“A Martha Stewart Thanksgiving” – The Lies and Carnage
It’s that time of year again where gluttony is considered vice chic and everyone expects the day to be reminiscent of the front cover of the 1953 Thanksgiving issue of “The Saturday Evening Post.” Hosts and Hostess have spent days preparing the menu, decorating, and coordinating guests lists and responsibilities for this most significant of days. We seek out the perfect recipes for the most important menu item; the turkey. The turkey has become iconic with this festive holiday and therefore it is crucial that the host/hostess must ensure it’s perfection. For days we have envisioned carrying this majestic bird on a elegant platter worthy enough to serve royalty. Guests are overcome with emotion as they realize they are in a moment in time that will be captured in their hearts and likely become a keepsake in their portfolio of memories. For that moment, the world becomes a better place. All thanks to the expertise of world-renowned mentors of cooking that coach us, encourage us, and give us delightful visual aids, such as the one above, that serve as the finish line to an exhausting culinary journey. With this inspired confidence, we know that we can’t fail.
However . . . .
I am Activator! I am Command! I am . . . what?!
Strengths Finder 2.0
I’m usually not big on personality or assessment tests. But I have to say I’m impressed with this one. I love the premise of this book as it states that you can’t be whatever you want to be. Rather, you are supposed to become the best that you were created to be. We are always working on our weaknesses rather than capitalizing on our strengths. While this concept is not new to me, I sure wish I had learned about it before I spent 10 years pursuing a classical music career. I spent so many years developing and training a skill that had significant limitations. Had I realized earlier what my true strengths were, I could have saved a whole lot of money and been a little further down the road doing what I was supposed to be doing. But God has a way of redeeming the time and correcting our course when we take our little trips down crackpipe lane.
The premise of the book is there are 34 themes; patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that can be usefully utilized. Out of these themes, there are five that surface as being the strongest and most dominant. Our pastoral team is in the process of taking the test to see how we compliment each other and better work together. This should be interesting. Apparently, mine turned out to be:
1. Responsibility
2. Command
3. Competition
4. Activator
5. Strategic
Now I must confess that I enjoy the hyper-masculine overtones of this list. However No. 3 was a little bit of a surprise. I never really considered myself competitive. The only thing I’ve ever asked is for the slow and incompetent to do what I tell them and get out of my way. The fact that this is on my list is a little concerning since I’m on pastoral team and categorically this is considered sin! I’m sure this is just eluding to my commitment to compete against and defeat the forces of darkness. That makes sense . . . right?
Return to Space Mountain
I don’t know what it is about mountain communities, but there is something that I’ve always felt a connection too. It’s not necessarily the people with their natural fibers and vegan menus or the women looking like cast members of the Hallmark Channels “Sarah, Plain and Tall.” I don’t mind their categorical protests to cosmetics and their desire for body hair to grow completely unhindered . . . really. . . I’ve always thought that rubbing a crystal under my armpit would accomplish the exact same effect as a solid stick of Right Guard. It’s just that I’m very committed to conserving our natural resources so why waste a good crystal?
Driving around some of these towns you can see the eclectic mix of architecture as well as retail diversity. Go into one store where you can peruse a wide assortment of tie-dyed hemp while experiencing incense-induced emphysema, then walk next door into a general store that will transport you back to 1943 with it’s wooden floors, Duncan yo-yos and Glen Miller playing in the background. For lunch, you can find a meat-and-three or walk down the street and discover fusion cuisine that could only have been conceptualized with one’s head in a narcotic cloud.
Having lived in Boulder, CO for three years, I truly have an appreciation for all of this exaggeration. The only place I know where you can eat in a Russian Team Room, walk outside to have your tarot cards read, wave at the Buddhist monk as he walks by chanting while banging a drum then grab dessert at Haagen Dazs before buying a pair of khakis at Banana Republic. I wore the torn jeans with the Birkenstock clogs and was even a vegetarian for a year (a true feat for a carnivorous southern boy). I love the elevated sense of being in the mountains with its connection to nature and commitment to simplicity. I think that’s what I like about this culture; the diverse attempts to connect with simplicity in its most original form. Each expressing their own view of simplicity whether it is through diet, clothing, homes, or business practices. Each one very creative in their frugal approach to living.
However, what I’ve discovered in my journey is that we can’t achieve simplicity through cultural asceticism. This, to me, is like worshiping the creation rather than the Creator. Simplicity means “to be free from guile.” Our attempts at achieving purity through diet, environmental awareness or any other means will not give us our desired results in the end. There is an innocence that we are always seemingly trying to get back to. These things that we abstain from or lay down should be for the purpose of seeing God with more clarity and not ourselves.
I remember watching “Grizzly Adams” as a child (popular 70s TV program for the chronologically challenged). My favorite part was the opening and closing credits. There was this incredible view of a man on a mountain top looking into the horizon with John Denveresque theme music in the background (work with me . . . it was the 70s). There was something free and majestic about him. But there was something incredibly content as well. I think that’s what is appealing. A feeling of being connected to something much bigger than myself in its untainted form. Pure to its original intent and design or at least to my understanding of it. A simple appreciation of the value and beauty of something. Worship.
So in the midst of this, I will find myself strangely feeling at home in this peculiar tie-dye, tofu world. Look for me. I’ll be the obvious SUV-driving, yuppie, suburbanite visitor looking on in fascination with a Starbucks in hand.