Just Asking Questions

 I am in a contemplative mood today. Some days you just wake up with questions. I will freely admit that most days I fly through from dawn until dusk without a serious thought ever passing through my mind. I am driven solely by instinct and the genetic code bequeathed to me by my ancestors. But other days, everything is open to challenge and I question all of it. I have no idea why this is. Might be something I ate. Who knows?

This is a day that has been circled on my calendar for quite some time for all the wrong reasons. It’s “prep day” for a certain procedure which people of a certain age have to endure once a decade. Its a lovely experience that involves the two words that no human being likes to hear…liquid diet.Yes, all day I will be subsisting on Fresca, black coffee, water, jello, Italian ice, and —the highlight of my day—chicken broth. The show-stopper of this day will come in the evening when I will be tasked with drinking an entire gallon of what might be fairly described as Kool-aid with an ulterior motive. It’s the sort of day where active physical activity is to be avoided, you spend the entire day trying to pretend you’re not starving, and you begin to ask questions. Lots of questions.

Like…who was the first person to look at a lobster and think, “I bet this might be good to eat.”

We’re almost 25 games into the baseball season and I am chock full of questions. 

Like…my Nationals are first in the big league in errors and last in pitching. How is it possible that they have actually won 10 games?

Like…the Cincinnati Reds have won 15 games despite hitting just .203 as a team.

And another thing: How is it that nobody washes their hands with regular old soap anymore? When I was growing up if you wished to wash up before dinner you went to the bathroom and there was a bar of soap. It was usually Ivory or sometimes, when my father was in a certain mood, it would be something called Lava, which was kind of like washing your hands with a live porcupine. But now, no matter where I go in my house to wash my hands I am presented with these pump bottles filled with cleaning foam with bizarre names like “Honeycrisp Hayride.” Ok, I know what a honeycrisp apple tastes like and I know vaguely what a hayride smells like, but neither of them have any relationship to this product. But there are plenty others around here to choose from. I can go with “balsam breeze” or “lavender sunrise.” But do I really want my hands to smell like anything? Back in the day if we were going through a “Lava” phase I was lucky to even have hands! I suppose this is what passes for progress these days.

Human Beings are Great at Complaining

 There is one thing about human beings that is beyond doubt. We are genetically predisposed to complain. We all do it. I suppose it is one of our instincts because complaining has at least a strained relationship with progress. If enough of us complain about something long and loud enough, eventually a product or service is born to placate our dissatisfaction. But make no mistake, complaining is here to stay. This blog, now in its 14th year, stands as a testament to the enduring power and often the entertaining nature of complaining. However, there are times when complaining annoys me, whether it comes from me or someone else, and that is when it comes to church.

Churches are first and foremost a private association we enter into with other mostly like minded individuals. There are no membership dues, not many enforceable rules, not even attendance requirements. To join requires only an acknowledgment and a passing fealty to a set of core beliefs. After that, you’re in. While every church hopes that all its members will attach themselves to any number of volunteer opportunities that make up the church’s mission, there is no requirement to do so. You can have as much or as little church as you wish. 

I am a member of what most people would call a large congregation church. Our main auditorium only holds around 700 people, but we fill it up for 3-4 services every Sunday. A separate building on the campus intended for youth ministry has been added as a site for two addition services each Sunday. That building holds probably 100-150 people at each service. So on any given Sunday roughly 2500-3000 people will have attended services at our church. Every single Sunday that I have attended in the 8 years I have been a member has been a parking and logistical problem, for which there is currently no affordable and practical solution.

Then there is Easter and Christmas.

Ah yes—the two days on the church calendar that bring out that hearty perennial—the Holly and Lilly Crowd. Anyone who has even the most vague attachment to the church feels an obligation to nostalgia and guilt which drives them to attend services, swelling the normal crowd by 20-25%. At our church this means going online to “reserve your spot.” Although you don’t buy a ticket—church attendance is still very FREE—but knowing how many people are coming to each service helps the staff to prepare accordingly. No matter how much preparation is done, it’s always a madhouse. There are a hundred chairs set up in the foyer. People are jammed in to the cafe to watch on life stream. Finding a parking space is the kind of thing that ranks high on most people’s list of things that make one “lose your religion.”

For many years our church rented out the Carpenter Center for two services. Both of them were nearly full. But because of scheduling issues we scrapped that strategy and are now back to multiple services on our own campus which is not designed to accommodate so many people.

All of this produces much complaining. It goes something like this:

When we used the Carpenter Center people would complain about having to drive downtown, park in a parking deck which it took forever to get out of afterwards. They complained about the long lines of traffic, of how impersonal it was not being in our own building.

Now that we are having services in our own building the complaints are with the online registration process—how no matter what service you sign up for it doesn’t mean you’ll get your normal seat. You might end up in the concourse or in the cafe! The traffic gets backed up all the way to 288 on Patterson Avenue! It takes forever to find a parking space! 

Each of these complaints are true. All of these inconveniences are totally accurate. To which I can only say, Yeah…ain’t it GREAT??

Do we have any idea what an honor, blessing and privilege it is to be part of a church which has this type of problem? Look at the numbers for church attendance in this country over the past twenty years or so. It’s fallen off a cliff!! To be a part of a fellowship that is thriving is a gift to every one of us.

When we attend a sporting event or a concert we sit in long lines of traffic, scramble around forever trying to to find a parking spot and it takes forever to get back home afterwards—and we don’t bat an eye. It’s what we expect. Why then is it different for church? Our leadership has explored every expansion possibility that exists and are still doing so. Some of them are outrageously expensive others unworkable for one reason or another. Still, the church continues to grow.

I don’t want anyone to think that I’m some fan boy apologist for my church. I’m not. I’ve been a member for over 8 years. There are plenty of things that happen of which I am not a huge fan. There are other things that I wish we didn’t do. I have approached no one on the leadership team about any of my objections. Why? Its simple. I have no solution to offer with the complaint. See…most of my objections, upon closer scrutiny, amount to personal preferences. I simply don’t care for this type of music or that sort of presentation. Any solution that would satisfy me would most likely annoy others. So unless the issue at hand has a workable solution that would benefit and improve the entire church, my job is basically to shut the hell up. Especially if my complaint revolves around something that is causing me an inconvenience—like winding up in the concourse instead of my usual seat on Easter Sunday. Shouldn’t the members volunteer to take the worst seats on those two special days anyway? Shouldn’t we be going out of our way to make the visitor experience as good as it can possibly be? 

In any organization on earth that human beings are a part of, each of us have to decide who we want to be. Do we want to be part of the problem or part of the solution? Got a complaint and a workable solution? Great, let’s hear it. Just a complaint? Not interested.

The Most Beautiful City in America

Pam and I spent yesterday being introduced to the most beautiful city we’ve ever seen, Savannah, Georgia.

I purchased two tickets for the Old Town Trolley Tours, the best $100 I’ve ever spent. We boarded around 10:30 or so. It’s advertised as a 90 minute tour but that’s only if you don’t get off and walk around, which you are free to do because there’s always another trolley waiting to pick you up. Honestly, we could have gotten off at each of the 16 stops on the tour because every one of them was fascinating and beautiful. Instead we only got off the trolley three or four times. Still, it took us almost five hours and we hardly scratched the surface.

We took a bunch of pictures but this was the sort of experience that photography doesn’t really capture. Savannah claims to be the first planned city in all of America, its dimensions laid out in 1734 by its founder, General James Oglethorpe, an Englishman who designed the place with a military man’s eye for detail and utility. The standout feature of the city layout were the 24 “squares” placed throughout the middle of the place, of which 22 survive to this day, un stained by “progress”. Each of them feature gigantic live oak trees strewn with Spanish moss, which create the strange sight of the downtown of a city overrun with 400 year old trees, statues and memorials, all of them a feast for the eyes, all of them shrouding the city in a rich towering canopy of shade and filtered sunlight. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.

Oglethorpe insisted on his new city abiding by his four “rules.” There was to be no slavery, no hard liquor, no lawyers, and no Catholics…no slavery because it was wicked, no hard liquor because it made people lazy, no lawyers because lawyering led to unfair persecution, and no Catholics because of the Spanish army down in Florida and Oglethorpe’s fear that if he allowed Catholics in his city and the Spanish were to attack, his Catholic citizens might side with the Spanish. Our guide pointed out the fact that Georgia has been trying to keep Floridians out ever since!

The primary reason that Savannah is so beautiful after nearly three hundred years of “progress” is due to the indefatigable efforts of six little old ladies who back in the mid 1700’s established the Savannah historical society—essentially the first and most robust home owners association ever formed in America. These hearty women and their predecessors have guarded downtown Savannah’s unique aesthetic with a tenacity that would have made General Oglethorpe proud. As a result, every where you look there is one gorgeous home/building after another. Perhaps the centerpiece of the place is the famous “Jones Street”, the beauty of which is overwhelming to the point of being where we get the expression “keeping up with the Jones’” from.

We stopped for some shopping and a delightful lunch at an Irish Pub. We took a gorgeous walk through Forsyth Park, where we staggered around with our mouths hanging open like a couple of spellbound tourists. We were consistently entertained by a series of Trolley drivers who educated us with history and hilarious stories told with top shelf humor mixed with a Georgia low country drawl.

So, if you ever find your self within a hundred miles of Savannah, Georgia, make the detour into town. Worth. Every. Penny.

Silas Time

 As it turns out, we chose a bad week to spend on Tybee Island. The weather has been cloudy with 35 mile an hour winds, making beach time scarce. Consequently we have spent much of our time watching Silas crawl around the condo leaving giant messes in his wake and looking adorable doing it. We have also taken him to two restaurants, one coffee shop and an ice cream joint called “Sugar Shack.” At each venue he conducted himself with admirable poise, demonstrating world class manners, except on a couple of occasions where he revealed a few unfortunate habits he picked up at day care, no doubt. One of them involves the recent discovery of the sheer power and thrill of hearing his own voice in full primal scream mode. Each blood curdling outburst is proceeded and followed by a mischievous grin, assuring everyone that he is not gravely ill or in serious distress. He just digs the sound of it.

All of the adults at the table for this particular demonstration began attempting behavior modification in the form of a group SSHHHHHH, with our index fingers on our lips. This had a positive effect at first. A less successful strategy was attempted by Lolli when she attempted to explain the concept of inside vs. outside voices, to which Silas replied, GLLAACKKKARGGGGOOO!!!

But, for the most part the little guy has been a delight. He will be heading home today and we will miss him terribly, be are very grateful for having spent this time with him. Last night we sent Kaitlin and Jon out for a date night. Before they left we got Silas into his jammies and read him books on their bed. As I was reading he suddenly laid his little head on my chest and patted me with his hand. At that point he could have asked me for anything in the world and I would have given it to him…or died trying.

33 Days. WAY Too Long

 Pam and I have discovered that there is a limit to how long we can go without seeing our grandson…and we have reached that limit.

With the exception of the six weeks we spent in Maine last July/August, we are currently in the longest stretch of going Silas-less. 33 days. This is an outrage which we intend to remedy next week when we spend a week on Tybee Island, where we will introduce the little guy to the ocean, swimming pools and the city of Savannah, Georgia.

In preparation, Pam has been busy spending our kid’s inheritance on any and everything that catches her eye at Carter’s. For those of you who haven’t been introduced to Carter’s, think a cross between a Baby Walmart and a Las Vegas casino for grandparents—places where we go to hemorrhage money.

I don’t care about the money part, all I care about is ending this interminable grandson drought. 33 days is way too dang long and neither of us intend on letting it happen again!