Maybe this will convince Jack to let me get a kitty.

One of my MHGS cohorts is putting her dog down this weekend.  I’ve been thinking about her, wondering how their last remaining hours together feel.  The last days I had with Nosey were heavy and sad.  After we found out she was dying, death colored everything.

My Dad had the sad job of taking Nosey in for her euthanization eight years ago.  We assumed he was the only one who could “handle it.”  I will probably never ask him what that lonely morning was like, because even nearly a decade later I don’t think I could handle it.  I imagine he drove home from the airport after dropping Mom and me off, made some coffee, and did the crossword puzzle.  After the sun came up he would have had to coax Nosey out from under the bed, wrestle her into her carrier, listen to her last sad little yowls in the car, and finally, hold her still under the needle until she went limp.  I hope she somehow felt the years of our family’s gratitude in his touch.

Mom and I left for a trip early that day.  My last memory is of Nosey chasing down a moth.  I wondered if she knew she was sick.  If, given a few more weeks, she would have meowed to be let out, and gone away to die, thinking to spare us the grief.

One time, after Jacob and I ignored her pleas to go outside for an hour because we were too busy playing Mario Brothers, she peed all over our jackets.  It was the first and last time I’d ever heard of a female cat spraying.

Another time, after Jacob had moved away to college and I was the only kid left at home, she fell asleep in the crook of my arm, with her head resting on my palm.

On the fourth of July she hid in the basement during the fireworks, and when I came looking for her she trotted right past me up the stairs, as if saying, I wasn’t scared, I was just resting.

She often sat on my lap while I cried.  She would bounce up and down with my sobs, clinging to me with claws she didn’t have, and purr.  Not having any dates broke my fragile adolescent heart.  On the rare times I stopped pretending otherwise, Nosey was there.

Today I cried over my lunch.  I felt like my kitty had died yesterday and not eight years ago.  If only I could have one more day with her.  I would open a hundred cans of tuna, then put on a movie for us.  She was so good to me, and I didn’t thank her nearly enough.

Something my Grandma said…

in response to my last post…  Well, okay, not in response to the post.  I’m pretty sure my grandma will finish her life on this earth without reading a single word on the Internet.  But we were having the telephone- conversation version of my last post about my nephew, whom she will see next week.

“Christine, I tell you… the older you get, the more you long to see the world through just one more pair of young eyes.”

Creation, Incarnation, and my 1-year-old Nephew

I’m watching my nephew for an afternoon this week.  The email I sent to my brother said something like, “Out of the generosity of my heart I am offering to babysit for you on Friday.”  But what I meant was, “Can I hang out with your kid?  I need that time with him, I really do.”  The deeper I go into my work at Mars Hill (3 weeks now), the more I miss Joris.

This week we read twenty pages of a 15-volume work by Karl Barth called Church Dogmatics.  The chapter was titled “The Spirit as Basis of Soul and Body.” And through this great work, I discovered what may be the cornerstone of every seminary education… I can now join in the chorus of Divinity students past and present.  May we all confess together that

German Theologians are fucking hard.

I underlined a lot of things in the Barth article.  One of his shorter sentences was “God is the living and active basis of man.”  God sustains our lives by giving us his spirit, not just once but constantly, every second of every minute. In him we live, and move, and have our being.

See, we’ve been reading different theologies of creation, and our professor has been offering us this new perspective: creation is incarnation.  God creates so that he can live within this world.  He re-creates it, day after day.  He is constantly sustaining and creating, and he calls us as co-creators and participants.

Our professor made the outlandish statement that God needs us.  Later he modified it and said, “Okay, need isn’t the right word, but the relationship is murky.  God created us to create with him.  What if, for example, we all just stopped having sex?”

Eighteen months ago I watched Joris take his first breath in this world; a shivering, screaming new co-creation of God and his parents.

Now, I see his delight in the world.  He shrieks when he sees a dog.  He studies faces, and memorizes the regular ones (he even came up with a sign for Obama).  He wants to know how everything feels to the touch— dirt, sand, Auntie Chris’ teeth… I don’t think “childhood curiosity” is an inaccurate term.  But I’m beginning to think it’s more than that.  God is calling Joris to co-creation.  Joris loves the world because of God’s creative spirit in him.

And as I’ve been reading these articles and obsessing over lofty ideas about Spirit and Matter, creation and incarnation, sin and Imago Dei, I have this sense that I will understand this more if I watch Joris play.

I’m looking forward to Friday.

Pho

I’m eating pho again.

Last year my body starting rejecting pho.  Probably because my blood was already half beef broth and critically oversalinated.  But then last week, I wanted pho, Oh how I wanted pho, and nothing else would do. So I ate it for 3 meals in a row.

Some of my most potent adult memories happened at pho restaurants, and not only because Sriracha gives me diarrhea.  My college boyfriend called me “stupid” over a bowl of pho.  He did it in another language, but unfortunately it was identical to the Russian word.  Not that it would have mattered.  If any college boys are reading, please note: your girlfriend will always recognize an insult.  It doesn’t matter if you hand her a dozen roses and flash that winning smile and lovingly coo “You Slimy Ho” in Berber.  She will know exactly what you said.

I used to meet my friend Amy for pho every week, before she left the country.  These lunches were Christian Fellowship on Crack.  We crammed confession, prayers, fears, frustration at God, and encouragement for each other into 22 minutes.  While Eating. I miss you, Amy.

Most recently, I ate pho at the same Than Brother’s Restaurant that I went to weekly in college.  My first ever bowls of pho splattered the pages of my first ever Bible (at least, the first one I bought myself), which I always read while I was on my own.  And while I was reading the Bible, I always felt like I was being read too.

This last bowl of Than Brother’s pho splattered the pages of Karl Barth and Martin Buber.  Instead of slurping up my rice noodles and asking, “What is Jesus saying to me?”, I am asking “What do I as a reader bring to this text?  What does it mean that God’s spirit gives life, even to those who reject him?  What hermeneutical tradition do I come from?”

I hope to visit the U-district Than Brother’s Restaurant in 10 years.  I’ll bring a book, the Bible or something else.  I’ll breathe in the steamy salty broth and as I read, I’ll ask myself,

“______________________________________?”

At the Neighborhood Dinner

One of the many many Mars Hill Graduate School (henceforth MHGS) events last week was a “neighborhood dinner.”  It turns out a lot of students live in my area, and I am lucky for it.  I met about 20 Greenwoodians/ Crown Hillians at a dinner party last Friday.

After dinner, I got to chatting with one guy, who asked how long Jack and I have been married and how we met.  I told him about meeting at the UW and getting to know each other through a non-Christian Bible study.  He said, “Oh, so you haven’t been a Christian for very long, then?”

I answered, “A little over 5 years, I guess.  The first year was amazing and wonderful, and every year after that has been just confusing.”

One of the other party goers, sitting on my other side, chimed in, “Short honeymoon, eh?”

I hastened to explain that we weren’t talking about my marriage anymore, I was just telling Clinton here about when I first became a Chr—

“I know,” he said, and I was struck by the kindess in his dark eyes.  “I do know what you were talking about.”

And that alone might have been worth my first year’s tuition.

Disneyland and the Kingdom of God

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I’m sure a lot of parents have told their kids that heaven is like Disneyland, probably in a desperate attempt to get them to love God and go to church.  Because really, I would go through any number of years of bad Sunday school for an eternity in Disneyland.  Wouldn’t you?

I spent last week in Disneyland with my parents and two nieces.  We flew in Monday, went to the park for a few hours, then went back to the hotel room to sleep.  I lay awake, my mind buzzing with excitement.  Splash Mountain!  Peter Pan!  Indiana Jones! Then, with a rush of guilt, I thought, “I forgot to pray today.”

Realizing that you forgot to pray is like realizing you forgot to take your birth control pill.  Not only do you feel stupid for not doing it, you have to get up out of your warm bed and find the damn pills.  Then you have to remind yourself of the horrible things that will happen if you keep forgetting.

I liked thinking about Disneyland more than praying.  I didn’t want to quiet my mind, to ask God to speak, or confess the long list of unaddressed sins.  I’d much prefer some form of entertainment and fun.

Which is why I’ve spent much of the last year on facebook, or watching movies, or reading magazines.  Frenzied distraction has replaced joy and contentment.  I feel like Pinocchio arriving at Pleasure Island.  The candy and games—they’re still fun.  I don’t want to go back to the father yet.

On Wednesday we ate breakfast at Goofy’s Kitchen, which was flooded with Disney characters.  It was chaos, with little necks craning and little fingers pointing and little voices… oh the little voices… shrieking and laughing.

And that’s where I saw it, why Jesus probably loves Disneyland too.  Goofy was as excited to see my nieces as they were to see him.  Winnie the Pooh acted as though we were his long-lost daughters.  The princesses knelt down and listened to rambling stories, as if the kids too were beautiful, worthwhile, and had hearts of pure gold.  Everywhere in Disneyland, kids (and adults) were welcomed, celebrated, loved, and nurtured.

I’m guessing that when Jesus told people to become like little children, he was picturing the way kids react to Disneyland.  They love it.  In the words of my 5-year-old niece, “I wish I could live here!”

I’m not sure how much the guy in the Goofy suit likes his job, but I would say he spends his days loving his neighbor.  And you know, being hugged by Winnie the Pooh is probably the closest I’ve ever gotten to being hugged by Jesus.  Sorry, Jack.