Yearly Reflections on Hot Weather in NJ

I admit, I'm a big wuss when it comes to heat. I feel uncomfortable when hot; I don't like feeling sweaty; I feel crabby during times of heavy humidity. Growing up in the Midwest, I used to think that "hot" was anything over 75 degrees. Now I think "hot" is anything over 85. I'm more used extended periods of snow and cold than I am to long periods of humidity and hot weather.

(Why did I like camps so much? Being outside and running around in the heat? In NW WI it is not uncommon for it to still be pants weather until the end of June.)

When we lived in our old apartment in Hamilton, it wasn't a big problem - the AC was awesome. In our new place in Trenton, as much as I love (mostly) everything about the new place, it does have a drawback: no central air. But we have discovered that this is pretty common for the City of Trenton. Most homes/apartments have  AC units hanging from windows and fans in windows, and most people sitting around outside during much of the day. And now we understand why - these old brick homes are great for winter, but hold the heat in so that it feels cooler to be outside. We have a window unit in our bedroom, so we sleep fine and the cats can stay cool, but the rest of the place gets lots of nice, hot sun during the day (again, great for winter, not so much for summer).

Thanks, Mom, for teaching me how to keep a place as cool as we can during these hot summer days (closing windows early in the day, having fans on exhaust rather tan intake function, drawing the blinds against the sun). We also have plenty of cool places to be during the day - church, a friends' place while they're at camp, another friend's as we watch their cats, Starbucks, the mall. But we've also been thinking a lot about the people around the city who are homeless and have no place to be cool except for the train station. It sort of makes our little bedroom oasis seem pretty good.

Lent is....

Lent is… letting God defragmenting your hard drive.

At the beginning of Lent, I usually have the best of intentions. I don’t normally give something up, but I try to add something to my devotional live. This year it was a nice resource put out by Augsburg Fortress, a little devotional on Romans that fits in your pocket. And, like most years, my use of it has been hit or miss.

But that’s ok. Because Lent is like letting God defragment your hard drive.

When my seminary Luther tweeted “Lent is….”, encouraging people to fill in the blank, I thought I was pretty clever at coming up with this one. I didn’t expect that God would actually listen to me and make me eat my words this Lent.

Defragmenting a hard drive, if you recall, is the process of getting rid of the unnecessary junk in your computer and rearranging the programs to fill in the gaps more neatly, kind of like arranging your bookshelves by height and size so that they fit better. Now when we defragment computers it takes an hour or two, maybe more if it’s been a while. Beau once told me that he defragmented his computer way back when, and it took it an entire week. AN ENTIRE WEEK. Seven days of defragmenting. Can you imagine? What would we do nowadays without a computer for an entire week??? Thank goodness the process is sooo much faster now!

But defragmenting life is still a much longer process. And letting God defragment your personal hard drive takes an entire Lent, if not longer. For the past few weeks, and really for the last five months since moving to Trenton, God has been trying to teach me what is really necessary and what things might fit better in my life if rearranged a bit. Sometimes I’m a good student, sometimes I’m not. But I’m still learning a lot. I’m learning that it is possible to be a one car family even with both of our crazy schedules. I’m learning that a few sewing skills and some creativity can go a long way when it comes to saving money. I’m learning that when God rips down the detailed map of where you thought your life would go, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole wide universe behind it.

But that’s pretty much Lent in a nutshell. God taking our fragments and putting them back together to make a whole that is much better than the cobbled-together mess we’ve come up with; God making something beautiful out of the mess. 

This liturgical art is made from sea glass and broken IKEA plates, reconstructed and used at "Baby Pastor School" 

"We're moving to Trenton!"

 “We’re moving to New Jersey!”

Almost 2 ½ years ago, Beau and I found out that we were being called to an awesome synod on the East Coast. But the reactions we got were… interesting. Our friends and family took the news ranging from “That’s nice” to flat out “Why would you go THERE?” To resident New Jerseyians, it would be reasonable to be affronted by such reactions. How dare they judge a place they’ve never lived, or probably have never visited? But to those who live elsewhere, there is only one image that New Jersey conjures up: gritty industrial sprawl populated by rude people (ala the show “Jersey Shore”). Of course now, I have had first-hand knowledge that this state is not (all) like that. New Jersey is unique, and beautiful, and diverse.

So...

“We’re moving to Trenton!”

Trenton? That place we read about in the paper with violence happening nearly every day? That place with the abandoned buildings and dangerous streets and drugs and gangs and corruption and problems and people who don’t look like us? “Make sure you are careful.” “Don’t go out at night.” “You might want to get some Mace.”*

(You see what I did there?)

Beau and I want to discover sides of Trenton that few people dig deep enough to see. Because in between those articles in the paper about drugs and violence, there are also stories about people trying to help, trying to make Trenton a better place. God’s up to something in this place that seems to have been abandoned by the leadership of this state. Beau will be devoting himself fully to this exploration and I will be accompanying him as much I am able, along with my normal pastoral ministries at my congregation. 

But it's going to be different. Some things are going to be challenging, and others will change. Like my commute. My commute has not just increased in time, but it has increased in socio-economic range: on my way to church I now pass multi-million dollar houses and homeless people on the street. Every day now I get cultural whip-lash, but I fervently pray that I will never not see the injustice in it. 

Pray for us. We're going to need all the help we can get!!




*Of course Beau and I are going to be careful. This kind of situation is not one to take lightly. We have been so thankful to all of those who live and work in Trenton who have given us some really good advice, which we gratefully accept. It is when general advice is offered, coming from a place of fear, from those who have had little to no contact with the city that I frankly find grating. I was completely unprepared for all the unsolicited advice. We may be crazy for doing what we're doing, but we're trying not to be stupid about it!!