here comes the all good things

All Good Things started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and my radio co-host Cassie. We both contribute things to the list, so I'll tell you who said what to avoid confusion.

So get cozy and get ready for this week's batch of good things!

1. Song of the week: Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles. This is a plea for spring to come, and it just always makes me happy.

Also, one of my Facebook friends posted a throwback website she made in middle school this week, which featured a polytone .midi version of this song as the background music. So great.

2. Overcoming obstacles. Last time I drove on I-95 from Baltimore I had a panic attack and had to take the smaller U.S. Highway 40 the rest of the way, which is how I've gone since then. But it takes a little longer, so this time I gave 95 a try, deciding that if I started to feel really anxious I'd switch... But I made it the whole way on the interstate, in good time! - Clara

3. Reunions. This one makes the list a lot, but I saw my girls Mary and Lisa this weekend and it was awesome. We talked about lots of important things, cooked and ate good food, and cuddled. Talk about soul food! - Clara

4. Making a new recipe. I made a delightful quinoa Greek salad this week that had tomatoes, spinach, cucumbers, onions, and an awesome dressing. I find that during a long week I can easily forget to eat healthy foods, so it's a wonderful feeling when I make the effort and things turn out well. It was doubly good because it's vegetarian so Luke and I could eat the same meal that night (which doesn't always happen!) - Cassie

5. A new honey store opened up in my neighborhood! I visited this week and ended up with so much honey in my house. Raw honey, vanilla bean honey, and honey candy fill my cupboards right now, and I'm feeling good about it! - Cassie

6. Spring is coming! This is a bit premature, but it's in the high 30s here today which is an incredible feeling after having 50 days this winter where temps dipped into the negatives. I'm going to be one of those crazy Minnesotans who wears shorts outside today! - Cassie

7. Discernment. Today I actually went to church because we had some mission specialists coming from the synod. Despite my complicated relationship with The Church, I do have great interest in the efforts It makes to come up to speed with the world, so I went. I don't know how much progress we made, exactly, but it was definitely a step in the right direction, and I know I for one left feeling inspired and hopeful. - Clara

8. Bourbon in mimosas?! We had brunch at a place called Golden West Cafe in Baltimore's Hampden neighborhood on Saturday, and they sell carafes of mimosas made with bourbon as well as champagne! Yummm. - Clara

9. Mardi Gras. I had made plans to go out for dinner with some girlfriends on Tuesday night, not realizing it was Mardi Gras... But we found 3 seats at the bar and had some drinks and half-price burgers and great conversations. Love my girls. - Clara

10. Unexpected smiles. I desperately needed some motor oil tonight, so we swung by Walmart. Our checkout clerk in the Express Lane seemed a little cranky, but when we left I said, "Have a good night," and looked over my shoulder to see her absolutely beaming like no one had ever said that to her before. It definitely made my night, if not hers! - Clara



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Thank you, readers, for being with us tonight, and for giving me reasons to write, and things to write about.

And thanks for joining us every Sunday night! Join the Baby Steps on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/TheBabyStepsSaga for good things every day, and updates on new posts. Come back next week for another reminder of 10 more things to be thankful for!

Until then, be kind to each other, and find a reason to smile!

posted from Bloggeroid

soul food

You might remember my life-changing service event from The Gathering in the summer of 2012, where our group was served food by members of the New Orleans cooking school. Kevin, the man in charge, said, "We love our food here, but we know what's important. It's not what's on the table that matters, but who's at the table. It's about sharing a meal together."

That quote, and the experience of being served as a service project, changed my perspective on everything. On eating, which is a way I spend a lot of my time, and on service, and on sharing gifts with other people.

This past weekend was the ELCA Delaware-Maryland Synod's annual high school youth retreat, which last year got me thinking about reformation. This year, the theme was soul food.

And if I learned anything this weekend, it is that I am hungry.

Food, and eating, has been a major source of unrest since I left college. Maybe more than any other "figuring out" I've had to do, the eating, eating affordably, eating on time, eating healthy, and eating things that don't make me feel ill has been an almost constant obstacle course in this adult life.

So I am intimately familiar with the significance of food, and how closely it is tied to emotional and mental well-being. It is an apt and long-lived metaphor for spirituality.

At the retreat we talked about the different things we can be hungry for. We talked about food shortages, food deserts, and the host of social issues that tend to accompany hunger and poverty. We talked about satisfying our hunger, about the church's response to hunger in our communities, and about the different ways we can feed our own hunger, the different ways we find spiritual fulfillment and relief.

As an anthropologist I know that church plays an important social role for individuals and communities. And so it was this weekend.


I was dreading the trip because, until Thursday night, I had been planning on driving down to Ocean City alone after work on Friday. But on Thursday night I bit the bullet and called my friend Abby to see if she wanted to carpool. We were both happy for the company, and we got to reconnect after not seeing each other in months.

She told me how she found a new church in the city whose congregation is mostly made up of young people, like us. Every single thing we talked about had to do with our social needs, fulfilled and unfulfilled - what we are hungry for.

Through the course of the weekend I realized that I have been lonely. There is something I have been missing, something I realized sharply at the Ole wedding in Kansas in December. I am missing community, and I found it at Roadtrip, kind of.


In the fall or late summer, my dad gave a sermon about our demands as a congregation, about the point of worship and the ways in which we give back. It was a tough sermon, but I liked it. It was about commitment. And the point that changed everything for me was when he said Worship is not for us. It is for God. We are saying we don't get anything out of worship, but shouldn't we be worried about what we're putting into it? About what we're giving to God? Anyone brave enough to say Amen to that?

He's right. Worship should be about God, however we go about it. Praise and prayer are about our relationship with God, and relationships are a two-way street.


But if we are hungry, how can we feed anyone else?

My friend Audrey told a story about being a camp counselor sending kids down a river and pulling them back out again. Her job was to pull them out on the other end. And, she said, if she went in too deep, she would lose her footing and both she and the campers would go sailing down the river. If she lost her footing, she couldn't rescue anyone else.

But what about when we are fed by our own feeding of others? What about at Roadtrip, when we find our spirits filled in the process of offering ourselves and our gifts to others? What about when we share a meal together, when we serve the fruits of our labor to another person and take the first bite together? This is community, and this is what I'm hungry for.

Our dinner on Saturday night was called the Agape meal, a meal of love. It was like Communion, beginning with the breaking of bread and ending with the pouring of "wine" (in this case, grape juice). There is a church in New York City that hosts this kind of sit-down Eucharist weekly. I talked with my small group (13 inspiring 10th-graders) about the difference between sitting together and talking with other people, and eating together with other people. For a multitude of reasons, it brings us closer together.

And indeed, after the meal our group found its stride, a deeper level of trust and rapport.


J and I have our routines, the order of operations for holidays (whose parents' house we go to at what point in the day, and where we eat our different meals). We usually eat dinner at his parents' house on Sunday nights, and at my parents' house on Mondays. His family dinners begin with everyone crossing themselves and reciting the same prayer: Bless us O Lord, and these our gifts which we are about to receive... My family starts by holding hands, and singing. (If I reach for my neighbors' hands at his family dinners out of habit, he puts me on the spot and makes me sing.)

In college I dated a guy for awhile who always bowed his head before he began to eat. I rarely did. By senior year I often ate with friends who began a meal with a "pause for the universe." And after graduation, I got in the habit of "clinking" or "cheersing" or "toasting" the first bite or the first sip of everything with my eating companion before we start our meal.

That's what J and I do most of the time now. But last night, as I sat down to eat the dinner he had made, he took both my hands in an almost-joke. We just looked at each other for a minute, smiling, and then I said, "So... what do we do now?"

"I don't know," he laughed, but didn't let go. Instead, he looked at the shirt I was wearing, the shirt from this year's Roadtrip, and read it out loud. "Soul food. Patience. Goodness. Love. Peace. Joy. Faithfullness."

"Seems fitting," I said.

And then, at the same time, we said Amen.

a fitting snapchat i received while at roadtrip talking about soul food!

posted from Bloggeroid

hashtag remember the sabbath

There are suddenly so many things to write about. I am feeling a constant creative surge lately that distracts me from my own comings and goings and makes me restless. I guess the feeling is perfectly timed because this year I'm really going to try National Novel Writing Month and will need plenty of creative energy to crank out 1700 words a day through the month of November.

I get notifications every day from this Facebook group called Organic Faith Online, which is run by an old friend of mine. I typically don't get deeply involved in the group, since its offline community operates out of the Buffalo, NY, area, but this week's theme is Sabbath, which happens to be an area of great interest and ongoing turmoil for me.

And, given my current state of mind, I thought it wouldn't be a bad topic for a blog post. Rest is an incredibly important but underdiscussed issue in our society, and particularly for new adults.

Sabbath is God's day of rest in the Biblical Creation story, the seventh day after creating the world and everything in it. Historically Judeo-Christian belief systems have kept the Sabbath in tribute to this (and because it's in the 10 commandments - good luck getting out of that one).

But for a girl who grew up in a strong Lutheran household in suburban America, Sabbath was confusing. We didn't go shopping on Sundays. For the longest time I wasn't allowed to go the mall with my friends on Sundays. We didn't go out after church, most weeks. Saturday was the day for chores, because we tried not to do anything resembling work on Sunday. And even that was weird to me, too, because church was my dad's job and he always had to work on Sunday... So didn't that sort of defeat the purpose of the "Sabbath"?

(Of course half the stories in the Gospels are about Jesus healing on the Sabbath and everyone getting all hung up about it, and Jesus saying, "Y'all are really missing the point." But I was 10. I hadn't put that together yet. I guess God's work is exempt...)

The thing that really got me was when I said I didn't have anything to do instead and my parents said, "We need time to Just Be." In my head it was always capitalized and italicized.

And it still is, to this day. I eventually (if somewhat reluctantly) found an appreciation for a Day of Rest, and for Just Be-ing. In college I assigned myself one day of the week where I would not do homework, and wouldn't feel guilty about it either. And on Sunday nights Cass and I ran the All Good Things radio show (now a blog feature) which forced me to put on a zen voice for my listeners. The zen voice is surprisingly convincing, even to myself.

After college, when I was living in St. Croix Falls with Ann, our only day off together was Sunday. We ran most of our errands on our separate days off, but Sunday was the day we didn't have to wake up or get dressed if we didn't want to (which we usually didn't). It usually involved some kind of elaborate ritual of making and eating brunch, usually involved romping around outside or biking around town, reading in our hammocks and experimenting with mixed drinks. We talked about trying to go to church in town at some point, but never made it. Considering ourselves complete and unsalvageable heathens, we joked about "remembering the Sabbath" in our own non-religious ways.

I've become a lot more serious over the two years since then, in some ways I like and some ways I'm less excited about. #RemembertheSabbath has become a saving grace to me as I worry about money, about time, about becoming too immersed in the daily grind, about losing my conscience, my creativity, my ability to appreciate simplicity. (I worry a lot.) The hashtag keeps me centered now.



And I realize the importance of rest, and of simply having a moment to enjoy something. Now I get what my parents were talking about when they said we needed time to Just Be. Now I realize what we as a culture have lost by turning Sunday - half of our too-short weekend and our last hurrah before returning to the work week - into a day for running errands and shopping and hanging out at the mall. I guess football kind of takes back Sunday... depending on how angry your buddies get when the game turns sour.

It doesn't have to be Sunday, either. This is what I drew from the discussion on Organic Faith: we can find moments of Sabbath in each day. I'm taking one now. The Blog (usually) centers me and gives me an outlet to process the days that move too fast otherwise.

How do you #RemembertheSabbath, readers? Or do you at all?

posted from Bloggeroid

the season of our mythology

There is a lot going on lately. It's the kind of "a lot going on" that makes me surprised to report that I don't have that same sense of gathering doom that I had last December... I'm just feeling tired.

For that reason I'm having a hard time focusing my thoughts enough to write. A few weeks ago I made a note to myself to write about milestones today. Because tomorrow marks my two-year anniversary of starting work with my current firm.

I will always remember this date because it is the day after September 11, and I don't think I'm alone in feeling differently about that date from how I feel about other dates. The numbers 9-11 are the same way.

And speaking of these things, of 9-11 and of milestones, this year marks 12 years since the quadruple plane crashes that, when you think about it, changed the world. Twelve years. Time doesn't stop, does it.

So last week I had my two-year performance review. Sitting there across the table from the partners it struck me how much I have changed since the first time I sat down across the table from them. And how many other things have changed.

For example, a point from my notes. Bishop's Café (the place I met J.) since two years ago has become a baked goods supplier, and the physical location has been replaced by The Well Coffeeshop. When elements of my life start to outlast each other it is a strange thing.

Along similar lines, I received a beautiful text message the other day from an old friend:

"The season of our mythology is upon us."

He was referring to the fall of our freshman year of college, when we were well-occupied writing new narratives for our lives and our relationships, when a lot of things changed, when we created the basis of the rest of our college career and the seeds of the stories about who we were to become, together.

But as you have just read, there are a lot of mythologies that started in the fall.

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Yesterday I had a good talk with a faraway friend, and one thing that came up was spirituality. More specifically, what we talked about was our thirst for spiritual discovery, the quest for fulfillment; to us what is most important is not the discovery, but culling an insatiable spiritual appetite. We don't like to be too comfortable. We have trouble believing in comfortable things.

This may not surprise you, since I have been writing about things like entertaining angels and bringing J. to church and caring for the Earth -- but what I have really been wanting to write about lately is faith and church and religiosity.

...What was that about the season of our mythology?

This week I discovered that Pope Francis has a pretty fantastic Facebook page. Check this guy out. I'm not Catholic (and for some reason feel the need to say so) but I think this guy is pretty great. He seems so focused on that tricky "love" commandment, and on making the world a better place. I know that his every movement and every word that crosses his lips is probably carefully orchestrated, but I can get behind an image that is orchestrated to push the kind of change that saves us.

Pray for others, he says; pray for our loved ones and our leaders, our teachers and the weak, and for ourselves. Pray with perspective.

And then he says, "Make Christianity a way of life, not a label." Live like Jesus. No need to wear a sign; somehow people always recognized Jesus when he was in disguise.

And then there was the time he got a letter from a guy who was having trouble forgiving the men who killed his brother. That is some honest real-life humanity right there. And instead of judging this guy, and telling him something along the lines of, "Well, too bad, you gotta forgive them"... he cried, and called the guy at home, and said he's sorry and he feels the pain of the situation.

I love the way the author closes this article, too:

You know, many folks are worried about Pope Francis. Worried for his safety, worried about his orthodoxy, worried about his sincerity, etc. I’m not worried about any of these things, and I don’t think Pope Francis is either. I think Pope Francis has chosen the greater part, and it is not to be taken away from him.

Worry. My mom and I have been talking about worrying a lot. Remember that part in the Bible where Jesus says, "Don't worry about food, clothes, shelter, money, or any of the stuff you spend all that time worrying about. Seriously. I got this." It's such a nice idea, but so much easier said than done.

That is one thing I loved about this interview I listened to twice all the way through this week (and once I only listened to a little bit of it). It's with a Lutheran pastor in Denver named Nadia Bolz-Weber, whose church is called the House of All Sinners and Saints -- so wonderfully inclusive. Toward the end of the segment she said, "If God's going to wait till I ["love my enemies" and] mean it, that's going to be a while."

We're all just human, and the best we can do is try. And I am trying so dang hard and trying to make the space around me better and hope that it ripples beyond my small circles of influence. After all, I am entertaining angels.

I get it from my dad, I think. He has been flying a lot lately and his favorite story this week is from his travels. As the plane rolled toward the gate, the stewardess was giving her standard closing speech:

"You'll find your bags at baggage carousel 6. If you are making a connection, please check the flight information on the screens at the gate. Thank you for flying with us today. Enjoy your stay, and be kind to one another."

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Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."

damn, girl

I am tired.  This is mostly because I am a woman about town.  I'm struggling to frame this post as more than just a sort of dazed review of what I've been up to lately.

Thursday nights have turned into Zumba-and-Applebee's nights with my girl Kristy.  We get our dance on, and then cart our sweaty selves up Kirkwood for half-price drinks and appetizers after 9pm.  It's great.

This week, though, Kristy was in Ohio, so I went to Zumba solo and then went to the late show of This Means War with J.  The movie was pretty much exactly what I was looking for: sexy, funny, mind-numbing enough but with some satisfying original twists and well-placed explosions.  The relationships and character motivations could have been more satisfyingly developed but the movie pretty much did its job so I can't really complain.  Here's the trailer, if you're interested.

Friday night the youth group at church had a lock-in.  (For legal purposes I must clarify that we were not actually locked inside the church; it was pretty much just a sleepover.)  It was actually a lot of fun.  Strange, though, that I am now officially a youth chaperon rather than a youth group member.

(Also... is chaperon really spelled without an 'e' at the end?  I never knew...)

I was really tired from being out so late on Thursday and working all day Friday, and dinner took forever to cook...  So I kept trying to get everyone to sit down and watch a movie so I could casually pass out.  But everyone wanted to play games, which ended up being way cooler and a riotous amount of fun.  One of the best games of Cranium I have ever played.  Also, C for Cool was the best team.  Way to go Chris!

Finally we staked out our sleeping spots (everyone, of course, trying to claim the couches hours in advance) and put in Secondhand Lions, which is a great movie.  Unfortunately our copy is a little scratched and the DVD player is old and missing a remote, so it was tough to get it going; finally I managed it (who put me in charge of running any kind of technology, I don't know) and promptly passed out.

An hour or so later, 15-20 minutes from the end, I got up from my slumber, turned off the TV power, and immediately fell back asleep -- leaving my dad, Andy and Roberto sitting in the dark saying, "Um... I guess we're not going to see the end of the movie..."  I didn't remember this in the morning, but I won't be forgetting it any time soon seeing as they will never let me hear the end of it.

Last night was girls' night.  Kristy survived the trip back from Ohio and Carly managed to make it up from Dover to go out with us.  We are the perfect trio since all of us are perpetually late for everything.  So no pressure.  After our divine classic Charlie's pizza, we rock-paper-scissorsed to see who would drive blindly toward Trolley Square, which none of us had ever successfully visited before.

After a bit of aimless weaving through dark downtown Wilmo streets, we managed to find Trolley Square, and, more specifically, Catherine Rooney's, an Irish pub apparently featuring two dance floors.  And we'd been told there is no real dancing in the entire state of Delaware.  I mean, it wasn't a rave, but it was a lot of fun.  None of us have gone dancing in forever, but we've definitely still got it...*

*See title...

The weird reality check was that we got 3 rounds of drinks for about $60.  We're not in Northfield/Newark anymore, Toto.  (So hold the line -- because like Kristy, Carly, and myself, love is almost never on time.)  We're in a city, at a grown-up bar.  And this grown-up bar featured a startlingly wide range of ages.  A middle-aged couple pretty much gettin' it on on the dance floor, for example.  Lots of meticulously curled hair, too.  I think our trio was pretty well-matched as far as badass, down-to-earth, really cute and fun girls go.

Ever since Audrey's and my encounter with the Santa Crawl back in December, I have been wanting to do the Wilmington "Loop" -- where school buses are provided to take patrons to bars all over downtown Wilmington.  Somehow I have managed to never do a pub crawl, and our Rooney's adventure only reinforced my desire to do one.  Even if the drinks are $8 apiece.  Shamrock Shuttle, here I come!

Maybe.

Back at Kristy's we decided to make some Ghirardelli chocolate chip brownies to go with our G&Ts that only got strong down at the bottom.  I guess I didn't stir them well enough.

We slept well enough, though, and in the morning discussed our different family structures, passed around the cats, and conceptualized a few memes all before breakfast.

Breakfast, just the way I like it at the Marsh Road Diner.  A classic diner for a classic Sunday brunch, classically decorated with posters of Italy, Italian art, and other proud specimens of Italian heritage.  Delicious omelet, peanut butter/chocolate chip pancakes, home fries, scrapple, tea, endless coffee refills...  I love my Sunday mornings.  Love my diners.  Love my girls.

Coming up: Wanderlust tonight at People's Plaza (another first-time venue for me), Jess' birthday tomorrow (not getting out of that one, girlfriend), and nachos on Tuesday.  We'll see if I can keep my head.

so the story goes

Merry Christmas, readers!  I will spare you all the "politically correct holiday season" rant, as I know we've all heard it before (at least 4,000 times this year alone), and as it says in the Bible, "Do not be [offended], for I bring you glad tidings and great cheer" and so on.

Anyway, what does it matter, because I have missed not only the actual Christmas, but Boxing Day as well.  So I am not only politically incorrect, but increasingly tardy as well.  We're coming up on New Years now.

My Boxing Day did, in fact, involve some boxing.  Of fruitcakes.  Tomorrow I intend to do the actual posting of those boxed fruitcakes, and any recipients should know that my fruitcake-boxing battle was not a particularly neat or quiet one.  Please appreciate my countless trips to the recycling bin in the freezing cold garage for packing materials.

Something about the convergence of events (and the escalation of my coffee shop book exchange) lately has me thinking about storylines.  I first saw Google's Zeitgeist 2011 video framed as a bit of brilliant digital storytelling, intentionally and evocatively constructed.  If you haven't seen it already, please take a moment.  Or, if you have, take a moment to watch it again.

More generally, social media news has been lately dominated by headlines about Storify and the new Facebook Timeline and the new Twitter app, all created to somehow "organize stories" that build our lives online and, increasingly, offline.  That's the idea, anyway.  It's making me think about what a story actually is, and how we tell them, and what role they play in our lives.  It's making me wonder whether the meaning of the word "story" is taking on new digital meaning, similar to the way "viral" has.  (In case you missed it, you can read more about my thoughts on going viral here.)

Also in that post you will find what anchors my storyline fixation in the physical world: fruitcake.

Aside from the fact that I legitimately love fruitcake, especially fruitcake from this recipe, I have been most excited about carrying on the family legacy of making and sending fruitcakes.  This is a personal storyline that crosses, now, four generations, in a very simple frame: a recipe.  (Remember Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco?  Brilliant.)  I already told you about getting fruitcakes in the mail every Christmas, wrapped in Sunday comics.  Actually I think I left out the comics before, and the fact that we always had to wait until Christmas morning to open and cut into the fruitcake.  And as we all know, waiting for something makes it taste that much sweeter.  This storyline includes not only my childhood, but the unknown plot deviations of Aunt Judy struggling to locate candied orange peel in modern supermarkets, trying different substitutes, maybe once pickling watermelon rind in the summer to use come Christmas in the cakes.  And the beginning of this story is completely blank; I can only tell you bits of the middle and the ellipsis of an end.

Consider also the cultural storyline of fruitcake.  As I churned the exotic dried fruits into the batter, it suddenly occurred to me to ask where fruitcake came from.  What genealogy does fruitcake follow in our family?  Is it British?  German?  Under what rule did it gain the honors of tradition?  In which empire?  Which traders brought the fruits to fill it?  And how did it get such a bad rap today?

Not that you will probably be called on to share any fruitcake trivia, but if you think there is a chance of this happening I recommend this article from TLC.  I can't say for certain that it is the most accurate or comprehensive, I just like it best of all the ones I've seen.

Now, for the sake of time and attention, let's make an undeveloped allegorical leap to the Christmas storyline.  In fact, we can take it full-circle to the whole politically-correct thing and ask which storyline each of us prefers to follow at this time of year.  Is it Santa Claus?  St. Nicholas?  Festivus?  Solstice?  Kwanzaa?  Hanukkah?  The birth of Jesus?

Grampi has been featuring heavily of late, and while I fear some of you might be cringing at the apparent disregard in which I hold my elders, please take heart in knowing that any confrontation is both the result and the catalyst of important learning experiences, I dare hope, for both of us.  As Maria has reminded me over and over again these past few weeks, coming to face opposition forces us to grow in ways we might otherwise atrophy.

Anyway, Grampi and the birth of Jesus.  On Sunday morning in church he went out of his way to point out to Mutti and I that the baby in the manger had been set up directly beneath the cross hanging over the altar.  The significance of this symbolic placement brought him to tears.  I admit I rolled my eyes the way I do when he skillfully relates any topic to missionary work, but even I can't deny the brilliance of this nativity setup.  I do revere the Biblical storyline, the way it unfolds over thousands of years, the careful genealogies, the outstanding characters, the fulfillment of prophecies.  (This year I found myself wishing the Gospel writers paid more attention to Jesus' childhood, because the Terrible Twos are notably absent, and for some reason I have developed a sudden urgent curiosity about Jesus as a 6-year-old.)

I'm focusing on the Christian storyline of Christmas because it's the one I'm most familiar with, and the one that is most significant in my family tradition; but I am well aware, and fascinated by, the pagan influences on this endless tale.  I appreciate the fact that I can't escape the materialistic aspects of this holiday, and that the giving and receiving of gifts is not something I could easily extract from my own experience of Christmas.

These complicated details only make the storyline more intricate, more unique, more fascinating.  I always have to remind myself that each storyteller constructs the story differently and each listener understands it differently.  No frame is quite the same, no language holds the same weight or connotation, no scene is so well-constructed that it excludes the possibility of misunderstanding, of a wrong color in a corner or a detail slightly misaligned.

And yet I consider my storylines carefully.  I see a story in everything.  I see a story arc everywhere, a conflict, a happy ending.  I have endless prepackaged choices: fairytale, Judeo-Christian, origin myth, comedy, tragedy, series of snapshots.  But I delight most in the deviations from the predictable introduction, escalation, resolution, the allegedness of everything, the details and the soundtracks and illustrations and, most of all, the fact that in real life, the story doesn't end with a slammed-shut cover, but with a ...

for my fellow krill

I've been easily frustrated lately, in particular about work-related situations.  I have been known to have a temper, but it's surprising how incredibly non-irritable I've been at home lately in comparison.  Maybe it's karmic balance.  Maybe I'm sleep-deprived.  Maybe simple situations just get easily out of hand due to high tensions in the vicinity.

Maybe I'm getting my general empathy back!  This is maybe not the most productive possibility, but it is the most exciting to me considering all the time I've spent wondering if I still have emotional reactions -- the suppression of which was a defense mechanism that did less to "defend" me than to make me pine for my lost innocence.

Speaking of lost innocence, it came to me in the wake of Saturday night Den drama that I am, once again, a small fish in a big ocean.  It's not the first time this has happened: there was the transition from elementary school to middle school, then middle to high school, then high school to college -- not to mention the other times I changed schools in between there.  I hate change.  And so far, this is the biggest ocean this krill has ever been swept into.

And my krill-status is painfully obvious to all the angelfish, barracuda, and baleen whales in this gigantic ocean, who tout my n00b-hood and just assume I know virtually nothing about the world since I am so newly born to it.  In many ways they are right; but I hope that among all the things I learn from living in this "real world," a sense of idiocy is not one of them.  I hope I never lose touch with the things I have to teach the world.

Let me rephrase: I hope we never lose touch with all the things we have to teach the world.  Because this is how things change.

"But Clara," you might be thinking right about now, "you hate change!  You said it yourself!"  I know, but it really just needs to happen.

So, on another note, remember how my birthday is coming up?  Well, it is.  And remember the wild plan I didn't want to tell you about, in case it went wrong?  Well...  For those of you who don't know, the annual AUL Turkey Bowl ultimate frisbee game is held every year (predictably) on Black Friday at the Four Diamonds.  This is the fourth year running, and I have never played a game in my life.  Shame on me.  (This is hometown-speak, so I apologize to those of you not originally from the Dirty -- more widely known as Amsterdam, NY.)

And this year, the Turkey Bowl is on my birthday.  So how could I not go?

You're right.  I couldn't... not... go...

So I asked to get the weekend off from hostessing, shot the cursory text-blast to important down-home parties, planned to leave the house before Best Buy opens on Black Friday (to make it to the Four Diamonds by noon), and apologized to my mother for being so eager to hightail it out of the house on a holiday weekend.

She gave me a funny look.  "You know it's funny," she said slowly, "I had planned to have all your friends come down here for your birthday.  I even Facebooked Mike about it awhile back and he was doing all this planning in the middle of studying for his finals.  We were going to surprise you."

Floored.

I called Mike and he yelled at me for ruining my own birthday surprise, and I swore that he is my favorite person ever and forced him to make a huge dinner reservation at a nice restaurant.

So much love in this room.

Speaking of love in this room, last night I went to a Wine, Dine & Discern event at the bishop's house in Baltimore.  Guess what it was?  A bunch of young adults in the Delaware/Maryland Lutheran church who have graduated college and are trying to figure out our lives, eating meatball subs, drinking beer, and watching football in a cozy living room while talking about vocation.  Story of my life.

I RSVP'd to this event months ago, when I was feeling slightly more desperate for human contact and slightly more amused by church.  Over the last few weeks, though, I've been feeling my patience waning and my frustration growing.  It starts on Saturday night when I fall asleep wrestling with my personal demons.  It weighs on me as soon as I wake up on Sunday, boils in my stomach during the youth class when I censor my highs and lows for the "plankton," and pushes at my throat and my eyelids during the service when I flip through the prayers section of the hymnal looking for something that addresses what I'm struggling with...  And as mundane as my Demon of the Day undoubtedly is, nothing comes close.  Because, hip as they may have been, neither Martin Luther nor any of the other authors of the Lutheran Book of Worship were 20-somethings struggling with the demands and desires of the twenty-first century, smartphones and the hormone-fed Petri dish better known as college.  And In This Economy?

You may be surprised to note, then, that I may be the only person between the ages of 20 and 40 that goes to my dad's church on Sunday (emphasis added).  No offense, because I have really sincerely enjoyed meeting and talking with the people of Hope.  (I am also tickled by this name: the People of Hope.)  But I rarely get the feeling that anybody there gets me.

My family members, concerned about my spiritual well-being, have said repeatedly that finding a faith community is the most important element of maintaining a healthy relationship with God.  I have historically found this to be not true -- at least not in the way they mean it.  My most fulfilling "faith communities" have sprouted from one-on-one conversations with good friends who are working through their own faith-related fears and frustrations.

I could go on and on in this vein, but the important point for now is that far from feeling uncomfortable at this peer-group gathering, I felt invigorated and encouraged by the camaraderie.  I might venture that a good way to get rid of your personal demons is to send them off on playdates with other people's personal demons, while their hosts meanwhile strategize together about ways to run them out for good.  And personal demons aside, I remembered last night how crucial peer groups are for general well-being.  Peer groups tend to share common issues, a sense of humor, taste, TV channels, and a language with which to talk about all of these things.  My peers already know what social media is, and I can relate when they explain why they didn't apply for the Peace Corps.  We can commiserate over being tired of writing cover letters and tweaking resumes, getting a drudge job or another degree just for something to do.

So this post is dedicated to My Fellow Krill.  I won't put any parameters on the title, so feel free, even if you are not a young adult, to claim this dedication.  And no matter who you are, keep clear of baleen whales.