Date Night (Tina Fey & Steve Carell)

I CANNOT WAIT FOR THIS MOVIE TO COME OUT!

Reflections on why we believe what we believe or do what we do.

I told a friend of mine the other day that I’ve noticed in myself a tendency to be less forgiving towards what I am most familiar with (my own heritage/context/upbringing), and more forgiving towards what is alien to me. Meaning, as a Christian, I tend to be harder on Christians and religious people, than towards atheists. I know my kind better, so I am better acquainted with all the ways we screw things up. But I have to be able to identify why I’m prejudiced in this way, in order to not just rebel against something because I know it and its flaws better–due to overexposure–or embrace something different because I know little about it or its flaws–due to underexposure.

Others, might err in the reverse. They might be more forgiving towards their own kind, and less towards those they are unfamiliar with. Perhaps, this is because they are comforted by familiarity, even with all the flaws one can observe from such a close proximity, and they will defend what is familiar at any cost–unconditionally, so to speak. Or, perhaps, out of a sense of loyalty to the familiar, they ignore these flaws, or are blind to them.

Regardless, a lot of people’s ideologies seem to be either in defense of their heritage/context/upbringing or a reaction against it. They’re Christians because their parents were, or because their parents weren’t. They’re atheists because their parents were, or because their parents weren’t. They’re teetotalers because their parents were, or because their parents weren’t. They’re either conservatives in defense of what’s familiar to them, or conservatives in rebellion against liberalism because that’s what’s familiar (and vice versa). They are either blinded by loyalty to the familiar, or blinded by rage for the familiar.

You see this a lot in those transition years between dependence on parents and independence from parents, in other words: adolescence (between childhood and adulthood). Many adolescents react to this transition by either accepting the ideologies close at hand without discretion (unable to think for themselves, only what they were told), or they react against what is close at hand by switching to opposite ideologies. I’m encouraging neither. And I’ve seen many adolescents successfully do neither. But…

I find that few people have good reasons to believe what they believe or to live the way they live, because they are too lazy to do anything besides simply accept the status quo or just reject it all together–and throw the baby out with the bath water, so to speak. I’ve known this to be true both in churches and in bars. When will we evolve past this defensive attitude for what is familiar or reactionary tendencies towards what is familiar and do our best to do the tedious work of real evaluation? Not in spite of our heritages/contexts/upbringings or in loyalty to them but with them working like yeast in rising bread, causing either negative or positive starting points–not negative or positive FINAL points. As in: because of my Christian context, I can take certain positive things from my faith and be launched forward by them, and I can take certain negative things I have experienced and learn from them (and be a different kind of Christian). I won’t accept the status quo of Christianity. But I won’t throw in the towel on it either. This is just an example. I think it applies to a lot of areas of our lives, such as: relationships, jobs, dealing with regret.

When you rid yourself of baggage, it’s still best to take what you learned from it with you, if not the thing itself. Sort of like the saying: take the good, leave the bad. You don’t have to keep the bad, but you don’t have to forget the good either. I’ve been in relationships that were bad enough to leave, but not bad enough to regret all together. We left the youth ministry. That decision had to be made. But just because the situation was such that a decision had to be made, doesn’t mean for a second that I regret having been there in the first place (even if in the end we had to leave). And if I could, I wouldn’t go back in time and never have been in those relationships, or never have taken that job.

On a kind of random side note: This is why I think time travel movies are stupid… In most time travel movies, people want to get back into the past and change it, when really they should have just learn from it. If they don’t learn from it, no matter what they change, it always blows up in their faces. I’m NOT saying accept the past. But the answer isn’t changing it. It’s learning from it. We create a false dichotomy by pretending there are only two options–ignore or blow up. What about thoughtfully working your way through a situation? Ever thought of  that, time travelers? End side note.

There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by ones upbringing, for better or for worse. Let it teach you. Let it warn you. Let it scare you. But prune, people!Don’t just chop down. And don’t just let it grow wild. Prune! If what you’re familiar with is full of holes, then plug the holes. You don’t have to demolish the wall. And even if you do, you don’t have to forget what that faulty wall taught you. And if everything seems swell, don’t be cynical, but don’t be foolish, either. Question it. Look behind the curtain. Don’t take the lazy way out and simply reject or accept out of pure ignorance–or lack of curiosity.

I heard this somewhere, and I think it’s a great principle to live by: “don’t believe everything, but don’t doubt everything, either.” (something like that)

Happy Halloween!

Another reason The Office is the best show on TV!

Update on No Impact Project

So, if your interested in how we’ve been doing with the project, we’ve been having lot of fun figuring out how to minimize our waste of resources (and money). Went grocery shopping on Tuesday; it was fun and we saved a lot of mullah. Spent the day Wednesday coming up with some delicious recipes using seasonal ingredients, less processed stuff, and less meat. Still hardy. Still tasty. And, on Thursday, we cooked a delicious 23 inch rainbow trout our friend Joel caught. Poor little guy (the fish, not Joel). But Buck (that’s what Joel named him) sure was tasty with a little bit of garlic and a little bit of lemon. See pictures below:

Beggars

Finally had a chance to listen to Thice’s newest album, Beggars, which came out September 15th. I’m surprised at how much I really like this band (Brian’s and my musical tastes are completely opposite, but he’s followed Thrice since there hardcore beginnings, and what-do-you-know, I dig um too). The sweet little paradox of pessimism paired with hope comes through pretty strong in the lyrics of songs like the title song Beggars, and also The Weight, In Exile, and Wood & Wire. The Weight is one of those glorious, obsession based, love-will-last-forever songs. Gotta love it. So romantic. And I really like the Ben Folds’ieness of songs like Doublespeak and The Great Exchange–I might be the only Thrice fan to accuse them of that! Also, I’m pretty sure they flip threw the pages of the Bible to come up with the themes for a lot of their songs. The Great Exchange tells the story of a sacrificial, spurned savior through the eyes of a sailing metaphor. And there’s definitely something reminiscent of a longing for what’s behind the pearly gates in the lines of the song, In Exile: My heart is filled with songs of forever/Of a city that endures, where all is made new/I know I don’t belong here; I’ll never/Call this place my home, I’m just passing through/I am a pilgrim – a voyager; I won’t rest until my lips touch the shore/Of the land that I’ve been longing for as long as I’ve lived/Where there’ll be no pain or tears anymore. I don’t know if this will make you like this album less or more… But if you’re interested in listening to something that sounds a lot like if Thrice and Ben Folds had a baby, with great lyrics and a cool sound, listen to this. I highly recommend it.

The huge impact of the No Impact Project

We, the Millers, are just ordinary people. Let me say that again. WE’RE JUST ORDINARY PEOPLE. We watch T.V. We eat red meat. We do lots of normal stuff. Yeah, we recycle, but we’re not fringe/weird environmentalist hippies who live off the land and off the grid. But when I heard the story of Colin Beavan (No Impact Man)–first on the Colbert Report and later all over the internet–I was inspired. Here’s the trailer from the film documenting their experience:

In a nutshell: this normal, red blooded, american guy–along with his wife and daughter–decided to see how little of an impact they could have on the environment over the course of a year by making some drastic changes to their lifestyles. What they discovered was much more than being “green.” By the end of their experiment, they found that the changes they had made saved them money, made them healthier, happier and more fulfilled. They said they felt like it improved their marriage. That it made them better parents. Sounds cool.

Now, let me say that I don’t believe these changes will save the world single handedly. And I’m not gonna run out with this information in hand and write some hokey self-help book. There were still problems in the world back when, out of necessity, everyone lived off the grid, and ate local and seasonal. Think Old Testament Bible stories. Wars still happened. Murders. Rapes. Or think Puritan New England. Girls couldn’t go to school. Black people couldn’t vote. BUT THEY ATE ORGANIC! These changes are not cure alls. The world is not going to [POOF!] be perfect, because people bike to work. People used to walk everywhere, and the world wasn’t perfect.

But, in a lot of ways, we were better off when everything didn’t come so easy to us. Modern improvements have allowed many of us not to starve to death–only for us to end up eating ourselves to death. Now that we’re not plowing the fields all day to harvest fresh oats, we’ve saved up plenty of time and money to buy processed oats and sit on our butts all day and watch TV. See what I’m saying? Not everything from the past needs to be improved on. And our attempts to do that, haven’t always yielded the best results. Not all technologies, conveniences, and short cuts make life better.

Needless to say, I was very moved by this family’s story. But it didn’t take long for me to talk myself out of doing anything about it. We can’t do that, I told myself. It snows here half the year. We have a newborn baby. I love bacon… And what about when Lost comes back on TV next year? I could never do this.

But I checked out the No Impact Project website. And they had a bunch of tips on there for ways regular people can lessen their impact and simplify their lives. Some of the things we were already doing, and didn’t even know it. Well, we knew we were doing them, but we didn’t know their effect.

Shop at thrifts store to save money and resources. Check. Shower with your honey to conserve water. Check. Wear your clothes more than once before washing. Check. Don’t buy books, get them from the library instead. Check, check.

So, with some help from the project on ideas of where to start, we’ve made some goals. These alone wont save the world, but they will at least help us live healthier, happier, cheaper, less harmful lives. This weeks goals: Switch to soy milk, cut down on refined sugar and meat. Stay tuned to see how we do.

We’re back… And we got Lennox with us!

So… I haven’t blogged in months. I’m back to do some more blogging. But first, here’s our cute son Lennox:

And a pic from Brian’s 25th birthday breakfast-n-bed extravaganza today:

Oh! And here we are at the park…

Brian and Emily, 4 years and counting

Today is a very special day for me and Brian, today we celebrate four years of being together. If you know us, you may be thinking: idiots, they got married in December of 2007! Can’t they count? But this anniversary (not of when we got married but of when we first committed to each other) is far sweeter in our eyes. By the time we got married, our commitment wasn’t awkward, naive or unsure anymore. It was confident and certain, which has its own merits. But the commitment we made four years ago today, wasn’t as easy. Certainty makes things easy, and commitment to marriage has much more certainty surrounding it. The two stupid and awkward people who committed to each other four years ago had no certainty, only decision (faith, that is…). 

Peter Rollins said in How (Not) to Speak of God, “Doubt provides the context out of which real decision occurs and real love is tested, for love will say ‘yes’ regardless of uncertainty. A love that requires contracts and absolutes in order to act is no love at all.” 

Now, I don’t believe that this devalues our marriage vows in the least, but, instead, I believe it seeks to place at the starting point of our union, not the commitment that was born of confidence, but the one born of faith. This may also turn out to be true of the more difficult renewal of commitment that will take place later in our marriage (when confidence in December of 2007 is even harder to sustain). It will require faith, which, as Rollins says, makes real love possible. 

It’s the same way I feel about falling in love with Jesus, or my “conversion” experience. When was it? Was it when I got my pass into heaven at age 7, when I prayed “the prayer”? Or was it a few years prior when I took my first sweet steps of faith towards him? Or was it at age 13 when I actually started digging into the scriptures for myself? Was at age 16 when I had a major crisis of faith and God reached down from the heavens to rescue me from my adolescence? Or could it have been five years ago when I was so confused and depressed that I wanted to die, and God saved me from that, and I felt as if I was starting all over again, even perhaps understanding grace for the first time? It seems weird, looking back on all these starting points, to give preeminence to “the prayer,” just because it gave me the certainty of heaven. Before I knew of my reward, my little feet were taking faith steps toward God. Something was already beginning before I said “the prayer,” something born of faith, not certainty about a reward. And after I knew of my reward, and had the certainty of heaven, my love for God was tested time and again, but the certainty of heaven couldn’t save it, only childlike steps of faith. 

So, in both the union between me and Brian and between me and God, the real glue, the crux, the starting point, isn’t certainty, but faith.

I don’t go to church…

… I am the church.