The view from our back deck.

This past weekend was Memorial Day weekend. Like many people in the United States we celebrated the holiday by being outside. For the past five years we have lived in a house on a lake.

There are some nice things about living on a lake. If you want to get out of bed and take an early morning swim you don’t have to go anywhere to do it.  Cruising around in a paddle boat can be relaxing and physically tiring at the same time.  Our lake is too small for motorized boats, so no skiing.

However, there are some adjustments we have had to make to living on a lake. There is a very active residents association which does put some restrictions on the properties fronting the lake. A significant one for us, having a medium sized dog, is the prohibition on having a fence.  In our case, living on the lake means abiding by rules that we have agreed upon such as agreeing to mow your grass clippings away from and not into the lake. Since we are at the end of the lake where everything collects we are appreciative of this rule. It is a microcosm of what it means to live in a democratic society as we live with some rules we don’t like and benefit from some others that may be inconvenient for our neighbors.

Probably the biggest adjustment for me, having moved from a house that has a very private back yard, is getting used to the fact that we have virtually no privacy in our back yard. As the yards all converge on the lake we are funneled together if we are outside on the lake. I can see clearly and completely a half dozen back yards from the chair in my living room in which I am writing this.

Robert Frost is often quoted as saying, “Good fences make good neighbors.”  Frost said those words in the voice of a character in one of his poems.  The irony is that, while many people have quoted Frost in support of the boundaries between us, the poem (Mending Wall) actually is questioning the need for artificial boundaries in our relationships. Frost seems to doubt that the New England reserve with which he grew up is really the best way to be a neighbor.

If you view the lake as an extension of our backyard then I share a backyard with the other 46 residents on the lake. It blurs the boundaries between our yard and theirs and between the privacy we normally would expect from one another.  I really don’t know if good fences make good neighbors.  I do know that living on a lake makes you cozy with your neighbors in a way that stretches my need for privacy sometimes. Occasionally, it draws me outdoors to enjoy the water. But sometimes, it pushes me inside, where I can enjoy the private quietude. Maybe water and walls make good neighbors – the ever negotiated balance between public and private in our lives.

I am awake.  It is four in the morning.  Those of us who are trained in the Wesleyan way know that John Wesley woke up every morning at 4:00 AM to pray.  When I see four in the morning it is not usually because I have set an alarm but because I am not sleeping well as is the case this morning.

This morning when I woke up, I picked up my phone from the bedside table, made a brilliant play in Words with Friends, and then decided to see if anything was stirring in the Facebook/Twitter world.  While I skimmed lots of posts from the night before I was struck by two very different posts.

The first was a series of tweets by a friend who was having nightmares, the most recent being six minutes ago.  Her brief descriptions of her nightmare and her anguish at not being able to find peaceful sleep were heart wrenching.  I said a prayer for my friend. Like her, I have had nights when sleep wouldn’t come and bad dreams intruded on my sanity when sleep did come.  These are dreams of the unwelcome variety.

And then I came across another tweet about dreaming. This was a blog report about #DreamUMC.  (You can read the entire report at http://pastorbecca.wordpress.com/)  #DreamUMC is an invitation to have online conversation about the future of the United Methodist Church. Specifically, it is an invitation to chat live via Twitter at predetermined times about issues  that challenge us but also about issues that give us hope. I didn’t find much about which to be encouraged in this General Conference, but I find hope in conversations like the one that is happening at #DreamUMC.  I look forward to seeing where it may lead us.

I haven’t decided yet whether to give up on sleep tonight, or this morning, depending upon how you look at it, but I am sure that I have not given up on dreaming dreams.  At least of this second variety.

Recently, I have entered the world of Twitter or, as it’s website describes it, micro blogging. It has been somewhat interesting to know where some of my colleagues spend their time and I was certain that Anne Lammott’s tweets were written especially for  me until I noticed that she has almost 20,000 followers.  (I currently have 53 followers.)

One of the challenges of Twitter is trying to express yourself in 140 characters or less. Great for telling the world that you are going to the grocery store. Not so great for expressing emotional nuance. A couple of weeks ago the United Methodist Church had it’s quadrennial (every four years) meeting in Tampa. This year the conference was covered by a live webcast, which was true four years ago. What was new was that there was a concurrent twitter feed, which became at times the United Methodist version of angry birds.

And so I have some thoughts about using Twitter for good and not for evil. (No, it is not a super power, although some treat it as if it is.)

First of all, try to assume good intentions on the part of others. After General Conference, a friend of mine posted a blog in which he describes a Twitter exchange between him and an unknown “tweeter.”  What was interesting to me was that he continually assumed good intentions on his own part and thought the other person should as well. But he constantly made assumptions about the other person’s posts which tended to vilify that person’s intentions.  I have noticed this tendency in a lot of electronic venues which is why I am more apt to send someone an email if I want to complement them but prefer to have critical conversations by telephone or face to face.

Secondly, it is rarely helpful to have deep philosophical conversations via Twitter. If you want to talk in depth find another means to do it. The advantage of Twitter is that it is in real time and keeps you up to date with your friends. It isn’t really designed for depth of expression. It can, however, point you to a blog, Facebook page, or other venue where these kinds of conversations can take place.

Finally, I have learned to block people I don’t know and who are merely trolling the ethernet looking for sparring partners. If the person has a screen name that is clearly meant to hide their identity then I give them a wide berth.

Having said all of this, I am enjoying the interaction I am having on Twitter. Yesterday, I connected with a group of young pastors in our conference who want to read through the standard sermons of John Wesley together, one per week, and share their thoughts together through tweets. I have a few friends who do Twitter and don’t do Facebook and so I enjoy hearing their thoughts and keeping up with their activities. And I have, cautiously, made some new friends.

For the time being, however, I mostly listen in on conversations (or lurk, in electronic parlance) trying to get the feel of this short burst of words world.  In time, I suspect I might put forth my opinions but for the time being I make this request: Don’t tweet me if you don’t love me.  I have enough conflicted ambiguity in my life already.

This past weekend was a very busy time for us which culminated with a Sunday afternoon visit to the Indianapolis Zoo accompanied by our daughter and her husband to celebrate Mother’s Day. It has been some time since I have been to the Indianapolis Zoo. I remember visiting the zoo at the old location by the fairgrounds when it was little more than a petting zoo. Since it moved to the White River Park location in 1988, it has expanded into a wonderful place to explore and enjoy family time.

Seeing animals in captivity is fun in some respects but is sad in some others. Watching a tiger continuously circle it’s enclosure is a constant reminder that this is not the environment in which it is meant to live.  It is obvious that some of the animals lack the muscle tone of their counterparts in the wild. And yet, for some of these creatures, which are threatened with extinction by poachers and human encroachment, the zoo is a haven of sorts.

The picture of the elephant with this blog is one that Michelle took while we were on a morning safari at the Victoria Falls Game Preserve in Zimbabwe in 1999. To see animals that close with only a range rover between the two of you is exciting and informative as well. Unlike the zoo experience, it is obvious in this environment who is visiting whom. That is, we are the ones who need to respect the power of the beast rather than watching from a comfortable distance with a fence and trench between us.  It is both fulfilling and a little frightening at the same time. Unfortunately, the safari experience is not readily available in central Indiana. And so we go to the zoo and imagine what the animals might be like in their natural environment.

I expect that many of us like life served up in the zoo experience style – just interesting enough to engage us but at a completely safe distance.  One of my wife’s childhood friends published a book a few years ago titled “The Glass Between Us: Reflections on Urban Creatures” (Rebecca Norris Webb) in which she photographs animals in various zoos around the world.  She shows that “in a certain light, the glass between us can be a window and a mirror.”

So, my  visit to the zoo has reminded me that we are both fascinated by and a little wary of those things that are radically different from our world. And maybe we should be careful about lions, tigers and bears. But there is also something to be said for seeing things without barriers or at least looking into the reflections in the glass between us as we look through the glass.  It might have something to tell us about who we are and how we look at the world.

We had a great time at the zoo, by the way.  And although there is a small pool where you can pet a shark, I chose not to do that. I think I’ll keep the glass between me and that experience for the time being.

35 years!

I have now been out of high school for almost two-thirds of my life. This summer I will be attending a couple of reunions – one at my high school and one with a group of folks with whom I attended elementary school.  I have not lived in either community in the 35 year interval since graduation and so it is with both anticipation and reservation that I approach the possibility of reconnecting with my former classmates.  All of this has gotten me thinking about some of the differences between these reunions and reunions of times past.

First of all, it seems to me that folks have begun to move past the vocational posturing that characterized the one reunion (20 years) that I have attended. Maybe we have lived long enough to begin to realize that life and work have many ups and downs and we are not totally defined by the work that we do. While meaningful work is important, it should be looked at as our opportunity to contribute to the world not as the sole means of self identity.

Secondly, most of us have by now experienced significant difficulties in life that have knocked some of the uncompromising rough edges off our personal interactions. Deaths, unemployment, broken relationships, and a myriad of other life situations have made us a little more accepting of other people’s life journey.

Finally, most of us have begun to accept the inevitable changes in our appearance. While a few folks have maintained face and figure, most people our age begin to make peace with less hair, more inches around the middle, and reduced stamina.  As we begin to accept the face that stares back at us in the mirror we also begin to offer a higher level of acceptance to our fellow middle-aged peers.

As I re-read the preceding paragraphs I suspect some people reading this will find it a little depressing. I don’t. I have found that getting more comfortable with my own mortality has freed me up to love people around me with less judgement and more wild abandon. I have less interest in passing judgment and more inclination to enjoy our time together.