60 Before 60

My daughter and I sat down a while ago to write lists. She wanted to write a “30 before 30” list. She is 21. She has quite a while to complete her list.

I, on the other hand, had to write a “60 before 60.” Which is, if you’re good at math, twice as many things to do. And, well, not nine years to do it.

Enough people have asked what is on my list. So this week, while still in my birth month, I’m telling you. I know it won’t all happen. But I like to think just writing it down makes it more likely. Isn’t that true with many of our goals and dreams? Putting it down, getting it in words, maybe even putting a date by it–makes it somehow more tangible and more possible. As you can see, I’ve already gotten to cross some things off, and I just wrote it in August. Writing down goals works!

I also want more on it that has to do with others. So there could be some revisiting. I’ve got time.

That’s my thinking, anyway. Here’s the list. It’s rather random, like me. Feel free to suggest other options. Options that have nothing to do with roller coasters or sky diving. But I’m willing to consider your suggestions. I’m excited to! After all, someday I’ll need 70 things.

60 before 60 list

1. sail
2. go to another continent
3. establish a mission relationship with a church overseas
4. finish my doctorate
5. maintain a healthy church
6. publish 3 more books
7. be a national speaker
8. win the flower arranging championship at the county fair
9. read ten (other) classics
10. (re)learn French
11. (re)learn Spanish
12. learn Greek
13. see the sandhill cranes in NE
14. see the northern lights
15. trace my dad’s family heritage
16. drive the whole St. Lawrence seaway
17. tour Wrigley Field
18. girlfriends’ trip
19. drive the Blue Ridge parkway
20. sea kayak
21. teach a college course
22. get a hedgehog
23. get in good shape
24. see a solar eclipse
25. watch the top ten movies of all time
26. pet a cougar
27. see the cave lake in TN
28. climb a volcano
29. Scotland
30. Iceland
31. Grand Canyon
32. Galapagos Islands
33. see polar bears in the wild
34. fly first class
35. pick cranberries
36. eat durian
37. tour more of Chicago
38. be mentioned in an alumni magazine
39. stand up paddle board
40. jet ski
41. have another travel article published
42. covered bridge country bike ride
43. ride a bicycle cab
44. go to a unique festival
45. spontaneous road trip
46. sleep on a houseboat
47. tour the Ferrara Pan factory
48. go skinny dipping
49. sing karaoke
50. picture with World Series Trophy
51. Walk the Camino de Santiago with Beth
52. Go to Carnival with Emily (Venice)
53. Trip with my sister
54. See the Tolkien exhibit at the Bodleian
55. Meet Colin Firth or David Tennant
56. go somewhere with Becca
57. Hike Angels Landing Trail at Zion Park
58. Take a helicopter ride
59. Play one of my high school piano pieces
60. spend the night in a lighthouse

appendix: spend a month studying at the Kilns

 

What’s on your list? I’d LOVE to hear.

The Naming of Things

I love God’s creatures. I plot vacations around seeing as many of them in his wild world as I can. I’ve gone to ends of the world, so it seems, to view orcas, sloths, and moose where they live. Last month, I actually did drive to nearly the end of Canada, partly to see a giant gannet colony.

Because we could, and I would.

But there are two animals that do not hold a secure place in my heart. Spider and wasps.

This will be important.

Last summer, a spider spun a web in our dining room window. This meant I had to see him at every meal. I sat across from that window. Like the accident we can’t turn away from, I couldn’t help but look him, stalking around in our window sill, taking up an entire corner.

This was a big spider. I named him Aragog. And this is when I started to like him. At least, I started to have a strange proprietary affection for him. He was named. He was our spider. He was still big and ugly. He still gave me creepy shivers when he moved unexpectedly. He still hung out where I had to simultaneously eat food and see him. But he was Aragog. And I was oddly sad when winter claimed him.

For it’s in the naming of things that we draw them closer. One can have ten grandchildren but only one Rose or Elliot. McHenry isn’t a random suburb but the identity of the town where I spent my childhood. That small rectangle on the wall is no longer a painting; it’s Mona Lisa.

When we name things, we give them specificity. We infuse them with meaning beyond the simple letters of the name. We create a bond that we really don’t understand but we feel, sculpted between ourselves and those things.

Aragog was a member of a species I hated and feared. Until I gave him a name.

This will be very important.

In was in the days after one of the shootings of a black young man—I don’t even know which one anymore. Names and faces and tragedies have become so common in our newsfeeds that we rarely can differentiate, thus granting them the namelessness that makes all of it so easy to pass over. On one of those days a friend, who has an adopted black child, wrote these words:

“One of the things I have found out over the last couple of years is that some of our closest friends have treated Eli so kindly and like anyone else because they knew him. And then one day, we realized if they didn’t know him, and he was just another black man, their view of him would be much different.”

He has a name (though I didn’t use the real one). That name makes all the difference for her friends. it shouldn’t. But it does.

Names in the Bible are immensely important. God gives people names because of what they’ve done, or more often, what they can do and what God will do with them. He christens one Peter, the Rock, though he’d hardly been steadfast to that point. He changes one from a man wishing to overthrow his brother (Jacob) to a wrestler with God, themes that would certainly define Israel’s erratic history.

He gives another boy (Ishmael) the promise of his name—God hears. He surprises Naomi with the reality of her name—lovable, delight—when she feels so much less.

God appears to agree that names give meaning. Faces, eyes, and voices from a person we identify drip with belief that we will hear, we will listen, we will respond. Because we know them by name.

There is so much hatred and fear surrounding us, regardless of how well insulated we believe we might be. The hating of “other” is what people do, it seems, to the exclusion of much else these days.

But what if instead we chose to name?

If anyone, the people of God should be able to name. We should be able to imitate the One who looked the blind in the eye, took the unclean by the hand, and offered the broken Peter a name of unbreakableness.

If we knew the name of our brother, could we still hate or fear him? I don’t mean know a name like we know someone’s caption in a news story. That’s knowing a label, not a name. We easily substitute another label when that’s the extent of our knowing: liberal, republican, ungrateful black man, Muslim, bigot, shrill feminist, druggie, redneck. The switching of the labels is a shell game to keep us from having to know.

Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus touches. He hears. He bends down. He repeatedly implores the ones who hate him most to come back and be his brothers. He is the father running down the road, and you know he is calling and crying his son’s name all the time his robes are flapping in the wind and his feet are flying. Over and over.

You know he is.

I’m going to try to join God in the naming of things. When I see news stories of people I disagree with, or even deeply despise what they value, I’m going to give them names. I’m going to imagine their names on the lips of their mothers, sisters, and children. I’m going to think about how they might toss their daughters in the air or scrimp and save to buy their dads a Father’s Day present. I’m going to let them be human. I’m going to let them be the image of God.

Eli’s friends know his name, but they don’t know his fears and hopes as a young black man. I hope his mama is able to break through and help them know those things. I hope we all are able to do that for ourselves.

Naming a spider seemed like such a small, silly thing. But when you offer something a name, you offer it value in a suddenly vulnerable heart.

This article originally appeared on Theology Mix. Visit to read and listen to some other great material!

Dear Young Mom

Dear Young Mom (Me),

Look into the face of your little girl. Your first one on her first birthday party. The one with a red cut above her right eye, courtesy of the jungle gym she climbed two days ago. The one who started walking at nine months. The one who has already foiled every baby gate, crib rail and door knob safety cover ever invented. She will break through most barriers set for her, so you might as well get ready.

Years from now, a new Disney princess (you will become very well acquainted with Disney princesses) will encourage you to “Let It Go.” I wish she had told you that sooner. There are so many things I wish you had given yourself permission to let go.

Do you want to read more about permission to let go? I’m over at the MOPS blog today. Please join me.

 

“Originally published in The MOPS Magazine and posted on The MOPS Blog.“

Chosen

After an entire childhood of being the odd one out, I was sought after. I was thrilled to be wanted. Too thrilled. It became all that I was.

I don’t remember when I stopped clinging to those yellowed letters of acceptance. They never really offered anything but flimsy paper. The real offer came on other paper, also yellowed and worn with time, dripping with the voice of the Spirit.

“You are chosen. You are God’s very own possession. Once you had no identity . . . now you are God’s.”

This week, I’m over at The Glorious Table talking about college applications, acceptance, and hanging on to affirmations that we don’t need. Join me here, won’t you? While you’re there, check out some of the other great writing from people I’m blessed to call friends.

Time To Play

The afternoon sun is coming in our front window, falling on the pages as I sit down at the piano my parents scrounged to buy when I was thirteen. The top is dusty, the keys badly out of tune. There are concerto pieces in the piano bench beneath me, but I focus on an intermediate book, and I play slowly.

I will never compete at this again, never perform for an audience, never put mad piano skills on a resume. And that is the point.

From (in)courage again, one of my favorites. What happens when we take the passions God gave us and just enjoy them? Can we take the time to play?

Read the article here.