Lent reflections 2013

Lent again, and I'm running at it with the usual half-hearted enthusiasm. I keep wanting religion to mean things. Sometimes it does! But other times it unrolls like a rug and then lies very still like a rug.

This year I wanted to give something up, but I didn't want to give up something that would be, like, hard.

Last year for Lent, M and I tried over the top -- all juice. It was too crazy too much too fast, skipping straight from Burger King to beet juice. We would up retreating to "no processed foods" by Easter.

This year I just didn't want so much work in my suffering. So I found a thing I do a lot, that I like a lot, but that I can stop without pangs.

I'm not eating out. This Lent, everything has to come from the grocery store and be prepared by someone I didn't pay to cook for me.

It's just the right amount of sacrifice. I hope. It requires me to think about food, reflect on my choices, but doesn't seriously deprive me. (Now that I've written that down, it sounds like the biggest softball I could find. Sacrifice without deprivation? Balls to the motherfuckin' walls, Quick!)

Still, it is having an effect. With a serendipity I'll call grace, I started tracking what I eat on an app (myfitnesspal, available for download on your fancyphone of choice). I don't do it every day, and I don't do a crack job of tracking when I do. But the crux is that it creates pauses to think about what I'm shoving in my Doritos-hole all day long and to have different thoughts besides, "More horsemeat."

I'll probably be a few pounds lighter come Easter 2013, but weight loss is a pleasant side effect. What I really want is a religious observance that doesn't lie like a rug, but flies like a carpet. I want God to show me something amazing that irrevocably cuts through fear and complacency.

It sounds like I'm asking for a lot in exchange for not much. If I was serious about this shit, I'd go get imprisoned or beaten, right? But God's economy is not tit for tat. God is always operating on a different scale than humans. We're commemorating a messiah back from the dead! That's kind of a big deal. I've got to come to the table, but I can't be expected to bet real money there, you know?

Given that state of things, I think I can ask for fireworks even if my chief contribution is a wet match. But I'm afraid I won't get them. Or I'm afraid I'll be too stupid to know how to follow up even if I do. Those are the two main outcomes of religion in my life thus far: disappointed or dumbfounded.

I keep showing up though. Trying is better than not trying. 

A Three-year Record

It's only January, and I've already posted more times in 2013 than I did in either 2011 or 2012.

WHAT COULD THIS MEAN?

I always want things to mean something, I want the surface to point to a hidden substratum or -strata.

And you know, usually that pays off. What I think it means is that about the time I stopped blogging regularly I got a job working in the mental health field that took all my psychic energy.

There was no time to try to be mildly humorous on the Internet. I spent every work day not merely trying to provide compassionate assistance to Delaware County residents with moderate mental illness, but also learning how to get all my billable hours in, which as social workers will tell you, is one of the real bitches of their jobs.

Then I moved to a job working for a board game company, AEG. (which yes, is a thing, board games are a business that makes hundreds of millions of dollars annually, I'll have to tell you more about that some time.) And it was great. Except it masticated all my free time until it deposited me on the street recently, because like all entertainment jobs, you must either be lucky or badger-level tenacious to stay steadily employed.

So it could be that I'm coming off a 2.5-year work bender and have space to be reflective again.

But the thing about hidden layers is that they're hidden. Mr. Rumsfeld's infamous "unknown unknowns" always lurk beneath your enterprises. So maybe there are other reasons?

Because I imagine an underworld of black swans that I have failed to uncover, I make promises gingerly for my future. But with a lovely vase of provisos in hand, I'm glad to be back. I hope it means good things for every one of us.

Pursue Your Pipe Dream With Vigor

I don't know what unfinished business draws me to collect these inspirational quotes. A friend of mine once said, "Jeff, you are in no danger of becoming an office drone." But still, I fear it. 

Maybe it's the kind of fear I should just embrace and be transformed. Or maybe it's the kind of fear I should continue to resist because I can only overcome by struggling to the very end?

I'm afraid I don't know. 

It could be that there's no one correct answer and life is not easily reducible into binary choices.

Anyway, here's another quote I read today and wanted to put somewhere safe:
"It is FAR better to pursue your pipe dream with vigor than to halfass something you took as a compromise."

--Kate Beaton

Internet complaint box

I've been reading (okay, skimming) a lot of news articles about the fiscal cliff in the last month, and they are frequently followed by a comments section full of poorly informed vitriol. During the 2012 election it was worse.

One of the favorite metacomments from Facebook (via my wife) was how annoying everyone's friends were with their poorly informed vitriol. Barack Obama and/or Mitt Romney were individually the worst thing to happen to this country since Tippecanoe and Tyler Too drubbed that dandy, "Little Van" out of the White House.

There's a lot of hand-wringing among public service types about civic disengagement. People apparently don't vote. But they do complain on the Internet! Can we use that?

Listen up, all you vitriol-spewers! Instead of typing your mauvais mots to each other on the Internet (where they have no chance of influencing anyone other than your children to shy away from you), send them to your congressperson. 

The same typing! The very same words! Just send them to your elected representative. Vent your unfocused rage toward some FOCUS. There, you might have a chance of doing some good. At very least you'll stop bothering my wife.

Find out the names and email addresses of your congresspersons. If you're not sure what to say, there's a big link in Spanish at the top of the page to remind you about your poorly-informed vitriol concerning illegal immigration! Start there!

Wes Anderson does Star Wars?

Oh, trick titles. You do so much good work.

An interview with perennial QT favorite, Wes Anderson. The money is the toss-off about a Han Solo backstory. I wold pay feature price to see that short in a theater.

DEADLINE: Star Wars was among the films that influenced you early on. What would the world get if Wes Anderson signed on to direct one of these new Star Wars films Disney will make? 

ANDERSON: Well I have a feeling I would probably ultimately get replaced on the film because I don’t know if I have all the right action chops. But at least I know the characters from the old films. 

DEADLINE: You are not doing a good job of selling yourself as a maker of blockbusters. 

ANDERSON: I think you are reading it exactly right. I don’t think I would do a terrible job at a Han Solo backstory. I could do that pretty well. But maybe that would be better as a short.

Also, since we're in the neighborhood, here's Conan O'Brien's take on Wes Anderson's take on Star Wars:

Regret is easy.

I easily fall for those Deathbed Epiphany trains of thought.

• No one wishes they had spent more time at the office.

• You regret the things you didn't do more than the ones you did.

• If only you'd known that consequences for being true to yourself were so minor.

Here's a link to a nurse revealing the top 5 deathbed regrets.

I am deeply interested -- vested -- in doing it right the first time, because there is only a first time. And by "it" I mean life. And by "life" I don't know what I mean.

Today it occurred to me that no matter what you do or don't do in life, you can have regrets. It's not hard.

That's the problem. Regrets are so easy, so common, that they're meaningless. They're the dust bunnies of convalescence.

Life is big, and if you're careful and fortunate, long. At the end, you are likely to have a major regret. Maybe two. I tried guessing what my major regret would be when writing this post, but how the hell do I know? If I die today, I could name you one. But when I'm 80? That's a half-life away from here. I'll be an entirely different human by then. On a cellular level.

Make your peace with the fact that you will grimly fail at something important in life. Do it as early as possible. Then accept the forgiveness you will need. Accept it ahead of time, and go do the thing you want to do.

in re: New Year's Resolutions

My pastor said something a couple years ago that stuck with me:

"Jesus is not particularly interested in your self-improvement schemes."

Iceland on the rebound. Lessons? Anyone?

Remember a few years back when I said that forgiving student loan debt was the thing to do with the billions of relief dollars -- instead of giving them to banks?

Iceland did a version of that. They forgave housing debt when their entire economy went to shit. How's that working out?

Fitch Ratings last week raised Iceland to investment grade, with a stable outlook, and said the island’s “unorthodox crisis policy response has succeeded.” 

People Vs Markets
Iceland’s approach to dealing with the meltdown has put the needs of its population ahead of the markets at every turn. 

Once it became clear back in October 2008 that the island’s banks were beyond saving, the government stepped in, ring-fenced the domestic accounts, and left international creditors in the lurch. The central bank imposed capital controls to halt the ensuing sell-off of the krona and new state-controlled banks were created from the remnants of the lenders that failed.

Observing Lent 2012

It's Lent again. M and I are eating whole foods and no meat for the discipline this year. And we're taking Sundays off, because that's the Sabbath.

Which is interesting because every Sunday for the past 3 weeks has been a day to eat meat, and not have to think so hard about what I eat.

Except that thinking about not thinking about eating is still thinking about eating.

Yesterday, I ate a lot. A burrito from my favorite burrito place, and then a half-pound burger at Wendy's, and then a Geno's cheesesteak after church meeting, and about a liter of Mello Yello after all that.

You might think I'd have some gastrointestinal trouble, but no. Even though I've been eating somewhere around 1500 calories a day for the last three weeks, mainly in fruits and vegetables, a day of gluttony does not upset my stomach at all. It doesn't even upset my conscience.

What it upsets is my taste. Cheap meat used to be a big part of my diet. Now, with this discipline going on, I think wistfully sometimes of eating at crap food places again because they're cheap and easy.

But what I noticed yesterday was that the food didn't even taste that good. It wasn't bad. But if I'm going to look forward to food, I want it to taste good when I get there.

Today, I'm back to the usual. All I've had today is some fruit and yogurt (which is processed, I know, but too bad). I'll probably have some cheese and whole wheat bread before I go to bed. That's kind of how I eat this Lent. Not much. Mostly plant-based. I don't know yet what I keep and what I eject after Easter.

Epiphany

At cell before Christmas, one of our hosts, Rachel, prepared a thoughtful activity for us about hope.

She had purchased glass ball Christmas ornaments and decorative strands. Then she printed out strips of green and red paper with hopes on them.

There were a variety of different ones, at different levels of thought and inclusion. It was hard to fill out. It's work to think about and name your hopes. I spent most of the evening on it, off and on.

After I got home, I dropped my ornament on the floor, and the glass ball broke. I was left with a loose handful of hopes.

So I won't be hanging that on our tree next year. Instead, I'm going to put them here at QT so they'll be visible all year long.

These are the strips:

• This Christmas season, I hope... to shake this low-grade depression sooner rather than later.
• For myself, I hope... to have the same job this time next year. To become the person I was made to be.
• For my family, I hope... for wisdom and care about money and things.
• For my neighborhood, I hope... for fewer helicopter flyovers. For more community.
• For this world, I hope... that the protests of 2011 effect real, permanent change for the better, and don't spin out, run out, or get bought out.
• May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. Romans 15:13