One of the biggest things my family has battled with is the busyness of American culture. Nearly everyone I talk to agrees that America has a broken mentality of being too busy too often, leaving no time for the things that matter most:  family, friends, peace & quiet.  Instead, we sign up for too many programs, work too many hours, shuttle our kids from one place to another, work too much at church or other volunteer organizations, or just plain watch too much TV.  If everyone agrees, why is no one rejecting the lifestyle?

In my family we’ve made rejection of this a priority.  We try and keep work to a minimum.  We don’t over-commit (which means we often under commit) to ministry work.  We don’t sign our child up to do, well, anything. We don’t go out very often and we are getting good at saying ‘no’ when too many options present themselves on the weekend.  Doing all of this has been a great improvement in our lives.  We feel less hurried and we end up spending a crazy amount of time together as a family.  When an opportunity comes up to see friends, to help out with a project that is a good cause, or to just go play at a park we almost always have time.  Friends could call on a moments notice to hang out or to ask for help and we’re here just waiting.

But this is where the problem begins to surface  We’ve learned that making time in life for relationships, family, and friendships is the right path, it’s an awesome step in the right direction.  However, if no one else takes that step with you…it’s lonely and, quite frankly, boring.

You see, now we’ve got all the time carved out and, well, we don’t know what to do.  We sit around the house basically staring at each other because, while family time is awesome, eventually you want to connect with other families (be it friends or extended family of your own).  And, if none of them have the same vision you’re left sitting on the sofa hoping that someone will call.

So, this entry was born in frustration that we’ve made the step to build relationships, we’ve cut things out of our lives to make time…and no one else seems to be willing to put their money where their mouths are.  Why not?

I love my friends.  I love my family.  I understand that everyone isn’t on the same life journey as we are.  But it would be awesome if more people started taking time out of their lives like they say they want to. Everyone says they’re too busy, but no one actually does anything about it.

Sure, it’s a selfish request, but here’s my encouragement.  Stop complaining about being too busy and take some actual steps to simplifying your life.  If enough people actually start living this way, we won’t be so bored.  Now go out there and learn to say “no” more often!! ;)

This past week, I read a really interesting book:  Searching for Whitopia by Rich Benjamin.  This book was funny and challenging and I recommend it for any white person living in the suburbs or exurbs (if you have an open mind to how others see the world).  However, this blog entry isn’t about the book…it’s about something that was said as an offhanded comment towards the end of the book.  I don’t have the quote in front of me, but it went something like this:

“Most white suburbanites complain about their taxes being increased because they work hard and don’t want to subsidize a welfare state.  They feel they’re paying for those who are ‘lazy’ and don’t want to work or supporting those with drug or other habits that they don’t think their tax dollars should pay for.”

I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard this same old argument about why people don’t want to pay higher taxes.  I’ve heard countless people who are otherwise compassionate declare that they don’t want their money going ‘down the drain’ to social programs that don’t work. I even used to think this myself.  Then three different things changed my view:

There is no qualifier

I’ll never forget the day that Dean made an offhanded comment that solidified something for me.  He was talking about the ‘more taxes for lazy people’ complaint above and pointed out that Jesus gave no qualifier for helping the poor.  He didn’t say “give to the poor…but only if they’re not on drugs” or “give to the poor….but only if they work hard”.  He didn’t even say “give to the poor…but only if it’s done directly and not through a larger government program.”  He asked us to give to the poor…period. There was no qualifier.

The Modern Tithe

The second perspective changer came from a book called Pagan Christianity, which points out that our modern tithe does not equate to the tithe of the Israelites in the Old Testament.  Back then, the Temple was much more like the government than a ‘church’.  The tithe was taken in by the temple for a couple of reasons, but the main reason was to support the poor and widows who can’t take care of themselves.  (do you see where this is going?) If the temple is serving as the government and the tithes are taken to support the poor, you’ve got something that looks a WHOLE lot more like our tax/welfare system than a church offering plate.  God mandated people to pay into the welfare system of the day…and here we are complaining about it (oh, and we conveniently forget about “giving to Ceaser what is Ceasers”)

Corn Syrup Welfare

Now we come to thought #3 that hit me yesterday and brings us full circle back to Rich Benjamin’s “Searching for Whitopia”.  After him quoting this oft-used thinking, he points out a very intersting fact about where our tax dollars are actually going.

Those of us outside the big ‘urban’ states think that our tax dollars are all going to big cities (New York, LA, Chicago, etc) to support these ‘welfare leeches’, but the facts don’t support this.  When you look at where tax money is going, these states that have big cities actually take in less taxes than they pay out.  This means that our Red State money isn’t going to their cities, their city-earned taxes are going somewhere else…so where?

As it turns out, all of our big ‘farm’ states pay in WAAAY less taxes than they get in return from the government as corn and soy subsidies.  Our tax dollars aren’t primarily paying for ‘welfare babies’…they’re paying for corn and, more specifically, processed corn products.

If you’ve read any modern writing on how our food system works, you know that the government is HEAVILY subsidizing our “Fast Food Nation” of processed and packaged foods.  Didn’t you ever wonder why a bag of Doritos is ridiculously cheap compared to, say, an organic zucchini?  It’s because your tax dollars are making up the difference.

So, this brought my mind full circle to an incredible irony.  We suburbanites are chowing down our McDonalds, Cheetos, and Corn Flakes faster than anyone in the nation.  WE are the ones who are benefiting from these higher taxes.  These aren’t “welfare subsidies”…they’re “junk food taxes”.  If you want to complain about higher taxes, you shouldn’t be complaining about social programs, you should be complaining about how our government is pushing cheap, unhealthy, processed foods with your tax dollars. Funny how it’s always easier to point the fingers at others, but much harder to accept that our fast paced, junk food driven lives are really a major cause of our complaints.  I’m not sure if YOU see the irony in this…but I sure do.

Think, don’t rant

I intended this blog entry not as a political debate starter, but as a thought starter.  That’s why I’m leaving comments off.  In the past I’ve seen that posts like this just cause a knee jerk reaction but my hope is that, if you can’t comment, you’re forced to think about it to yourself.  Whether you agree or not isn’t the point…hopefully it’ll make you stop and think about the little bits of truth all around us that are cut off by political hacks and media pundits.

So, if you’re reading this blog entry, you’re most likely someone who knows me via my ‘online personality’.  You’re someone who probably listened to the podcast or followed me on twitter or possibly ran across my Mustardseed video podcast.  If that’s the case, you have, for sure, noticed something that all three of those links have in common.  They’ve all recently “gone out of business”.  I’ve disconnected much of my online life in favor of pursuing other connections and, as I’ve recently said, “I don’t miss it one bit!”

Did you notice that I assumed that most people reading this entry were not people I know in real life?  Sure, there’s some exceptions (”Hi Mom!”) but most people who know me don’t need to read my blog because, well, they know me.  They see me at least once a week.  They run into me at Starbucks.  They stop in for coffee or we work on projects together.  In my new, more analog, life, connections aren’t made or fostered online…they’re carried out around a kitchen counter.  Literally.

I think our society expects us to have too many friends…too many connections. We’re encouraged to put quantity over quality.  We’re expected to stay in touch with people who move thousands of miles away.  We’re expected to run our kids from one friends house to the next.  We have the burden of popularity, the need to be loved by many, the drive to make more connections with our limited time an attention.  I’m done with that.  I will have few friends.  I will make few connections. I will spend most of the time with my family (both immediate and extended).  I will make those relationships deeper and willfully let quantity fall by the wayside.

It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with you, oh dear blog reader.  I look at all the amazing connections I’ve made through my online life.  People I’ve tweeted with, blogged alongside, and facebooked.  People I then met in ‘real life’ at conferences, meetups, and trainings.  You are awesome and I wish I could be your friend.  However, I’m now fully convinced that relationships can’t be built online, only introductions or surface acquaintanceships.  I need some more serious weight on that corrupted word:  Friend.

How can you be my friend if I never see you to give you a man-hug (ya know, with the manly pat on the back so we don’t look too girly)?  How can I be your friend if I can’t give you a hand lifting something heavy or loan you a tool when you need to fix your car?  How can you be my friend if you don’t really know me through day to day conversation?  Sure, you can be an acquaintance.  But not a friend.  Not someone I can call in an emergency or someone I can lean on when I’m weak.  We have too many ‘friends’ in this Facebook-world and almost none in our actual living, breathing, human experiences.

So, (to take this question further to a problem it presents when the premise is accepted) with fewer, better, analog friends:  How do we stay in touch? How do we continue our friendship in a world built on Facebook and Twitter?

I ask this because I sit here in Starbucks alone. I yearn for some of those analog connections, yet to get them I have to fire up Twitter.  I have to text my peeps.  I have to use these ‘tools of distraction’ to make these connections happen.  We no longer live in a time when you can mail someone a letter (that would just be strange!) or even call them and say “let’s hang out”.  These methods no longer fit into lives crammed full of instant and unobtrusive communications.  We’re no longer able to just pop over to someone’s house or show up at their workplace because privacy and efficiency are more important than relationship.  We live in a world so separated and segregated that communicating directly is just plain rude since these connections are not run through our junk mail filter or archived in our Visual Voicemail box.

So, these two concepts sit side by side.  We need fewer and more analog friendships.  Yet, in this world we’re forced to use digital tools if we want those to happen. What’s the cure?  I suppose it has something to do with living closer together (this could mean city or small towns) and putting relationship over work…quality over quantity.

I strive for this change everyday.  The problem is…you can’t do it all by yourself.  So, who’s in?

I’m not sure if everyone else has the level of nostalgia that I do, but it sure doesn’t look like it. The reason I assume they don’t is that no one else seems to long for a time before industry, technology, and the hustle of normal life in the same way that I do.  All of my daydreams are of big open and empty spaces created by the hand of God, not by some dude in a factory.  I dream of the day when I can cancel my internet service and get rid of my cell phone because I live in a town where everyone I know is a 30 minute walk from my front door and I buy all my groceries from a farmer just down the road.  The problem is that this type of world has disappeared, or is rapidly disappearing from this country and I don’t believe it will ever return unless we have no other choice.

The more I thought about the disappearance of this world, the more I traced it to a single and monumental time in our history:  World War II. I used to think that our country had it’s most radical shift in lifestyles and ideas during the 1960s and Vietnam war…but the further I traced it the more I realized that the 60’s were only the practical and inevitable outcome of a post-WWII country.  The explosion may have happened during the Nixon years, but the fuse was lit on a quiet Sunday morning in Pearl Harbor.

Everything we are, everything we know is almost universally a product of the second Great War. (I can hear a big giant “duh” coming from the history crowd) Lifestyles and expectations of what we ‘deserve’ were all born into existence during my grandparents generation.  We entered the 1940’s as a mostly rural-focused, simple country.  We left that decade an industrial and political super power.

As an example let’s look at the women’s liberation movement.  The 60’s get all the credit for freeing women but it was actually done 20 years earlier when Rosie the Riveter beckoned women to the factories and away from the  kitchens.  This was undoubtedly a step forward for women’s equality (which I embrace and applaud) but it was done at the expense of putting industry and ‘career’ before family (which I heavily regret).  It was Rosie that made women strong but the family weaker.  It was Rosie who was responsible for helping to win that war but made McDonalds meals the inevitable replacement for women who no longer knew how to cook from scratch.

Speaking of McDonalds…WWII is where our concern for our body’s fuel (ie. food) fell by the wayside. We had better things to do, like win a war…we didn’t have time to worry about what we put in our stomachs.  We’d outsource that to Swansons or Kraft.  The problem is when the war ended our culture and habits didn’t change.  We continued to live in ‘war mode’ eating prepackaged or pre-prepared foods which, as we see now, was killing us just as efficiently (albeit a little slower) than a Nazi bullet.

This whole ‘organic’ food movement is a direct backlash on post-WWII life. When the war ended we have a whole lot of explosives material and factories that we no longer needed.  It had to so somewhere.  Then someone had the brilliant idea of putting it in our food.  No, I’m not kidding.  The fertilizer that we now buy in bags from Home Depot is the product of too many unexploded and left over bombs from WWII.  The non-organic food we buy in supermarkets is sprinkled with explosives, which is why it’s so huge and green.

How about The American Dream? (and subsequently our overachieving and non-stop lifestyle) A direct product of the War. We came home victorious and proud to a country untouched by the ravages of war.  We were strong and wealthy and we started to believe we deserved it.  The 1950’s were the living of this dream that we though we deserved. We lived high on the hog in our suburban houses, we all bought cars, we shopped for fancy clothes and built bigger buildings.  We all ‘deserved’ dishwashers and washing machines so we bought them.  We decided that we and our American Dreams were more important than community and relationship.  We worked harder (and more often) to buy more stuff…we neglected our kids and outsourced their development to Mr Rogers, Big Bird, and Ronald McDonald.

I could go on forever but I’ll stop here.  We think that this post-WWII world has always been ‘the way it is’…but in reality it’s only 60 years old. Our previous 200+ years were radically different in this country (not to mention our previous thousands of years before this country).  We shunned self for community.  We worked hard, but not so hard that we neglected family.  We raised our own kids and cooked our own food.  We talked with people instead of e-mailing @ them.  We knew our neighbors and our farmers and we lived with them and supported them emotionally and financially.

And now I wonder how to escape this post-WWII world. How do you live in this era connecting with your family, your neighbors, the land, and God without the distraction and pull of a post-WWII world that constantly tugs on your shirt trying to lead you to a more ‘fulfilling’ life?  I have no answer, but I can tell you that I yearn to disconnect from the hussle (not to mention the bustle).  I look every day for ways to discard digital life for hard cold reality.  Someday I might get there but until then I’ll live each day as an opportunity to move closer to December 6, 1941..just hours before the day that lives in infamy..and the day that changed America and American lifestyles forever.

Yes, it’s true.  My blog is back after a good 2+ years away.  I’m not quite sure how I feel about this yet and I’m not quite sure I have much to say.  The reality is, I’ve been verbally blank for, at least, the last 6 months.  I have few thoughts beyond “mmmm….peanut butter” or “Drupal sucks, it should be better”.  My mind hasn’t been in the gutter or soaring to new hights…it’s pretty much been sitting in an Ikea desk chair staring at a screen.

While I don’t know what I’ll write about, I know why I’m writing.  I want to start thinking again. Back when I blogged frequently, my brain was functioning at a higher level.  I had new ideas, new thoughts, new opinions.  I didn’t write because I wanted to get them out….I had them because I wrote.  There’s something about a consistent writing habit that makes the brain move and operate in ways that it doesn’t normally.  It forces you to put ideas to paper (or keyboard) which means they have to be formed into words and sentences and paragraphs…all with a lucid point.   I think this is why Journalling is so talked about in Christian circles:  It’s the written word that makes spirituality, the un-seen, visible.  It’s thereputic but it’s also inspiring.

In the past, my blogs have mostly been a venue for bitching about the world, the church, or pop-culture.  It made alot of people upset and alot of people uncomfortable.  Those topics caused me to stress-out when people disagreed, but they also help me GET the stress out in a way that, honestly, is currently destroying me.  Keeping that inside makes you sick…and I’m tired of feeling sick.

I’m always passionate about the right and wrong paths that the Christian church in America is taking.  But I think, in some ways, I’m beyond that.  Not because I’ve gotten older or more mature…but because I see The Church (in general, yet not specifically) as a total mess which is beyond repair.  So, while I’m sure I’ll complain about and jab at Christianity, I have a feeling it will be with less vigor…kinda like a Mike Tyson who would rather just eat a cheeseburger than fight Holyfield.

So, here’s to blogging and it’s remedy for the soul.  May it (this time) live long and prosper.

(oh, and yes, this is a Wordpress blog for any nerds that care….)

Well, here’s the thing. I may attempt blogging again (for about the 50th time in the past 2 years). So, keep your head down as the script hits the fan. Come back in a few days for something to see…