The Margins

“Mommy, do you know there is a song with my name in it?” Mercy asked me on Monday.

“Can you sing it for me?” I replied.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases…his Mercy never comes to an end…they are new every morning…new every morning…great is thy faithfulness.”

“That’s beautiful! Where did you learn that song, kiddo?” I responded.

“Daddy sings it to me at night,” she answered proudly.

That same day I had spent a long time talking with a close friend who lost someone very dear to her in a tragic accident on New Year’s Day. We spoke of pain and loss and the incomprehensibility of so much of it. How difficult it can be to really grasp what mercy is. God’s activity, his faithfulness in our lives, in the lives of those we love; His presence in our communities and cities and in our world: these things can be so hidden and can look so radically different from how we imagine them. And our hopes can be more than frustrated: they can be destroyed. And yet we receive from God this promise of mercy, not as a one-time gift but as this persistent, always-present, renewed act the Lord of the universe daily extends to us.

Mercy and mystery.

Sovereignty and suffering.

Incarnation and crucifixion.

Do we dare draw near to the unceasing, steadfast love of the Lord?

Yesterday good friends of ours were married in a lovely ceremony in Pasadena. They asked Mercy to be one of their flower girls, and she performed her task beautifully. She didn’t make it very long up front, though. She and the other little flower girl were supposed to stand up with the bridesmaids until Daddy started the worship time, but a few minutes into the ceremony I caught her mouthing something to me where I sat in the second row. I motioned for her to stay where she was, which led her to annunciate with a bit more urgency: “Mom. I. Have. To. Go. Pee.”

I jumped up and made my way to the end of the aisle where she was already waiting, and with Elijah hanging on one side of me and my little poofy-dressed girl on the other, we hurried out of the sanctuary. We spent the rest of the ceremony hanging out in the back of the sanctuary in the largest kid-section I have ever seen in a wedding. There were a ton of infants and toddlers, and Mercy happily gave all the little girls turns with her flower girl basket and petals.

The day of the wedding, Mercy awoke with much excitement and anticipation for the day’s events. And one of the ways she expressed that was by setting up the wedding using some car tracks for the aisle and her princess figurines to represent the various members of the wedding party.

Mercy is the little Sleeping Beauty figurine standing up front with Snow White, the other little flower girl: I am the big Sleeping Beauty figurine, sitting in the pew. Her cousin, Jordan, is the little Cinderella with the other ring-bearer, Ariel.

I think my favorite were her choices for Pastor Kevin and the bride and groom:

On Friday the phone rang and it was a friend up the street who was calling me from the hospital. She just lost her husband a few weeks ago, and her own health is a concern as well. She was at Good Sam being treated for Pneumonia, and she wanted us to know. This meant her boys were home alone. I promised her I would cook dinner for them and bring it over.

I was taking care of Mercy’s best friend all day Friday, and as the dinner hour approached, it was no small amount of chaos in the house as I tried to cook. It ended up that I could only pull off one nice dinner, and that was the dinner that got packed up into Tupperware containers and stacked on the dining room table. My kids got scrambled eggs and some fruit and vegetables.

As Mercy and Aaron gazed longingly at the noodles and muffins that were packed away, Mercy turned to me and asked: “Mommy, I would like to have some of that food.”

“We are sharing this food with some kids whose Mommy is sick and can’t take care of them tonight,” I replied.

“But I want those muffins,” she continued.

“I know. I do too. But we are going to give away all of these muffins. We are being like the little boy John who gave away EVERYTHING he had instead of just giving a little bit like P. Benjamin Methuselah (from the Walt Wangerin re-telling of the story of the Widow’s coin in the Arch book series). God loves it when we give all that we have instead of just giving a little bit.”

Mercy paused and thought about this.

Then she looked up at me with a big smile: “I know, Mommy! God can heal their Mommy and then she can go home and make food for her kids…and then we can eat these muffins.”

Apparently my daughter has a robust theology of healing, especially when blueberry muffins are on the line.

A friend ministering in the wealthy community of Laguna Beach recently posted on her blog about how the perspective of her kids will be shaped by the affluence around her. One thing I appreciate about Patty’s blog is her honesty and willingness to ask tough questions about what it means to live in the land of the highly-resourced, especially considering their proximity to so much need.

normal is my problem. i’m not concerned about my kids being spoiled. we make plenty of money to be comfortable, but mia will never have chanel sunglasses or a coach purse while she is in junior high or high school…o, i’m not worried about my kids being spoiled, because it won’t be an option in our house, even if we wanted to. but, i am concerned that my kids will always feel poor because we aren’t millionaires. normal to them, will be the new car, juicy couture clothes, designer makeup, etc. because it’s what all of their friends will have.

As I read her post, I marveled at how mainstream luxury has become. Coach? Chanel? In junior high? You’ve got to be kidding me.

I remember having a similar reaction to hearing the litany of spa treatments that are now the norm for young teens or hearing of high school kids sporting Tiffany’s jewelry. At church.

Then last night I was reading through this week’s Newsweek when I spotted an article titled: “Branding for Beginners.” The short piece examines the prevalence of brand name-dropping in books targeting teen girls. The author writes:

“Chanel Vamp lip gloss, Jimmy Choo heels, Gauloises cigarettes, Absolut Vodka: they’re the kind of brand-name products you’d expect to find in a glossy magazine. But they’re popping up with astounding frequency in novels aimed at teen girls…brand names appeared an average of more than once per page: 1,553 references in all” (in six best-selling teen novels).

The article concludes:

“The Judy Blume books I read as a kid were about life lessons and defining yourself…The life lesson here is that you can buy your identity.”

From hip-hop to tween-lit, the gospel of bling reigns. Which is why JCrew honestly believes that I am going to buy Cashmere for my two-year old.

One of the consistent things in our neighborhood is the very steady flow of ice-cream trucks up and down our street. In the six years that I have lived here, I have never bought ice-cream from any of them. Until yesterday

I can’t remember the occasion, but I had told the kids last week that I would set a dollar out and the next ice-cream truck we heard, we could go outside and spend our dollar. Well, we never heard one that day (hard to imagine), but yesterday the kids remembered what I had said and when we heard the familiar music, asked me if we could go. Something truly remarkable had just happened in our home: all three kids took afternoon naps. At the same time. And so I was happy to allow them this special treat.

We ran down our stairs, without shoes, and out our front door but we were too late. The truck had already crossed 30th and I wasn’t going to cross the street barefoot. “Let’s sit on our step and wait to see if there will be another one,” I suggested. The kids were thrilled to run around in the grass and build little twig houses and blow dandelions while we waited. And sure enough, a few minutes later we heard another truck

We met the ice-cream truck (van, actually) on the corner of 30th and Kenwood, and Mercy very quickly pointed out the pink ice-cream cone she wanted. After realizing that just about everything else pictured on the side of the truck cost more than a dollar, I asked the man for the pink ice-cream cone. We walked back to our steps, and the kids giddily sat down to share their treat. They took turns with bites and licks, and their soon-pink faces and big smiles gave me much joy. Doug arrived home from his study session while we were still out front, and he was given the bottom of the cone filled with melted pink to eat.

While we had been out front waiting, we had made friends with two little kids riding scooters on our street. I had not seen them before, and they motioned a few houses south of us when I asked them where they stayed. When we heard the ice-cream truck, they ran home to get some money, but by the time they made it back the truck was gone. I assured them that another one would likely come soon. When it did, I was horrified to see these two kids running after the truck, begging it to stop, while the driver accelerated and drove away. And I could not help but wonder if it was because of the color of their skin.

About the same time we had heard the first truck approaching, a cruiser had come racing up our street. Having just seen a flurry of young men on bikes and on foot, streaming from 30th, I had that moment where I had to decide if we should turn around and go back inside. For whatever reason I decided to keep going and so we walked, barefoot, Elijah dangling from my arms and the two big kids holding hands, to a corner that has been the center of so much violence in our neighborhood, with the black and white cruiser creeping slowly next to us. A second cruiser came from the opposite direction and the two met just north of us on Kenwood, parked their vehicles, and entered the property of one of our neighbors. And we picked out our ice-cream.

Doug made a comment to me the other day about how people make a big deal about where we live but “it’s not like we are saving the world or anything.” My response to him was that while that was true, there is a constant level of fear and tension that we live with that most others (at least those who have a choice) do not. I was especially struck by this on our trip to Denver when I was standing in the backyard of Aunt Kristin’s house where my kids were playing, and I caught myself constantly looking around and looking behind me and I realized: wait, I don’t have to do that here.

It’s hard to quantify: the fear that hovers over little decisions like buying ice-cream. It’s hard to quantify: the ever-present shadow of young men, murdered. It’s hard to quantify: remembering all of the kids who were out playing the night someone was shot, and choosing to walk outside with your own.

On a mission trip in Honduras a few years ago, we were all sitting with some of the villagers around a fire in the evening. One of the members of our team said, “Let’s all go around and share our favorite Bible verse.”

This sort of thing can be tough for us scripturally challenged Methodists! Someone mentioned John 3:16, somebody else said 1 Corinthians 13. A Honduran woman said, through a translator, “I love that passage toward the end of Luke’s gospel, where Jesus says that the world is coming to an end, the moon will turn blood red, and everything will be burned and disappear. Such a comfort.”

That’s her favorite Bible passage? A comfort?

A nurse, sitting next to me whispered, “I talked with that woman in the clinic today. She has had four children, three of whom died in infancy because of hunger.”

Then it hit me. Sometimes the difference between bad news and good news (gospel) is where you happen to be when you get the news. What sounded like bad news to me, “This world, which has been so good to you and your family, is ending. God is going to destroy all of it. This isn’t the world God wanted; this is the world you built” seen through the eyes of the poor, is good news, gospel.

From William Willimon’s blog, A Peculiar Prophet

I read an interesting piece this past week over at Mark Galli’s blog where he quotes a portion of a recent Atlantic Monthly article titled: “Marry Him.” He leads with this quotation from the article:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go. Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year.

Check out the whole piece and share your thoughts with Mark who writes: “I’d love to hear how it does strike you. I just don’t know what it’s like to be a 20-or 30-something at the turn of the 21st century…”

People who have encountered the cross, people who have carried a small part of it, know something that is the source of incredible joy: that evil is only the second-most powerful force in the universe. Do you know that? That is what the cross tells us—that there is something bigger and wider and deeper than evil, and that is the power of suffering love. Do you believe that?

From “When the Cross Lays Hold on You”, a sermon preached by Peter Storey in Duke chapel from Sermons from Duke Chapel (edited by William Willimon).

Last night we were so grateful to have someone very dear to us come for a visit. He was in San Diego for business, and he was able to shift his outbound flight from San Diego to LAX (and willing to forsake a day at a pretty amazing spa resort) to come up and see us. Matt had the chance to see where we live, see first-hand some of the exciting dynamics of having three children so close together in age, hang out with my sister and my parents a bit, and of course play princess over pancakes this morning. And it never would have happened if we hadn’t been chatting on Facebook a couple of weeks ago.

While I am most certainly on the very low end of the spectrum of Facebook involvement, it has proven to be a great way to reconnect (or stay connected) with some people I love.

We did it.

My parents flew down for a long weekend and today they treated all the grandkids (and parents!) to a day at Disneyland.

I told Mercy that we were going to meet Cinderella. I told her other things that we would do there, but I don’t think she heard anything after that. She wore her special Valentine’s Day dress to show Cinderella and she even had a “happy cry” in the van as we pulled up to the gates this morning. When I asked her what she wanted to tell Cinderella when she saw her, she thought about it and said: “Welcome to Disneyland!”

The Disney commercials are a bit misleading. They always show the characters wandering the park, kneeling down to talk to kids and hug them. We didn’t see any characters anywhere the entire day, other than the Alice in Wonderland Queen racing past the Dumbo ride on her way to a break. But in our brochure we read that there was a place you could go to meet the princesses, so after a few rides, an overpriced lunch, and some rigorous Jedi training for Mercy’s cousin, we made our way to the “Princess Fantasy Faire.”

There was a line to get into this little area where three princesses awaited to meet and greet our little ones. I asked one of the staff and found out that indeed Cinderella was inside. And so we waited. And waited. It was easily the most slow-moving, annoying line of the day, and we all made comments at various points about whether this was even worth it. Mercy’s cousin was a trooper and stuck it out, as did my sister (though her husband drew the line at princesses, and he and my dad took their other little boy to meet Mickey). Jordan, Aaron and Elijah were the only boys in the entire line.

When we finally made it to the entrance area, we spotted our first princess: Jasmine. Aaron could not take his eyes off her glittery midriff, and Mercy was eager to tell her about the Jasmine doll that her Uncle David had given her for Christmas.

Next in line was Mulan. Her hair was amazing and she was very sweet with Mercy, but Aaron kept his distance.

As we said goodbye to Mulan and turned to go, we spotted the final princess: there, in all her blue-dress glory on the floor, sat the one and only Cinderella. Mercy took the next few steps in almost slow-motion and then she stopped. Then a giant grin covered her face and she ran full-speed and jumped into the seated princesses arms. And as cheesy as I think the whole Princess thing is most of the time, my little girl’s raw delight made me cry.

But it was actually Aaron who stole the show. As Cinderella talked with them, Mercy made sure to tell her “welcome to Disneyland”, and Aaron listed off all of his favorite Thomas the Tank Engine Trains for her. Then she invited them to sit down on her puffy dress for the requisite photo opp. Now Aaron has a very goofy smile-thing that he does when you take his picture. He squints his eyes, sticks out his chin and makes this pained look. But as the photo shoot progressed, his silly grin started to morph and his eyes actually started to close and his head began to bow. By the last photo, he was in full prayer posture.

When it was time to get up and say goodbye, Aaron still refused to open his eyes. Cinderella put her hands on either side of Aaron’s face and gave him a big lipstick kiss on his forehead. He stood there, frozen, head bowed and eyes closed, hands clenched on either side. And he did not move. For a long time. This totally cracked Cinderella up, and pretty soon people were coming over to see the little boy who had been frozen by her kiss. Finally, she raised her hand to high-five Aaron, and he lifted his own to meet hers. And he smiled.

And every moment in the annoying line? Forgotten.