The F-Word

The F-word. It's scary, abrasive, and attention-grabbing. It always gets a reaction. People have strong feelings associated with the F-word. Some abuse the word, others don't understand it. Some people believe the word shouldn't even exist. Most people have heard the word, and many are afraid to use it, in case they are misunderstood or considered offensive.

The word I am referring to is, of course, feminism.

Webster defines feminism as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities; organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". Well that doesn't sound so bad. Actually, that sounds like something everyone should believe in, right? I mean, if this is the definition of feminism, shouldn't we actually be asking those around us why they aren't feminists?

But feminism still gets a bad rap. Now whole blogs could be (and have been) written on why there is such anti-feminism out there, but I'm not all about just regurgitating information - so here.

In an inspiring TED Talk video, the role of men in feminism is highlighted and championed. "We need more men who have the courage and strength to start standing up and saying some of this stuff. Standing with women, not against them, somehow pretending this is a battle between the sexes and other kinds of nonsense. We live in the world together." So clearly, this isn't just a "women's issue".

Feminism is about equitable treatment for all human beings. I use the F-word. I am a Feminist. I want my dad, my brother, my mom, my male and female friends to be feminists. I sincerely hope you are a feminist too.

Frankly, there's no good reason not to be.

Worry Lines and Insatiable Joy

Tonight I discovered something that I had never noticed before - I have worry lines. They are there, hovering between and just above my eyebrows, slight creases furrowed from twenty-some years of life.

That is twenty-some years of worry carved into my forehead. [With probably a little sarcasm or skepticism thrown in there, I notice those expressions are similar, at least on my face.]

I have not spent twenty-some consecutive years constantly worrying, no, I would say my life has been relatively free from over-anxiety. It is amazing, then, how single occurrences of worry, segregated episodes of doubt can mark you so permanently.

But then again, so can joy.

A single moment of unmitigated joy can imprint itself on your heart and change your life forever.

“I call it Joy. 'Animal-Land' was not imaginative. But certain other experiences were... The first is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. 

It is difficult or find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to 'enormous') comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?...Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased... In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else... The quality common to the three experiences... is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. 

I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.” ― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

Joy can be insatiable. Worry may stain the forehead, but joy saturates the bones.

I want to breed joy in my life. I want to sleep more, criticize less, pray constantly. I want to eat good food, read great books, listen to music that lifts my soul. I want to take long walks and have surprising adventures.

I choose joy.

The Everyday Jireh

Life has been good lately. School is going well. I've been traveling to new places, meeting new people. I love my job. I can afford to eat out now and then.

And I got comfortable. I relaxed. I took for granted my need for daily communion with the Lord. I thanked Him as I remembered, gave Him the glory when He came to mind. After all, I reasoned, He knows that I love Him, that I am grateful.

Then life happened.

It has a way of doing that, especially when we get comfortable.

Now my facade of comfort is gone, and I recognize yet again my terrible need for Him.

As I find myself yet again in this place of desperate need, where all my best-laid plans have vanished into dust, I taste so clearly the unbelievable Grace that emanates from a God who waits for us, even when we forget our need for Him.

That is one of the many reasons that He is the model for all love relationships. He never forgets or forsakes us, even when we take Him for granted or squander His gifts.

My resolution? To celebrate, to love, to communicate constantly, to worship Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides day-to-day. His everyday provision is just as worthy of praise as His deliverance in our most desperate times of physical need, for He has pledged His love to us for a lifetime. "I have cared for you since you were born. Yes, I carried you before you were born. I will be your God throughout your lifetime" {Isaiah 46:3}.

From this moment forward, I pledge my constant attention to the Everyday Jireh, the God who provides in the good times and bad, and never leaves my side on this journey I call "life".

After all, "His mercies are new every morning..."

Cappuccinos and Red Balloons

I will always be an advocate for international travel. To see how someone lives on the other side of the world, to walk on their streets, to glimpse their joys and their struggles - all this gives us a new perspective on how we live in our little corners of the world.

Just before Christmas I spent 4 days in France visiting with my friend Meghan and experiencing a bit of this new country through her knowledge and love of the culture. This was by far my favorite international experience to date, primarily because she and I are similar travelers. We take every opportunity to experience the culture we are in, after all, why not? Why wouldn't we want to make the most of a chance to gain a richer appreciation for the beautiful diversity around us?

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." {Mark Twain}

On a beautiful, warm, (8 degrees celsius!) Saturday afternoon, Meghan and I stopped at little Cafe Esmeralda, appropriately located directly across from Notre Dame Cathedral.  We slid into delightfully delicate wicker chairs, positioned not facing one another, but looking out onto the street. (French culture encourages people watching, so cafe chairs are usual set like this!) Around us life in Paris was business as usual. French teenagers strolled by, giggling and chattering in impossibly fast dialogues, tourists darted back and forth, stretching like professional contortionists to get just the right picture of the massive Cathedral standing guard silently over our heads, and several artistic looking young adults (film students?) were in the process of shooting a commercial on the sidewalk to our left. As the cheery serveur materialized with our order, 2 shots of espresso for Meghan and a frothy cappuccino for me, we settled back to rest our feet and take in the bustle around us. I wondered then how I would ever go back home, spend Christmas on an upstate farm, visit Lancaster County, and then resume school in rather unremarkable Erie, Pennsylvania. But maybe, I quietly pondered as I sipped the decadent foam from the top of my cappuccino, that was the point. What is the good of experiencing life if we don't allow it to change us, and in turn, how we live in the everyday moments?

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." {Terry Pratchett} 

On my final day in France we yet again caught the train into Paris, this time to the south end and the Champs-Elysees. As we migrated through an expansive park, the object of our wanderings at the far end, we were arrested by a peculiar spot of color above us. On one of the bare trees lining the walk, someone, (human or faerie folk?) had tied bright red balloons to the uppermost branches. We lingered only a moment to snap a few pictures before resuming our rapid march, but the memory of that sensation lingered even as I boarded my flight home the next morning.

Why, I wondered, would someone go to all the trouble of stringing those decorations high up in a tree along a fairly untraveled walk in a solitary park? Was there something special about that tree or place? [Insert American indignance] Who even has time to inflate that many balloons?

But then, I think that may have been the point. While that city and that park were new and fascinating for me, they were someone's ordinary. Someone lived and worked there, probably passing that park on a daily basis out of routine, perhaps dreaming of a visit to another country far away. But the point is that someone stopped, stepped out of the ordinary, and made something beautiful. They allowed their perspective on the world to influence how they lived in the everyday.

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." {Marcel Proust}

As I prepare to head back to another semester of grad school, I want to have learned far more from my travels than how to say "bonjour" and the trick to maneuvering the metro system. I want my new perspective to impact how I live in the everyday. I believe that I will be held accountable for what I do with my little piece of the world, and so I want to leave a few "red balloons" behind me, so that maybe one day someone from another time and place will stop and say, here someone found something extraordinary in the ordinary.

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not." {Ralph Waldo Emerson}