Thoughts on friendship and more on Jesus Camp

I met Sheri one Sunday morning at Airport Baptist Church in Des Moines (yes, the church was across the street from the airport). My family had recently started attending Airport Baptist after leaving another church, Adelphi Calvary Baptist, which was just a mile from our house. We left Adelphi after a church spat that ended with two deacons fist fighting on the front lawn. The fight happened after a business meeting and if I remember it right, had something to do with the color of carpet in the sanctuary.

My parents had had enough and thought it best to take us kids elsewhere...even though my ancestors had founded the Adelphi church. So we started driving into Des Moines to attend Airport Baptist, a bigger and, at the time, "hipper", Baptist church where my older sisters had friends in the youth group. Sheri and I were in the 6th grade at the time, and she led me to the 6th grade girls Sunday school classroom. She seemed sure of herself, confident, leading this shy new girl to class. She introduced me to Lori, and the three of us became friends as we sat in the pink shag-carpeted sunday school room. We had sleep overs, went to camp together, and wrote notes during the Sunday morning service.

A few years later, when Sheri's family moved to Arizona, I was devastated. We vowed to keep in touch...and amazingly enough, we did. We wrote letters every week or two all through high school. We mailed each other gifts -- sticks of gum, cheap necklaces, and once, after Sheri's family vacationed in Mexico, she sent me a sombrero. We told each other about our latest boy crushes, our new hair styles. We'd send each other school pictures with "Friends forever, xxooxx" written on the back.I kept all of her letters for years in plastic bags in my closet. I finally threw them out once when I was moving. I regret that. I wish I could go back and read them again.

Sheri and I went to the same college our freshman year and were roommates. She eventually moved back to Arizona to finish school, but I visited her every few years. Like any friendship, we've had our ups and downs, but I'm thankful to have a friend, a kindred spirit, who has known me since I was 12.

After reading my "Jesus Camp" post, Sheri wrote her memories of camp:

"Your blog entry on "Family Camp" sure brought back a lot of memories. I only went through Junior Girls camp and the family camps in the summer my elementary years and remember them so fondly from a young child's perspective. I remember some speaker talking about how evil pierced ears were, comparing the practice to demonic native habits in the jungle! My mom remembers that after some lady sang a solo, little Andrea (3-4 years old) spoke out (loud enough for everyone to hear), "I like her voice but I hate her body!" (My mom admitted she had a weird figure.) So there's my stream of consciousness on family camp. I'm so glad we're still close and that I can enjoy and relate to your eloquent expressions of some of these things. I have told others, 'Karen and I had the same childhood in a lot of ways.'"

It's not often you find a kindred spirit...a lifelong friend that just seems to "stick." It's been 30 years since that Sunday morning at Airport Baptist Church. The church building was recently razed to make room for a new airport runway. Our friendship remains.

On Missing Jim Lehrer and What Not to Wear

I'm going through withdrawal. David and I decided to give up TV for Lent...and maybe forever. So yesterday we unplugged the huge black TV I inherited from a friend and wheeled it into the closet. Now the wall in the living room is bare and empty. I feel lost and disoriented. What are we supposed to do now while we're eating dinner? Sit down at the table and talk?

We've been considering getting rid of the TV for a long time--as long as we've been married. But we couldn't wean ourselves off the The News Hour with Jim Lehrer or Antiques Roadshow (okay, we're geeks). Too often, we'd find ourselves on the couch long after The News Hour was over, surfing the channels trying to find anything intelligent to watch, with no success. So we'd end up watching "What Not to Wear" (Why do Stacy and Clinton make everyone look THE SAME)? or "Flip This House" (Will they get it done on time and within budget???!! The suspense!) Our addiction was sucking our souls dry. So we did it. We went cold turkey and put the thing in the closet.

I think mainly I'm afraid. Afraid that the house will be too quiet. That David and I won't have enough to talk about. Afraid that I'll become bored. That maybe I'll have to listen to God more and I won't like what he has to say. Afraid that I'll have to face some things I've been avoiding. Because when you're addicted to something, it's usually because you're avoiding something else.

I'm hoping to read more, write more, workout more. Maybe in a year I'll morph into a svelt novelist who's read the complete works of Derrida. Who knows. In any case it has to be better than a glassy-eyed couch potato who's seen every episode of What Not to Wear.

Ramona updates

For the latest on Baby Ramona, go to this website.

Thanks for praying...

Are you 100% Christian?

I love this quote from C.S. Lewis:

"The world does not consist of 100% Christians and 100% non-Christians. There are people who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name…There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are strongly attracted by him that they are his in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it."

Baby Ramona

Please pray for this sweet little girl. She's the daughter of my friend, Jane and her husband, Andy. Last Tuesday doctors discovered that baby Ramona has a severe heart defect, and her arteries were so tiny they didn't know if they could even do surgery to correct the defect. But on Wednesday night they went ahead and did surgery. They didn't know if she would make it through the night. But miraculously she did, and now she's doing a little better with the oxygen levels in her blood improving. But it's still touch and go, minute by minute.

I have been thinking this week how unfair life seems sometimes. My friends had wanted a baby for a long time. Finally, they decided to adopt and less than a year ago they adopted Simon. Around that time, Jane found out she was pregnant! We were all so happy for them! How life can change in less than a year. After years of waiting, they had not one, but two children.

Now this.

What can I say to them? I can't think of anything that doesn't sound like a Christian platitude. So I'm just praying that God will comfort them and help them through this. And I'm praying for a miracle. I'm asking you to pray, too.

My new website

In case anyone is wondering what I do for a living, check out my new website.

A victory for pigs...and humanity

I grew up in Iowa as the granddaughter of a farmer who planted corn and soybeans and raised cows and hogs. I remember visiting my grandfather's farm, just a mile or so from our house, and climbing up on the wooden fence that corraled the big hogs. They were a little scary for a child -- huge, covered in mud, and loud. I stayed on the other side of the fence. But I liked watching them roll in the mud and nudge each other with their big snouts.

In the 30 or so years since then, farming has changed drastically. The small, independent farmer like my grandpa are relics of the past. Farming has turned industrial -- huge hog lots dot the prairies -- and hogs are treated like products, not sentient beings created by God. Thousands of hogs are raised in big warehouse-like structures with no mud in which to roll around, and most of them never see the light of day before they're trucked off to the slaugherhouse. The sows have it the worst -- they're kept in "gestation crates" that are so small the animals can't even turn around. They're impregnated, give birth, and then impregnated again. They endure this cycle until they're no longer useful, then they're slaughtered. When I learned more about the meat industry 7 years ago, I decided to become a vegetarian.

A few years ago I interviewed a writer named Matthew Scully who wrote a book titled "Dominion: The power of man, the suffering of animals, and a call to mercy". The Q&A was published in Christianity Today magazine. After reading the book and interviewing Matthew, I learned even more about animal rights and our responsibility as Christians to protect animals.

Just a few weeks ago I read on the Humane Society's website that there's been a huge victory for pigs. Smithfield Foods, one of the biggest corporations in the meat industry, has agreed to phase out gestation crates at their "farms." I'm surprised this hasn't been covered in the press. Here's a quote from the article on the website:

"This is an earthquake in the pig industry," Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The HSUS, said. "Gestation crates are one of the most inhumane confinement systems used in modern agribusiness, and this decision is a signal by the industry leader that these crates have no place in the future of American agriculture. The HSUS calls on the other major pig producers to follow Smithfield's lead, and rid the industry of this extraordinarily inhumane confinement system."

Following Smithfield's lead, the largest pork producer in Canada has also agreed to phase out gestation crates by 2010.

This is a victory for pigs, and for humanity. I still won't be eating pork, but I'm encouraged...

Jesus Camp

I haven't yet seen the documentary "Jesus Camp". But reading about it has made me think about the Baptist camp I attended when I was a child. Family Camp at the Iowa Regular Baptist Camp was our family vacation every year. We'd go with other families from our church, and we'd stay in one of the cabins that had theological names like Salvation or Redemption. We swim in the lake, attend bible classes in the morning, be captivated by stories from missionaries who came from lands far, far away, listen to sermons in the chapel at night -- complete with hour-long Just-As-I-Am singing alter calls. Then we'd build campfires and eat popcorn and then curl up in our sleeping bags in our bunks and listen to the tree-frogs chirp and the wind blow through the large oak trees.

As I got older, I attended Junior Girls camp, then Junior High Camp, and then Senior High camp. My older sisters were on staff as lifeguards for awhile. They'd be gone all summer and I envied their friendships with other staff kids. Then they got fired. Yes...fired for skipping chapel and t-peeing one of the staff dorms. This happened during family camp, and I remember the stern look on my mother's face when she found out her older daughers had been dismissed. The shame! I couldn't figure out what the big deal was...it was just a teen-aged prank, right? And my sisters were being fired?

When I was 16 I was kissed for the first time at Senior High Camp by a lifeguard named Tom. He had sandy blonde hair and was an artist and one night he pulled me behind a tree, beyond the watchful eye of the camp director, and kissed me. It was a sweet, innocent kiss. But the director yelled out, "Tom, get back to the staff dorm, now!" He couldn't see us, but he suspected we were up to no good.


I have fond memories of camp. Of sitting on "Snake Hill" with my friends, of week-long camp romances, of the spiritual high that lasted about a week after camp was over, of skiing behind a speed boat, of the campfires. But looking back I also remember that it wasn't a place filled with grace. Instead, it was filled with rules and judgement. Purusing the website (complete with a tab titled "Eternal Life"), I noticed things haven't changed much. Girls are forbidden to wear shorts above the knee. While swimming, everyone (men and women) have to wear t-shirts over their swimsuits. External Rules. Just follow them and we'll all be okay. There's something safe and comfortable about just following rules. But at some point, you realize that life isn't black and white, and a simplistic view of God doesn't work any more. That life is messy, and that there's nothing wrong with kissing a boy behind a tree.

I'm thankful for my camp memories, of sitting around a campfire, tanned from a day at the lake, with my family and friends. Of being inspired by missionary stories and learning about the bible. But I'm also glad my faith has grown beyond just keeping the rules and feeling God's judgement.