For two years in a row now, Rob and I have taught a January interim class at Calvin called Pop Culture in the Empire. With mostly first-year students, we take a tour of the biblical narrative and contemporary society through the lenses of empire vs. the Kingdom of God. You can read more about it here and here. We certainly don't want to expose students to huge systemic problems and then leave them with no sense of hope or rootedness in the biblical narrative. Toward that end, we left them with a blessing yesterday at the end of our last class.

May you Know Truth:
Not the small truth that you can contain in a glass,
     Consume,
     Throw at others;
But big Truth like an ocean of water
     That sustains a vibrant riot of life,
     That allows you to float if you just
     Surrender.

And not the small knowing that reduces ideas
     Infinitely larger than the human skull
     To brain-sized bits,
     Mastered, packaged and asphyxiated;
But big Knowing that is like friendship,
     Knowing that is love,
     An eternal process
     That also embraces being known.
May you Know Truth.

May you Act in Hope:
Not the small hope
     Blowing out the birthday candles
     With a wish for what can be wrapped,
     Owned, insured, destroyed, replaced;
But the big Hope
     Of a suffering servant
     Who will walk through walls to find us,
     Even in our fear,
     Even in our utter hopelessness,
     Hope of a world without end,
     Hope that even death could not destroy.

And not the small action
     That is an end in itself,
     Selfless and yet somehow serving a self
     That would otherwise be overwhelmed
     With guilt and shame.

But the big Action
     That is love bearing fruit in this world
     For all to taste, touch, smell, hear, see,
     Action that nourishes,
Action that is an invitation to a resurrection party
     Accepted with compassion and delight.
May you Act in Hope.

Waking up is hard to do
     But once we see
     How deep the suffering goes
     How high the purpose of human beings
     Created in the image of the Creator
What is sleep, but settling for so much less?
     What is sleep, but surrendering to a tiny, lazy savior?
     What is sleep, but biding time in such boredom
     That eternity becomes bad news?

So, friends, may you be fully awake,
     And in that wakefulness:
May you love beyond reason.
May you hope beyond what's realistic.
May you find true pleasure in what pleases God.
May your hunger and thirst for shalom
     Be satisfied by the Bread of Life
     Embodied in the bread of earth.

We haven't managed to write here since the end of March. Here's a cheat sheet (for cheating, I guess?) of what's gone down in our lives since then:

• In early April, we managed the Festival of Faith & Music at Calvin College. It was incredible and we really need to write about it soon. Check out the audio on the Festival web site ...


• Shortly thereafter, we took a two week vacation and attempted to do as little as possible--which just about worked.


• *culture is not optional put in an offer to purchase an old elementary school building in Three Rivers, Michigan. We have a lot of ideas for it and we need to raise $20,000 before the end of May if the deal is going to go through. Want to donate? :)


• We're finalizing plans for a speaking tour this summer, details of which will be forthcoming on the *culture is not optional web site. Essentially, the Christian Reformed Church Office of Social Justice is giving us a grant to make our way around to Midwestern congregations to speak about approaching food faithfully.


• We celebrated World Fair Trade Day at World Fare with events on the hour, from potting workshops to film showings to a fair trade cook-off. Sparsely attended, but great fun!


• We published a few issues of catapult magazine in there, too.

Wow ... we really get to be a part of a lot of great stuff! :)

I've been appreciating Thomas Lynch's essays in The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, working my way through slowly, usually one-essay-at-a-time before bed. His reflections resonate not just with recent news of deaths, but with my affection for Three Rivers, another Michigan small town not unlike Lynch's home of Milford.

This morning, a paragraph from "Mary and Wilbur" had so many synapses firing at once with recognition and connection, I had a hard time getting through it. It wasn't that I had a one-to-one correlation for Wilbur in mind, but that it captured such an aura of small town experience:

Wilbur Johnson knew everyone in town. It was his style. For seventy years he's worked in the produce section of the local market, proffering welcome to newcomers and old timers over heads of lettuce and ears of sweet corn. The market first owned by his father and then by his brother had changed hands a couple more times since Wilbur's youth. But Wilbur always went with the deal--an emblem of those times when people came away from the market with more than what they'd bought. Once known by Wilbur, you were known. Unafraid of growth and change, he thrived on the lives of those around him from children in shopping carts, their young mothers, husbands sent to market with a list, bag boys, and cashiers. His own life, perfectly settled--he never changed jobs or wives or churches or houses--gave him an appetite for changes in the lives of others. He kept an open ear for the names of newborns and newlyweds, news of setbacks and convalescences, the woeful monologues of the jilted, the divorced, the bereaved. He remembered the names of children, visiting in-laws, friends of friends. He had a good word for everyone and everyone knew him. Nowadays we call this "networking" and the store of information Wilbur kept on the lives of others, a "data base." But Wilbur called it "neighborly"--the attention we pay to each other and each other's lives.

I think of two young women who wandered in our shop just the other day who were surprised to find something of interest in such a small town, even though I would guess they were only from Kalamazoo--a small city of about 75,000. I asked them if they were just in Three Rivers just to hang out and they politely scoffed at the question: "There's not much to do here. We're just waiting for a friend to get off work." I wish I'd had a clever retort that would have opened their eyes to the unique wonder of rootedness in time and place, of readily accessible "wilderness," even of the endless possibility of empty storefronts. I wish I could have introduced them to one of our Wilburs, who might just have gone beyond simply charming them with his small town ways to giving them a sense of being known that perhaps they were missing in their pseudo-cosmopolitan lives.

Well. If we end up being rooted in a place, as I hope we will be, I have many more years ahead of me to cultivate such responses, such ways of being. Maybe I'll even become a kind of Wilbur myself. And in addition to personal application, Lynch also makes me reflect on how our work with *culture is not optional might not be so much "networking" as simple "neighborliness"--not so much a strategy for organizational success by some corporate definition, but day-to-day faithfulness in making connectios among the people with whose knowing we are entrusted.

One of the things Rob and I really like to do is make connections among people and organizations who are doing good work, so we were pleasantly surprised when having lunch last week to see a CRC coffee blend with Higher Grounds in our hosts' kitchen. The CRC's Office of Social Justice is doing some amazing work to connect congregations with information and action for all-of-life shalom. We're glad *cino and World Fare may have played a small part in connecting the folks over there to our favorite Michigan fair trade coffee roaster. Way to go everyone!

well, the August publishing break for catapult is nearly over, which means I'm getting back into the rhythm of soliciting articles, reviews, interviews and artwork for the magazine. there's one week left before the deadline for "Storytelling" (deadline: 8/31, publishing: 9/7). below are the questions I sent out to our writer's list related to that issue. I have a couple of articles committed, but could use more. I could use reviews and artwork (poetry, paintings, photos, etc.) also.

and looking ahead, the issue after "Storytelling" will be "Let's Get Together 5" (deadline: 9/14, publishing: 9/21). each September, we celebrate our publishing anniversary with an issue on community, in the broad sense of the term. this year--I can hardly believe it--we celebrate FIVE years of bi-weekly publishing. here are links to the previous issues, just to give you an idea of what we've done in the past and to get your mind turning on submissions for the upcoming installation:

2002

2003

2005

2006

let me know if you have any questions or suggestions (kirstinvgr [at] cultureisnotoptional [dot] com). you can also join the writer's e-mail list (and more) here.

• what is the role of storytelling in your immediate family? what do you hope to teach your kids about storytelling?
• are you good at making up stories? why or why not?
• think of some of the stories you've heard your parents or grandparents tell over and over again--why those particular stories? what are some of your favorites? what have they taught you about who they are and what they love?
• is there a story from your life that you wish had turned out differently? re-tell the story however you like.
• what are some of your favorite short stories or novels? what is your response to people who gravitate toward reading non-fiction because they want to 'learn something' when they read?
• how do we learn how to tell stories?
• what is your experience with unique ethnic qualities of storytelling? what cultures are you fascinated by in this respect?
• whom do you think of as being a particularly good storyteller?
• what has been your experiences with radio shows like This American Life? Vinyl Cafe? Prairie Home Companion? others?
• documentary films seem to be becoming more popular--why? what is the value of these films compared to fiction films?
• what is the value of 'true' stories compared to 'created' stories?

Well, another issue of catapult is online, this one focusing on various issues and images related to summer--vacationing, outdoor activities, body image, the beach and so on.

The next issue of catapult is called "Getting Even" (7/27), which will be the last one before our August publishing break. "Getting Even" will focus on revenge and forgiveness. Here are some questions I sent out to our writer's e-mail list:

• Who in your life models forgiveness to you? Who models an inability to forgive?


• What makes revenge intuitive and satisfying? What makes it unsatisfying?


• When have you experience forgiveness in a memorable way, either as an individual or as part of a community?


• What aspects of our culture and systems encourage vengeance over forgiveness?


• South Africa has provided a model for communal reconciliation. What are your thoughts on this model? What other models have you observed, whether on micro or macro scales?


• When has it been difficult for you to forgive? When has it been difficult to be forgiven?


• Do revenge fantasies serve any kind of redemptive purpose?

If you might be interested in submitting something, send me an e-mail: kirstinvgr [at] cultureisnotoptional [dot] com. Please feel free to consider all kinds of formats--articles, interviews, 'conversations', annotated bibliographies, reviews, artwork, poetry, etc. And let me know if you want some feedback on an idea. The deadline for this issue is Friday, July 20.

If you would like to join the writer's e-mail list to get regular updates on publishing dates, deadlines and topics, you can do so here. Don't worry--it's easy to unsubscribe if the list isn't what you thought it would be.

About once a week or so, I send an e-mail to a list of people who have expressed interest at some point in writing for catapult magazine, the online publication for which I'm the editor. The e-mails let people on the list know what our upcoming topics and deadlines are. Also, I send out at least one e-mail per issue with questions related to the issue topic. The following questions went out for the upcoming issue, "[Deleted for Inappropriate Subject Matter]":

• What subjects were taboo in your family as you were growing up? How did these taboos affect you? Do you now avoid those topics yourself, have a strong desire to talk about them or something in between?
• When have you felt 'censored', either by yourself or by others?
• The description for this issue references the 'girl crush'. What is your experience with this subject? Or if you're male, is there such a thing as a 'man crush'? Should we be talking about these issues and if so, how? What would be the benefit?
• When is it appropriate NOT to talk about something? When do we talk too much?
• How should parents decide what their kids are ready to see, hear and discuss? Should kids be 'sheltered'?
• How do we set our own boundaries for what we are able to see, hear and discuss?
• How does the church (universal and/or particular) hurt itself and its members by staying away from certain subjects?
• When have you experienced comfort, revelation, etc. because someone (or a community) was willing to talk about something you'd been keeping to yourself?
• How does the issue of 'inappropriate subject matter' relate to art? For example, what is the line between pornography and erotica? The line between horror and 'torture porn'?

If you have any ideas you'd like to contribute to this issue, let me know. The deadline is Monday, June 11 and the issue will go up on Friday, June 15. Since this topic could delve into potentially very sensitive subject matter, please let me know if it would be helpful for you to publish something anonymously. I'm looking for both personal stories and cultural analysis for this issue. I'm going to try to post calls for articles on our blog more regularly, but if you'd like to join the writer's e-mail list, you can do so here.

I was just checking *cino web log statistics, as I am wont to do on occasion, and discovered that *culture is not optional sites surpassed 40,000 "unique visitors" in the month of February. The "unique visitor" stat is based on people who view more than one page during a visit, with less than 30 minutes between click-throughs to various pages within the site. So, for example, people who have catapult set as their home page (like me) aren't counted unless they click to another page within the catapultmagazine.com domain. Interestingly, because catapult is spread across two domains (catapultmagazine.com and cultureisnotoptional.com), these stats are a little more impressive than they might otherwise be. Why? Well, if someone were to visit catapult's homepage and, seeing an updated discussion topic, click over to the discussion board (hosted at cultureisnotoptional.com), they wouldn't be counted as a unique visitor on either site because they would have only visited one page on each domain. Hadn't thought of that before ...

While these kinds of statistics are obviously a little hazy, it's still encouraging to think that so many people have been finding their way to this part of the internet. Thanks!

This will only make sense to two people, but it's our last ditch effort to fix a mistake ...

Last week, you contacted us through the contact form on the *cino site. Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch, we didn't get the e-mail addresses you submitted. If you happen to see this, could you re-submit your information? We'd really like to get back in touch with both of you!

As promised, here are some final additional thoughts on the Messiah College Faith & Popular Culture Conference.

• Over Thai food at dinner one night, someone asked about the place of evil in the discussions at these conferences. There's a lot of talk about "good" art and looking for truth, but what about evil and sin? One of the examples he raised as an example of extreme evil was rape. What does "discernment" look like in the face of so great an evil? In this particular example, I think discernment involves realizing that the action is a distortion of human sexuality, which God created good. But in the context of the general question, I wondered what the role of confession might be at a conference like this. Certainly, some art has a confessional quality to it, but the content of that art is not the content of the conference. Also, I wondered about the role of suffering. If Jesus is God, who becomes human to show us the way through suffering to eternal life, how does suffering relate to the discussion of discerning "popular culture"? Is suffering, in the context of the conference, just an abstract concept represented in art to be deemed true or untrue by us detached discerners or does suffering have implications for the conference itself? It seems like attentiveness to suffering as its manifested in our own lives is essential for understanding sin and evil as artists represent it in their work.
• There seemed to be a very vague understanding of what makes culture "popular," meaning "popular" culture mostly ended up being "things we like" or "things we're currently into." With the exception of U2, there was little discussion of other art that could be considered statistically popular. So what do we mean when we hold a conference on faith and "popular culture"? Should we be talking about Ashley Simpson and The Wedding Crashers? Who decides what work has value for these discussions? I'm not saying that the conference would look any different if we discussed these questions--perhaps popularity and value are assigned by the informal participation of the conference community--but I do think we need to go a step further in defining "popular" and articulating the process of selection.
• Another question that came to mind as we progressed through the weekend was: where are the women? Two out of perhaps 10 speakers were women and 1 out of 6 performers. Not that I care to start bean-counting when it comes to gender, but the situation was noticeable--also in the lack of women participating in the comment times and mentioned as examples of artists who are "getting it." What is it about the nature of this topic that's more appealing as a participatory experience to men? Is there still a tendency to hold women to a higher standard in their scholarship, hence they're less likely to be invited or participate? Is the communication style of women ill-suited to the topic? Is there a perception that a female will have fewer compelling ideas or ideas that will be received with greater skepticism by both male and female listeners? Is there some power element to cultural engagement that makes it more appealing to men as a concept and a practice? I'm not sure what to make of this, but it would be worth discussing I think. In talking about it with someone, he suggested that I host a separate gathering just for women at the next conference. Definitely not a long-term solution, but it's worth thinking about, especially as there are some aspects of being a woman that bear discussing in the context of faithful engagement.
• The unique nature of a conference struck me at this event, particularly in contrast to the sort of 24/7 online work that *cino is doing. There is value in creating a resource that is available whenever, wherever, but there is also unique value to an event that spans an identifiable period of time. A conference is more likely to be remembered as a crucial turning point than a visit to a web site. Also, there is no substitute for cultivating face-to-face relationships. These thoughts convinced me that *cino needs to get back in the gathering business. Thankfully, one of our friends who just moved to a farm in Ontario contacted me the day after we arrived home from the conference with a desire to co-sponsor and plan an event next summer. So watch for more details, if you're into that sort of thing: outdoor experiences, late night discussions, connecting with kindred spirits, story telling and hearing, etc.

I think that's all for now. Thanks to those of you who have slogged through these notes and had enought energy left at the end to comment!