Through a Glass, Darkly

“When I left Queen’s my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don’t know what lies around the bend, but I’m going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes–what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows–what new landscapes–what new beauties–what curves and hills and valleys further on.” -Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

We learned something else in New York, something I forgot to mention. Mike can sleep through anything. I mean anything. Except doormen beating on trashcans at 4:00 in the morning. But traffic, drunk people, crazy cats . . . please. He scoffs at them. In his sleep. I already basically knew that he was the best sleeper ever, but my jealousy of his sleep reached new and more perilous heights. He lies down and falls asleep almost instantly. How does he do this? He sleeps through almost anything. How does that work? I had to take a nap in the park like a homeless person in order to keep up with him.

On a completely different note, Saturday morning I went running, and the weather was absolutely perfect, the kind that makes me feel like I could run forever. But, actually, since I haven’t run as much lately (though we did walk approximately 800 miles in New York), I could not run forever. But it was still nice to get out and get some time to myself.

As I was running, “Moon River” by The Innocence Mission (I know, what kind of running music is that?) came on my iPod, and I started thinking about what is happening “just around the bend” in my own life. As a good Anne of Green Gables fan, I thought about Anne and about how life is full of choices and opportunities and challenges, bends in the road that keep us from knowing exactly what is going to happen. There were times that the future did seem to stretch straight ahead of me, with things lined up in perfect order. Life isn’t really like that, though. We think that we are on a certain path, and then the road does bend, or maybe we could go all Robert Frost and take another path altogether. We can have ideas about when we want to get married, what we want our weddings to look like, our careers and when we will have children. But plans and priorities change, relationships wax and wane, and the things that happen shape us into people who wouldn’t be satisfied with that straight path, even if it was still an option for us. I will never be the kind of person who wants to beat an entirely new path (think of all the mud on my shoes!), but I have learned/am still learning to be thankful to these adjustments to The Plan, these unexpected bends in the road.

All of that to say that this is my last week at my current job, and I will be taking a new job as a school media specialist starting in November. This is why I’ve been a little quiet here lately . . . I have had a lot on my mind.

I don’t know what will happen around this bend in the road. I have been happy at my job, but I think that it’s time to make the switch for all kinds of reasons. Mike and I have been talking about this for a while, and we feel like it’s the right decision, even if it’s a hard decision to make.

I wish I was more like Anne, that I could anticipate the beauties that are to come, but right now I am a little bit frightened at this undertaking, to be honest. Frightened and excited. I hope I am up to the challenge.

When we started the Dwight Schrute’s Travels set on Flickr, a few people thought we would be releasing a new picture of Dwight regularly. But we had mostly just planned on taking pictures of him when we visited interesting places. However, since people seem to think we should have regular pictures of Dwight, we are slowly releasing the pictures of his travels in New York. He had quite a good time. Here he is at The Met. With some crossbows. He enjoyed the whole exhibit on weapons, but the crossbows were his favorite.

We realized a couple of things this weekend.

1. We should really travel together more. We always travel with friends or family, and, friends and family who read this, please don’t be offended by this, but it was really fun just to be with Mike in New York City. This is partly because we have been together for nine years (NINE YEARS), so navigating what he will want to do and when he will need to eat is almost like navigating those things for myself. But it was mostly because he is my favorite person and it was really fun to be in New York City with him. We are looking forward to traveling more once he is out of school.

2. Mike genuinely has no sense of direction. Also, street numbers mean nothing to him. “54th and 7th” is like speaking gobbledygook (I used that word for you, Andrea) to him. His eyes actually glaze over. There was a point at which my cousin was showing Mike the street map for the Brooklyn Bridge area, and both of us simultaneously realized that instead of me helping in the kitchen and Mike taking care of the map, we needed to switch places. Because if he was in charge of the map, we were doomed.

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As you might imagine, the corner of 54th and Broadway is rather loud, so I didn’t get as much sleep as I might have wished during the night. So we slept in Saturday morning, which was wonderful, and then we checked our luggage and went to Central Park. I defy you to find a better day to go to Central Park. It was gorgeous. We didn’t get to do everything we wanted (like visit the Central Park Zoo), but Strawberry Fields and Alice in Wonderland made up for the lack of gay penguins. (I did not know that Roy and Silo had broken up!) I have wanted to see the Central Park Zoo for years, but it never works out when I am there. (Are you ready for the full confession? Can you handle it? Are you sure? Because the first place I heard about the Central Park Zoo was in a Baby-Sitters’ Club book. It’s a good thing Mike doesn’t read my blog. He would never agree to go now.)

After Central Park, we went to The Met. I guess Mike can’t bust on me too much for wanting to go to certain Central Park exhibits out of BSC fandom, because he (and I) wanted to go to The Met because he just read From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for the first time. (That’s totally the same thing, right? My silly teen series and his Newbery winner?) We enjoyed it, and then we hit our limit for art. And then we couldn’t find our way out, so we looked at more art. And we understood how people could hide in the museum overnight. Also, when I went to the bathroom, I looked to see if any children were hiding in the stalls. (That is a reference to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. I loved that they hid in the stalls.) Finally, we escaped. That’s not completely true, though. We had to ask for help. We went up to one of the security guards and said, “Hi. We want to leave.” And he told us which way to go. It’s a good thing, because otherwise we might still be there.

After that, we did some other things like eat muffins and visit FAO Schwarz before heading to Brooklyn to stay with my cousin and his wife (who is pregnant, yay!) (and has a book coming out in May, you should totally order it right now!). Since I had visited their apartment before, I remembered which trains to take, and I managed to navigate us there without any problems. (Again, let me emphasize how important my navigating skills are to our relationship. No, I could not navigate us in the labyrinth of The Met, but I can navigate the labyrinth of the subway system.) When we got to Brooklyn, I told Mike, “You are going to like it here.” And he did. Now he wants to move to Brooklyn. One problem, though. I like Brooklyn a whole lot, but I don’t really want to move there myself. I would be fine with visiting it more, though.

Last time I visited my cousin, I quoted the following passage on my blog:

“If you want to make Brooklyn in words or film or paint, you must see the way the sun defines the silent streets on an early Sunday morning, sculpting trees, buildings, fire hydrants, stray dogs, and wandering people with an almost perfect clarity.” - Pete Hamill

Maybe it was just that I was visiting in October again, but it was so lovely on Sunday. My cousin said, as he drove us to the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, that he loves his neighborhood on Sunday mornings. So I don’t think it’s just me. We had the best day on Sunday, brunching with my cousin, reading (Mike) and napping (me) and eating pizza (Grimaldi’s) in the park, and wandering around the neighborhood. It was just a golden day, and I was so happy to spend it with Mike. We have a lot of things going on in our lives right now, and this weekend was the perfect way for us to transition into some of them.

We were very lucky to win the tickets, but I also feel so lucky in general. To be married to such a wonderful man, to have been able to go on the trip, to see things we’d been wanting to see, to spend time with my cousin, to rest and walk and eat great food. It was one of those magical weekends that happen sometimes, and we are thankful that it happened to us.

I am chronicling this as much for myself as for anyone, and that’s my excuse for it being so long.

I was afraid I would cry. That was my biggest fear about the whole evening, for weeks beforehand. Just like I knew I was going to cry when July 21st rolled around, I couldn’t imagine being at Carnegie Hall with J.K. Rowling and not shedding some tears. (Plus, I’m always tired after traveling, and I am not great to travel with, I think, because being tired makes me more likely to cry. Mike is a saint.) I knew that, as we got our books signed, I’d have one chance to tell her what it’s meant to me.

We were allowed to bring our own book to be signed. Mike brought the special edition of Sorcerer’s Stone. But I brought with me my favorite book of the series, Goblet of Fire. The first release party we went to, the book we read on our honeymoon. If I could have only one signed, that was the one I wanted.

I did not want to ruin it by crying.

So, I’m lame, but I practiced. I practiced it over and over in the car on the way to work, on the way to a librarian conference, in my head at lunchtime. I practiced, but it didn’t make a difference. I cried every time. On Friday, before we walked over to Carnegie Hall, Mike asked if I knew what I was going to say, and tried to say it to him, but I cried. How could I distill what all of this has meant to me into one or two sentences? Reading the books out loud with Mike, sharing them with friends, release parties and costumes and years of speculating. How could I say thanks for all of that?

The night itself was basically amazing. They did a random drawing to assign seats, so we didn’t know where we were going to be until we picked up the tickets on Friday. It turned out that we were in one of the boxes. It felt like being a queen, sitting there in Carnegie Hall with an excellent view of the stage. We chatted with the people around us, taking pictures of the stage and each other. Except that of course we didn’t do that, because they told us no flash photography and we are very very obedient.

Or maybe not.

But pictures without a flash were okay.

Even Dwight got in on the fun:

The chair of greatness:

And there were some introductions and some videos, and then, finally finally, she came out. And that, my friends, is when I did cry a little, because we were there, in Carnegie Hall, giving J.K. Rowling a standing ovation. (Mike said later he knew I’d cry then, curse him.) I am not much for the standing ovations, myself. I think that we give them much too often to people who don’t really deserve them, but I didn’t mind giving one to her. The fans finally getting to say thanks for the years of fun we’ve had. She seemed really moved, and said that we had to stop or she would cry.

The reading was great, the questions were very interesting (I will say more about Dumbledore in a minute), and you can read a transcript of all of that here, so I won’t bother getting into all of it. I’ll just talk about the signing. We waited a while, still up in our box, as they cleared the people on the floor first. We watched her as she was signing the books, and what struck me the most was that she was so present for each person, looking them in the eye, listening to their stories. The Scholastic handlers, bless their hearts, were trying to move everyone along. And I understand that, I do. But if they were just going to give us a signed book, they could have done that without giving us interaction with her. The whole point of the tour was that she wanted to spend time with her fans. I didn’t begrudge anybody the chance to say what he or she wanted to say, provided it wasn’t a ridiculous amount of time.

As our turn approached, I made Mike go ahead of me in line. We are so different, because, even knowing that this was his one shot, his one chance to say something to her, he didn’t feel like he had anything to say other than, “Thank you.” Or possibly asking her to adopt him. But I sent him through first so that we could maybe stick together, that maybe the handlers wouldn’t rush me through if it was two people taking up the time of just one. It didn’t really happen like that, though. They moved us through pretty fast, and Mike went on ahead and then it was my turn. They took my book, and I watched her sign it, and then there she was, right in front of me, and I leaned in and said, “We read Goblet of Fire out loud on our honeymoon, and it is really special to have you sign it.” Here is what I remember: When I said the word honeymoon, she looked me in the eye with genuine interest, very alert. I am sure that other people have said similar things to her, that we aren’t the only ones who read Harry Potter on our honeymoon, but she also signs a lot of books for kids, and this is a grownup story, and I felt like that registered with her. She and the women around her (Scholastic employees) all went, “Awwwww.” She looked at me and said, “Thank you,” and then said something about it being special for me to say that. It’s kind of a blur after that point, and then I rejoined Mike on the other side and . . . it was so crazy, because he hadn’t seen any of it. It really did all happen so fast. And we went and had hamburgers at 10:00 at night and squealed about it and I was so tired that I just wanted to crash.

I can’t say enough about how impressed I am that she would listen to what I have to say, that she was engaged and warm and friendly with all those people. It was a really great time for us, the culmination of a lot of years of fun and fandom. We won’t ever forget it.

We were dismayed to wake up on Saturday and see the blurb across the bottom of the television, “Dumbledore is gay!” Friends called us to ask what was said and what we thought, and we told a few people about it. It’s interesting, because I went to a librarian conference on Thursday, and one of the seminars I went to talked about how gay teens are more likely than straight teens to attempt suicide, and how the presence of books with gay characters in a library correlates with lower suicide rates as well as incidents of violence and harassment in schools (that’s more specifically about school libraries). (Also, as a good Freakonomics reader, I understand that the books themselves may not be exacting change, that they could be a sign of a good overall community that wants to keep kids from being harassed. But the books are a piece of it, is my point.) And so my first thought tended on those lines, that it’s a positive thing for this character to, oh, by the way, be gay, because he’s a respected character, and it may help stop violence and harassment everywhere.

From a narrative point of view, I feel like the story obviously works without it, but that it gives more nuance and emotional resonance to the story of Dumbledore, which was already revealed to be pretty tragic. I love backstory, and that’s exactly what this is. It helps us understand why he did some of the things he did, why he got caught up in what Grindelwald was saying, even possibly why he was so aloof with other people later on. Dumbledore loved a man, the only person who was his intellectual equal. And he was very wrong about him, and that is a very sad thing. To see something so complex blurbed as, “Gay Hogwarts Professor!” is disheartening, because Dumbledore is a full, complete character. But that’s the culture we live in, I suppose, full of soundbites and sensationalism. I don’t see it as anything to get worked up about. It doesn’t change the story we have. It just fills it in a little, and that, to me, is good storytelling.

So there’s my soapbox. I hate to even have to address it, but it’s the one thing everyone’s talking about. The Great Dumbledore Outing was a very small part of a wonderful night that was part of a wonderful weekend. I guess the rest of the weekend report will be later. I keep making you wait. You can at least view the pictures online now if you’d like.

Yes, I went to Carnegie Hall, and yes, I got to speak to JKR, and yes, it was an amazing weekend. One of the best weekends in my life, to travel to New York in October with my husband to see an author we love, to eat great food, to enjoy the fantastic weather. I have things to say, but, you see, the pictures are still on the camera. And I hate to give our report without the pictures. So you, my friends, will just have to wait.

(How was that? Was it tantalizing? Are you tantalized?)

I am not one to rearrange the furniture in our house or to get really into deep cleaning, but I do get restless from time to time, so restless that I can barely sit in a chair. So restless that I don’t want to read or exercise or watch TV. And so restless I most certainly don’t want to clean. I have felt a lot like that lately, for all kinds of reasons. Reasons as simple as gorgeous weather and planning to go see J.K. Rowling. Other reasons so much more complicated that it would be better to sit down and talk about them over coffee than to put them here.

St. Augustine’s words have been running through my brain: “Our hearts are restless till they find their rest in Thee.” (I must admit that quote always makes me think of Eve in Circle of Friends, who chooses not to say that sarcastically to Mother Clare. But I digress.) I know that’s true, but it’s hard to know how to find rest. One of the things I’ve been trying lately, in case you haven’t noticed, is baking. I guess it’s my own small way of co-creating. If I don’t feel like reading, at least there are baked goods in the house.

The other thing that’s been helping in small ways is that Mike and I have been teaching Sunday School for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. Every week I am almost overwhelmed with what an incredible responsibility this is, to teach young people about God. And every week I see that I am doing a great thing just by showing up and caring. (But I still worry about teaching them about God. I mean, I have heard so many stories about so many wrong things learned in Sunday School.) It’s really incredible to get to teach them some of these stories for the first time. This week we talked about the 23rd Psalm, and it was great to see it from their eyes, to talk about sheep and shepherds and fear and comfort. That morning, the sermon was also about rest. I am getting the sense that maybe I should try and get some.

I made Mike take a walk with me tonight, and that took some of the edge off of the crazy feeling. As much as I dislike not even being able to sit still and read, I do appreciate the time away from books now and then. I know they’ll be there (in ever increasing numbers) when I am ready to get back to them. Meanwhile, I’m going to try not doing much of anything.

Last night, Mike and I took a walk while waiting for the apple pie I made to cool. That’s right, I finally attempted the most American of all pies, the one we eat while watching baseball and Jerry Springer. While I doubt it would win any contests, I was pretty pleased with how it came out. I don’t know if this has come up here before, but I am not a huge fan of cooked fruit, and apple pie in particular is, well, not my favorite. But I wanted to make one because it seems like pie making at its most pure, and this one, with Granny Smith apples and a splash of bourbon mixed in, had a nice full flavor, kind of like cider. It was less sweet than a lot of apple pies, and the crust was tender and flaky. I had another piece this afternoon, and I am still pretty impressed with it. I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures, but here is a picture of what the pie looked like, in case you were wondering.

And here is a more interesting shot of it.

It made our house smell wonderful. Maybe that’s why people like apple pie so much.

While Mike and I were walking, we engaged in one of our favorite activities: harshly judging decorations. Our neighborhood, as I have mentioned, loves the inflatable lawn decorations. We saw inflatable pumpkins, inflatable ghosts spelling out “BOO”, graves, a strobe light that will probably cause accidents, the silhouette of a ghost in a window, and a lot of orange lights. I like Halloween, but . . . wow, I say. Wow. There were so many tacky decorations that Mike is reconsidering his desire for a Halloween tree. And thank heavens for that.

That’s not to say that we aren’t participating in the Halloween fun this year. It’s just that we happen to find sincerity and The Great Pumpkin more our style than, say, graves in our front yard.

That’s right! Mike and I did actually make something crafty! We made that sign! I know you are impressed. You will be especially impressed on Halloween night after The Great Pumpkin rises from this, the most sincere pumpkin patch, to deliver toys to the good children of the world. And, hopefully, cash for the adults.

Since I haven’t mentioned it lately, I loved The Know-It-All by A. J. Jacobs. You knew that, right? My brother gave me a copy for my birthday, and I said, “Oh, I loved this book,” and he got all disappointed that I had read it (I have already read most of the books on my Amazon wishlist. That is why I want them. If I just wanted to read them, I would check them out of the library or use Interlibrary Loan. Use your public library. Thus ends our PSA), but no! I wanted to own it! It made me laugh. A lot.

(This has nothing to do with his new book, but remember when I wanted to tell A. J. Jacobs about the Menage-Ottawa thing that one time? He didn’t have a website then, so I couldn’t figure out how to contact him. He does now, but it seems as if the moment has passed. However, in his new book he admits he is an obsessive self-googler. Hi, A. J., nice to see you! Be sure to click that Menage-Ottawa thing. It’s pretty funny.)

So, anyway, last year I heard rumblings about how A. J. Jacobs was on a new mission, to live out Bible laws literally. And since then, I have been waiting for his book to arrive. It came in yesterday, and I finished it this afternoon. Hooray! Okay, let me back up and give a little summary, though.

For a few different reasons, Jacobs decides that it might be nice to try to live out the Bible literally. One of the reasons was, yes, just that he needed a gimmick for another book. He also wanted to explore religion and religious people. I also think that he hints that now that he’s a father, passing his Jewish heritage to his son is more important to him, even if he’s never been an observant Jew.

So, Jacobs blows a ram’s horn at the beginning of every month, he carries a seat around so that he doesn’t sit on any seat made unclean by a menstruating woman, he prays regularly, he binds the ten commandments to his head, he wears white robes, he visits the Amish and Jerry Falwell and snake handlers in Tennessee. He takes a pilgrimage to Israel, and he attends several more obscure Jewish festivals and ceremonies. And, of course, he grows a big long beard. All year long.

And all of that is very fun, and of course I laughed, but that wasn’t what struck me the most about this book. Jacobs started as a man without any kind of faith, and that doesn’t completely change over the course of the year. But at the end of the year, he calls himself a “reverent agnostic,” having come to appreciate things like the Sabbath (a forced day of rest), prayer, and even life itself. He referenced a C. S. Lewis quote that says that “the distinction between pretending you are better than you are and beginning to be better in reality is finer than moral sleuthhounds conceive.” And I have found that to be true in my own life - the more I pray, the more I believe in prayer. I have talked before about faith being in the doing, because it reminds me that I am a part of something bigger. I think that’s what A.J. Jacobs experienced in his year of living Biblically, and though my religious background is very different than his, I could very much relate to that aspect of his story.

I also liked that the Bible stories that I am so familiar with really came alive to him as he was hearing many of them for (what seemed to be) the first time. Something would happen in his daily life, and he would say, “That was like so-and-so from the Bible.” It was fun to watch him learn about and embrace those stories, especially when it was something weird and obscure.

When I was done, Mike asked me if I would recommend the book, and if so, to whom. If you enjoyed The Know-It-All or you are interested to see what someone approaching the Bible and religion for the first time might think, you will probably enjoy this book. It’s more serious and has more depth than The Know-It-All, but it’s still very funny and enjoyable to watch Jacobs grow over the course of the year as he struggles with faith and religion. He was being gimmicky, yes, but it did change him in many ways.

Also, his wife must be the most patient person on the planet.

This morning at our staff meeting, there was a great big bowl of Chex Mix and a smaller bowl of candy corn. At the end of the day, I happened to go into the break room. The bowls were on the table. The Chex Mix bowl only had crumbs remaining. But there was quite a lot of candy corn.

This is, of course, because candy corn is vile and disgusting, while Chex Mix is, well, not. If there was any question in anyone’s mind about this issue, I hope that these very scientific results will put that doubt to rest. Candy corn = vile. Thank you, and goodnight.

The only Anne Tyler I have read was The Amateur Marriage, and I thought it was okay, but it didn’t do much for me. But I know what you are going to say, her books are amazing, etc. etc., so I thought I would try again. When Digging to America came out, a coworker read it and said it was good, and I filed it away to possibly read at some unspecified later date. That “later date” turned out to be “when I was desperately looking for a book for my book club to read.”

Digging to America is the story of two families who adopt baby girls from Korea. They meet at the airport and form an unlikely bond. The Yazdans, who are Iranian-American, want to raise their daughter Susan to be as “American” as possible, while the Donaldsons focus on keeping Jin-Ho’s Korean heritage. Two very different approaches to adoption from two very different families, and yet, somehow, they carve out a friendship, which eventually extends to include the grandparents. The central character of the novel is Maryam, the mother of Sami Yazdan, who is a widow and who eventually has a relationship with Dave, the father of Bitsy Donaldson.

This book is about what it means to belong, to be a part of something, and we see that theme explored through the baby girls, through the Yazdans (who, though American, still feel that there are rules that they don’t know that everyone else seems to play by), and through Bitsy, who is so intense that she doesn’t even seem to be comfortable with herself. I struggle with that feeling of “other-ness,” with being an outsider, and I liked the way that we could see that some of the characters were both excluded because of circumstances and were choosing to exclude themselves. I especially liked the last scene in this book, when one character literally opens a door to another character, symbolizing a huge shift in her heart and in her approach to those around her.

I want to read more Anne Tyler now, but I don’t really know which direction to go. Any recommendations for me?

In an age in which fortune cookies are more likely to give lame advice than actual fortunes, my brother recently received what is, without dispute, the greatest fortune of all time. No, seriously. That’s not hyperbole. What did it say?

“God will give you whatever you want.”

Oh my gosh, you guys. It was his fortune! In a fortune cookie! That means it must be true! Now all I have to do is convince my brother that he wants good things for me, and . . . voila! I also get whatever I want! I bet you all wish you knew my brother. Well, I’m not sharing him.

We keep trying to convince him that he should play the numbers on the back of that one. They seem guaranteed to win. If that’s what he wants.

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,
’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

I have to admit that it made me a little bit uncomfortable on Sunday to be talking about simplicity at church. It was a great message, that simplicity is about what drives our decisions, our hearts. It’s okay to appreciate the things we have here, to spend our money on things we enjoy. But those shouldn’t be the things that guide us. This is something Mike and I have been talking about a lot, making sure that our decisions are in line with what we value. Making sure we actually value what we claim to value. Trying to choose family over finances. So it wasn’t that the sermon made me uncomfortable in that sense. It was, in fact, very encouraging. Instead, it was hard to come home and see the pictures of my sponsored child, Stephen, that came in the mail on Saturday, and to think that we need to talk about simplicity at all. Stephen is from Kenya, where over half of the population is poor, and where 700 people a day die from HIV/AIDS.

I don’t want to romanticize Stephen’s situation, though. I know a lot of people love Andrew Peterson’s song about his own sponsored child, “Land of the Free,” but it has always made me uncomfortable, to be honest. In it, he claims he’s “just a little jealous of the nothing that she has,” which . . . goes too far for me. I think that it’s better for me to try to put the blessing/curse of The Land of Plenty in the correct context in my own life without claiming to be jealous of people who have less than I do, as if it’s inspiring to wish to live like they do. Rather than assuming that these people see the sun and think of heaven, or that they never complain about the rain, I should simply remember that all of life has its advantages and its drawbacks. Maybe it seems that people who struggle with much more basic needs than I do can be more focused on God, but poverty isn’t beautiful or romantic, and it’s insensitive of me to act as if it is. The song never rings true to me, because the people he is singing about are just that: people. They aren’t object lessons. It’s easy for me to sit on my cushy couch in my air-conditioned home and say, “Oh, if I was unfettered by wealth, I’d be able to appreciate God more.” My guess is that it has more to do with personality than circumstances, because, for many people, worrying about where dinner is going to come from may not leave energy to spare on the things of heaven.

On Sunday, besides singing “Simple Gifts,” we sang “’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus,” a simple song about faith that I cannot sing without hearing my grandmother’s voice. “Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him, how I’ve proved him o’er and o’er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus, oh, for grace to trust him more.” There’s nothing simple about faith and trust in light of what we see here on earth, and yet, in the end, sometimes we make it more complicated than we have to. The song “Simple Gifts” perhaps gets it right –there is great freedom in joy in choosing humility and simplicity. That seems rather different than envying those caught in the trap of poverty.

I guess I will close with one more song, my favorite of all of the wonderful lyrics by Rich Mullins: “Nobody tells you, when you get born here, how much you’ll come to love it and how you’ll never belong here.” I think that this is probably what Andrew Peterson was trying to say, that where we live has so many benefits that we have to remind ourselves that it’s not our true home. I listened to this song last night on the way home, with the windows rolled down and the stars in the sky.

I think we can get caught up in the idea that simplicity means following a certain set of rules: moving to certain neighborhoods, going without certain things. That road, as far as I can tell, leads to dissatisfaction and discontentment. I think, instead, that, like much of Christianity, the joy comes when we choose to take on the idea of what our culture tells us is true about wealth and status, opting instead for the freedom to live generously out of the wealth God has given us, whether that’s emotional or material. I shouldn’t envy anyone, not those who have more than I do or those who have much, much less. I should worry, instead, about placing God before the possessions in my life, caring more for his ways and his people and his priorities. And what a gift it is to be able to choose to do that.

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed.
To turn, turn will be our delight,
‘Til by turning, turning we come round right

1. Clarence Wiedman. Clarence Wiedman, people. So what if he’s a guidance counselor in this show? He will still shoot you. Because he is Clarence effing Wiedman.

2. Scott Patterson. Wow, I love Clarence Wiedman, because I put him on this list before Scott Patterson. It’s nice to have Scott Patterson on my TV again, even if he looks nothing like Luke Danes. (I knew Scott Patterson was on this show, but Clarence Wiedman was a surprise.)

3. From how it sounded and from what I can tell on IMDB, the bad guys in this school? Are named Palladino. It could be Palladini. But let’s just go with the first one, shall we? Down with the Palladinos!

I didn’t watch all of the first episode yet, so I may find more reasons. What I saw, though, was funny and sweet, and the show has gotten great reviews.

And it has Clarence Wiedman. He will shoot you if you don’t watch it.