"THIS IS SO FAST!!! **bump bump** AAAH! TREES! **crash white wash sled flip body flying** ...cold..."

All those things they never taught us

"Sometimes I think the church teaches silly things around the edges and neglects the most central things of all. What is it to gather around word and sacrament Sunday by Sunday if not to build up the body of Christ for the sake of the world?" ~Don Saliers, Professor of Theology and Worship, Candler School of Thelogy at Emory University.

Being a Christian most of my life really screwed me up theologically. Of course, I say that affectionately, and recognize that given the chance I probably wouldn't have had it any other way. Listening to the Thanksgiving episode (11/24) of Speaking of Faith propelled me to reflect on how my entire pre-16 year old life was built on a severely incomplete understanding of communion and just about every other aspect of Christianity, and further to reflect on how lucky I am that as a high schooler raised in a Christian church at least I was genuinely A.) Christian and B.) interested in politics and learning by practice how to work for systemic change to better people's lives. Several years of bombarding myself with "Christian rock" and attending youth events and camps that were exclusively me-and-Jesus (including some better ones that were me-and-Jesus-and-love-even-the-kids-you-don't-like) meant I was genuinely Christian in the sense that I was "saved" and trying to live by example to "save" others. And there was little, if any, theological connection to my equally genuine interest in making the world a better place (other than the daily prayers I said for persecuted Christians around the world). But when me-and-Jesus theology abruptly had a system failure and plummeted to its death, thankfully I had political activism to keep me active and asking questions about the world. After several months of quasi-mourning the death of my faith I started to wonder if politics and Christianity should have been intersecting and integrated in my life rather than running parrallel. Thus began my journey to discover all those things fundamental to Christianity that somehow they never taught me in church. To date my most important discovery--brought to mind again by the discussion communion--was that they never taught us how to ask questions. For example, my dad--and pastor--probably preached theologically richer than the grip of me-and-Jesus would allow me to understand. But those younger and more hip youth workers and band members who had the most immediate influence on me worked within such a narrow theological framework that even when I was encouraged to ask questions, my questions didn't penetrate the theological wall we erected around us "saved" Christians.
The purpose of this blog is as scattered, complex, and multi-facated as my life, but as of this entry I hope one purpose will be to help me to occassionally make sense of the now swirling and ever growing mess of those fundamental things I never learned in youth group. So that not only can I better learn how to ask questions, I can help other youth question that which they have taken for truth.

Waiting for the ice to break?

Global warming was the topic of lunch conversation today. I thought of it again as I nearly fell through the ice while skate skiing across Loon lake with my brother. (If you haven't experienced that kind of moment--the kind that paralyzes your breath with panic--I highly recommend it). This time I heard the familiar crunch of my skies through the first thin layer of crust over the snow, and all seemed well as I scanned the snow covered lake immediately in front of me...But when i looked down I heard ice cracking and saw water running over my skies. I laughed a warning to my brother (who was grinning and poking his pole through open water) and used some mad turning skills to get to thicker ice in time to stay above water. Once a hundred yards back, we were able to survey the area and realized that it was easy to spot thin ice (under snow it's bluer and generally not quite as snow-covered) on both sides of the spot we'd tried to ski through. Still, our mistake could be rationalized easily enough...perhaps in the same way the Bush administration and some scientists are rationalizing a lack of human effect on global warming. (Come on, treat me to this one analogy, please?) A few reasons we should have been able to trust the ice: 1) yesterday the lake held an ice fishing contest, several fourwheelers and snowmobiles. 2) we were following the snowmobile tracks. 3) we had just skied over the other half of the lake and even determined via an icefishing hole that the ice was a good six inches thick (2in. required to hold a person). 4) the direction in which we were skiing showed no signs of thin ice within 10 yards or so. Well, any proud Ole or Lena could give you an essay on the flaws of those reasons. It had been 32 degrees for the better part of the week and today, the snowmobile tracks we followed could have been made two weeks ago, the icefishing was one the other half of the lake, just cuz one half of the lake is frozen doesn't mean the other half doesn't contain a hot spring, and while the part I almost sunk through didn't look like thin ice--likely because of deeper snow due to driftage--if I'd just looked up to survey what was going on 10 yards away I would have realized I was skiing across a bridge between thin ice--i.e. i was on thin ice myself. However, I was so focused on where I wanted to go, where I wanted there to be safe ice that by only staring at what was right in front of me, it was easy to convince myself everything was OK. I could only stay in my own world for so long though--pretty soon I was watching the only thing between me and a cold bath disintegrate.
The folks in the great mountains have been watching glaciers melt for years; those on tropical coasts have been witnessing coral reefs bleaching; now the signs are sadly becoming clearer every season around the world. Everywhere is affected now...and we've fooled ourselves onto thin ice. What's really the clincher about global climate change, though, is that as the U.S. bumbles across the ice, we're dragging the world with us. Disgusting.

Christmas talk

I usually go pretty skinny on notes when i talk, but i somewhat incompletely filled this one in so it occasionally makes sense.

Christmas sermon, Riverside UMC 2005
Scripture: John 1: 1-14.

Good morning this Christmas! I’m deeply humbled to be able to share with you this joyous morning.
So, today we celebrate the coming of the word and the light into the world. It seems prudent to ask some questions. Why is Jesus called light? What does it mean to follow the light of the world? What does it mean to spread that light to all, that all might be children of God?
I’d like to start thinking about these questions by doing a little imagining. Come with me on a picnic, will you? It’s been winter for awhile here, let’s pretend it’s a warm summer day and we’re heading to the river with some family or friends for a nice afternoon. Imagine you’re just sitting down to a yummy picnic lunch when suddenly behind you you hear some water splashing and the sound of someone struggling. You turn around and there’s a person in the water, calling for help! What do you do? (congregation responds…jump in, throw a floatie). OK, so you get the person up on the beach, safe and sputtering, and you’re tending to him when you hear the same sounds of struggling again. You turn around and this time, there are 3 people, drowning in the river. Now what do you do? (grab a friend or family member and go in, etc.) Alright, so it might be a challenge but in pinch you could probably save the 3 people. But no sooner have you gotten them up on the shore than you turn around to loud shouts to see some 15, maybe 20 people in the water. What do you do? (pray, call for more help) What if before you know it, there are 40 people? (eventually someone says… “Go up stream to see who or what’s throwing the people in the river”).
Maybe you didn’t quite expect that answer. I think often we do feel called, as Christians, to jump in the river and do what we can to save those struggling in the water. But when the water is filled with strugglers, and we are doing all we can to stay afloat ourselves, the situation can seem not only overwhelming, but hopeless. Here is where Christmas comes in. Friends, that first Christmas was one big surprise filled with hope. For Christmas is about that journey upstream.
I’d like to visit once again the story as it’s told in Gospels.
A girl, a virgin who is engaged to be married, is visited by an angel and told she’ll give birth to God’s son. Even though it’s a mortal crime, literally punishable by death, to have extra-marital relations, Mary takes the risk and is willing to be God’s servant. Then when it’s almost time for the baby, Mary and Joseph must travel. There is no room in the inn and they are given shelter in a stable with the animals. The newborn Jesus is laid on a feeding trough, on a bed of straw. The angels don’t announce the arrival of baby Jesus to King Herod, or to the Pharisees, as would be expected; instead the angels appear to lowly shepherds—as Pastor Don explained last night, the “nobodies” of society. In fact King Herod doesn’t hear about the birth until some time later, and only through three foreigners who later disobey his selfish orders. Why? When Jesus could have been born anywhere, to any woman, why was he born to a young virgin, and why were his first hours spent in a strange, harsh place in the company of the lowest of society? Perhaps because Jesus came as a savior for all people, not just the rich and the established. And perhaps because in Jesus’ day, the problem upstream was that to be a young woman meant you had few rights and little importance in society; perhaps because in Jesus’ day, to be lower on the societal ladder was to be considered less than human; perhaps his birth was the first confrontation in a long line of confrontations with societal norms that Jesus found unacceptable. Now, we have an entire Christian year to study the many times Jesus directly challenged a system or institution, be it political, religious, or cultural, that was unfair or unjust. Today, may his humble birth remind us to look about ourselves and identify the areas of our life and areas of society in which we have grown complacent and comfortable with the status quo; Christmas should be a time when we look around to find the areas of our life and society in which we are perfectly happy to worship a child who may as well have been born in a hotel or a hospital. Christmas should be a time when we ask ourselves, “Is it okay that 1/6 of the world’s population is severely food insecure?” Christmas should be a time when we should ask ourselves, “Is it okay that the leading cause of death in the world for ages 15 to 49 is a completely preventable disease?” HIV/AIDS/Pneumonia. Is it OK that here in the cold, wintery state of MN, more than 1,000 people turned away from full homeless shelters on any given night? Is it OK that over half of 20,000 homeless or precariously housed Minnesotans are children? Is it OK that 41% are working part or full time and still can’t make enough to afford rental or mortgage?[1] Christmas, of all days, should be a time when the church confronts the world about these unacceptable realities in the same way that Jesus did on that night so many years ago. For most of all, Christmas should be a time when rather than thinking about how to do our duty by saving one or two people from the river, Christmas is the time when we go upriver. And we go upriver in the name of a God who didn’t send a son to preach that we should help people when it’s ‘convenient,’ but in the name of a God who sent his to be born of a virgin in a stable, worshipped first by the lowest of society.
Now it’s easy for me to stand up here and talk about the problems of the world and how we, as followers and worshippers of Christ, are called to confront them. But we all know the solutions are complex—so complex there is much disagreement among even Christians as to which problems are we should confront and how to do so. I’m sure if I asked every one of you the best way to end world hunger, for example, you would have a plethora of suggestions. The problems of Jesus’ time were also complicated, but rather than turn his back he faced them head on—he began his life in the company of livestock and shepherds.
The United Methodist Church has a long history reaching back to John Wesley, who spoke against the institutions of poverty and slavery, of refusing to be complacent in the world. In 1908 the church created a social creed that called for the “abolition of child labor,” and “a living wage in every industry,” among many things.[2] Today, we send delegates to general conference every four years to reexamine our church’s stance on issues ranging from how to be stewards of God’s creation, to how to care for the most vulnerable in society. Our social principles reflect a general consensus that while issues facing society are complicated, difficult, often political and sometimes divisive, to simply stand by and act as if nothing is wrong would be absolutely un-Christ-like. Thus even though we have a long list of principles, and a gigantic book of Resolutions to go along with it, they are not church doctrine and to be a United Methodist doesn’t mean we must agree with all of them. But especially if we disagree with some of them, it is all the more important that the principles be the starting point of dialogue about these issues. I know the Church and Society ministry team here at Riverside is planning on handing these out at some point, they’re just trying to figure out funding and what not. So there are a few in the back if you’d like to take a look for today, and all the principles are on the web at www.umc-gbcs.org.
The General Board of Church and Society, of which I’m a member, is the general board charged with implementing the social principles in the church and in the world. We do that in two ways.
1) We work on behalf of the UM church for policy change in D.C. and in the United Nations in New York.
a. We have the only privately owned building on Capitol Hill. They say that proximity is power on the Hill, and we may not be advisors to the president but there is something amazing about being right next to the Supreme Court building and only a block from the Senate and House office buildings.
b. Lobbying – Of the 24 some staff members of GBCS, 5 could be described as full time lobbyists. They cover areas of civil and human rights, global population issues (HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, children, women’s rights, etc.), economic and environmental justice, peace with justice (foreign policy, war and peace issues), alcohol and other addictions and health care, and the United Nations.
c. Resolutions – OK, so there are some United Methodists out there in D.C. working and lobbying on our behalf. What purpose do board members serve? Well, besides holding the staff accountable and helping them determine where we should be more proactive vs. reactive in our work, we’re also able to make resolutions in response to current events. This past meeting in October we passed resolutions to: Stop the torture of prisoners, stand in solidarity with Liberia as it transitions to democracy after 14 years of civil war, and Call for a plan to End U.S. military presence in Iraq
2) YOU! I mean this very seriously. It feels great to be part of a connectional church and know that our church is acting on our statements at a national and international level, but we can do almost nothing without individual support of United Methodists throughout the denomination.
Here at Riverside I was excited to be able to attend a church and society meeting before leaving for school, and I’m psyched that the group is so alive and doing great things for the community and church.
-- But Christmas should remind us that just because we go to a church that already has “that committee” doesn’t mean we aren’t individually responsible to hold in our hearts and manifest in our lives a Christian worldview.
-- Here in the U.S. we are able to make our Christian voices heard by simply calling up our Senators and Representatives and by engaging ourselves in the political process. Check out www.umc-gbcs.org to sign up for weekly action alerts about what’s going nationally, what GBCS is up to, and how you can be involved. We can also affect positive change here in our local community and state. (some political pump up…so often difficulties facing folk in our local community and state can be solved by going upriver and committing to a cause).
And acting in society doesn’t always have to be political. Jesus didn’t always just march right up to Caesar and say, “I don’t like the way you’re running this country.” Rather he lived his life in a way that lifted up those in the margins of society, and in everything he did gave his love for humanity priority over societal or cultural expectations of him.
As followers of that baby in a manger, we must do everything we can to see that the hungry are able to feed themselves; that the naked are able to clothe themselves. And sometimes, this means more than rescuing people from the river—it means going to see why they’re drowning. This Christmas, I pray we do not worship a Christ who might as well been born to a married, experienced mother on a comfortable bed with the help of midwives. Today, let’s celebrate a most unconventional birth and commit again to shake ourselves from satisfaction with the way things are. Let’s worship a Christ child who still, today, gives light to the world by shattering the world’s expectations. And let’s remember that it is us, Christ’s followers here on earth, who must be the conduits for that light. WE must spread the news of his birth; we must share with others the joy of a baby born for all, and we must be living testimonies to the Christmas message of righting what is wrong and speaking out on behalf of those who society would rather forget or ignore.
[1] Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless; www.mnhomelesscoalition.org
[2] http://www.interpretermagazine.org/interior_print.asp?ptid=16&mid=5430&pagemode=print

Time to be Perfect

Plato was all wrong about perfection. There's no idea world with perfect models of everything.
I've touched perfection. Often it comes when you aren't trying to do anything of the sort, when you're just chilling and doing what comes naturally, when awareness merely means pushing your consciousness higher, higher, to the next level until it converges with the consciousness of another person.
One instance of perfection: I won't confine it or mis-define it by shoving it into the category of "music," because the sound we made wasn't what mattered (although it was pretty cool). Nate was on congas and bongos and i was on drumset. It wasn't quite like any messing around we'd done before, or any jamming i'd done before with other musicians, because this time rather than focusing on what we, as individuals, could "add" to what the other was doing, we were only aware of what happened as the intricacies of our rhythms floated through time and space and created something no person could create by herself, even with a 5-track recorder. We shifted through 4/4, 3/4, 7/8, 5/4, 2/2...together, polyrhythmically, and seemlessly. The time signatures had no beginning and no ending; as he laid, say, a 4/4 conga base pattern and I travelled listlessly in and out of 3/4 and 2/4, he would accent to offset my layers of time and add 5, or 7, to the dimension. The result--the sound that eventually reached our ears and minds--was original and organic and as we danced and made eye contact and laughed we both knew that in that moment, the other sibling would be meaningless without the perfect space between us. It wasn't about what we were creating or producing or performing. It was about how i'd been playing five more years than him and i valued his playing just as much as he valued mine. It was about how Kristina as an Individual and Nathan as an Individual didn't need to exist because it wasn't like we each had something "to offer," it was like as we became conscious that our rhythms were converging and being perfect we were of the same consciousness, in the same dimension of existence, in the same reality. In those moments our playing happened as if it was being done by the same person with eight limbs. In those moments what we created was a small, perfect part of who we were, as two people, as friends, as brother and sister.

ICE SOCCER

This one's for you, Caitlin.

Today I discovered the BEST game EVER! It even tops rollersoccer, which my brother and Caitlin's siblings invented sometime around 7th grade in the church parking lot. That game was fun because two of us were big (the girls) and the other two were small. So we'd rollerblade to top speed and then accidentally run them over.
ICESOCCER, however, is more egalitarian in nature because it's based on the philosophy that anyone is capable of falling face first, or butt first, when everyone is using the same tiny amount of friction to fight gravity. A close kin to broomball, which is like hockey except with brooms, a ball, and no skates, ICESOCCER is soccer with smaller goals (we used bookbox sized cardboard boxes) played on ice. It's especially awesome after a couple inches of powder, because snow provides some very illusionary traction. Remember 9th grade gym class--whether you were no star, but somewhat athletic, or not athletic at all--feeling such animosity towards the kid who always seemed to beat out her challenger and score goal after goal? Imagine her making the break-away, going for the shot, and eating snow. Everytime. That, my friends, is what makes ICESOCCER the sport of the century. Plus it's even a blast for two people--my bro and i play full contact--because the break-aways happen more frequently (anytime one player falls down) and thus result in more hilarious wipeouts (generally as soon as the still-standing player realizes she might actually score a goal). All formerly supersweet combo soccer foot tricks cause a solid butt-kissing; all carefully aimed shots are foiled by snow, big boots, and a mobile goal; most of all, moving fast of any kind has disastrous implications for all involved. Being in shape is optional, having good balance is no particular advantage, and dignity means being able to laugh the hardest. Finally, I highly recommend playing at dusk with a black and white ball. Then even people with good eyesight are out of luck.

Plastics manufacturing part 2

This was supposed to go under my question about plastics but apparently one shouldn't have more than a 150 character answer to such a question:

Then once i was relatively successful i would campaign to convince the Kenyan government to stop manufacturing disposable plastics, which end up in the streets holding water that breeds mosquitoes who spread malaria. Wangari Maathai's idea. Check her out.

in the beginning God created snow

so i like snow. my slight obsession with the cold, winter, and everything frozen sent me on this train of thought: hm. i have time before lunch but not enough to do any real work. hey, look at that cute little button in the corner of my screen...*click* you've done it, kristina, you've gotten yourself started and now backing out from completing the Three Easy Steps to create a blog would just be SISSY. ok, you need a name, one that won't be too serious but will both justify creating this blog and be uniquely you and hopefully not too cliche. *look up* IT'S SNOWING! LOOK AT THE SNOW!! Oh my gosh this is so awesome I'm so excited!!! Oliver (dog), look out the window! Look at it falling!! I can't wait till it's time to go get nate and his friends so we can play broomball on the lake which i just realized with all this snow i must shovel off again!!! WOOHOO! SHOVELLING! *opening the door, happy face, snow face, close door* Ok, a name for the blog. something that explains my ever-present and impossibly too long to-do list, something that represents how i usually have more to say after i should be done talking because i can't help but constantly think of the philosophical and theological implications of EVERYTHING, and something that's a little serious to remind myself that while i may be like a little kid life who often thinks existentially of life as a game, it is a serious game.
In further posts i'll try to spare you drawing out my analogy further. I'll also try to construct better sentences.
For now, i'm hoping this first post is literally coming from out of a blizzard. SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!