercilious, to see myself as somehow better because I have had different experiences, I have moved away, and I have made a name for myself elsewhere.

I'm reminded (embarrassingly) of a chick flick by the name of "Sweet Home Alabama." Reese Witherspoon plays a young lady who moves from small town Alabama to the big city of NY. She has to return shortly before her wedding to the mayor's son in order to finalize her divorce from her high school sweetheart. The attitude she returns to town with is one that I must fight: the urge to see yourself as having outgrown the hometown, as having somehow a better life than those who have stayed here their entire lives.

This sort of attitude is one that I must fight if I want to be a good light for the word of Christ in the worlds I inhabit. Once you begin ranking people, thinking, "I'm better than that," you begin to not care about them as human beings, but rather as elements to be defeated, ignored, and ostracized. If I think, "I am better than you because I have been to India, and your idea of a vacation is going to Omaha," I have already lost the battle against myself.

Part of me wants to take pride in my new self that I develop when I go to new places, and part of me should be proud of the person I am becoming. But that same part also has to realize that any notion of being better than others immediately highlights my inability to improve myself. When I take my self back into my own hands, I undo years of work that God has wrought in my life in terms of trying to love others.

I take credit for work that I have no right to.

While I am not the prototypical Midwesterner anymore, though I still pronounce words funny, I am not better than those who choose to live their lives here. I am no better than the young woman browsing the Christian Inspiration section at Barnes and Noble, or the people turning into WalMart, or my father reading Glenn Beck's Arguing With Idiots. If I allow myself to think of myself as better than my fellow human beings, I no longer allow them an identity. They are no longer human.

I am getting repetitive, so I will leave you with Paul's words to the Philippians:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

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I apologize for the scattered nature of this post. In the process of writing, I was interrupted, and I am now at our local Barnes and Noble, people watching and typing away. Also, the above picture is of an unknown origin, but is one of my favorite pictures of the Falls in Sioux Falls' famous Falls Park.