Dear 2008:

I’ve never broken up with the past before, so I’ll be honest—this will be a little awkward. You’ve been great, but it’s not you, I promise. It’s me.

You’ve been very good to me this year, having taught me about the value of a simple life, the reward of slow and steady practice, the glory of aging a little bit at a time, and the sheer beauty of four separate seasons. I hardly knew you twelve months ago, but I’d heard about your reputation—that you would be better than 2007 and that an optimist would find you charming and good. They were right. You were all of those things.

But I was reading the Bible this morning and God said that there’s a time for everything under the sun. A part of me wishes I could keep you for a while longer. You’re safe and really, really predictable. I like that about the past. But God has new things for me and that means that I have to let you go.

Perhaps you've read the rash of articles this season trying to decipher whether Barack Obama is a certifiable geek. Apparently, geekism is related to techno-savvy and intelligence whereas nerdism and dorkitude relates more to social awkwardness and a fondness for Star Trek gang signs. This puts our President-elect in an awkward spot, since he seems to straddle these definitions.

But we Americans like our labels to be as accurate as possible, so a variety of journalists have fashioned a new word for Obama and perhaps others in his predicament: nerd-adjacent.

People who are not themselves fully steeped in nerd culture—but through partial traits and the proximity of friends find they are pretty darn close—can be classified as nerd-adjacent.

If you follow ConversantLife somewhat regularly, you’ll notice a trend lately toward anti-consumerism (including some of my own posts). It seems the right thing to be—a lover of God and humanity more than a lover of things, a Christ follower who chooses abstracts like love and peace over crass commercial objects. I’ve been feeling the vibe myself. The Christmas season tends to inflame these sentiments even more. Christians, you know, can be very anti-establishment when it suits us.

All the talk of philanthropy and anti-consumerism has gotten me thinking. I’m sure lots of other people have thought about these things longer than I have. I’ll bet I could find a hundred books debating the virtues and vices of capitalism. I am not a student of economics, so pardon any embarrassing gaps in my understanding, but here’s a simple layman’s exploration.

Some girl in the fifth grade yesterday called my ten-year-old son hot.

Yup. Hot.

Okay, so I think the word hot means, like, sexy and attractive and all that. So when I, his mother, hear that a little vixen uses that word to describe my baby-faced son, I’m ready to sign up for recess duty. I might need to check this out.

And then I realize that fifth-grade hotness is really something else entirely. It really means, from what the locals tell me, that she called him crush-worthy, a boy with some perceived value, a boy who won’t pull her ponytail. This is, in fact, a very good thing. It’s really not about being hot after all.

As his mother, I am caught in the unenviable position of interpreting an elementary school lexicon, which I can access only from a distance. I hear a word, a phrase, in solitary confinement and I botch the interpretation. Such linguistic investigation is teaching me a lesson, namely that unless I hang out on your playground and speak your language, I’d best not try to interpret it. It will only make me look foolish.

Why do so many of the non-readers at my high school suddenly want to read Twilight?  How come the aprons in the 1800s were all made from calico prints? Why do some Christians believe that Obama is the anti-Christ?

In his best selling book The Tipping Point (2000), Malcolm Gladwell explores the parallels between ideas and viruses. He uses an epidemiological motif to promote his thesis—that human behavior is shaped suddenly and powerfully by viral influences in their communities. If ideas are viruses, then my proximity to both Christian skepticism and Christian trendiness is bringing me dangerously close to getting the flu.

I’m going to admit something very honest: my Christian faith has suffered from my chronic reading, interfacing, and networking this past year. I'm rather shocked by this. I thought I was doing myself some good by jumping into the conversation. I’m not talking about the good and beautiful result of knowing all sorts of people. I’m not talking about exposure to new ideas, or being challenged to examine the credibility of my beliefs. But I’m suffering from some information inflammation—the relentless sound bytes, articles, videos, jokes, books, concepts, marketing, and opinions that my spiritual antibodies must filter every day. I don’t think my soul was designed for this much discernment.

It's nice to see what some churches are doing this holiday season. Check out this video: 

Last week the stick joined the cardboard box as honorary members of the Toy Hall of Fame.  The message is obvious: even primitive things have value, especially when the imagination gets involved. Who needs a Wii when you have a Tree?

So it got me thinking. Having spent some time in no less than nine states and at least 15 evangelical churches in my lifetime, I’m considering a proposal for a Church Accessories Hall of Fame. I’m not sure where to build it, but I can picture the architecture in my head: a monstrous mega-museum with maybe a hydraulic collection plate spinning on the roof?

Anyway, some of you can go way back, but for now, let’s start with some inductees from the 1970s: varnished oak tables from the foyer, the faux-leather hymn book, saltines on a tray, and maroon choir robes with giant zippers down the front. Long, padded pews, Sister Hannah’s flannel board with Caucasian Bible characters, and the plastic snack trays from the downstairs Fellowship Hall. We would have to include a collection of staff photos and their pyramid arrangement: pastor on top, with his wing men in dark suits in descending order according to their seminary degree and paychecks.

When my house is dark and my children are asleep, sometimes I fantasize about earning a Ph.D.

I dream of thesis projects, dense reading, pretentious poetry recitals, and most of all, that super cool graduation robe and hood—part Opus Dei, part Frodo Baggins— that I could hang in my closet and show friends. My other degrees are just fine, but I stopped short of the Big One, relegated to pitching Triple A ball when I really wanted a shot at the majors.

So on some days, I fantasize.

But this year, I might be closer to accepting my fate as a minor league member of the intelligentsia. While I love the world of reason and higher thinking; while I love the pleasure of great books, old and new, and the electric atmosphere of a university; while I’m addicted to epiphanies that strike when I least expect them, I doubt I will ever identify with a subculture that defines itself almost exclusively by its ability to reason.

Now what else is the whole life of mortals but a sort of comedy, in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each one his part, until the manager waves them off the stage? Moreover, this manager frequently bids the same actor to go back in a different costume, so that he who has but lately played the king in scarlet now acts the flunkey in patched clothes. Thus all things are presented by shadows. -Desiderius Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

Let’s just call it a dormant childhood fantasy. Technology has whisked me back to Octobers in Connecticut, the let’s-pretend-I’m-someone-else phase of childhood. But instead of my mother sewing me into a polyester princess costume for Halloween, Photoshop lets me be whoever I want for a brief, narcissistic moment (yes, that’s my face strutting down the catwalk).

My high school students have no idea how to die.

How do I know? In class this week we’re reading an old school emo poem with the puzzling Greek title “Thanatopsis.” A seventeen year-old poet named William Cullen Bryant wrote his “vision of death” in 1813, a time when teenagers were apparently thinking about death more often than their modern peers. With the Puritan legacy in his rear view mirror, he defies the Christian worldview of his ancestors and basically says that when you die, that’s it. Young Bryant suggests that you shouldn’t worry about dying because you will join the gazillion other corpses rotting underground who are part of one big annihilated family—and he feels this should be rather comforting to you.

Quite frankly, it isn’t.