24 and expectations

no matter what year you are turning, someone always inevitably comments on how old you are and then in the next moment, how you are so incredibly young.

it is the conundrum of birthdays celebrated in community. it is caused by a society that dictates our frequent segregation by date of birth and the number of years we've blown out candles on a cake.

it is the beauty of generations that to some we are ancient and to others we are just beginning.

it gives perspective I think- a moment to realize how blessed we are to have been granted another year and another moment to recognize that if we are lucky that there will be more to come.

I turned 24 last week.

it seems to me that life is marked less by numbers at this point and more by phases.

there are no special privileges attached to 24, no laws governing what is or isn't permissible now that the clock has turned and I have a 4 after my 2.

my driver's license expired. i ate too many rocky road cupcakes. i celebrated my birthday for a full 48 hours thanks to the mongolia time difference. i tried to quickly sew a dress together so I could finish one of my goals for the past year.

but 24 is 24. my life is now marked by other questions.

questions about professions and jobs. questions about long-term plans and relationships. questions about friends who are getting married and having babies and buying houses. questions about choices and pieces and thoughts.

24 is as much about 24 as it is about other people's expectations.

for me. for my life. for my present. for my future. for my professional life. for my personal life.

23 was about learning, breaking, growing and making some really difficult decisions.

i have a feeling 24 is going to be about continuing the process of unlearning my people-pleasing ways.

because my life can't and shouldn't and won't be about what other people want for me or expect for me. I refuse for it to be in the hands of anyone but God and I.

i'm calling an end to pleasing people before I discern what will please God.

i'm calling an end to pleasing the world before I do what is right for the Kingdom.

"What a woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded to unfold such powers as are given to her."

-Margaret Fuller (quoted in Reviving Ophelia)

so hello, 24.

let's do some unlearning and re-learning and new learning.

it'll be fun and probably a lot hard.

that's a promise.

food swamps and farmers

In high school, I don't remember anyone ever saying they wanted to be a farmer.

I knew several people who lived on farms and who threw parties in the cornfields after dark.

One of these guys was even my biology lab partner lab partner freshman year. Unfortunately for me, his life on a farm did not give him any inclination for biology or answering lab questions. Fortunately for me, it did give him a strong confidence in wielding a knife and cutting open frogs.

Our partnership mainly consisted of me answering the lab questions and him poking through the guts of whatever specimen we were assigned that week.

I complained, but it worked.

To my knowledge he did not become a farmer. I don't know anyone who did.

A few weeks ago I went to a panel discussion about food deserts and public policy, hosted by a local university and a coalition dedicated to issues of food security and policy.

A food desert is any population living more than a mile from a full-service grocery store (fresh produce, etc) or in rural areas, more than 10 miles.

I live in North Omaha, a large portion of which is considered to be a food desert. I'm lucky in that my closest supermarket (an Aldi) is just 1.4 miles from my house, but many of my neighbors are not so lucky.

But I didn't need to go to a panel discussion to be told what I already knew from living in the neighborhood that I live.

As one of the panelists pointed out, food desert is really the wrong word to use. We should call them food swamps. There is food around. There are two Walgreens, a few gas stations/convenience stores and a Sonic all within fairly easy walking distance of my house.

There is food. But it's the not the food that my biology lab partner harvested from his parent's farm. Or at least it's not any recognizable form of those harvested crops.

It's packaged, saturated, made to sit on a shelf food.

It's higher in calories, higher in sugar, higher in processed chemicals.

It's not a desert, but a swamp.

And most of the swamp's contents came from outside of Nebraska.

A state that is known for its agriculture, that has a history of farming and harvesting and working the land- and most of the food purchased here in the middle of America is produced elsewhere.

We have lost the infrastructure of buying and eating locally harvested goods. With that loss the number of farmers have grown smaller, the corporations have grown larger and the number of farmers managing to stay profitable has shrunk exponentially.

It is hip these days to discuss the importance of eating organically and locally for the environment. It is cool to go to farmer's markets (and rightfully so, I love farmer's markets!) and to cut back on meat. Community gardens are growing (hooray!) in all sorts of unique and beautiful corners of cities and wide open plains.

But as the panel participants pointed out, here's the million dollar question:

Who are going to be our farmers?

How do we encourage folks to become or to remain farmers?

We cannot sustain a change or a shift or a movement towards local eating unless we have the local farmers to respond.

And until the infrastructure changes for that to happen, for that to be viable and real, for that to be a choice people want to make....

the swamp is just going to keep growing.

gardening

it was a good week in the garden world.

lots of visits to happy, growing community gardens.

lots of mucking through wet, muddy dirt that is keeping the plants and seeds happy and wet.

lots of looking at happy green plants that are growing taller in spite of their not-so-happy green weed neighbors.

lots of watching the beginning formations of eggplants and peppers, radishes coming up and carrots growing strong.

lots of conversations about why we garden and how we garden and how we learn and why the rabbits eat everything no matter what we do :-)

i love walking around these gardens in such diverse and interesting neighborhoods and then going to the farmer's market on Saturday mornings and knowing that similar vegetables are being grown right here in our city and their farmers are folks who may have never been to a farm in their lives.

they're being grown on parking lots and in raised beds, in yards and next to playgrounds. they're being grown at churches and food pantries, non-profits and schools, by refugees and children, senior citizens and teenagers.

we all need vegetables.

and for that, I am grateful.

when the tourists come

in UB it was July.

in Omaha it is now.

in UB it was the telltale sign of non-Mongolian folks carrying backpacker gear as they glanced at maps and stood in the middle of crowded streets.

in Omaha it is college paraphernalia and sun visors and coolers and signs saying baseball this and baseball that.

in UB it was beer "gardens" set up in parking lots promising 3 am showings of World Cup soccer games.

in Omaha it is beer "gardens" set up in parking lots promising cheap beer and food.

in UB it was folks squinting at signs written in the Cyrillic alphabet and paging through their copies of the Lonely Planet guide book.

in Omaha it is folks slowing down as they drive past each stoplight, staring at their windows to read street signs and discern which direction they are driving down a one-way street.

in UB the action was at the very rarely used, gigantic stadium featuring the largest Mongolian flag I ever saw.

in Omaha the action is at the brand new, everyone-is-flipping-out-about-where-to-park stadium in the middle of a possible flooding disaster.

in UB the residents listened to the roar of crowds celebrating wrestling victories.

in Omaha the residents are listening to the crack of baseball bats and to people complain about parking.

in UB the residents couldn't get tickets to the wrestling because the tourists bought them all.

in Omaha the residents can't get tickets because it requires standing in line for 4 years and selling your first born child (or so a friend said).

in UB residents avoided all of the touristy areas for the span of two weeks that anyone actually ever came to Mongolia.

in Omaha everyone is already discussing where to avoid for the next week and a half.

in UB it was Naadam.

in Omaha it's the College World Series.

different contexts, but basically the same. exact. thing (plus or minus a few vital things).

monday.

some days dinner consists of,

three frozen oreos (i have a thing for cold chocolate)

and a fried egg sandwich with cucumbers and turkey bacon that I cooked on a pan that I later remembered smokes every time I put it on the stove top and thus filled my kitchen with smoke (not the first, nor the last time that will ever happen to me).

some days training runs end with,

raindrops falling just as your path brings you back to your front yard.

some days rain drops make you,

sit on your front stoop, legs tucked under as you smile at the graciousness of God's sustenance.

some days old sweet dogs sleep,

curled up next to you on the floor of the thrift store.

some days you half way eat a salad,

before realizing you forgot to take the sticker off your peppers.

some days are mondays,

just a little off center.

couldn't have said it better

if anyone is going to get what I'm trying to say and say it better, it's Hol.

her latest blog says it all.

thanks for getting it right minii naizaa.

confessions of a returning missionary, part 2

1.) i just spent a week at a church conference where I had to answer where I'm from a lot. i never know which version of the answer I should use. The fact that I grew up in PA? The fact that I then lived and went to school in Texas? The fact that I then (and most recently) lived in Mongolia? The fact that I now live in Omaha? Or all of them combined?

2.) a group of teenagers will never fail to ask about eating animal guts when you are sharing about life as a missionary. it's interesting to me that differences in food and eating are one of the things that people everywhere can understand about cultures different from their own.

3.) if you wear a long, colorful dress the day you give the "i'm a missionary" talk you are only reinforcing the missionary stereotype people have of women in foreign prints walking barefoot down dusty roads. oops.

4.) being a missionary will teach you patience for a lot of things. church legislative meetings are not one of them.

5.) i'm a good traveler. I'm an even better homebody.

nebraska umc ac

there are a whole bunch of things waiting to be written about and reflected upon, but for now I'm still in the midst of that annual week that united methodists love to hate and hate to love.

welcome to holy conferencing, picture-style.

the need we have for one another is so great. the tension that that need creates is greater still. the need for Christ to save us from ourselves is greatest of all.