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Shower-in-a-Box, plate progress

I had a great surprise when I got home yesterday -- a box from my sweet friend Sara Ardrey-Graves. Sara is one of the women of ladies night, a group of Duke women in religious studies who got together once a week to enagage the holy and the some times questionably holy.

When Sara was simply Sara Ardrey we all went down to the beach after classes were over for a week of amazing beach bonding. It was like a bachelorette party that lasted five days.

But after that we all went our own ways. Molly is a Methodist minister, Amy Griz the Baptist version. Sara is ministering to California surfer youth. We've got PhD programites, Uganda university theology profs and West Bank peace workers in our group. We're across the country and around the globe, from Texas to the West Bank.

It's hard to lose fellowship like that. There have been emails and occasional phone calls but, of course, that isn't the same.

So it was a DELIGHT to come home to my little NE Portland apartment to find a box with individually wrapped gifts from each of the women from the great beach excursion. Bridal-shower-in-a-box was a sweet, wonderful surprise. It was like getting a global hug.

I also got some great pictures of our plates from Chris Haw. It is so awesome to remember that they are just clay from the earth. Here they are in nascent form.

New Address

Here's the address of our little tiny apartment in NE Portland. It's me there for now and then Jacob too when we get married. Pictures coming soon....

1926 NE Tillamook St.
Portland, OR 97212

ROTC, Walmart and the art of negotiation

Working at UP is interesting. It's interesting to be a pacifist at a school with a heavy ROTC presence, to be a Mennonite(ish person) at a Catholic school, to be back in the Corporation after a year scrubbing the backs of the disabled. I love my job because I am paid to bring conversation to each of these places of potential conflict. Because these conflicts are particular and personal for me, they have a sepcial relevance for my work.

One "moment" of late was a conversation with the Director of my department, Tom. He's part of Wal-Marts greening intitative. After protestors and lobbyists put a heap of pressure on Wal-Mart, the company formed panels across the country to get it's greening action underway.

Tom's really torn about it. So am I. In the news a few months ago we learned how Wal-Mart fires pregnant employees and won't hire those who were feeble or old because they don't want to pay the insurance bills. They have some of the worst wages and benefits of any multinational and are completely blind to the sweatshop labor which provides their goods.

So they want you to help their stores not pollute the earth by producing less carbon emissions. What's a guy to do?

I have my own struggle. ROTC is a huge place of contention for me, especially at a Catholic Christian school. One of my students recently asked me to help her plan a trip to Fort Benning for the School of the Americas protest/actions. Suddenly there is all this negotiating. How do you be in relationship, in community with our ROTC brothers and sisters and still speak from a place of grave concern? How do we enter the sorrow that there are places we simply cannot travel together? And, perhaps most chilling, what does this mean for us under the banner of the cross?

Our readiness to renounce our legitimate ends whenever they cannot be attained by legitimate means itself constitutes our participation in the triumphant suffering of the Lamb.

This is the John Howard Yoder quote that follows me with these thoughts. They may not sound like very wedding-esque thoughts, but there are so many questions about being well in the world about us at all times. One of the main ones is the difference between acting charitably and acting sustainably. We eventually chose a caterer who didn't have to drive a large gas guzzler an hour to reach us. But we didn't get to support the charitable organization we wanted to. We landed with a local woman who started her own company and was very sensitive to our desire to use local food and wine.

It's great. But these are the kinds of things we turn over in our daily life. But this is the journey! It's birth control and Safeway, Mac computers and NFL football. And we're blessed to be in the conversation, to be together in it.

Dishes

We finally found some dishes we like, and someone to make them. Chris Haw is our hired potter who will be making our dishes over the next few months. I know of Chris, who lives in the Camden House in NJ, through friends from Duke. I saw his pottery and asked if he would be willing to make a set for us. He agreed and we will be getting 6 sets at $37 a set by January.

You can more about the ministry of Camden House here. This house is part of a larger movement called the New Monasticism. Since the folks at Camden House share their worldly goods, Chris' pottery goes towards their work. You can check out the rest of his stuff (and place your own order) by going here.