Best Week Ever, pt. 3: Passages.

This is part one of another trilogy. See below.

And now, for the conclusion of my birthday week trilogy, allow me to take you back to the beginning of that awesome week. Unlike Part 1 and Part 2, this installment will involve no feats of athletic endurance, but I hope it will be still be exciting.

As you may recall, I spent the last week of May attending a conference and my college reunion, all while battling food poisoning. I got home May 30th and spent Memorial Day catching up on errands and sleep. On June 1st, I returned to work for a bit of a special event:

I work at the Saint Vincent Pallotti Center, an organization that promotes long-term volunteer service through Catholic programs. One of the ways we promote long-term service is by meeting with people who have recently completed short-term service and helping them process their experiences. If they had a good/meaningful experience doing short-term service, we hope they might consider long-term service.

So, on June 1st, we spent the day working with two groups of college students who had just completed a 2-week service trip in Latin America. Of all the things they saw and did, what seemed to impress them the most was the experience of being unplugged. They had all spent 2 weeks away from cell phones and the internet, and they had been shocked at how much they enjoyed just being with other people for a change. They talked about long conversations, playing cards late into the night, and how people in their host countries seemed to place more value on human connection than we do in the US. We spent a good deal of our processing time discussing how they could bring more of this connection into their lives back home. 

After work, I headed to the awesome bookstore Politics and Prose for another special event: a reading by Justin Cronin, author of The Passage. The Passage was a bit of a hit last summer. I bought it as soon as it came out, having read some advanced reviews which described it as great summer reading about the end of the world. I was on a bit of an end-of-the-world kick, having started with The Stand, and proceeded through I Am Legend, The Road, Ender's Game, World War Z, the Hunger Games books, Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, and a few other apocalyptic titles. The Passage did not dissapoint. I plowed through all 750+ pages in a couple of days and then, as I often do with books I love, turned back to page one and read it all again. I've read it a couple more times since. In fact, I learned about the P&P event because I was stalking Cronin's website, trying to find a release date for the forthcoming sequal (alas, 2012).

What do service trips and the end of the world have in common? More than you might think. I recently had a conversation with a friend, speculating about why end-of-the-world books seem to be so popular right now. We had a lot of ideas, and one of them was that they portray a world where all modern communication has been stripped away. In a situation common to many apocalyptic stories, the people in The Passage have no phones or internet, and no idea what might be going on in the rest of the world. Heck, they don't even have mail! Its a situation I can't even imagine anymore, but I think its something many of us long for to some degree, sometimes. Case in point: the kids from the service trip.

Also, during his reading, Cronin told a story that made me think more about human connection. Apparently, he started The Passage as a game with his then 9 year-old daughter. They would go out together, he running and she on her bike, and toss ideas for a story back and forth. He set two rules: it had to be interesting and one of the characters had to have red hair (like his daughter's). I was touched to hear that such a successful and widely-loved book had come out of some quality time between a father and daughter.

(I was also reminded of a game I once played with a little boy I worked with one summer in Philadelphia. I was co-leading a summer day camp, working with 8-10 year-olds. A few weeks in, we got a new camper: a shy and somewhat awkward boy who told me he liked to write stories. For some reason that is still mysterious to me, I responded to this pronouncement by saying "Oh good, because I like stories. Not interesting stories, though. I prefer boring stories. Can you tell me a boring story?" He asked how you tell a boring story, and I explained that you have to tell a story where nothing happens, like "Yesterday, I drove to school and I went neither fast nor slow." Naturally, the more I asked for boring stories, the more the boy told me stories about getting kidnapped, attacked by bears, etc. We both found this game hilarious and played it pretty much every day. Its one of my best memories of that summer.)

The connection theme of the day continued after the reading when I approached Cronin to get a couple of books signed. Writers are like rock stars to me, and I often have trouble acting even semi-normal in front of them. My book signing experiences range from the totally humiliating (Sherman Alexie, in front of whom I could not utter a word) to the utterly amazing (David Sedaris, who was so gracious that I wrote a sermon about our encounter). On balance, though, they tend to be more humiliating.

Fortunately, this one went fairly well. I was getting one book signed for my niece, who happened to be graduating from high school the next day. So, I had an opening line ready: "This is for my niece, who is graduating from high school tomorrow. Feel free to write any words of wisdom you might have." He wrote "Enjoy your life," which I think is sound advice. Then, things almost ran off the rails. He saw my name, looked up, and said "Alicia!" I think I stared blankly for about 20 seconds before the gears of my brain clicked back into place and I recalled that Alicia is one of the main characters in the book. In fact, she is the girl with red hair, and a bit of a badass/warrior type. He looked at my hair and said "Its a little red, maybe," at which point I seized my opportunity to stop seeming like I had never read a book which I had in fact just read for the fourth time. I said "I don't know about the hair, but I like to think I'm a bit of a badass. Maybe that's the connection." This comment was rewarded with the following inscription:

The next day, I presented the signed book to my niece, Summer, who is also a badass and just happens to have red hair. Then, in one of the prouder moments of my life, I got to watch her graduate.

One of the best people I know, off to take on the world. Sigh.

Best. Week. Ever. Bring it, 32!

Living Water.

This is a sermon I preached at St. Andrew's UMC in Edgewater, MD on 3/27/11. I drew heavily on my previous life as an English major for this one. Back in college, I learned that a good way to write a paper is to take two or more texts and "put them in conversation." That's pretty much what I did here. The texts are John's story of the woman at the well (see below), the amazing book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, and this piece on the Huffington Post by David Lose of Luther Seminary. I let these three great pieces of writing have a little conversation, and my sermon pretty much wrote itself. I also owe credit to the organization charity:water, whose website is the source of the water facts I cite.

John 4:5-42

So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.” Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.” The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!” The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.” Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

Living Water: John 4: 5-42

Just before Christmas, I read a truly extraordinary book: Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit. Clearly, I’m not the only person who finds this book amazing, because its been at or near the top of the New York Times bestseller list for months. I hope you will all run out and pick it up after church today. I promise that what I’m going to tell you is only a tiny piece of this amazing story.

Unbroken is the true story of Louie Zamperini, who grew up in Torrance, California in the 1920’s. As a kid, Louie was a notorious delinquent, on the fast-track to jail or worse. Then, when Louie was 15, his older brother Pete got him to start running. With Pete as his coach, Louie discovered an extraordinary talent. Starting in tenth grade, Louie broke records at his high school, then at regional track meets, then at national meets. He won his first 2-mile race by a quarter of a mile. In 1934, he set a national high school record for the mile-run that stood for 19 years. Newspapers called Louie the “Torrance Tornado.”

Louie in training, pictured in Unbroken.

In 1936, Louie qualified to run the 5,000 meters at the Berlin Olympics. He only came in 8th, but he still ran the distance faster than any other American that year. He returned to his hometown a hero, and immediately set his sights on the 1940 Olympics in Tokyo. Louie, his supporters, and his fellow athletes all believed that he would win gold in 1940. Unfortunately, World War II ended Louie’s Olympic dreams forever.

In April 1940, war erupted in the Pacific and the planned Tokyo Olympics were cancelled. In 1941, Louie was drafted and began training as a bombardier. By 1942, he was in Hawaii, serving as part of a tight-knit crew on a B-24 fighter plane. In his off hours, he ran laps around the base. On the morning of May 27, 1943, Louie got up at 5am and ran a mile in 4 minutes, 12 seconds. On his way home, he was stopped by a commanding officer and ordered to his plane for a rescue mission. Counting Louie, 11 men left on that mission. Just a few hours in, the B-24’s engines failed, and the plane went down. Only Louie and two other men survived the crash.

Louie and his fellow soldiers soon found themselves drifting on a small life raft, far out on the Pacific, with only a tiny supply of food and water. During their first night on the raft, one of the other men panicked and ate all of their food. Within only a few days, their situation was desperate. They were starving, baking in the hot sun during the day, and freezing at night. They were surrounded by sharks, which they had to physically beat off the raft. Worst of all, they were dying of thirst. A human being can survive for several weeks without food, but will die after only 3 to 5 days without water. Louie had never been a religious man, but once the men’s water ran out, he started praying. In one desperate moment, he led his fellow castaways in a prayer for water: “If God would quench their thirst, he vowed, he’d dedicate his life to him.” Shortly after Louie said his prayer, it started to rain.


Thirst is a powerful thing. Louie knew that, the people in this morning’s Gospel text knew it, and millions of people in our world today still know it. As part of my preparation for this sermon, I looked up some facts about water around the world, and they are shocking. Today, in 2011, about 1 in 8 people around the world don’t have access to clean and safe water. Around 42,000 people die every single week from drinking dirty water, and 90% of them are children. In Africa, people spend an estimated 40 billion hours a year walking back and forth to wells to get water. Most of the people who do this walking are women and children, who can be robbed and attacked on the road. In some countries, the water supply is controlled by private distributors, and people have to spend more than 10% of their income just to get water. In this country, where water is free and plentiful, we sometimes forget how vital it is. For those who don’t have it, water is literally the key to life and freedom.

We need to understand the power of water and the experience of thirst to understand today’s Gospel text. Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at a well outside her city. She probably goes to this well every single day to get water for her family. In fact, she has probably walked between home and this well nearly every day of her life, from the moment she was strong enough to carry a bucket. By the time she meets Jesus, she is probably bent over with back and neck pain from carrying heavy buckets every day. Perhaps she has been taunted, robbed, or attacked on her daily walks. The Samaritan woman is clearly intelligent and interested in the big questions of life. Still, when it comes down to it, her life is bound and defined by water. No matter what she might think, say, do, or want out of life, her first priority every day is going to that well.

Its only when we think about water, and what it means to the Samaritan woman, that we truly understand the power in what Jesus says to her: “those who drink of the water that I will give to them will never be thirsty.” To never be thirsty- imagine what that would mean to this woman. Have you ever wished for a few more hours in your day? She would get those hours if she didn’t have to go to the well. She would be freed from fear about what might happen to her on her walks, or what might happen if she can’t get to the well, or what might happen if the water from the well is dirty. She would be safer and freer than she has ever been before. That’s what Jesus is promising when he talks about living water.

Of course, we know that Jesus is speaking metaphorically. He’s not offering this woman actual water, but he must be offering something equally valuable. Something that will make her safe and free. So what is it? Jesus offers the Samaritan woman something as simple and as powerful, as beautiful and as terrible as water. He offers her the truth: the truth about who she is and the truth about who he is.

First, Jesus confronts the Samaritan woman with a truth about herself. When she asks him for living water, he asks her to go get her husband. She admits that she has no husband, and Jesus fills in the details: she has had five husbands and lives with a man who is not her husband. Traditionally, Christians have interpreted this to mean the woman is guilty of some sexual sin: lust, adultery, or even prostitution. In this interpretation, Jesus’ statement is seen as condemnation- he won’t allow her to hide her sinfulness from him. Maybe this is true, but some people see other possibilities in this story.

Women in Jesus’s time were treated as little more than property, and could only achieve security and safety through marriage. The Samaritan woman might have been widowed several times and had to re-marry again and again for her own protection. Or, she may have been forced into repeated marriages. In Jesus’ time, a woman who lost her husband might be married to her brother-in-law or another relative, whether she wanted the marriage or not. Or maybe the truth is a little of both. Maybe this woman went through so many bad things that she started to think of herself as a bad person, and started to do bad things.


Louie Zamperini would understand that. Miraculously, he and one his fellow castaways survived on their raft for 47 days. During those 47 days, they wrestled sharks, pulled birds out of the sky for food, got shot at by Japanese planes, and watched their fellow castaway die. Each man lost more than half his body weight. Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of Louie’s ordeal, because he and his companion weren’t actually rescued. They were captured by the Japanese.

After being pulled out of the ocean, Louie spent two horrific years as a prisoner of war. He and his fellow survivor were moved from camp to camp, where they were starved, beaten, interrogated, and forced to do hard labor. Over and over again, their captors promised to kill them, and they watched enough other POWs die to believe it. Louie’s captors did everything they could to take away his hope. Even worse, they took away his dignity. One of Louie’s guards took a particular, sadistic interest in him. For two years, he subjected Louie to unrelenting humiliation and cruelty. To cite just one example, Louie’s guard once lined up all of his fellow POWs and made each of them hit Louie as hard as they could. Louie was punched 220 times and nearly died.

Amazingly, Louie survived to the end of the war. His POW camp was liberated, and he returned to the US a national hero. His family welcomed him home, he received countless honors and awards, and he even fell in love and got married. Yet, underneath this celebration, Louie was suffering. Louie had physically survived, but his mind was tormented by fear and shame. He had flashbacks of the war by day and terrible nightmares whenever he tried to sleep. Within a few months, he was drinking heavily. He became consumed with the idea of returning to Japan and killing his captors. He grew hostile to his wife and family, picked fights with strangers, and became convinced that God hated him.

Louie was not alone in his struggles. Hillenbrand writes that over 80% of the Pacific POW’s who survived World War II suffered some kind of psychological illness. Their suicide rate was 30% higher than average, and more than 25% developed alcoholism. As Hillenbrand writes, Louie and his fellow POW’s were “torn-down men… Many felt lonely and isolated, having endured abuses that ordinary people couldn’t understand. Their dignity had been obliterated, replaced with a pervasive sense of shame and worthlessness… Coming home was an experience of profound, perilous aloneness.”


I think Jesus sees this same sense of shame, worthlessness, and aloneness in the Samaritan woman. That’s what makes his conversation with her so powerful. When Jesus says “you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband,” he might be naming her sin, or he might be recognizing her suffering. Either way, its what comes next that really matters: he keeps talking to her. In fact, he tells her the most important truth about himself: that he is the Messiah. Jesus’ words to the woman are important, but there is something even more important going on in their conversation. Jesus is saying to this woman “I see the truth about you. I see everything you have ever gone through, and everything you have ever done… and I still want you. I value you, and I need you to help me spread my message.”

I don’t think this is a story about condemnation. I think it’s a story about grace. Jesus sees the Samaritan woman for who she truly is. He sees all of her hurts and all of her faults, all of the things that she is most ashamed of. Yet, he also sees her worth: her intelligence, her purity of heart, her thirst for knowledge. In fact, he chooses her for a very important job. The woman at the well is the first person in John’s Gospel to go and tell others about Jesus.

And what does she tell them? “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” To me, that doesn’t sound like the words of a woman who has been put to shame. If Jesus had been condemning her morals, I don’t think she would have run to tell her neighbors about him, or urged them to go and experience the same thing. The Samaritan woman has experienced grace and she wants her neighbors to experience it too.


For Louie, grace came in the form of a young, unknown, traveling preacher named Billy Graham. By 1949, Louie had hit rock-bottom. He had squandered his money through bad investments, his alcoholism was out of control, and his wife had filed for divorce after finding him shaking their newborn daughter. That fall, a 31 year-old Billy Graham came to California for one of his very first tent revivals. In the beginning, he had no press and almost no audience. Within a few weeks, Graham’s preaching was drawing huge crowds. Louie’s wife begged him to go to the revival with her, but he refused. She went alone and came home saying she no longer wanted a divorce. Louie was happy, but his heart was still hardened toward God, and he still refused to go hear Billy Graham for himself. Louie’s wife badgered him relentlessly until he gave in.

The night that Louie first heard Billy Graham, Graham preached about God’s love and God’s judgment. He told the audience that God knew everything they had ever done, that God could read their very thoughts, and would hold them accountable. Louie got angry. He thought “I am a good man.” But he also got uncomfortable, because he knew the kind of man he had become. Even more, he felt what Hillenbrand describes as “a lurking uneasiness,” an awareness of “a memory he must not see.” When it became too overwhelming, Louie grabbed his wife and ran from the tent.

The next night, Louie’s wife convinced him to go back to the revival. That night, Graham preached about God’s miracles, and God’s promise of grace in the midst of suffering. Louie thought about all of the terrible things he had survived. He got upset and tried to run away again, but suddenly a memory exploded into his mind. He remembered his prayer on the raft: “If you will quench our thirst, I will serve you forever.” Suddenly, it started raining. When Louie felt that rain, he turned around and walked to the alter to surrender his life to God.

Like the Samaritan woman, Louie’s experience of grace led to a feeling of safety and freedom. As soon as he got home from the revival, he poured all of his alcohol down the drain. That night, Louie had his first sleep free from nightmares about the war. The next day, he sat at a park and read a Bible that had been issued to him during the war. Hillenbrand writes that Louie realized “He was not the worthless, broken, forsaken man that [his captors] had striven to make of him… That morning, he believed, he was a new creation.”


In addition to safety and freedom, the Samaritan woman and Louie also found purpose in their experiences of grace. This is very important. Grace isn’t just about Jesus knowing our pain and our faults and loving us anyway. Grace is about Jesus knowing our pain and our faults, and still calling us to do his work. Its through that work- through sharing our experiences of grace and becoming instruments of grace for others- that we let go our shame and pain and discover our worth. Just as he explained grace to the Samaritan woman by talking about water, Jesus explains purpose to his disciples by talking about food. When they urge him to eat, he tells them “I have food to eat that you do not know about… My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.” Like water for the thirsty or food for the hungry, Jesus tells us that the experiences of receiving grace and doing God’s work can satisfy our deepest needs.


After his conversion, Louie began a new career as a Christian speaker. He also bought a campground and turned it into a nonprofit camp for delinquent boys. Through his experiences of grace and meaningful work, Louie overcame his feelings of shame and anger about the war. In 1950, he returned to Japan, where he met with many of his former captors and offered them forgiveness. In 1998, at 80 years old, he ran the Olympic torch through the site of one his former POW camps, on its way to Nagano, Japan. Today, Louie Zamperini is 94 years old, still running, still living independently, and still sharing the grace he received. When he learned that Laura Hillenbrand wrote Seabiscuit and Unbroken while suffering from a debilitating illness, Louie gave her his Purple Heart.

Louie at 93, with the torches he carried for 5 Olympics,
pictured in the January 2011 Runners World.

After her encounter with Jesus, the Samaritan woman brings her neighbors to meet him. After two days with Jesus, they tell her “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.” John doesn’t tell us what Jesus said to these people, but I imagine that he treated them just like he treated the woman at the well. He saw them, listened to them, acknowledged their deepest and darkest truths, and told them he had work for them. If Jesus were here today, I imagine he might say the same things to us:

“You, who are in pain and ashamed- I see your truth, I still love you, and I have work for you.”

“You, who grew up with an alcoholic or abusive parent- I see what you went through, I love you, and I have work for you.”

“You, who are struggling with addiction and ashamed of your own behavior- I know everything about you, I still love you, and I have work for you.”

“You, who lost yourself in a bad relationship- I see your pain, I value you, and I want you to build up my kingdom.”

“You, who are sick and in pain- You, who are grieving and feel all alone- I’m here for you, and I have very important jobs for you.”

“You, who have suffered prejudice and discrimination because of who you are- I see your true worth, and I have work for you.”

“You, who are young and feel like nobody listens to you- You, who are old and feel like your good days are behind you- I honor you and I need you to do my work.”

“You, whoever you are, whatever you have been through, and whatever you have done- I know everything about you, and nothing can take away my love for you. Come, and do my work.”


Amen.

Good books (and other things that mess up my schedule)

As you may have noticed, I have been rather quiet this week. Its been a bit of an odd week, schedule-wise. Most of my office is away at a conference, so I have been almost or entirely alone at work. This happens from time to time, and has the potential for disaster in terms of productivity. I am sure that the absence of any concrete form of accountability is detrimental to many people's productivity, but it is especially problematic for people with ADHD. Long stretches of time with no structure and only vague due-dates are not my friend.

Fortunately, this particular circumstance arises often enough that I have worked out a coping strategy: Before the dead-office week begins, I write a to-do list for the whole week, setting goals which are reasonable to accomplish in a work-week's time. Then, I allow myself to relax things like hours and dress code, just as long as I make progress on the list every day. The result is often a more productive week than usual... but that's only productive in terms of work-work, not so much in terms of things I do to procrastinate from work-work (like, say, blogging).

Another reason for the lack of blogging is that I've been consumed all week by the "Chaos Walking" trilogy by Patrick Ness, which begins with this book:

My friend Kate (who happened to write one of my favorite books of 2010) recently mentioned the final book of this series, Monsters of Men, as one of her favorite books of 2010 on her blog.  She mentioned it alongside Mockingjay, the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy, and advised that "anybody who liked The Hunger Games" should start reading Chaos Walking "immediately if not sooner." I had never heard of Chaos Walking, but Kate has never steered me wrong where books are concerned and I love The Hunger Games, so I obeyed Kate's instructions at once. I fired up my Kindle and learned that Ness actually wrote a short prequel to Chaos Walking, The New World, which is available exclusively on the Kindle for free. Smart marketing! I read the prequel in about 20 minutes, and afterward I immediately downloaded all three full-length books and cleared my schedule for several days.

I get a little obsessive about books that I love. Reading is probably my all-time favorite activity (sorry, counseling, running, and eating), and I've always been a fast reader. Thus, I tend to go through a book or two a week just by reading a bit during dinner and before bed. When I find a book I really love, I am totally consumed. I must inhale it as quickly as possible, and then I usually read it once or twice more just to catch anything I missed the first time. I read Kate's book, The Boneshaker, three times the week it came out. I read each of the three Hunger Games books in one feverish day, and I've re-read them several times since. When I discover books like these, I find it impossible not to stay up too late and ignore other people and responsibilties until I've finished reading. (One of my best romantic relationships almost ended prematurely when the final Harry Potter book happened to come out on our anniversary.) 

The Chaos Walking books are the kind of books that make me obsessive. Kate is exactly right that these books are similar to The Hunger Games- in themes, audience, creativity, and addictiveness. I don't want to say too much about them because they hinge on suspense and surprise; I'll just say that I think they are examples of the best kind of books for younger readers. They address big and important themes (war, terrorism, colonialism, the modern information overload) in ways that are relatable without being dumbed-down. Plus, the stories and characters are engaging enough to keep the books from veering into preachy/overly philosophical territory. If you are a Hunger Games fan, you should definitely try these- just be forewarned that Ness's books are much longer, more difficult, and a little darker (hardly seems possible, but its true).

(And, if you have no idea what I'm talking about because you've never read of heard of any of the books listed above, you should follow the links, make a few purchases, and clear your calendar for the next few weeks!)  

Be your own Santa.

I don't usually get much for Christmas, for good reason: my parents (who would be my primary source of presents) are pretty much paying for the degree I've been working on the past three years. Most of my family is solidly working-class anyway, so big-ticket gift items have never really been part of my Christmases. Going into this Christmas, I wasn't expecting much. I asked everybody that buys me presents for the same two things: passes to the indoor pool and gift cards to Bike Doctor, both for triathlon training purposes. I was hoping that a few people would go the Bike Doctor route, giving me enough money to finally buy some cycling shoes.

Things didn't really work out that way. My mom thinks I have no business taking up new sports which requre new equipment, so she wasn't about to contribute to that. She did tell an aunt to get me the pool passes, but that aunt refused, saying that the pool in question isn't clean enough (she actually bought me soap instead). Another relative never got to the pool, but did buy me towels, which are really nice. I got gift cards to Barnes and Noble, Trader Joe's, Giant, Dunkin' Donuts, and Noodles and Company, but nothing bike-related. Fortunately, I did get some cash, which allowed me to take matters into my own hands this afternoon.

Just as I don't get a whole lot for Christmas, I also don't do much shopping, for pretty much the same reason: if I don't have money to pay my tuition, I don't have money to buy things. Also, I dislike crowds and loathe the mall. Thus, my disposable income usually goes to food, running stuff, and downloading books on my Kindle. I can't remember the last time I actually spent several hours going to several stores, only buying things for myself. Its rare enough that it merits a blog post! Here's the rundown:

The shopping actually started a few days ago, on 12/23. That night, I was up in my attic struggling to make my niece's Christmas present on my garage-sale 1970's sewing machine: 

I have been teaching myself to sew on this machine for awhile now, with the idea that I would master the basics on it before I upgrade to something better. It worked fine for last year's homemade gifts. This year, though, something just wasn't right. The thread tension got out of whack and I simply could not fix it. After hours of work, I did not have one passable seam. So, at 8:30 the night of the 23rd, I did what I swore I would not do: went to the mall. Shockingly, I found parking right up front and the stores were not too crowded. I picked up a super-basic Singer machine for $80 and was home by 9:30. Problem solved. The new machine has no frills, and I'll probably want an upgrade eventually, but going from a 70's machine to one made this year is definitely a big and exciting improvement. I finished my niece's present easily and have been working on a couple extra projects just for fun.

Now, on to this afternoon, or shopping day 2: My first stop was B&N, where I hoped to use my gift card to buy calenders. Unfortunately, all the good ones were already gone. I was about to leave and save the gift card for another day when I spotted something on a 50% off table: 

That's a gift set of Thomas Keller cookbooks: The French Laundry and Ad Hoc at Home. I've picked up these books many times before, but always put them back down due to cost and impracticality. The French Laundry is way beyond my skill level and would just be a "food porn" coffee table book. Ad Hoc at Home is more manageable, but still expensive: $50 at B&N, $31 on Amazon. This set has both books, and the discount plus my Mom's store membership brought it down to $45. Knock off another $25 with the gift card and I got both the food porn and the one I can actually use for $20. Score.

Next, I headed over to Bike Doctor, where I pooled all my cash and finally bought the cycle shoes. (I was so excited about them that I took an unplanned extra spin class this evening just to test them out). While I was there, I also took a quick look at bikes, and was pleased to see many more in my price range than I had expected. Come Spring, I hope to visit them again.

After Bike Doctor, I used the grocery store gift cards. This would probably not be exciting to most people, but I love to cook and I deliberately bought things I would not buy normally: steaks, fancy coffee, a couple whole chickens to freeze, things like that.

Finally, I headed over to the mall to continue my calendar search. It was a NIGHTMARE- way more crowded today than it had been the night of the 23rd! It was probably a good last stop because it reminded me why I don't usually like to shop and should keep me from going back anytime soon. I did find the calendars I wanted, though, and I got to pick up some dinner with the Noodles and Company card.

So, now I am at home, surrounded by new things, and (even better) not crippled with guilt for spending too much money. Thanks, do-it-yourself-Santa!

With all due respect to Oprah: My favorite things, part 1.

Just in time for the holidays, I thought I would share my thoughts on a couple of new products that have come my way over the last week. For those of you who are "Lost" fans, I'll talk about the Lost Encyclopedia in this entry. For those of you who are past, present, or aspiring followers of Weight Watchers, I'll talk about their new program in a forthcoming entry (probably today or tomorrow). Then, I'm sure I'll think of other things to review over the coming weeks until the big day. Sadly, I do not have the resources of Ms. Winfrey, so I can not finish with spectacular giveaways. Sorry!

So, on to The Lost Encyclopedia: I came across this over the weekend at a B&N, though its actually been out since October. Its an officially sanctioned companion, authored by people who were highly involved in writing the show. In the foreward, the producers explain it as "the iceberg," ie: all of the information that existed under the visible "tip of the iceberg," which was the actual show. At first glance, it looked awesome, and I was tempted to impulse-buy it. I'm glad that I didn't, because the cover price is $45 and it isn't worth that. Amazon has it for only $26, so I added it to one of my Christmas gift orders and it came yesterday.

If you are a serious "Lost" fan, there are some good reasons to buy this book. It is filled with fun photos and quotes, which will make it a good coffee table book for nerds (like me), and it does contain and compile some information that is hard to find elsewhere. For example, there are detailed drawings of the hatches, close-ups of things like Daniel Faraday's diary and the blast-door map from the Swan station, a copy of the DHARMA/Others truce, and a two-page spread showing all of the images from the "Room 23" brainwashing film. It also fills in some (very minor) gaps in some stories. For example, it gives the reasons why Libby was in the mental institution and why Charles Widmore was banished from the Others.

That being said, there are at least two major problems with this book. First and foremost, the editing is extremely sloppy. There are typos everywhere, as well as inconsistencies and mistakes in alphabetization. The content is poorly organized, seems randomly chosen in places, and is definitely not comprehensive with regard to the major characters and locations. It is nothing like the website "Lostpedia," which exhaustively catalogs every fact and relationship from the show. Most of the customers who have reviewed the book on Amazon have commented on the shoddy editing, and many have speculated that a second edition might come out in the future. I certainly hope that happens. If I were the show's producers, I would not want this poorly-edited version to be my definitive final statement.

For me, the other major problem is with the content of the book, paticularly those bits of information that were not on the show. There simply is not enough new information, and what is there is not very satisfying. I did not go into this book expecting big answers to the many unsolved mysteries of the show, as the producers have always said that they intended many things to remain mysterious (they reiterate this in the foreward). Still, I thought I might get some of the facts and backstory that got edited out of the finished episodes. For example, the name of the Man in Black, which got edited out of the final episode, and which Kristen from E!Online revealed to be Samuel. I imagine that the producers must have tons of little tidbits like this, which have little bearing on the overall meaning of the show, but would be immensely satisfying to fans.

When the book does address unanswered questions (example: "Why can Miles and Hurley communicate with the dead?"), the answers are generally non-answers ("They were born with these gifts and don't know why"). At least 50% of the time, the answer is just "fate." So, for example, Desmond was born with an unexplained resistance to electromagnetism and it was fate that he would meet Penny and wind up on the island, where his gift was so important. Another popular answer is "unknown." For example, it is unknown how the woman who raised Jacob and the Man in Black came to the island, and it is unknown what happened to the DeGroots after they founded the DHARMA Initiative. In several of these cases, I think the "unknown" stretches plausibilty: did the writers really have no answer in mind for these questions?    

On the whole, the book just feels sloppy and thrown-together. It makes me totally understand why JK Rowling things it might take her 10 years to sort through all of her backstory and "cutting room" material in order to produce a satisfactory Harry Potter encyclopedia. I wish that the "Lost" team had spent more time producing something worthy of their fan base. Still, if you're a serious "Lost" fan, you'll probably want this book. Just don't spend $45 for it. Better yet, throw it on your holiday list and get somebody else to buy it for you!

A "hollow day."

For awhile now, I have been obsessed with the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, along with a decent chunk of the late-elementary through high school readers in the world and quite a few adults. If you have not heard of these books, you really owe it to yourself to check them out. You can put yourself on a sure-to-be-very-long waiting list at your local library, or pick them up on Amazon at http://amzn.com/0439023521.

I won't spend too long summarizing the books here; I'll save that for a later post. For my purposes today, you only need to know that the heroine is a 16 year-old girl named Katniss who has spent her life struggling to get by in a poor coal-mining community called District 12. For much of the first book, she has to struggle to find food. At one point, she thinks "I know I'm going to have what we call a hollow day back in District 12. That's a day where no matter what you put in your belly, its never enough."

Very fortunately, I have never struggled with actual hunger in my life. However, I think pretty much anyone who has ever trained for a marathon or other serious athletic event can relate to the idea of the "hollow day." Just this Saturday, I discussed it with Katie C. and her lovely training partner Erin. During our training, we have all experienced days when, no matter what or how much we eat, we never stop feeling hungry. Often, this happens when we add mileage and/or speed to our longer runs. After some of my runs, I have eaten a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel (which is a decent-sized breakfast) and felt like it literally fell through a hole in my stomach. When that happens, I know that it will continue for at least the rest of the day. I will eat like crazy and still feel hungry. 

Today is one of those days. I increased my usual weight in Group Power yesterday, and then I took a spin class last night. This was a pretty decent activity increase compared to my usual Monday, and I am feeling it today. I ate lunch at noon, and was starving by 2:30. This is inconvenient because I am meeting a friend for dinner at 6:45, and the only snack I have available is an apple. I ate the apple around 3:30, and immediately realized that it wouldn't hold me for 3+ hours. So, a few minutes ago, I broke down and ate the Lean Cuisine I had packed for tomorrow's  lunch. Guess what? Still hungry. When I ate Lean Cuisine #2, I deluded myself that I would just get a salad when I meet my friend, but right now it feels more like a steak kind of evening. Hollow day indeed.

*Quick fundraising update. As of today, our combined donation total is $1940 and we have a little over 18 days to go. Keep the donations coming- you could be the person who pushes us over the $2000 mark!

Great friends doing great work, part 2 (and some updates)

As I have mentioned here before, my awesome friend Kate Milford recently realized her life-long dream of being a published author. This would be exciting in and of itself, but its even more exciting because (a) her book, The Boneshaker, is amazing, and (b) lots of important people in the children's literature world have noticed that it is amazing. In fact, there are many blogs and websites out there, writtten by people who know what they are talking about, predicting that Kate will be nominated for awards like the Newberry Medal and the National Book Award for young adults.

Recently, these predictions caught the attention of a Massachusetts 6th grader named Emma. Emma and her mom run a book club for her friends every summer (how cool is that?), and this summer they decided to focus on books honored by Newberry. They chose to include Kate's book because they "know it is a contender" for this year's award. Recently, Emma saw that Kate was making some public appearances in New Hampshire and sent her an email to ask if she might consider visiting MA for the book club meeting. Kate got the email the day before the meeting, when she was already on her way back to her home in NYC. So what did she do? She turned around the very next day and drove to MA.

You can read about what happened next in Kate's blog post . Needless to say, she made a whole group of 6th grade girls very happy and had an amazing experience in the process. This story made me so happy. As someone who spent the entirety of my childhood with my nose stuck in a book, I can barely imagine how giddy I would have been if the author of one of my favorite books had come over to my house. Heck, that would make me giddy today. Good work, Kate!

Now, a few updates on what this blog is actually supposed to be about:

Training continues, and is getting back to semi-normal after several weeks interrupted by injuries and other committments. I re-joined the Annapolis Striders training group last Saturday after being away for three weeks. We ran 14 miles, which is the longest I've ever run. It felt pretty good, especially because we had reduced heat and a relatively flat course. I'm still not feeling as strong as I would like to at this point, but compared to the heat and hills of the Riley's Rumble course (see July 26th), just about anything else feels easy. Tomorrow, we go for 16 miles!

Thanks to my recent trip to NJ, I was away from the gym and took a week off from all of my usual cross training. I thought that this was enough to get over the pulled muscle in my lower abdominals. By the time I returned to Group Power this Monday, I hadn't felt any pain in that muscle for a few days. Everything went well for the first 50 minutes of the 60 minute class. Then, we hit the abs track. About halfway through, I literally felt the muscle rip back open. So, its back to square one on that injury. I'm still doing some of my cross-training, but I have to sit out anything that involves the lower abs. Frustrating.

Speaking of the gym, today is the anniversary of the day I joined! Its amazing to look back on everything I've accomplished since signing that contract a year ago. Prior to joining Annnapolis Athletic Club, I was always an inconsistent exerciser. I had run off and on for years, done a few races, and belonged to a few other gyms that I visited with varying degrees of consistency. In that past year, I have exercised a mininum of four times a week every single week. I ran my first 5-miler, 10K, 15K, 10-miler, and half-marathon. I haven't lost an ounce (in fact, I've gained a few pounds), but I feel the most healthy and fit I've ever felt, I've made new friends, and I've found all sorts of new healthy activities that I actually enjoy. So, hooray for me and AAC!

   

This is becoming a problem.

When I first visited my gym last August and took a look at the schedule, I wasn't sure it would work for me. Given the crazy schedule I had from September-May, I knew that the only time I would be able to go would be at 6am. I have never been great at getting up in the morning; I used to struggle to get to work at 9:30am. How was I going to drag myself out of bed in the dark to work out?

At that time, I happened to be reading the terrific book Changing for Good (http://amzn.com/038072572X). This book introduced the concept of stages of change, which has become a widely accepted idea in counseling. There are tons of books about the stages written for therapists, but this one was originally intended as a self-help book for anyone wishing to change a bad habit. I've read it a few times in order to help clients, and the great thing about it is that I can't help but work on one or more of my own bad habits every time I read it. So, last August, I looked at the gym schedule and the advice in Changing for Good and thought "I can make this work."

For the most part, I have made it work. Since the second week of August last year, I have not gone a week without exercising at least four times, and I often make it five or six. Until this week. I don't know if its the heat, jet lag, or what, but I just could not drag myself out of bed this week. I even missed three group exercise classes that I really like just because I didn't feel like going. I know I'm going to pay for it on this weekend's long run.

The authors of Stages of Change would call this "recycling," which is their preferred term for "relapse." I think those guys might be watching me because, as I sit in my counseling office and type this, I just got a call from a client, with whom I've been working on the stages of change. She can't make it tonight. Which means I can go home and go to the gym. Time to recycle!

Adventures in climate-hopping.

I've been M.I.A. for a few days, in part because I went on a little trip and in part because I've been holed up at home in the a/c reading Justin Cronin's completely addictive novel, The Passage (http://amzn.com/0345504968). If any of you are looking for great summer/beach reading, look no further. As many reviewers have aptly stated, this is the kind of book that you can't put down, even though you kind of want to because you don't want it to end. I heard about it from a brief mention in a magazine and a friend's Facebook post and only learned this morning (when I went to Amazon to get the link) that it is part one of a planned triology. Hooray! With Harry Potter and Lost over, I need something to spend the next several years theorizing about.

So, on to the weekend: I did marathon training long run #2 on Saturday, then headed straight to the airport for the shortest West Coast trip ever: left Saturday morning, attended/DJ'd a wedding Sunday, flew back Monday. Here are the highlights:

1) The long run. What a difference a few degrees makes! I wasn't really looking forward to this run because I found the same distance (10 miles) so difficult the week before. Also, I had to do it by myself because my running buddy was doing another race and the Striders were setting out too late for me to run with them and make my flight. It turns out that I need not have worried. Thanks to my earlier start time and a merciful break in the heat, this 10-miler was a billion times easier and more pleasant than the week before. I walked more than usual and still finished 10 minutes ahead of my time the previous week. So, that was a great start to the weekend and a nice confidence-builder early in my training.

2) The long plane ride(s). Unfortunately, the weekend took a downward plunge after the run. I went to BWI for what was supposed to be a 12:35 flight to St. Louis and a connecting flight to Seattle, with arrival at 6:50pm West Coast time. I had taken a footlong Subway sub with me, intending to eat half on the first flight and half on the second, saving both money and calories. I also planned to sleep off the early-morning run during the flights and arrive awake enough to spend the evening with friends. Good plan, right?

The cascade of crappy events began with the 12:35 flight being late. By the time I got on the plane, I was starving (keep in mind I ran 10 miles that morning) and worried that I might miss my connection at STL. I ate the whole sub as soon as we took off. Then, 10 or 15 minutes into the flight, the captain came on and announced that there was a problem with the plane and we had to go back to BWI. So, we turned around, but there were no runways clear, so we just circled at low altitude for 45 minutes. Something about this process made me nauseous, so I spent that whole time trying not to throw up the huge sub. I was very thankful when we landed, despite the fact that I had already missed my connecting flight and would need to be re-routed.

I got moved to a flight to Denver at 3:55pm, followed by another flight which was scheduled to arrive in Seattle at 9pm West Coast time, meaning that I would miss time with my friends. At this point, I was out of food, so I (unwisely) bought some greasy Chinese food to eat on the flight and then (even more unwisely) stress-ate half of it before we ever boarded. The flight to Denver was relatively smooth, but I could not manage to fall asleep for even a few minutes. Then, when we arrived (at 5pm CO time), we learned that our connecting flight was delayed and we would be at the Denver airport for 3 hours. So that made me even more tired and cranky. What to do? Grab a snack, of course! By the time all this craziness was over, I had easily undone the 10-mile run and then some. (Mental note: pack way more healthy food than you think you will need whenever traveling).

We boarded the flight to Denver at 8pm. By this point, our best possible arrival time in Seattle was 9:30pm Pacific-time. A few minutes after boarding, the captain came on to announce that we were experiencing a lightning storm and all the runways were closed. So, we waited on the runway for another 45 minutes or so for that to clear. By the time we arrived in Seattle, it was after 10pm Pacific time (so 1am to my body, which had been up since 5:30am). I had been instructed to take a 45-minute bus ride and a 10-minute train ride to my hotel, so I headed for the bus stop. It turned out to be clear on the other side of the very large airport and down several long deserted walkways which looked kind of like this:

When I finally got to the bus stop, I realized that I had already missed the last bus. D'oh! So, I speed-walked back down the scary walkways and found a place where I could book a spot on a shuttle. I had a pleasant ride with a very nice shuttle-driver and finally reached the hotel at about 12:30am Pacific time. By this point, I had been awake for 22 hours. I'm still not sure how I managed that.

3) The wedding. The one good thing about my crazy travel ordeal and the marathon 22-hour day was that I went to sleep at 12:30 and woke up at 7:30 just like a normal day. No jet lag at all. So, I was awake and able to enjoy my friend Angela's truly lovely wedding to her new husband Matt. One of the many great things about going to Yale Divinity School is that the students there are really committed to creating creative, meaningful liturgy. Thus, YDS weddings are pretty much always awesome, and this one was no exception.

My DJ gig was at reception #1: a lovely lunch event at a rooftop venue in downtown Tacoma, WA. I love DJing for many reasons, but I especially love DJing friends' weddings because I'm able to really make the music meaningful for them. The time of day seemed to keep people from dancing much, but I was really thrilled with the cocktail/dinner music, which seemed to please both the bride and groom and the guests.

Reception #2 was an open house at the bride's parents' home, overlooking the water and the annual Tacoma 4th of July festivities. Getting married on the 4th was a smart move on Angela and Matt's part. How else do people who aren't mega-rich get to conclude their wedding with fireworks? Well-played, Angela and Matt. It was unseasonably cold in Tacoma on the 4th. I spent the evening shivering in a sweater and jacket, which made coming home to triple-digit heat a little shocking.

4) The trip home. This one was (thankfully) much smoother than the trip out. The only problem was that I didn't realize that the busses and trains were still running on a holiday schedule and wound up having to take a $60 cab ride to the airport. Also, it was a bummer to leave so soon after my arrival, especially once I realized that most of my friends were staying to hang out an extra day. Oh well.

So, now you're pretty much caught up. I meant to go back to the gym yesterday and get back to training. Yet, somehow, I wound up sitting in my air-conditioned room reading all afternoon/evening. I think the 105 degree heat may have had something to do with that. So, I really need to get back tonight and also to start planning for how I'm going to cope with the heat this weekend. Time to freeze some Gatorade!