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Comestible and Other Sundry Surprises

May 16, 2011 By 3 Comments

Ten pounds of tomatoes, ten containers of blackberries, containers of known and unknown vegetables and fruits. (I had to send a picture to a friend to discover what two of them were–jicama and tomatillos.)

Bountiful Baskets, a food co-op, now serves the Dallas area. Which means yesterday Chris and I peeled said ten pounds of tomatoes, and today I use them, along with the onions and garlic from the basket and basil and oregano from my garden, to make and can jars of marinara sauce (in twenty minute Keegan-nap intervals). And also, I made a blackberry tart yesterday. And froze some. And ate some. Tonight, we’ll grill the hatch chiles and tomatillos, and my husband will make pico de gallo.

I may not want to dive into molecular gastronomy, but I’m having a Suzie Homemaker makeover.

Far from my life plan (made in high school) to play flute internationally. Or from my life plan (made in graduate school) to minister in Italy.

Who knew I’d make homemade apple sauce? Or pickle cucumbers from my garden? Or knit toys for my baby and socks for various feet? Who knew a trip to the local dairy farm for raw milk would be my weekly treat?

Who knew I’d actually enjoy a suburban life?

It’s funny, considering this relationship between free will and God’s sovereignty. He gives us talents and the wisdom to make choices as we pursue and use them. At any point, I was free to go to grad school for music rather than to seminary or to choose to go to Italy rather than stay and see what happened with this sexy man I ended up marrying. And I believe God would have used any of those situations.

But here I am, in a Dallas suburb, with a husband and child wondering if a Winnebago is a good option for a family car. My imagination was not wild enough to conjure this scenario.

My life isn’t so different from the basket of known and unknown veggies and fruit I ended up with. Now I just need to figure out what to do with that jicama.

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Redeeming Suburbia, Part II

August 30, 2010 By 2 Comments

When I moved back to the suburbs six years ago, I mourned the loss of the ministry for which I’d been preparing, namely church-planting in Italy.

I mean, come on. I was headed for Trieste, Italy and landed in a Dallas suburb. The grieving period was necessary and long.

Two things happened before I could fully embrace ministry in the burbs: First, I had to accept that God could and will redeem the suburbs. Romans 8 says that all creation groans for our future glorification. I had to listen to hear I wasn’t the only one groaning in my neck of the woods. Second, I had to be joyful in this circumstance. When we think of contentment, we often think of endurance or dealing with the circumstance despite our preferences. But I think Paul had a fuller picture in mind. He tells us to rejoice always. 

Can I rejoice in the suburbs?

The question goes against the romantic picture of an artist, who should either be out in the woods somewhere or in some closet apartment he can’t afford in New York. An artist in the burbs? She simply doesn’t exist. An artist can conceivably be born in suburbia, but she ought to move out, according to the popular artist story, on her eighteenth birthday.

But why can’t I be an artist where I am? Why can’t I write stories that reflect the angst, stress, and loneliness of the typical suburbian dweller? Why should I let popular images from Hollywood and New York dictate my art? (Here’s where my rebel-without-a-cause nature, as my husband calls it, comes in handy.) Art reflects life, and life is lived in the suburbs as well as in the rural and urban areas. The more I get to to know the people in my neighborhood, the more I find people with lived-out dreams, hidden desires, hurts, and triumphs. It’s not all Stepford Wives here, but you have to dig beneath the stereotypes to discover that.

So I’ve found community here and life rich with potential. Which brings me back around to God’s kingdom work in suburbia and, specifically, how I can live out his mission here.

The Bible gives us several pictures of redemption, or, to put it another way, of Christ’s victory over sin and death. It affects the individual and the community, the physical and the spiritual, the country, the city, and the suburbs. In Revelation, we see the presence of God descending upon earth, bringing with it the fullness of healing, peace and joy. The nations react with worship and reconciled living. In Ephesians, we glimpse a communal life that embraces diversity and unity. James gives us the contrary–a warning to rich hoarders, gossipers, and slanderers, in other words, those who cause division.

From these cues, I can form a life that embodies these elements in the suburbs by building community, offering healing to those hurting, encouraging and embracing diversity, and living generously. 

Which means it comes down to making choices toward these things and away from other things, like inviting my neighbors to a backyard barbecue instead of only inviting the friends I already have, getting to know the couple down the street who immigrated from Russia or Korea or South Africa, volunteering at my library’s ESL program, taking cookies to my neighbors, refusing to keep up with the Jones’s and instead enjoying (and sharing) the material possessions God’s given us, being aware of where my clothes, technology, and water comes from and making decisions based on that, supporting local restaurants and arts rather than driving into Dallas for a date night, shopping at my local farmer’s market and dairy farm even if that means several trips to buy everything on my grocery list, going to events where I might be the minority, such as an Asian festival at the local Chinese church, serving at the orphanage down the street or at the new homeless program.

These are not without disappointment. How many cookies and breads have I taken unacknowledged? How many invitations have I issued unheeded? I may never have a great ministry story like urban monastic life. I may never have the glamorous life of ministering to artists in Brooklyn. But God has called me to minister where I live, despite the opportunity (or lack thereof) for a spotlight in Christianity Today.

As I get to know those around me, I can hear their groanings–their longings and hurts, their loneliness and angst, their hopes and dreams. And perhaps one day, I’ll see a beautiful community emerge to overcome the pain and live out the hopes.

Read part one of Redeeming Suburbia.

Filed Under: community, diversity, Ephesians, James, lonliness, Revelation, suburbs

Redeeming Suburbia

August 23, 2010 By 4 Comments

This has been a topic floating in my mind for the past five years. Christians talk often about rebuilding the city or reclaiming a simple country life, but for the most part, we seem to have little good to say about the suburbs or the possibility for the suburbs.

We consider them detached places where people commute to their work, their grocery stores, their lives. They come home, pull their cars into their garages without the inconvenience of greeting neighbors, plant themselves in front of the boob tube or perhaps play with their children for a few minutes in the backyard, which is well protected by privacy fences, go to bed, and restart everything in the mornings.

Suburbs are the places of sameness, of boxed lives. Or so goes Little Boxes, the theme song to Weeds.

The suburbs arose in the 1950s, partly because of the massive and sudden expansion of families post-WWII. Those families needed someplace to go and fast. I also suspect that after the fears and harshness of war, new parents wanted to protect their new children. Can we blame them after what they saw?

So can the suburbs be redeemed?

Some fun facts about the suburb in which I happen to live:

- There’s as much ethnic diversity in this neighborhood than where I lived in downtown Dallas. Some of this is true cultural diversity, meaning immigrants from Asian and South American countries settled in here. Some of it is superficial, which means you may see different color faces, but their backgrounds aren’t much different than mine.

- Though we’d like to think of ourselves as untouched by poverty, that’s simply not true. A local Samaritan Inn, a "comprehensive homeless program that helps willing people gain dignity and independence," filled up with residents from my city. They’re building a new one closer a few miles from my house. There are also two orphanages (that I know of), where the residents come mostly from either abusive homes or homes where their parents didn’t have the means to provide for them anymore.

- I can get to a local farmer’s market in five minutes and a local dairy farm (for unpasteurized milk, fresh butter, cheese, and yogurt, and eggs) in ten minutes.

- About two miles from my house is a lot with lamas and alpacas. Next to that is a field that looks like it’s been recently tilled to handle some sort of crop. (Confession: the people who own this field may have been growing plants since I’ve lived here. For some reason, I’ve only recently noticed it. Ah, yes, the powers of observation run strong in my family.)

- Several people have vegetable gardens. In some ways, I taste the juxtoposition of the garden and the city in the end of Revelation in these gardens.

- The downtown area of my suburbian city (about 5 minutes from my home) has an art gallery and a theater (as well as some fun restaurants). Neither of these are cutting edge. But they represent local art.

- We do have public transportation, but I admit, I rarely use it. Nor do I walk or ride a bike to the grocery store or to run other errands. So, yes, I’m more concerned with my own convenience, even in my 5-mile radius. Especially in the Texas heat.

All this to say that perhaps the suburbs aren’t as bad as I initially thought when I moved here six years ago. Or at least this particular one isn’t. This is not to say that the problems don’t exist. I don’t know many of my neighbors well. But I’ve built my life in this five-mile radius. (For Chris, he goes a little further for work, although not much further.) I guess to move forward, I want to play with the idea that God can redeem the suburbs. We don’t all have to move back to the city or to the country (an impossible idea, anyway). 

Though Revelation doesn’t specifically mention suburbs (because they didn’t exist at the time of writing; for that matter "city" was an entirely different idea to John, the writer of Revelation), I believe we can still look toward God’s future for us to get an idea of how we can redeem the suburbs.

Which I’ll have to do on another day.

Thoughts?

Filed Under: redemption, Revelation, suburbs

The Burbs

August 13, 2006 By Leave a Comment
I have fought living in the burbs. I’m a downtown girl. I want the symphony and Shakespeare in the Park and art museums and jazz clubs at my doorstep. But I live in the burbs. It’s not so bad, really. Most daily activities are the same either way. Starbucks is still on every corner. I can drive to two Half Price bookstores within 5 min. Chinese, Korean, Vietnam, Thai, Italian, Indian, Mexican foods all only blocks away (still missing a good Spanish Tapas place, if anyone would like to volunteer opening one near me). Oh, and Cuban. We need a good Cuban restaurant. (Ever wandered why we call all food derived from countries outside the U.S. ethnic as if our own food isn’t ethnic? Aren’t we a culture, an ethnicity? Is this a case of our ethnocentricity? If we went to India, would hamburgers be the ethnic food? But back to downtown…) I miss Keith, the homeless and legless man on my corner that always had, well, interesting insights, to say the least. I miss walking down to Davino’s where I would get a slice of pizza the size of Manhattan and a soda for $1.50. I can’t walk anywhere in my current location. I miss running up the apartment stairs in socks to grab a book or sugar or a hug from friends. There is something different about life living downtown. Everytime we trek down the interstate, I find myself antsy to be back. Except, that is, for the growing jeunesse dorée parading through glitzy shops and overpriced cafés. That’s when I feel separated from my previous home. The wealth of downtown explodes next to the ghettos, sometimes replacing the ghettos. Is it a co-op wealth meets poor on equal footing opening whole new worlds? Or is it displacement and turning a blind eye? (I’m going for the Guinness of most clichés in one blog.) And yet, in the burbs, I often feel assembly-lined. Not much diversity in ethnic or economic or philosophical statuses (is the plural stati?). We do have our Asian corner: Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese restaurants all next to the Asian market. Across the street is the Iranian restaurant. And my hairdresser is Indian. But it feels simulated. My neighborhood is white bread through and through.
Filed Under: community, suburbs