Rounding Out the Year

Last weekend, Michael and I celebrated our one year anniversary. I cannot begin to express how crazy it is to be standing on this side of that year.

In the last eighteen months, we have done the following:

• lived in China
• returned to the United States
• signed two year contracts for cell phones
• got engaged
• moved our former lives in Iowa and Texas/Oklahoma to New Jersey
• planned a wedding
• found a house to rent despite being unemployed
• got married
• lived off our savings while working less than 15 hours a week each for 8 months
• found full-time jobs
• in Michael's case, said full-time job ended; in Elena's case full-time job turned out not as expected

The only thing we managed NOT to add to this terribly eventful list of activities is getting pregnant. For this, I am grateful.

Year Two is starting out just as eventful. We're looking to move again, this time not so transglobally (I think I just invented another word), transcontinentally, or even transprovincially/transstately. We're only going transcountyly this time. More on this in posts to come.

(P.S. We're not pregnant.)

Mercy and Justice: Human Dignity

Job’s Example

Job 31:13-15 reads:
“If I have denied justice to my menservants and maidservants when they had a grievance against me, what will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account? Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same one form us both within our mothers?” (Job 29:7-17 and 31:13-23 both are passages that will stir up good things in you)

There is something here about Mercy and Justice that shakes me to the core. It’s Job’s philosophy of man. It’s his basic reasoning of why he should act justly and be merciful to others. (There is in fact two things here but right now I’m just focusing on one. I’ll cover the other one at another time.) So, what was this reasoning? What was this philosophy of man? It was this: My neighbor and I were both made from the same hands. We come from the same Creator.

Job knew that his servants, no matter how poor and “insignificant” they were to society, were to be valued as fellow human beings. He knew that they were created by the same God who created him. Therefore, valued them. He knew of the dignity they deserved just on the basis of where they came from. Therefore, when Job acted justly with his servants, he was valuing and preserving their human dignity.

Shem and Japheth’s Example

Genesis 9:18-29 records the story of Noah getting drunk and passing out naked in his tent. His son, Ham, went into the tent and, after seeing his father’s nakedness, proceeds to tell his brothers about it. The brothers, Shem and Japheth, took a garment with them, walked into the tent backwards, and covered their father’s nakedness with their faces turned away. After Noah awoke and found out about all of this, he cursed Ham and blessed Shem and Japheth.

I’ve read this many times in my life and I’ve always thought that the curse upon Ham was pretty harsh just for something that the National Enquirer would reject because it’s not very sensational. But there is something here about Mercy and Justice. And that something is crucial. That something is called shame. The injustice that happened was that Ham brought Noah’s shame out in the open by exposing his nakedness.

Here are two examples of shame: 1) The shame a father feels because he doesn’t have the means to buy enough groceries for his family. 2) The shame a peasant farmer feels because he is powerless to fight against the government who steals his land. The first of these deals with what Mercy does. Mercy provides for the poor. Mercy is open-handed to the needy. Mercy has a fat heart of compassion for the poor. The second deals with Justice. Justice fights for the oppressed. Justice speaks up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Justice has a hatred for injustice.

In the story about Noah and his sons, Ham exposed Noah’s shame. Shem and Japheth, on the other hand, restored their father’s dignity. Our natural sinful selves are interested in scandalous and sensational stories. Shem and Japheth no doubt had that same sinful nature. But they didn’t submit to it like their brother did. Maybe they remembered God’s words to Noah: “God made man in His own image” (Gen 9:6) and therefore made a connection between God’s image and human dignity.

Shem and Japheth saw something in creation that brought worth to others. They knew that people were image bearers of their great and glorious God. Noah had brought shame upon himself. Ham brought that shame out in the open. Shem and Japheth took on the role of restoring Noah’s dignity and by doing so, restoring God’s glorious image in Noah.

The Exchange

I see that an important goal of Mercy and Justice is taking shame away from others and trading it in for human dignity. Why? Because everyone, although totally depraved, was created in the image of God. Mercy and Justice is about exchanging shame for dignity. It is exchanging shame for the image of God. It is exchanging shame for the glory of God.

How Did Job, Shem, and Japheth Exchange Shame for Dignity?

Job valued and preserved human dignity in his servants. Shem and Japheth restored human dignity in their father. Valuing, preserving, and restoring dignity in the poor are all very important jobs of believers who desire to live the command “to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8)

Mercy and Justice is valuing, preserving, and restoring dignity in fellow human beings.
It is valuing, preserving, and restoring the image of God in fellow human beings.
It is valuing, preserving, and restoring the glory of God in fellow human beings.

3 Poems

The clanking and whirring of the machine in the next room
And the muffled shouts of workers telling stories through through their tedious shifts,
Push their way through the dry wall and mix with the ever-ringing office telephone
And the buzz of air-conditioning and my laptop's fan.
These industrial, commercial Monday through Friday sounds only emphasize
the loneliness in me
That waits patiently for the 5 o'clock bell and my return
To the more familiar sounds of our drippy faucet, our broken ice cube maker, and our merengue-loving neighbors
Where I wait for you to come home to me and relieve me of my loneliness.



Too often
I have tried to reinvent
myself
into the various personas
of alternate existences
when all along
There has only been
singularly
me.
This person
fond of typewriters
with nimble fingers across keys
Only ever fully incarnated in the collecting of words
across a page.



There are 1000 poems
trapped inside my fingers
just underneath my fingernails
itchy where I can't scratch
Pushing their way through
finger tips
reaching for paper and pen
or keyboard keys
or even sidewalk chalk
searching for whatever means they can find
to work their way out

The Business Trip

Okay, so it wasn't quite as "soul-sucking" as I imagined it would be.

1. Dinner was great. Not only was the restaurant one of those chic-but-down-home-local places, the company was warm and witty.
   
2. I took a shower in a full size bathtub, not in the small broom closet we have at home.
   
3. Our meeting was not in an over-air-conditioned conference room, but in an (albeit over-air-conditioned) atrium filled with plants, a pond with coy, and a coffee bar.
   
4. The weather was beautiful, and even though I didn't visit any farms or see any of the campuses, the mountains and the trees and the blue sky did me a whole lot of good.

But I am really glad to be home. I called Michael at least four times yesterday--when we got to the hotel/before dinner, after dinner, before I read Eldest, and before I went to bed. I called him this morning, too, when I woke up, and again before he left for work. Call it newlywed-whatever, but I do not care to repeat our long-distance experience.

So yeah, it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. (Even the nine hours we spent in the car were much less awkward than I had feared.) My next trip probably won't be until November, I don't think. And I'm okay with that.

Coming of Age

Tomorrow, I am going on my first ever "business trip" that didn't involve a Chinese train station. I'm going to State College, Pennsylvania with my boss to visit one of our customers, a scientific products distributor, and hopefully get some deals made.

According to some very reliable sources,

State College evolved from village to town to serve the needs of the fledgling Pennsylvania State College, founded as the Farmers' High School of Pennsylvania in 1855. Since then, the school has grown into a major university, renamed in 1953 The Pennsylvania State University. State College was incorporated as a borough on August 29, 1896 and has since grown with the university, sharing a symbiotic relationship. In 1973 State College adopted a home rule charter which took effect in 1976. The areas outside of State College are filled with historic towns and villages, immense tracts of farmland, and an expanse of mountains and forests.

The university has a post office address of University Park, Pennsylvania, which is sometimes a cause for confusion. When Penn State changed its name from College to University in 1953, its president, Milton S. Eisenhower, sought to persuade the town to change its name as well. A referendum failed to yield a majority for any of the choices for a new name, and so the town remains State College. After this, Penn State requested a new name for its on-campus post office in the Hetzel Union Building from the U.S. Post Office Department. The post office, which has since moved across a street to the McAllister Building, is the official home of zip code 16802 (University Park).

I doubt I'll get to see much of that historic tree-filled mountain farmland, or that zip-code hogging McAllister Building (does it rival Friley Hall?). I am realizing that this blackberry-business-card American coming of age thing doesn't lead to inspirational walks through real places with real people, but only to continental breakfast in business hotels and over-air-conditioned conference rooms. And I am starting to think I prefer my Chinese coming of age, where paying the phone bill meant a twenty minute walk and getting my electricity ration sometimes meant arguing with a man twice my age in a language I don't quite speak. Not only have I successfully completed that coming of age, I think I enjoyed the picking peanuts from the roots on a wooden bench with an old lady more than I will enjoy tomorrow night's steak and seafood dinner.

SPIN Selling

I've been reading a book called SPIN Selling by a guy named Neil Rackham. It's about major sales (think several thousand dollars as opposed to a couple hundred...) and what strategies are most successful. The book was first published in 1988 and it tore down a lot of traditional ideas about how to be a good salesperson.

But here's the thing. It says things like: don't be pushy, to try to close too much, don't assume things, don't bore the customer with stupid questions, be respectful, build relationships, be reasonable, help them solve their problems.

Granted, it's a little more scientific than that, based on research of lots and lots of sales calls, and lays out a very specific, very practical method. But I can't help but feel a little like the key to being a good sales person is to not be a jerk. And I wonder why it took until 1988 for people to start saying, "Oh, maybe we shouldn't be jerks" and why it 2010 and people are still jerks.

Neil Rackham tells a story about a guy (a purchasing agent at a company) had a strategy for dealing with jerky sales people. He'd gone through sales textbooks and written on index cards all the different tricks sales people use. And when some punk sales guy would come in and feed him some line, he'd put the corresponding index card on the table. Then he'd say, "You get three chances. When you get to three index cards, I'm throwing you out of my office." Needless to say, people stopped trying to sell him crap he didn't want or didn't need.

It's a good book, though. I've enjoyed reading it, and even though I don't often buy things valued in the thousands of dollars, I feel a little bit better equipped to go into a buying situation. If I ever am in a place where I have to make big purchases for a company or I have to sell several thousand dollars worth of things to make a living, I feel like it's not as scary a thing to do.

America Runs on Dunkin

I have been sitting in Dunkin' Donuts for the last hour watching people come in and out, ordering donuts and breakfast sandwiches and coffee with cream or milk or Splenda. And I have made a great realization about Dunkin' Donuts.

I should first perhaps confess that I have a great love for Dunkin' Donuts. The midwest, or atleast the regions of Iowa in which I resided, were greatly lacking in Dunkin' Donuts. The greater love, it seems, for the residents of those areas is Krispie Kreme Donuts. But to me, Dunkin' is the mark of superior donut-making, of artisan-ship and quality. I can't remember when I first started this passionate love-affair but I can tell you that there were three things I missed most during my time in Iowa: the ocean, the boardwalk, and Dunkin' Donuts.

Sometime while I was departed from this great, Dunkin' Donuts-filled land, Dunkin' began a advertising campaign hinged on the slogan, "America runs on Dunkin'." And I have thought, since returning, "Now, Dunkin' is great, but can we really claim that America runs on Dunkin'? The good people of Ames, Iowa certainly don't."

Today, I have come to believe that this is a perfectly legitimate claim.

You're probably thinking, "Elena, seriously, sitting in Dunkin' for over an hour on a Thursday morning? Why aren't you home sleeping like usual, or doing laundry or scrubbing the tub or baking a three layer banana-peanut butter cake"--I do tend to do these things at strange hours of the day (or night)--"like usual? Out? At Dunkin' Donuts? Your love must be great..."

My love is indeed great. But that's now why I've chosen to be here now. I drove Michael to work today, and rather than driving an hour back home to Vineland and then and hour back to his office and another hour back home, I packed up my bag with lots of reading (and my laptop) and have made myself comfortable in the all-American haven that is Dunkin' Donuts of Northfield, NJ.

See, America does run on Dunkin'. I, being somewhat stranded in this strange, new town have found a safe place to be. And I have watched everything from BMWs, Acuras, and Lexus...es? all the way to dingy AC Repair vans and pick-up trucks pull in to order their morning fix. Through these doors have walked business men in suit and tie, retired folk, moms and summer camp bound kids, secretaries, plumbers, and high-power career women. Dunkin' Donuts is the great equalizer, the place we all come to, regardless of of walk of life, to get geared up for the epic journey that lies ahead of us each day.

Yes, America, we run on Dunkin'. (But what does this say about us that, unlike the Chinese who love a good workout routine in the morning, we all love a good donut?)