Aj Schwanz

Worship Fully:  Today at Women’s Bible Fellowship a friend shared about the process of grieving her mother’s death.  She said eventually her tears and sadness were turned into praise, noticing that each morning instead of the gray, she woke with a praise song running through her mind.  It was a true example of God giving a New Song.  I notice that sometimes in my life, when something a child does that would’ve annoyed me to no end in the past I now find amusing, or a circumstance that would’ve made me angry I choose to let go of.  I’m thankful for that transformative God.

Spend Less:  I sent a link onto a friend full of homemade recipes to give away, mostly because I thought some of the recipes she’d like to make and keep for herself.  Funny thing:  she had the paper edition and actually filed it away already.  Glad my research skills are on target. 

Give More:  My son had his school Christmas party this morning, attended with Jason.  They went to a local Christmas-y store, sang songs, had goodies, and did a book exchange.  But the thing he was most excited about?  Giving Jason and me our Christmas surprise gifts that he’s been working on all month.  Each day he would come home, telling the adventures of the day, pointing out “And I worked on a surprise, and I CAN’T TELL YOU so DON’T ASK”.  Which, of course, became the game of me trying to wheedle it out of him, and him being all grins and dimples and shouting, “NO!  TEACHER LOEKIE SAID NOT TO TELL!!”  It was his day, but he was more excited about what he created to give to us.  That kid …

Love All:  During a sharing time at WBF a friend (who I actually grew up with as a kid in Idaho:  crazy life) reflected on her experience with Yvonne.  She said that she never really personally connected with her, and yet being in our community and walking alongside her in that group has forever changed and affected her.  Apparently one of Yvonne’s fears was that she hadn’t done enough to affect those around her with the love of Christ:  we all begged to differ.

Worship Fully:  I really enjoy the work that Mustard Seed Associates puts out.  Christine Sine has been very helpful to me in following and celebrating the liturgical year.  Her work (and the work of others) is really quality in regards to Advent this year.

Spend Less:  Today I listened to a great interview on CraftSanity.  It was so refreshing to listen to something creative while being able to putter around the house (Judah was at school, Abel had a box to play with, and Josephine napped for a bit).  Creativity and reusing:  great combination.

Give More:  Today I gave more time to Christmas goodies in the kitchen.  Waffles for lunch (just because), peanut butter popcorn (fail:  need to learn to work with hot sugar and temperatures), eggnog scones (for dinner and tomorrow), and some kind of German spice cookie (just because):  it felt nice to create with ingredients that I already had to nurture and nourish others (and for me to hear yummy noises – love that).

Love All:  “What I believe is so magnificent, so glorious, that it is beyond finite comprehension. To believe that the universe was created by a purposeful, benign Creator is one thing. To believe that this Creator took on human vesture, accepted death and mortality, was tempted, betrayed, broken, and all for love of us, defies reason. It is so wild that it terrifies some Christians who try to dogmatize their fear by lashing out at other Christians, because tidy Christianity with all answers given is easier than one which reaches out to the wild wonder of God’s love, a love we don’t even have to earn.” – Madeleine L’Engle

Worship Fully:  I’m an avid podcast listener.  Multitasker to the end, I love learning and hearing from others while doing the mundane of folding laundry, sweeping, chasing those every present crumbs.  And, when I’m feeling pushed to the brink, it’s really nice to hear adults talking to me rather than the demands of the Little People (darling as they are).  A few podcasts I listen to are keepers, but I find that many of them I listen to for a season:  they resonate for a while, and then my mind starts tuning them out along with the constant question of  “Can we eat our Advent calendar chocolate *now*?”  Other podcasts I try on for a bit, and they don’t connect, so I let them go.  One such podcast was from The Village Church in Texas.  Having heard great things about their pastor Matt Chandler (and having had a friend who I adored of the same name), I listened for a bit.  But one can only listen to so many sermon series from churches one doesn’t attend before it’s just gluttony, so I let that podcast go.  Then I read the story of what’s happening at that faith gathering, and I listened to Matt’s last sermon, and it just hit home.  Talk about worshiping fully.  It’s a challenging listen, and I’m finding my heart laboring with those from The Village Church, looking forward to where the Spirit will lead them in this.

Spend Less:  So I went against the grain and ordered a few things for Christmas.  Yeah, the orders didn’t go through.  I had a choice:  meltdown?  Or welcome it as a blessing?  I went with a little of both. 

Give More:  Awesome compilation of combining help and food and volunteering and donating and just giving more.  Food bloggers rock in this area.

Love All:  Today at the doctor’s office I did not have a hard time loving some little kids playing with Josephine:  she smiled, they giggled, it was great.  I did have a hard time loving the doctor who told me that he can’t do anything to make me feel better.  Love is a choice, not a feeling.  Love is a choice, not a feeling.  Love is a choice, not a feeling …

Worship Fully:  While reading a lift-the-flap nativity book, Judah asked me questions like, “Why was there no room?”  “Where were they going?”  And as I was summarizing the story for him, I wondered, “Was Mary miffed at Joseph that there was no room?”  Let me tell you, when I was in labor, if Jason didn’t know where we were going and could guarantee that I’d have a clean bed and help with the experience, there would be some STRONG words said.  “Really?  We have to do this census thing NOW?  You couldn’t have arranged for a room?  REALLY?”  Ah, Mary, I’m sure you were more gracious than I am: perhaps something to think about in my daily interactions.

Spend Less:  Today I heard a friend announce that he no longer ate meat:  “Correction:  I don’t eat *commercial* meat.”  His family had us over for a wonderful dinner, part of which was a “happy chicken” (free range/organic), although I don’t know how happy any chicken is in a crockpot.     His family had gone in with a group of people to purchase a large quantity of fryers, bringing down the price.  Happy meat sure is monetarily expensive and can take a while to find and process (spendy timewise), but I wonder if we end up spending less in the long run:  on doctors for health reasons, on food by making meat more of an accent than the main ingredient, on the world’s resources from packaging to shipping to the horrible conditions the animals exist in.

Love All:  Another rough day – just feeling a bit beaten down.  But hearing the giggles of my boys with their friends, racing around with light sabers and foam swords galore, I realize my heart is filled with love from and for our community, and even when I’m tired and just want to crawl into bed, it’s much better to be with friends and family (and yummy food). 

Worship Fully:  got to engage in song with wonderful women as we mourned and rejoiced as the physical passing of a friend.  So happy she’s dancing with the saints, but selfishly sad for our missing of her body in our midst.

Spend Less:  Today’s speaker at WBF shared her reflections on Luke 17 & 18.  So many stories packed into two chapters!  Christ doesn’t seem to be one to babble.    What stood out to me were stories regarding water.  First, she told of a time when she went to a pumpkin patch with her extended family.  She was about to buy a bottle of water, having forgot her water bottle at home.  She offered it to others, and her grown son said that he no longer drinks from bottled water:  much of it is bottled by Nestle, who has bought the rights to water in countries where people desperately need water and can no longer have access to it because of our consumerism.  She also shared how when hosting kids from an African choir they could not get over her washing machine:  “You mean water just comes in there?”

When I spend more, others have to spend less.  I heard someone recently define rich as “when I am rich, it means I am taking from others who can no longer have.”  When I drink water without thinking where it comes from, I am taking from others who don’t have; my need to be quenched creates a thirst in them.

Give More:  I’m not so much a baby person:  give me a teenager any day, and let’s have awesome conversations and go do stuff.  But babies:  they sure take a lot, and don’t give a lot, that is, if you’re a person who wants to go and do.  I’ve never been a sit & cuddle person as my folks can tell you – I held them at arms length pretty much since day one.  And when I have an infant of my own, I’m easily babied-out.  But today I actually wanted to hold someone else’s baby:  he was born one day after my daughter, and he reminds me of my boys – a bit more on the fussy side, active side, wearing his mama out side.  See, she had a girl first:  a cuddler.  Me, the opposite.  And now that I have little miss “let me smile at you to show you all the insides of my mouth:  see, this is how big I can get it!” girl, I don’t mind pacing with the active boy:  I have something of me to give.  Finally.  That sure is nice.

Love All:  Funny how I just talked about loving on my friend’s boy, and yet I had not a lot of love for my own boys this afternoon.  It’s too easy to whang on myself, so I’m just going to put this day away and look forward to a day tomorrow with new opportunities to create and play and love, or at least try to keep the tiredcrabbies to myself. 

Worship Fully:  Didn’t make it to corporate worship this morning – sniffles, aches, and sleepyheads.  But I tried to slow down the day, not engage in the hustle and bustle of being at home (laundry, cleaning, etc.).  The tree was decorated, manger scenes played with, and some cleaning happened, but that was during quiet time, so it doesn’t count, right? 

Spend Less:  Like I said, I was going to spend less time doing the things I feel *need* to get done.  Normally I would dive into the laundry with the air of martyrdom about me while everyone else rested.  Instead, I sat.  I sat with a baby on my lap and looked at the tree.  In the evening Jason asked if he could help start laundry:  who am I to say no?

Give More:  Today I gave more thought as to why we give at all.  At lunch time while reading a Parenting Magazine  I came across a section explaining brief synopsis to give to kids about the variety of holidays occurring this time of year.  The Christmas explanation stated that we give presents in remembrance of the magi who gave gifts to the Baby Jesus.  For some odd reason I’ve never made that connection.  I would say something about St. Nick giving gifts and celebration of Christ’s birth, but I never tied it to the Magi.

Which got me thinking:  if it’s in remembrance of that event, then the whole Christmas holiday is really mucked up!  Obviously.  But really:  if we’re going to be like the magi, we should be giving gifts to Christ, not each other.  True, I could use a Quaker principle as a cop-out, “But I’m giving to that of Christ in others!”    But how is giving a DVD player to another person honoring the birth of the Christ child?  Yes, the magi’s gifts were extremely costly, so we need to spend ourselves into debt?  OR we give of something that’s truly costly to us.  For myself:  it’s my quiet time – I *love* to be by myself, to think and write and read and be.  To give that time to my kids, to do something they want to do whether I find it a good use of time or not, that is costly to me.  And I think that might be honoring of Christ ….  Just some interesting thoughts.

Love All:  I don’t know that I loved all today, but I certainly felt loved by my family.  I’ve been feeling under the weather, and my husband took care of the kids this morning.  He held the baby when she cried, he front-packed her while sorting through gobs of laundry, and he asked repeatedly how he could help today.  My sons gave me lots of hugs, cuddles, and made all sorts of appropriate yummy noises when I made them hot (lukewarm) cocoa with marshmallows and candy cane bits.  And my daughter made all sorts of gummy smiley faces at me.  I am truly blessed by these people in the small things and the big things.

So.  Fall’s almost here.  And I have yet to feel like summer ever started.  Last summer I remember more free time, more days spent in the yard, less scheduled events.  But my mind has a tendency to wax poetically, and it’s very likely that I spent last summer like I spent this one, since I can’t even remember what I did last week ….

We gathered at Yearly Meeting in July.  The heat “encouraged” me to take advantage of the full range of opportunities:  workshops, board meetings, evening gatherings, evening celebration times.  Two words:  air-conditioned childcare.  Really, I did it “for the kids.”    But as I saw the eldest forging some bonds, making friends, loving to go play in the sprinkler and watch Larry-Boy and run amuck with wild abandon, I felt less guilty about dumping him off, filling myself up with connections with adults and quiet time to prep for upcoming events, and recognizing:  Hey, I liked YM for those same reasons!  And now he gets to have those memories as well!  The toddler would be less rosy about his experience, but next year when he moves to the “children who don’t wear diapers” room, I think it’ll all be good.

Following Yearly Meeting came our worship gathering’s Vacation Bible School.  Which I wasn’t sure about the eldest’s participation.  But again:  I saw the crafts, the running around, the morning cheer of “Yay!  VBS!”, and I knew why it was a good thing for him to be there.  Actually, VBS is where I first had an opportunity to “make a decision for Christ” – not that I didn’t make repeated decisions at later opportunities, but still.  And somehow it became oddly important to me that Judah have such experiences.  Finally, parental inclinations might be manifesting …

The next week the kids were shipped up (lovingly, of course) to the grand’rents while Jason and I went to join about 350 other crazy people at the coast for Surfside, our high school camp.  I facilitated a tract for the high school grads focusing on life transitions and our identity in Christ.  It was GREAT:  high schoolers are amazing people.  From kids voicing fears that they will only have dead-end jobs and therefore a dead-end life, to others talking about wanting to leave their faith gatherings all their lives until the community had a split and now wanting to walk through that pain and grief with them – wow.  The larger camp met corporately under a tent in a meadow.  Then it rained.  Then it heated up:  swamp thing!  Meals were served in the dining hall and neighboring meeting room.  Through it all (even my 1am bedtimes and 6am wake-up times) people loved on each other and loved on God and were loved on by God.  God.Is.Good.

After that, I felt like summer could start.  Except now it’s mostly prep for the fall.  Which is good and enh, all at the same time.  Fall is the hardest transition for me:  grey skies are coming, plants are dying, hibernation is on the way.  How not to repeat patterns that weren’t the best from past years?  How to live in the life and light that I feel in the summer without getting discouraged in the daily mundane?  How to re-enter into a more scheduled community life … or enter in at all? …

God is present in every season, ready to speak life and light and healing.  I’m not called to live in the summer season all the time:  I’m called to live a day at a time, with each one being a gift (although some days feel like they were gifts picked out of the dollar bins at Target).    Summer:  thank you for your light.  Fall:  soon we shall meet – please be kind (rewind).

I have had a lot of life together lately.  My boys and I vacated up to the grand’rents for a change of scenery/untapped energy sources to connect with.  The boys played; I read (like a book a day – Life Together, Shaped by the Story, Life with God, etc.  Like cramming for finals before seminary:  my brain kinda hurt); we all chatted about life and the daily and church and bearing the Light of Christ and baptism and the beauty of local blueberries and how long will it take Granddaddy to separate all the jumbled Lego pieces from my brother’s childhood into their proper kits?  You know:  good stuff.

We came home.  Jason’s parents came to town:  talking, family showers, missional gatherings, good food.

Northwest Yearly Meeting came, along with Wretched Heat which “encouraged” us to participate in YM moreso than usual:  hmmm, sit at home with no a/c and the stir-crazy boys, or deposit boys in programmed childcare and enjoy the conversations and stories of adults in an air conditioned environment?  The answer was clear.  I even managed the inter-generational ice cream social with two boys up past their bedtimes without the aid of the husband who was serving his time on the softball field (in 90+ temps – we’ll just call it “dedication”).

Then:  off to the beach to enjoy time with Jason’s family before dispersal back to our corners of the world.  Tomorrow:  VBS.  Next week:  Grad Camp.

That’s a lot of together.

In the midst of that activity, I still find my mind clinging to the thoughts and ponderings and rubix cube cunundrum that my brain is processing of “how do we do Life Together?”  I know Bonhoeffer is known for writing his timeless Christian classics, but this book seriously shifted some paradigms in my noggin, and I’m not sure what to do with it.  Questions of rhythms of life with a family, emptying oneself, confession – individual and corporate, the compounding elements of ministry (interesting:  Bonhoeffer says one must master certain ministries – holding ones tongue, meekness, etc. – before engaging in the ministry of delivering a word; otherwise, it will be too tainted by our desires for outcomes of this Word rather than being empty enough to be a vessel of Truth).

I really want to just sit with this stuff; but I can’t.  And I probably shouldn’t:  it’s best “field-tested”.  If only I can shove the grocery lists out of the foreground of my mind …. or maybe I should see if I missed that ministry of managing consumption chapter. 

“What did you say?”  “Supercalifragilisticexpialidous.  It’s something to say when you don’t know what to say.”

……….

Last Sunday I worshiped with the faith community at Jacob’s Well.  Visiting other faith communities is an interesting experience:  will I stand out?  Will I feel comfortable?  Will I stand aside and analyze, or will I enter in?  Will I know how to enter in?

Jacob’s Well is known as an emerging church.  For me, it felt like worship at camp, which is where I’ve had some of the most powerful experiences of corporate worship.  I was able to enter in, minus the distraction of a squirming child behind me who did *not* want to go to Sunday School (totally understandable:  he’d done a bit of “new” over the past days).  And I found myself wanting to know more of the community stories.  The worship team is in a time of transition, and so they sang more songs than usual, songs that were written by the worship team.  Songs that seemed to be more meaningful or owned as they came out of community experiences.

…………..

I enjoy looking at the Calendar of Events for different faith communities:  how do they spend their time outside of corporate worship.  I would so be at this event:

Blog silence.  Pretty typical on this little Wordpress blogaroo.  Other blogs seem so prolific:  so much to say, so much to say, so much to say, so much to say (okay, so I’m listening to DMB right now:  make my hubby proud).  When I started blogging, I found myself attracted to two types of posts:  informational and formational.  Informational:  giving terms and naming concepts to my experience of wandering post-college.  Formational:  sharing stories of their own orientation, disorientation, and surprising reorientation in which I could relate or find myself in their journey.

But lately?  So.Much.Information.  Answers:  so many answers.  Or critiques.  Or slams.  Or “I’m in the Emergent/Missional/Converging/Reformata/Baby-Wearing/Attachment Parenting/Babywise/Dave Ramsey/Fox News/CNBC/Obama Hopeful/Obama Critical” bandcamp.  As more and more people connect or input on the internet, the more polarized I see it becoming.  And I get sad.

I don’t feel I have answers:  just my journey.  And lately I’ve been hesitent of sharing that story because of the way people treat me:  “Keep your head up!”, “Boy, it must be tough!”, “You’ll get through this!”  Perhaps that’s the eternal plight of a melancholy who allows folks into the inner sanctum:  I didn’t think I made it sound “that bad” – it’s just the way I see things.  Folks from a different generation would probably say that censoring my thoughts or being more selective in the means of how I share would be prudent.  And it probably would:  but goodness, I don’t think my wiring has anything labeled “prudent” in there – believe me, I’ve looked.

This past weekend I got to participate in a gathering called Kaleo:  both energizing and discouraging.  Energizing in that I realized how much I adore being in situations like that:  with people eager to listen and contribute and discern the presence of God for the betterment of the world and the adoration of Christ.  Discouraging in that the next day while I was having a really rough time of parenting (Jason went snowboarding at the last minute with a friend), I wondered what could possibly be the purpose of going out to a conference, getting excited, and then coming home to fold laundry and put away dishes and deal with fairly crabby children with little to no thanks.

This is where I should input some sort of take away:  “But I realized that Christ was really inconvenienced when he came to earth.  Whatever I do to the least of these, I do unto him.  I realized I should find joy in all circumstances.  I found peace in realizing that these days will pass, and I need to keep my eyes on the future.”

Excuse me while I try to stop rolling my eyes and making my “thooey” face.  I didn’t realize those things.  I realized I needed to dance.  To Really Bad Pop Music.  So I did:  Ipod blasting while the boys were confined to their rooms, I rocked out to boy bands and Brit pop and a little Ms. Spears.  It didn’t provide answers, but it tired out The Furies, and now my butt hurts (getting so old).

Something that stood out to me at Kaleo, or perhaps it was the Recalibrating Church conference, was the idea of takeaways.  Somebody somewhere said that in Olden Church the priests did not exposit on the Scriptures:  no takeaways.  They allowed their congregants to enter into the story, to participate, to be formed and transformed by the Spirit through the Word.

Sometimes I wish I had answers or take-aways.  Maybe that would make my blogging more directed, prolific, marketable.  But then I’d probably skim it just like I do so many other sites.  Our society seems to be moving beyond “just the facts, ma’am” — but to what?  And how do we meet them there?

Maybe the answer, or rather the experience, is simply in the dance.  Which won’t always be bad pop music:  I’ve also been known to blast Mr. Sinatra as well as Mr. Diamond.