On Staying Home

by Lyndsey Graves

I am back from Georgia, stone-ground grits in tow, looking out my Boston window across the Charles River at Cambridge lights. I wonder how anyone could be lucky enough to live in two such beautiful places.

Another part of me wonders, can anyone live in two places?

Halfway through my second year in The North, I still feel like a Southern girl who is here mostly by accident on a soul-searching, world-saving journey. I wonder if I will still feel this way by year three, year four, by graduation. I wonder how long a place sticks to your bones once you can no longer find decent mayonnaise, fried chicken, or Mexican food.

I have a family and a history in the South; a boyfriend and an occupation and stereotypical, beautiful Young-People-in-the-City adventures here in the North; and it has all gotten the word “home” into something of a mess. I am put out.

I am cross because I have been made to believe (by the inescapable power of stories and assumptions to define words like “adventure” and “success”) that I am either anomalous or simply silly. My longing for a home – a place to stay – is a personal quirk, and probably a feeling to be quashed. Moving around is just what people do. Sacrificing a career to remain among your friends would be foolish. Get out of Cleveland, Tennessee or it’ll suck you in forever!

They told me family, friends, and home are small things for small people. To graduate hoping only to commit to these things would have seemed almost like a betrayal of my education. I had a degree designed for joining the upper middle class, and the upper middle class has Careers. Family, friends, and home are determined by, molded around, slipped in between Careers. Now, even if I want to choose not to buy in to the upward mobility imperative, I sometimes doubt that basic “job security” still exists to the point that I’ll ever really settle down, plant a tree, and watch it grow. Much less if I’ll ever see a community take shape under the trials and fondnesses borne by time and familiarity. Yet isn’t that what we want when we want church? Isn’t that what we’re trying to say when we latch onto phrases like “doing life together”? Isn’t that what we need in order to practice the vulnerability we all want to preach about?

I don’t what to sound hypocritical, in that no one actually forced me to move away; or ungrateful, because I realize I’ve had some rare opportunities. I don’t want to sound regretful, because I’m not. Yet I’m also not convinced that my decision to go was intrinsically better than a decision to stay. If I’d never fulfilled my high school flight of fancy by living in Boston, I’d still have things to do and people to see. If I’d never left the Southeast, I still could have chosen to learn and grow. You don’t become interesting just by leaving a place.

Maybe I just chose to ignore them, but I remember few if any people saying all this to me when I was thinking about these choices. No one impressed upon me, perhaps because no one thought, that moving so far would be a big and costly decision, even a decision somewhat at odds with human nature and its insistent need to become part of a place.

And maybe this is all just the wistful wonderings of someone fresh from a nice visit home, recently under the influence of Wendell Berry and a class on sustainability. Maybe nice visits home are all anyone can really ask for. That’s what I feel I’m supposed to believe. Or maybe the world really has gone just a bit mad, sending young people to far-flung corners just because. I’m not even sure what I think I’m saying we should do. I’m certainly not quitting school and leaving again. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to remind us of some things. I know now that our families are not non-factors. Our friends are not non-essentials. Our selves are not somewhere else, and yet we know this fractured world is not our home. 

Lyndsey lives in Boston, MA where she is pursuing her Master's in Theological Studies at Boston University. She enjoys Community, Mad Men and Beauty and the Beast and her spirit animal is a sloth. She would like to know if this is some kind of interactive theater art piece. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest. 

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Photo credits:
Image #1 via Robert Bauer 
Image #2 via Eric Robinson 
Image #3 via Penelope Waits 
  

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I Liked that Song More When I Didn't Know He Was On American Idol

by Ben Howard

I don’t know if this is a universal experience or not, but I really love falling in love with catchy songs on commercials or TV shows or the intros for sporting events.  I mean I really love it. 

Scrubs is one of my favorite TV shows not only because it made me laugh, but because it introduced me to Colin Hay, Joshua Radin and a whole bunch of other music I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

I remember the World Cup in 2010 for two reasons.  My total and utter fascination with the Uruguayan soccer team led by Latin Michael Bolton aka Diego Forlan and the catchy song from all the Coke commercials, Wavin’ Flag.  I still listen to that song every week.  In Spanish and in English.  The Spanish version is awesome.

So imagine my excitement and glee when I caught the beginning of women’s gymnastics on Sunday night and found myself falling in auditory love with “Home” by Phillip Phillips.  However, my excitement came to a screeching halt when I realized that Phillip(s) was a contestant on American Idol.  How can I enjoy something so…so populist?

Interestingly, I’m not the only one of my friends who had this reaction.  Two nights later I was watching the gymnastics finals when the same song came on.  A friend asked me who it was, hoping for something in the Mumford & Sons/Avett Brothers demographic.  When I told her who it was and where he came from, she actually recoiled.

Now, before we get much further I should say I downloaded the song.  I’m listening to it now.  I love it.  But there is something about popularity that makes me automatically suspicious of, well, everything that’s wildly popular.  I mean I almost had an identity crisis earlier this summer when I found myself singing along to “Payphone” by Maroon 5.  Who am I?

In my mind authenticity has a negative relationship with popularity.  I used to go to a church that I prized for it’s authenticity and integrity.  Then it got bigger and bigger and bigger.  500 turned to 1000 turned to 2000 turned to 3000.  I don’t know if the people there changed, but the context changed my opinion on it.

I’ve tried to work on that hence my purchase of the song and my total and undying adoration of Carly Rae Jepsen, but it still haunts many of my political and theological beliefs.

I think it’s a good thing to question things that are popular because so often those things go unquestioned.  I think this skepticism has benefited me greatly, but I’m always worried that, to borrow a gymnastics term, I’ve over-rotated a bit.  Discernment is hard.  It’s hard to live in the tension between extremes constantly looking for balance and a stable equilibrium.  That’s one of the reasons we have culture wars over chicken.  It’s easier to be an extremist, but that’s not what I want to be.

There’s a story in Jeremiah where he encounters another prophet, Hananiah who is prophesying about the people’s return from exile.  Jeremiah has been telling the people for longer than he cares to recall that they will be in exile for a very long time, but when he encounters Hananiah preaching a new message that the people will be returned and the nation re-established in a very short period of time.

I love Jeremiah’s response to this because at first he’s really excited to hear it.  Yes, it contradicts what he’s been saying, but he thinks God may have just spoken a new word through Hananiah, and he is so grateful for it.

But then he goes home and God speaks to him and tells him that Hananiah’s lying.  That he’s leading the people astray and that Jeremiah needs to go confront Hananiah.  So Jeremiah confronts Hananiah and tells Hananiah that as punishment, he will die within a year.  And Hananiah dies.  And the people stay in exile.  And that isn’t a popular story.

My point is I want to respond to things the way Jeremiah does.  I want to embrace the popular and I want to be enthusiastic, but I also want to be discerning.  If the popular idea is nothing but a myth I want to speak out against it, even if I really wanted it to be real. 

I think that’s what the church is called to do.  Not reject everything, which is easy, or accept everything, which is easier, but to embrace everything with the hope that it might have God’s voice in it then speak truth if it doesn’t.

Peace,

Ben

When he isn’t listening to “Call Me Maybe” and “Payphone”, Ben listens to bands you’ve never heard of, but only their first album.  You can follow his solipsistic elitism @BenHoward87.