I love maps. As a child, I would sprawl out on my our scratchy oriental rug and study our atlases and globe. With my finger, I would trace interstate and highway routes through cities and small towns, from Atlantic to Pacific and Gulf Coast to Canada. I remember when Mapquest replaced map-reading from getting from one place to another. When my friend and I drove from Nashville to Wilmore, Kentucky to visit Asbury Seminary, we used printed turn-by-turn directions. Now, I use Google Maps. Maps, Mapquest, Google Maps—each of these navigation devices helps us get to our destination, and each generation of navigation technology offers us more specifics about our journey. I began using the approximate distance between two points (scale and ruler, anyone?) and multiplying it by our ideal speed to estimate the general time of arrival. Now, my GPS app does the math for me, adjusts for traffic, and recalculates my arrival time to the minute after every stop for Starbucks or Chick-fil-A. But using each of these tools requires some specificity, some clarity on my part about my destination. Google Maps cannot give me directions to Eastern Kansas, so I enter a more specific location: Overland Park, …
They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I came across the concept of “intention” for the first time in 2007 in an infomercial for Wayne Dyer’s The Power of Intention. The infomercial showed Dyer teaching a huge crowd of people who seemed to hang on his every word. Many sought to scribble notes as he talked about “emanating from the source” and energy. My husband and I chuckled every time he talked about “the source” and gestured in the direction of a paper lantern on the stage. In this excerpt from a 2005 interview with New Age retailer, Dyer spoke about one particular intention: The No. 1 principle in the universe is “I intend to feel good.” Feeling good is what you should be doing every day of your life. A friend of mine visited Swami Muktananda back in the 1970s in India. As my friend was going into the ashram, Muktananda stopped him and said, “Do you know the difference between good and God?” and my friend said, “Zero.” Muktananda held up a zero and said, “That’s right. When you look at God and good, the only difference between them is one little zero.” So, …
Where Theology Meets Consumption Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. I did not receive any compensation for recommending the linked products, but I may receive a commission if you click on the link and subsequently purchase a product. For the past few weeks, I have had a crisis of conscience every time I go to the grocery store, every time I prepare a meal, every time I give a snack to my kids. I am no stranger to these food-related troubles. Jamie Oliver has me scrutinizing school lunches. Documentaries like Forks over Knives, Super Size Me, and Food, Inc. have me increasing plant-based foods, reducing processed foods, and being vigilant against GMOs. My newest food crisis is less about what is in my food and more about what my food is in. I am concerned about food packaging. Recently, I read a news story about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an 80,000-ton floating jumble of mostly-plastic trash floating in the ocean between Hawaii and California. This massive, maritime dump covers an area double the size of Texas. Since reading this story, I scrutinize every package. My awareness of how much non-recyclable, non-biodegradable packaging overwhelmed me in my dinner prep last …
While I finished cooking dinner, my son quietly slipped into my office and sat at my desk with a single sheet of white paper in front of him. A little while later, he emerged with a picture. Climbing up into the breakfast nook, he brought his drawing close to me and laid it near my cutting board. He had drawn a heart. Not a red heart. Not a pink heart. But a black and blue and green heart. “Tell me about your picture.” He pointed to the blue. “Are you sad, honey?” A nod. “Can you tell me what made you feel sad?” A head shake. Maybe at five years old, he didn’t have the words to tell me what made him sad. Or maybe, like me, he couldn’t bear to speak it. All afternoon I had fought back my own tears, swallowing the pain until I felt sick to my stomach. How could I cry when I needed to be strong for him? When I needed to manage the afternoon chaos, get dinner on the table, and make it to bedtime so that I could finally share my litany of sadness with my husband? There was a clear …
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