Would younger cars be better? For Whom?

USAToday reported on January 18 that the average car age at record 10.8 years, a new record.  Actually, the average car age was 11.1 years, and average truck age was 10.4.

The focus of the article, of course, was how projections hope that the improving economy will boost new car sales and bring this average down.

Is this a good thing? The article doesn’t mention any other reasons why people haven’t been buying new cars but the economy.  What if cars are actually being built better than they used to be, and thus are lasting longer?  Or maybe people are taking better care of them?  Perhaps it could even be that people are less interested in the size of the payment that comes with putting next-to-nothing down on a $20,000 car.

No: all the information we get is the average age of cars, and the hope or expectation that a better economy will mean more newer cars.

I’m not sure it’s that easy.

“Not Important” to me?

A high school classmate of mine lost her yearbooks in a housefire several years ago.

Upon learning this my first thoughts was, “well, I never look at mine, would you like them?”

This made me feel good, generous, helpful; all those good things.

Then I realized that there is another way to describe it: that my yearbooks, remaining printed evidence of my high school years, are “not important to me.”

This did not make me feel good.

In offering these yearbooks, was I callously turning my back on the 534 people I graduated with in 1981?  Was this a final farewell to friends?

My 30th reunion was last summer.  I was not able to make it as it coincided with a mission trip to which I was committed. I did make our 25th reunion in 2006, and had a great time catching up.

I suppose I should admit that from today’s perspective, almost 31 years after graduating from high school and moving away from the area, 4 books are not particularly important to me.

I’ve looked at them perhaps a half dozen times over the decades.  This means they have privately not been very important to me.  I guess the difference is I hadn’t ever thought of saying out loud how little time I spend reminiscing over high school.

Classmates of mine; please take no offense.  I would rather get to know you again now than attempt to relive whatever our lives and relationships were like then.

That would be of more value, and thus be more important, to me.

Only God?

I preached this past Sunday on Matthew 15:10-20.

Making Music of a Ringtone

Here is a great illustration on how to take an annoyance and turn it for good.

HT Cnet.

Would you be able to react that well to the noise of an un-silenced phone?  I’m not sure I would.

Breaking an old habit

I am, and always have been, a morning person. Sleeping in for me means not setting an alarm, and is almost always no later than 7 am.  I usually wake up quickly, too, and more often than not, fairly cheerful.

Until, that is, we reach a morning like this past Saturday.  Thursday morning, Rachel and I began the day in Seattle, where we took a public transportation adventure to get to the airport in time to find our flight delayed. It ended up being delayed 5 hours, or more than long enough to miss our connecting fligth out of Denver to Albuquerque, where Eliza was enjoying a visit with Nana and Papa.

All that would have been fine, as Frontier Airlines offered to put us up for the night in Denver and fly us into Albuquerque first thing Friday morning.  Unfortunately, first thing Friday morning was not early enough for us to retrieve our daughter and catch our morning flight home. Therefore, we rented a car in Denver and made the 7 hour drive overnight.  The roads were clear and Interstate 25 friendly enough to offer a nearly 5 hour sleep stop in Raton, NM.

We picked up Eliza (with much help in transition from Nana – thanks Donna!), and made our flight to Austin, via El Paso, and drove home from there, arriving before 5pm.

We were, needless to say, anticipating a liesurely Saturday morning.  We had not anticipated it starting at 6:05 with an incredibly cheerful toddler smiling at us and saying, “Hi!” as she has recently learned to do.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I AM a morning person.  I USED TO enjoy being all cherrful in the faces of people who were, let’s say, less so.

Now that I have felt how the other half feels, I’ll be a bit less “in-your-face” with my morning cheer.

I wonder how many other ways I have not yet thought about how others feel?  I expect, and now hope, that my daughter will continue to help me learn these.

What is (your) fight about?

I was privileged to witness a conversation become a fight just the other day.  What was really interesting about it was how quickly it seemed apparent to me, a fairly impartial observer, was that what turned this conversation into a fight was way beyond the scope of the fight itself.

There was quite a bit of anger, frustration, fear, anxiety, something going on here that wasn’t being said.

I’ve been around too long to be surprised that subtext takes over where text often dares not go. Surprise wasn’t what I felt. No; what I felt, as an observer, was sadness.

The sadness was first because this happened in front of family.  Out loud, “in front of God and everybody.”

But the real depth of my sadness was in knowing that because the subtext took over yet remained unaddressed, neither the original issue or the pain (or anger or anxiety…) behind it would be resolved.

I’m not saying we ought to peel down through every possible layer (I don’t believe there is such a thing), but wouldn’t it be nice if conversations could be about what we think, and admit, they are about?

Humiliation in Youth Ministry

Had a discussion the other night about what we’d be militant about.

I’m pretty laid back, and wouldn’t get militant over much.

But then I thought of it.

I am militantly opposed to humiliation in the name of youth ministry. Do you know what I mean?

Like those times on retreats or mission trips, when someone loses his or her nametag? Humiliation in youth ministry says they should be made to sing or dance in front of everyone to earn to back.

That kind of thing will never again happen if I am at the event.

Had it happened to me as a youth, I would have left the church. I’ve talked to at least one person who left the church more than a decade ago for such a reason.

If you think the solution is that people should just grow thicker skin, perhaps you should read the gospels again.

Are you with me?

“Happy” MLK Day

Though I have been blogging here since 2006, this is only my third MLK Day post.  I put quotes around Happy in the title because I’m not so sure this is a day that ought to be about happiness.

Maybe I should say it this way: I’m not sure today ought to be about one’s own happiness.  For some, it is not a holiday but a day of service.  I think King himself would have appreciated this particular way of recognition of his birthday.  After all, he did say that

 Everybody can be great… because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

But that’s the kind of thing many different people are likely saying about observance of MLK Day.  So why read this post?

Because I want to add this.  Something about the Civil Rights Movement that I did not know untila  few years ago is that it was such a multigenerational effort.  Much of hte protesting was done by young people while older adults held down their jobs.  Patient, steady training in the ways of nonviolence were practiced over and over because entire families, even communities, were commited to peaceableness.

In 2010 I posted about race issues and whether or not we have made progress since MLK’s day.  While we have not yet overcome, we have indeed made progress.  However, if injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as King suggested, I don’t think we ought to rest on our laurels.

In fact, whatever ground we have made up for on race relations over the past 40 years, I contend we have gotten worse on matters of generational relations.  Is there an issue today over which whole families, indeed, entire comunities, will rally to work together?

I fear we are inter-generationally much less connected now than we were as a society 40 years ago. I shared here, in 2007, startling truth from Kenda Creasy Dean’s Practicing Passion about this disconnection.  The problem is NOT the young people.  The problem is that the adults have let go of them!  Here is Dean’s explanation:

Tagged “the Autonomous Generation” by the New York Times in 1998, today’s adolescents have few adults or institutions who are prepared to ‘be there’ for them till the end of the age, or till the end of high school for that matter….
The distinctive feature of childhood in the late twentieth century… was the way adults pulled away from youth, despite young people’s expressed desire for a significant adult presence in their lives. (Practicing Passion, p.78, emphasis added)

Today; this year for MLK Day, and, if you will, throughout the rest of the year, let all of us who are adults refuse to pull away from young people!  We can become a nation for whom 11::00am on Sunday is not the most segregated hour of the week.  We can continue to overcome the fragmenting by race, class, culture, and faith in our society.  But we can do these things only if we stick together.

Cry in church?

Would you be comfortable crying in your church?

A pastor friend of mine recently shared with me this scenario. A congregant had visited with him about a particularly stressful event she had just been through. Among the suggestions my friend offered was to attend worship. (the congregant had not attended since the event)

She admitted her hesitation: that she would probably cry .

While I COMPLETELY understand this feeling, I want church (or, more specifically, the worshiping congregation) to be THE place or setting or group where one feels most comfortable to cry.

What do you think? Would you feel comfortable crying in worship? Are you (am l) the kind of person in whose presence others feel comfortable letting tears flow?

Read On!

So, I’m not wasting my time when I slip a novel into my reading list several times a year?

Anne Kreamer, at the Harvard Business Review blog, shares the fascinating research showing that reading fiction imrpoves some brain function. More specifically, reading fiction improves neuronal connections in the pre-frontal cortex. That’s the part of the brain that make judgments and controls impulses.

Reading fiction is GOOD for you. What’s better is that it is good for you in a way that is good for others.