how the iphone makes me a better christian August 16, 2025
Posted by mamdblueroom in Politics and Culture.Tags: time, technology, simplicity
5 comments
A recent conversation with some college friends about the smartphone and its effect on concentration and human interaction has me thinking…
Last year Relevant Magazine published an article containing some hand-wringing concern over the iPhone. (If you read it, it’s in the July/August 2009 issue, p. 27.)
Read it for his whole argument, but basically the author felt pulled by the economic “simplicity” lifestyle of the Anabaptists, the warnings by Wendell Berry (whom I adore, the big curmudgeon) against overindulgence in technologies powered by strip-mined coal, and the assertion that Christians need to be “wise as serpents” in the wake of this huge marketing machine hell-bent on convincing us that we’re deficient without this “messiah phone.”
I can’t completely dismiss the points about the environmental impact and the sustainability issues-Robert told me that it would only cost an additional $50 per phone for them to be built by people receiving a living wage-and I would pay that.
But I think the articles other points are a bit overstated. I know that there are folks out there, extreme gadget-mongers, if you will, who might feel like their life is incomplete without the latest thing. But c’mon, that’s way outside the norm, isn’t it?
Though I am a heavy user of technology, my views are pretty nuanced. I think a lot about what all of this is doing to our brains and to our sense of embodied community. (One thing I mourn is the loss of serendipity: thanks to Yelp and other sites, one need never go to a poorly-reviewed restaurant again, for example… but what about that great surprising hole in the wall that has yet to be discovered?) The problem is, a lot of the criticism of technology is SO over the top that I find myself overcompensating, becoming more of a tech apologist than I really am.
The technophobia is particularly bad in certain corners of the church. Even writers I admire do it. Blogging apparently makes us narcissistic. Twitter makes us incapable of deep sustained thinking. Facebook encourages us to share the most boring details of our lives with people, as if it matters what we had for breakfast. I hear this all the time from clergy and layfolk alike.
Given that the median age of Presbyterians is 61-and I’m sure other mainline denominations are similar-we make these blunt generalizations to our great peril. We don’t look prophetic and counter-cultural with such talk; we look out of touch.
Back to the Relevant article. The author’s point was that people are duped into buying the shiny new gadget because they think it will make them happy. But is it really that cut and dried? Wee need to learn how to speak about these things way more subtly. Are human beings really so easily seduced that we think that a smartphone is going to erase all of our sorrows? My wife won’t speak to me, I’m fifty pounds overweight, I hate my job… if only I had an iPhone! That would solve everything! Instead of painting with the broad strokes, we need to be talking about discernment. Intentionality. Authenticity.
The title of this post is hyperbolic and meant to be silly. Yes, I could create a list of ways that the iPhone has made my life as a minister-mom much more effective, creative, and even fun. But what this all comes down to for me is the idea of simplicity and what a paradoxical concept it is.
I read a lot about simplicity and “living lightly” on the earth. It’s a topic that has financial, environmental and spiritual implications. Certainly many of us consume too much stuff, and we aren’t mindful about what where that stuff comes from. Michael Lindvall recently wrote a great piece arguing that our problem isn’t that we’re too attached to our stuff-it’s that we aren’t attached enough. Read it. But where we go from there isn’t always clear.
I love the idea of simplicity and frugality, but some of the contradictions amuse me. Many aspects of “simple” living are just plain inconvenient. I don’t have time to hang my clothes on a clothesline, and I certainly don’t have time to fight the homeowner’s association to allow me to do so. There are countless other examples I could name.
Simplicity is all well and good. But my life is not simple. God or the Universe or The Great Whatever has put me in a place where I am knit together with three children, a congregation, a spouse, colleagues, friends, and the various connectional tasks that are required to care for them. This gadget sitting on my desk helps me live very effectively in the midst of a very complicated life… yet it’s made in China where the wages are way low, and it’s chock full of all sorts of yucky chemicals that a simple paper calendar doesn’t have, and is in many ways a symbol of the kind of consumerism that’s hurting the planet.
It ain’t a comfortable place to be. But it’s where a lot of people are.
do you have a self room? August 15, 2025
Posted by mamdblueroom in Parenting Parkour.Tags: spirituality, self-care
6 comments
A few Christmases ago, Robert was asking the girls what they wanted to give me. After thinking about it a few minutes, Caroline announced that she wanted to give me a “self room.” She explained, “Sometimes Mommy gets mad at us, and she needs a place to go and be by herself where nobody can bother her, where she can do what she wants and be calm.”
Robert reported this to me somewhat sheepishly, but I was elated. I had never thought about a “self room” but found myself desperately wanting one. The truth is, I do get mad at my kids. That’s not a sad truth, it’s just the truth. My friend Stacey, who teaches parenting classes, says, “Getting angry (appropriately) is great for our kids because it shows them that there are limits to what they can do and what we can tolerate.”
Having said that, I am the first to admit that patience is not one of my virtues. I have been known to put myself in timeout when my irritation gets the best of me. My children typically respond with grace… and no small amount of bemusement.
I am touched to think that my oldest child has already realized what it has taken me decades to learn—that people need a place just to be and breathe. Timeout in our house isn’t a punishment, it’s a little slice of Sabbath-and I use Sabbath not in the gauzy-pop-spirituality sense but in the stone-tablet-commandment “you have to stop NOW” sense. We don’t always want to go into timeout. But we’re better off having done so.
I was reminded of the self house this afternoon. We spent our vacation with another family last week, which was a total blast and I can’t wait to do it again, but I think our little firstborn introvert got peopled out a couple of times. Today during James’s nap Caroline built a little nook on our big chair using pillows and an umbrella, where she spent the afternoon reading with a flashlight.
I’m thinking about what my self house should look like. And I invite you to build a self house for yourself… even if it’s made of couch cushions.
what i’m not doing today August 12, 2025
Posted by mamdblueroom in Spiritual Stuff.Tags: adundance, spirituality, time
14 comments
Montreat: Lake Susan and Assembly Inn
I’ve been in Montreat all week for vacation, and this morning I’m sitting on the porch outside the Huck listening to the water cascading over the dam. My kids are enrolled in Clubs, and Robert is having a quiet morning back at the house, so this is my reading and writing morning.
Right now the Church Unbound conference is underway, and it seems like most people I know are either here, or not here but wish they were. Then there’s me—here but not here. Brian McLaren’s plenary session is only steps away. Workshops will take place throughout the next two days. Folks will linger over lunch tables, talking about things I care deeply about. The health and future of the church is bound up in the kind of stuff that’s being talked about and birthed here in this conference. And I am not a part of it.
This is my first vacation since March and I have to protect this time. I’m thinking about the recent New York Times article about clergy stress, poor health, and burnout. I’m thinking about a clergy colleague who serves a large church and recently quipped “A day off? What’s that?” and it made me want to weep, not laugh. And I’m thinking about Henri Nouwen’s thoughts on the temptations of Jesus, and how one of those temptations is to be relevant (turn these stones into bread), and how hard it is for us to resist that one. It would be so easy for me to slip into the sessions, to do a little networking, to pick up a great idea or two to take back to the church I serve. Instead I’m committed to Sabbath, which is a kind of blessed irrelevance, ordained by God.
David Wilcox has a great bit on stuff that bugs him for metaphorical reasons (among other things, the Blue Light Special at Kmart, and the Biltmore Estate). This week is also working on me, on a metaphorical level. I serve quite a small church in Northern Virginia, and I write from time to time, and I parent three children. I really like that rhythm, and it works, and I frequently can’t believe my good fortune. I’ve received all of two work related e-mails all week. People know I’m away and are taking care of things without needing to consult me (and in our church of 80 people, there’s just less to take care of).
But recently I’ve had a number of reminders of the road I’m not traveling. Friends and I kid about the size of one another’s steeples but there is something real behind the jokes. My second call has been a great move, and I love it, but it was not what many would have predicted for me. And the strangeness of that is crystallized for me as I sit here this morning with my feet up, writing a blog post and munching on a Pop-Tart from the General Store while people stride across the bridge wearing name tags and clutching folders and conference schedules.
One of the big tropes in certain spiritual and contemplative circles is the idea of abundance—the notion that there is enough manna for each day, that it’s just a matter of trusting that what is truly needed will be provided. Like Martha, we get distracted by many things, instead of focusing on the one thing needful, which is “enough.” In the theology of abundance, it’s our own scarcity thinking that gets us in trouble. We grow anxious and possessive, clutching that scarce commodity to ourselves, whether it’s time or money or prestige or power or whatever.
I think this idea works for a lot of people, and I’m sympathetic to aspects of it, but most of the time I think it’s BS. Video game makers have experimented with games that have unlimited lives or currency, and people find them profoundly unsatisfying. Abundance, in a word, is boring. It’s also unbiblical. Check out the Good Book: God’s drawing boundaries all over the place.
My father died suddenly several years ago. His last few years were spent in a very high-pressure job, until he himself was laid off, and I have no doubt that the stress of this work contributed to his death. There is nothing about the daily lack of him that speaks to me of abundance. The idea that his life’s work was completed, that he’d “done everything he needed to do in this life,” is an offshoot of the abundance stuff and is also BS.
At any moment, there are very real, very good things that we are choosing not to do. It’s great to be at peace with the roads not taken, but to blow those off as somehow “not needful” is to negate the goodness of those possibilities and the God who created them. I find it much more beautiful as a spiritual concept to live as creatively as possible within the scarcities of my life, which exist and are not to be trivialized.
The idea isn’t to trust that what is truly needed will be provided, as if God is somewhere dispensing our daily ration of stuff like one of those pet self-feeders that uncovers a fresh portion of kibble each morning. The idea is to live as a person of trust and hope, whether what we need is provided or not. The point isn’t to have faith in God’s provision, believing that whatever we give will come back to us. What kind of generosity is that, anyway? That’s not grace, that’s karma. The trick is to embrace the fact that maybe there isn’t enough, yet we are called to generosity anyway.
That feels more like the reign of God to me.
So… I am not at Church Unbound, even though I’m sure it will be amazing in many ways. I will not have a late-night ministry conversation at Theology on Tap. I will not make a new friend. I will not receive a critical insight into ministry. And I’m going to be OK with that. Not because I trust that those insights or relationships will come to me some other way, but despite the fact that they may never do so. Not because those things are not important, but in spite of the fact that they are deeply important.
what is parenting parkour? August 7, 2025
Posted by mamdblueroom in Parenting Parkour.Tags: parenting, sermons, time
3 comments
I’m on my way out of town for a bit of vacation, so the next few posts will draw from previous material… This is one of those.
Yesterday’s post was categorized “parenting parkour.” What exactly is that?
From Wikipedia:
- Parkour is a physical discipline inspired by human movement. It focuses on uninterrupted, efficient forward motion over, under, around and through obstacles (both human-made and natural) in one’s environment. Such movement may involve running, jumping, climbing and more complex techniques. The goal of parkour is to adapt one’s movement to any given obstacle in one’s path… Sebastien Foucan, a free runner who trained with David Belle during the infancy of the art, speaks of being “fluid like water.” Read more
It’s really better to watch it than read about it though: YouTube
I have been taken with this idea of life as parkour for quite some time. I even preached a sermon on the topic in which I also addressed the age-old question: WAS Jesus the master multitasker? I say yes.
For me, parkour has been a powerful spiritual metaphor. We move through our days as best we can, with grace and speed, as various obstacles and unexpected circumstances arise. Through it all we improvise, we keep our eyes open, we aspire to that state of flow in which there is no separation between our intentions and our actions and it all just works. Whether I’m parenting or pastoring or some other thing, man, I live for those times.
Several years ago, when Margaret was just a wee toddler, I wrote this poem (?) that I think describes what I’m talking about. I read this now, so many years later, and it feels frenetic and crazy, but I remember it as a pretty good day, a day in which I was in “flow.”
Wednesday: Parental Parkour
Spring from bed at 7 a.m. at the urging of Margaret.
Stumble downstairs.
Environment: Notice unusual sheet of bluish-white light on staircase; look outside.
Snow.
Put cup of milk in microwave; hit 30 seconds.
Dash downstairs to basement computer to check website.
Schools are closed.
Bound up the stairs, two at a time.
Grab milk. Up one more flight of stairs. Burst into M’s room.
Rock baby, kiss forehead. Check eyes for goop. Still watery.
Reach for phone; day-care provider. She’s open, but is M contagious?
Call advice nurse. Not available until 9:45.
Obstacle: M can go to daycare if her eyes aren’t contagious. Wait two more hours and call, or go to walk-in clinic?
Throw on clothes; rummage for granola bars, hop into car.
Weave slowly around icy patches in road. (Not all parkour is at breakneck speed.)
Walk in clinic, sign in, pay.
Tear off pieces of granola bar, feed to baby, unzip fleece.
Listen. Look. Grab prescription. Cell phone rings. Offer to call back.
Pile into car. Call day care. Pull into pharmacy. Turn in scrip.
Obstacle: bored kid.
Empty contents of purse. Strap child in cart. Zoom around drug store.
Pay. Leave. Drive. Stop.
Measure one teaspoon, kiss, leave.
Obstacle: low on gas.
Pull into gas station; return phone call. Pay. Leave. Fluid like water.
Finish phone call. Shower. Dress.
Obstacle: large meeting looms. Gotta get past it.
Jump right over it. Cancel; send report.
And on it goes. Fluid like water.
Just exactly like that YouTube, eh? Just without the techno music.
the harder thing is the easier thing August 6, 2025
Posted by mamdblueroom in Parenting Parkour.Tags: creativity, time
3 comments
One evening a few months ago, Robert went out with some friends, and I was solo with the three amigos. We decided to go to IHOP because there was nothing to eat in the house. Robert said, “All three? By yourself at a restaurant?” Yes, and a sticky one at that!
We had a great time. Afterward we went to the grocery store for some essentials. The kids were pretending the van was a space shuttle and we were headed to the space station for some supplies for our trip to the moon (our house). I decided to turn it into an elaborate extended make-believe space adventure that lasted into bedtime.
I didn’t do this because I’m all that creative, but because I’m lazy. It’s one of my laws of parenting: the harder thing is the easier thing.
It’s actually easier to call them First Officer Caroline and Lieutenant Margaret and Sergeant James, and to pretend to dodge asteroids (other cars), and to dock the lunar lander in the garage, than to zone out and drive and shop and come home and chase them upstairs with a toothbrush while they run amok in their underwear, whipping their pajamas around like lassos.
Amiright??
When it comes to children, it’s easier and more rewarding to expend a little extra effort and intention in order to play, than to be lazy and unintentional and just let things happen. Because the “things” that happen from your lack of initiative will invariably cause you to expend more energy (cleaning up messes, breaking up fights, managing overtired kids).
Think about this for yourself, and figure out whether it works in other spheres besides parenting. As for me, I see this principle at work everywhere. Every few months, Robert and I get into serious inertia with going to the grocery store. Robert won’t feel like making a list, or I won’t feel like going, so we’ll spend the next few days or weeks limping along on McDonalds and random mystery freezer foods crusted over with ice. It would be easier if we just went to the dang store.
BTW, Gretchen Rubin likes to say that the opposite of a great truth can also be true. So it’s true that too much planning can become inauthentic and draining. We can make the easy things hard. I also think that kids need to learn to manage their own boredom. I’m not talking about overprogramming here, but rather doing the work up front that creates a space for them to create.
Here’s a final example of this principle that also happens to show off the blue room in action. Back in May, Caroline was home sick. I was supposed to leave the following Sunday for a week of study leave, so of course it was a busy week. I was really hoping for some time to wrap up loose ends and get things ready for Robert to be a single parent for the week. (And can I say once again that single parents are my heroes?) I was sooo close to popping in a video, which I have done many, many (many) times in these situations.
I was taking an online class on contemplative spirituality and creativity in which we were making mini-books. I thought, Why not? So…… “Let’s make a project,” I announced. I helped James snip some paper with scissors while helping the girls:
hard at work, intent at play
you can tell in her eyes that she's sick 
the finished product
It was so much easier to do this than to try and get something done while leaving three small children to their own devices on a rainy day.
Where have you seen this principle at work? Where have you seen it break down?
post prop 8 ponderings August 5, 2025
Posted by mamdblueroom in Politics and Culture.Tags: marriage equality, ministry
6 comments
Nothing like tackling a controversial issue on the second day of a new blog!
I’m not going to say much about Judge Walker’s decision declaring California’s gay-marriage ban unconstitutional. But I am thinking about a few things today.
I remember seven years ago this summer, going to the Fairfax County Courthouse to get authorized to perform weddings in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In accordance with Virginia law, I had to fill out a form, get a letter from my presbytery saying I was a minister in good standing, pay $30, and take an oath. I remember walking out of the courthouse afterwards, calling Robert and laughing: “Hey! I’ve got the ‘power vested in me’ now!”
Something about that whole transaction felt very, very strange to me at the time. It seemed quite odd that I, a minister called by God and ordained to serve a local congregation, was now in effect performing a service on behalf of the state… that a couple whose wedding I officiated would not be legally married until I signed the license and sent it back to the county.
I remember when Robert and I went to get our marriage license (sixteen years ago!), the clerk asked us a long list of questions that we had to answer with “I do” and the like. As bureaucratic processes go, it was unexpectedly moving. Almost… liturgical? We left, and one of us said to the other, Did we just get married? Because it kinda feels like we did. Hey, if only we’d kissed afterwards, we could have saved everyone a lot of time and money…
This was in Texas, where I’ve also performed weddings, but unlike Virginia, there were no legal hoops to jump through beforehand. I’ve often wondered why Texas doesn’t vet its clergy like Virginia does. Could it be that Texas’s requirements and processes for getting a marriage license are more stringent, making the credentials of the officiant less relevant? I haven’t gotten a marriage license in Virginia so I have no idea. I hope one of my smart readers has some info about this.
The point is this, however: seven years ago, when I got ordained, I had not given much thought to the nuances of how gay marriage could or would be enacted from a policy perspective. But it seems clear to me now, as many others have said, that we need to separate the religious service of marriage from its civil aspects. I believe it is the only way forward, and it also gets clergy out of this agent-of-the-state weirdness. Even some of the opponents to gay marriage acknowledge that the legal rights of partnership should not be denied to same-sex couples.
I’m thinking about a couple whose wedding I recently officiated. I woke up the morning of their wedding rehearsal with a start, realizing that I hadn’t said anything to them in our premarital counseling about getting a marriage license. It isn’t my job to remind them, but usually it comes up, and I tell them to bring their paperwork to the service, if not the rehearsal, so I can sign it.
At the rehearsal I mention this to the groom and he says, “Oh, we’re actually not planning to get a marriage license. We really don’t care what our status is with the government. What matters to us is that our union be blessed by God.”
Now, inside I’m thinking, This is a really, really bad idea. This couple already has children together, and let’s face it, there are tangible benefits to being “officially” married… which of course is a big part of why gay persons are fighting for this civil right. And I told some friends afterward about this and several suggested that they probably already were married and either didn’t want their family to know, or wanted the imprimatur of the church on their union. I also felt a little put out: then what am I doing here? Play-acting? Fake marrying?
Later I realized: they cared more about the liturgical and sacramental aspects of marriage than the legal ones. Isn’t that something? What I was doing there was not play-acting, but what I as a clergyperson am supposed to do: to ask God’s blessing on the union between two people, to pray for their welfare, and to support them as they pledge their lives to one another.
And whatever legal/contractual arrangement they have with one another, as important and beneficial as that is, is a separate issue entirely.
What do you think?
what’s in a name? August 4, 2025
Posted by mamdblueroom in Blog Housekeeping.Tags: creativity, personal
26 comments
a little corner of my blue room
Several years ago we had the first floor of our house painted—living room, family room, kitchen and dining room. We chose a rich blue for our dining room, and it was my favorite color of the ones we chose. The trouble was, we never used the dining room. We’re just not in a formal dining stage of our lives. With three small children, we’re into simpler fare—tacos on the everyday plates, not tuna tartare on the china.
For me, the dining room became a source of low-level stress, a 180-square-foot monument to the lives we weren’t living. I finally realized that life was too short to be held hostage to the Should.
So, during the Snowpocalypse of 2010, we shoved the dining room table up against a wall, moved in a desk, organized all of our arts and crafts supplies into baskets and bins, and transformed the dining room that we used two days a year into the Blue Room, which we use every day of the year.
The Blue Room is where my daughter Caroline goes to work on her homework, or where we make beads together. It’s where Margaret will slip away to draw yet another series of smiling princess drawings. It’s where toddler James pounds on Play-Doh. And it’s where I write, work on sermons, read, knit, and do other creative things.
After several years of generating musings on the Internet, whether on Facebook or other online venues, this blog will be my online Blue Room—the place where I put my favorite stuff, and generate new stuff as well. This is where I’ll link to and reflect on writing projects, share progress on these books I’m intermittently writing, ruminate about life as a part-time solo pastor of a lovely, quirky congregation in Northern Virginia, and more.
