Stickers and salvation

There’s a car parked in the Cellar lot with a sticker on it that reads “When Judgment Day comes, you’ll wish you had a Jesus sticker.” Wow. Words fail me. I’m no Bible scholar, but I’m pretty sure Romans 10:13 doesn’t go, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord and affixes the appropriate bumper sticker to his/her vehicle will be saved.”

On Thursday, I had the refreshing experience of attending Campus Crusade at nearby Ball State University. At Taylor, “fellowship and Christian community” is an everyday expectation. All one needs to do to be surrounded by fellow believers is get out of bed. It’s easy to take common worldview for granted at Taylor, so I think it’s a good thing to burst the Bubble once in a while and be enveloped by a world where such an expectation does not exist. It’s healthy to have to seek out Christian community and be challenged by a world that disagrees.

I don’t know which girl owns the asinine bumper sticker in the Cellar lot, but I have to wonder how many people she’s encountered that don’t share her worldview. I doubt that she honestly believes that car logos could lead to exclusion from the Kingdom of God, but that’s certainly what the sticker communicates. I also have to wonder how many non-Christians have seen that sticker and thought, “Wow, I want to have Jesus in my life!” More likely, they scoffed and sneered at this misrepresentation of Christ’s gift of salvation.

Woman in the White House

I'm in the process of writing a rhetorical critique of Margaret Chase Smith's 1950 "Declaration of Conscience" speech. Smith was the first woman elected to both congressional houses but interestingly enough refused to be aligned with the feminist movement. A lot of people speculated that she'd run for president. In my research, I discovered a response that literally made me laugh out loud. When asked what she would do if she woke up in the White House, Smith said, "I'd go straight to Mrs. Truman and apologize. And then I'd go home." Amazing.

Why I blog

For the last several months, I've been thinking about why I blog. I wondered if it was just a ploy to get attention. I now doubt that. Although I enjoy it when others read and interact with my thoughts, readership is not my primary objective. But what, then, is my primary objective?

I haven't been able to answer that question with any degree of satisfaction until last night. I was sitting in Ball State's library waiting to meet a friend after doing some research. I took a break from reading about Adlerian therapy to enjoy my new pleasure, Telling Secrets by Frederick Buechner.

Buechner has this to say about the vital importance of telling one’s story:

But I talk about my life anyway because if, on the one hand, hardly anything could be less important, on the other hand, hardly anything could be more important. My story is important not because it is mine … but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories in all their particularity … that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally. If this is true, it means that to lose track of our stories is to be profoundly impoverished not only humanly but also
spiritually. (30)

I suppose I was onto something in January when I discussed blogging for mental heath. Blogging is not so much about the self-important broadcast of thought (or at least it doesn’t have to be), it’s a means by which we live in community. I still keep a private journal as I process some of my deeper secrets, but I’m learning to reach out in my introspection in counseling, in relationships and in this blog.

I’ve been told on several occasions that I write differently than I speak. Some people think this is a horrible trait while others see it as an interesting quirk. I’m choosing to believe the latter. I don’t think anyone needs to read my blog or any other writing I’ve done to get to know me, but I do think it adds a dimension to who I am that would otherwise not be there. For some reason, God created me with an ability to make my thoughts somewhat clear on paper (er… word processor), much clearer than they’ll ever be in my head. I’ve tried to fight this fact for the last several months, but I can no longer hide from the truth. This is just the way God made me.

So I will write, in whatever form that takes. Writing is not my identity; it is a means by which I can explore who I am, who God is and what this world is all about. Feel free to join me on this journey.

Breaking fast

I always loved it in Stephen Lawhead books when he referred to breakfast as "breaking fast." There's just something romantic about that. For a good time, read Taliesin and then read the rest of the books in the Pendragon Cycle. They sustained me through my freshman year of college. :)

The purpose of this post is actually to inform the reader that yogurt burst Cheerios are delicious. I purchased them in Muncie yesterday (along with Girl, Interrupted on DVD for $5.50. I know! It's ridiculous) when searching for morning sustenance. They were actually cheaper than the cereal I usually get, so I thought I'd give 'em a whirl. Thanks are in order to Sarah Janke for her rave review at dinner the other night .

God bless those brits!

There's a band called "Dogs Die in Hot Cars." :)

The blink of an eye

This afternoon, I was walking outside and the sky was bright blue with a few clouds. The air was warm and mildly stale, but a good breeze could be felt every now and then. I go inside for thirty minutes and emerge to a dark and stormy world, the once-clear sky now heavy with anger and rain.

The perfect allegory for my mood.

Telling Secrets

“[Our] original shimmering self gets buried so deep we hardly live out of it at all … rather, we learn to live out of all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world’s weather.”
– Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets

The other day at breakfast I came across the above quote in John Eldredge's The Sacred Romance. It reminded me of Jennifer Lewis and our Ireland group therapy session cleverly disguised as "Cross-Culteral Living" class. She read to us from a lot of books including Buechner's Telling Secrets and even had us write a short paper on the "shimmering self." Jennifer thought it should have been called "Telling Stories," but that doesn't matter.

Anyway, a few days later I was in Jenny's apartment in Indy and she had Telling Secrets and we got to talking about it. She offered to loan it to me, but I said, no, I probably should read for class (lol).

Well, I think God wants me to read Telling Secrets because not 48 hours later, Vance gave me my own copy of the book. I started it on the way to/during Media & Rhetorical Criticism and it's quite good. I may need to put it on hold for a few days until I can get digital video out of the way, but we'll see how long I can resist. Stay tuned for more comments.