Roaming Buffets & Guests of Honor

"The Poor Invited to Feast"

In this Sunday's Lucan lesson (Luke 14:1, 7-14), Jesus advises that when we are invited to dine, we ought to take the lowest seat possible, not the seat of honor, in case someone else comes along and bumps us down a notch. At its simplest, Jesus's story is a lesson of humility: live humbly so that no one has to serve you humble pie. The story is not about a space or a place of honor; the "place of honor" (v.8) or the "lowest place" (v.9) are merely evaluative descriptors. The important lesson is about attending to our behavior, our way of thinking and living. The lesson is about how we live life as humble servants called to be stewards, not dignitaries waiting to be served and honored.

Last Monday, the Sister and I hosted a dinner for some UMC clergy in our new house. Because we do not have a regular sized dining table and our primary dining surface is a bar-table for four, we had to think really hard about who to invite and how many to invite. Not only that, we also had to build a menu that wouldn't require seating everyone at the table, but which would accommodate a mobile, plate-on-your-lap dining style. In the end, we decided on a style between stationed hors d'oeuvres and take-out. We set up food stations in the spacious dining room, used the china hutch as a bar, and then set chairs and bar stools all around. Guests were invited to grab the food from the make-shift "buffet line" and then they carried their plates to different corners to enjoy food & conversation. We eventually congregated in the living room, and everyone found a seat -- whether it was the sofa, armchair, rocking chair, piano bench, bar stools, whatever. All in all, the evening worked out quite well. I think it fair to say that everyone felt comfortable and welcomed. We were nourished by the food and the company of our friends and acquaintances. Plus, we were all sufficiently humbled by the brilliance, generosity, intelligence, and kindness of each person we met that evening.

Thinking back on that evening, I feel happy that we did not have a seated dinner. It would have required reducing the number of people whom we could invite and whose company we wanted to share. Setting up buffet style, or a roaming buffet, was the best way for us to avoid the sticky mess of seats of honor, and we didn't have to worry about who would sit next to whom.

I grew up in a family that is rather culturally diverse, and yet I would say that we are still quite traditional in many respects. For instance, Dad was always seated at the head of the table. As the father figure in the household, that was his designated seat. (And as a pastor, he was always the head of the house, regardless of where he sat, and regardless of which house he entered. He was always accorded the respect and honor of being a Man of the Cloth, a minister, a pastor, a clergyman.)

However, thanks to my parents, I learned early on that when guests entered our home, they would be given a "seat" of honor. Dad would always be the pastor, but guests were special and deserved to be hosted with honor and graciousness -- regardless of their background and affiliation. For me and my siblings, a strong sense of radical hospitality was instilled in us by our parents from an early age. It was not so much where they were seated at the dining table, but how they were treated in our company. We understood that no matter who walked through our doors and into our kitchen, we would ask "have you eaten" and then serve them something with grace and respect, and some Maggi soy sauce.

This reminds me of my brother and sister-in-law's wedding reception. I was quite pleased with how they managed the sticky mess of seating arrangements for the guests. The bride and groom reserved 20 tables at the restaurant, and when guests showed up, they were invited to choose their own seats. Those who came first selected their own tables, and as more and more people arrived, we asked them to fill in the gaps. There was some shuffling, but everything worked out in the end. No one could complain that they were placed at a "bad" table because they had selected their own seats. (Interestingly, many guests who arrived early chose to sit in the back instead of moving up front. Surprise, surprise. I guess they didn't want the "seats of honor" next to the stage!)

Perhaps what I'm trying to say is -- If you intend to host a dinner and can escape the seated dinners in your home, I wholeheartedly recommend roaming buffets with food stations. There can only be benefits:

• No need to worry about seating arrangements or place-cards
• More mingling and thereby more interesting conversation
• Roaming allows for faster digestion of foods
• You can actually dine & talk with your guests instead of running back and forth serving food

So, invite some friends, neighbors, the cripple, the lame, the poor, the blind, and throw yourself a roaming buffet. (Imagine: roaming buffet potluck style!)

Photo source: JESUS MAFA. The poor invited to the feast, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48397 [retrieved August 29, 2010].

The Inquisitive Brother

A few weeks ago, we moved into a different house -- a rental that is considerably larger than the one in which we had been residing. There are twice the number of rooms which need to be furnished, and there is almost twice the amount of yard work that will need to be tended to. I'm not quite certain how we finaggled this deal (using our sweet, charming personalities?), but here we are!

As we packed up glasses, dishes, chopsticks, picture frames, towels, hand soaps, etc., I noted that the lectionary for the week we were moving included the text from Colossians which encourages us (me) to kill the earthly practice of greed ("which is idolatry", v.5).  Add to that, the parable from Luke reminded me that greed is truly seductive (and easily disguised -- helloooo flat screen TV!), and that I need to strive for the simple life. (Cue music for Green Acres.)

The thing is, however, after the first reading of the Luke passage, I understand the young brother's position, and can sympathize with his seemingly reasonable request. Given that inheritance laws favored elder brothers and shafted the younger brothers leaving them to practically fend for their equal shares, this young inquirer's request to Jesus sounds not unreasonable, and at first glance, the brother actually appears to be very fiscally smart -- this is sound planning for retirement. Is it not? And, if you read Jesus' parable of the farmer with the plans for the bigger barn -- doesn't that sound familiar? Like he's got a good financial consultant who's helping him with his assets -- saving up just in case the market crashes?

I've only lived 1/3 of my life, and I'm already told to think about the future: Am I investing aggressively? What's my plan for the future? Why don't I invest in some real estate instead of renting? Etc, etc, etc. [Truth be told, I'm already researching into this great retirement community that I want to join, except that they won't let me join before 65. Alas.]

You might be thinking what is wrong with doing that, wondering why I'm problematizing the move into a bigger house, the concerns for my future. Why question what seems, for all intents and purposes, like really sound fiscal planning?

"You fool!" said Jesus (v.20). [I pity the fool!]

Now, my reading of the situation here is that this fool is as transparent as cellophane, and Jesus was able to see right through this guy's seemingly innocuous question. You might say that this fellow wasn't just asking for his equal share -- he wants stuff! -- and Jesus recognizes this immediately and therefore raises this issue in the subsequent parable about the farmer. So, now we're assuming that the young brother is like the rich farmer. Now, what makes these two worthy of being called "fools"? 

1. He doesn't mention his master financial Counselor at all. No mention of the Source of all his gifts, the One who gives and gives and gives. He acknowledges nothing, and gives no praise or thanksgiving. It's all about him and what he acquired. 

2. He only thinks about himself. No mention of how he might share the blessings which he received. 

3. He seemed focused only on material "stuff" and not what was truly important -- being richer toward God.  

In the grand scheme of things, in the larger webwork of God's kingdom (which we are to strive for each day, each moment), we are to shed all these earthly things. Our lives, as Jesus reminds us, belong to God and we are to be "rich toward God" (v. 21), not be shoring up our earthly assets by shuffling them from house to house (in my case) or from account to account in order to save up only for ourselves. Our lives as faithful Christians should not be about making us comfortable and living off the wealth while there is so much suffering in the world, so much need for us to share the gifts that God has given us -- shared to us for us to share with others!

But, in this day and age, it's not uncommon to see individuals, organizations, and institutions wanting more. We see it around us all the time. And the "more" that we strive for comes in all shapes and sizes. "More" house to live in (alas, alas), more money to spend, more time to idle away, more vacation days to take, more people in our churches, more money in the offering plates, more , more, more... I myself am guilty. In planning our move into the bigger house, we began thinking about purchasing more towels (for the guest bedrooms and the guest baths), more cable TV (guilty pleasure: Food Network!), more furniture for the dining room and the breakfast nook and the upstairs family room, more dishes (in a bigger house, we'll have bigger parties, right? Right?), more, more, more... (I'm also thinking of the UMC's recent campaign to get "more" people in the pews... Read about this here.)


So much excess!! Before I know it, I'm up to my eyeballs in desire for more, and then I hardly know what to do with all the "stuff" that I've acquired, and buried in the midst of excess, I've forgotten what Jesus said:


"Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions" (Lk 12:15).

So, the lesson that I'm being taught, and which I'm learning with great difficulty, is how to let go of the greed, the stuff, the material possessions, and focus myself on being rich toward God. This is what a faithful disciple needs to be -- and perhaps this is one reason why I'm still unemployed and looking for work. As Taylor Burton-Edwards said in his reflection, the lesson is "concrete learning (and unlearning) of specific patterns of behavior". This experience is helping me to rely less on earthly goods and on unlearning my reliance on material riches.

Lord, have mercy, and give me strength! 

stylus: a project by ann hamilton

One of the wonderful side-effects of the unbearable Saint Louis heat is more art and culture for Saint Louisans. Because, well, what do you do to hide from hot summer weather? Go to a museum or art gallery! The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is neither a museum nor an art gallery, but its current exhibition is very worth seeing.  The current exhibition installed at the Pulitzer is Ann Hamilton's stylus. My sister and I ventured to the Pulitzer (read about it here) partly because we were interested in contemporary art, partly because we wanted to do something fun indoors to escape the Saint Louis heat, and partly because we wanted to do something for free.

Although we went to the Pulitzer not knowing anything about the artist or the exhibit, we were very intrigued after a brief look at the exhibit description:

As a visual artist whose contributions to contemporary art span three decades, Ann Hamilton's installations are notable in part for their capacity to weave a broad palette of media into engaging sensory environments. Noted for a dense accumulation of materials, her installations create immersive experiences that respond to the architectural presence and social history of their sites, while also engaging the public with broad questions of what it means to assemble in such spaces. Hamilton's installation stylus, created specifically for the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, was conceived as both a sanctuary for listening and a laboratory for experiments in collective vocal exercises.  The installation asks the following questions: How do we communicate? What external forces act upon or inhibit our collective need for social contact and response? How are relationships enacted (or not enacted) by the architectural spaces we inhabit? While the Pulitzer building is the main structural element, the project spills outside the walls, onto the broader stage of the built and social environment of Grand Center and beyond.

For those of you who will not be able to fly to Saint Louis to enjoy this exhibition (and the summer weather), I will attempt to give you my personal impression of this extraordinary project, in hopes that you will attempt to visit any and all exhibitions created by Hamilton, should she ever venture into your corner of the world. There are various multi-sensory, multi-modal elements for the actual exhibit, so I'll try to briefly describe the ones that imprinted on my mind the most.

Upon entering the building, we are immediately given a brief explanation about the concordance, with said briefing occurring in full view of a small shelf of concordances (I saw several kinds -- concordance for children's tales, concordance for Whitman's writings, concordance for the Bible, etc.) lining a blank wall. The written explanation that we are handed contains the following:

concordance:At the threshold of the exhibition is a concordance. By its definition, a concordance is an alphabetical arrangement of the principal words of a book with reference to the passage in which each word occurs. A concordance is also an agreement, harmony. [This is when I began thinking of concordances that tell me where I can locate the word "smite" written in the Bible.]

The printed concordance stacked on the first table of the exhibition draws also on an older definition of the word concordance,

A composition combining and harmonizing various accounts. [This printed concordance which we also found dispersed in various places throughout the exhibition looked and felt like a newspaper, and it was printed on newsprint in lettering like newsprint lettering, and the title consisted of multiple newspaper names -- I remember seeing "Tehran News".]

The words that comprise the two vertical spines of the composition serve as principal words describing the interior register of the space of the Pulitzer Foundation for the ARts as stylus inhabits it. Though the selection of words will shift with each printing, a base selection of words forms the spines:

Act, Address, Being, Black, Blue, Body, Call, Calling, Chorus, Finding, Hand, Hear, Hearing, Light, Listen, Listening, Mind, Mouth, Sense, Soul, Speak, Speaking, Spirit, Time, Touch, Touching, Voice, World

In the concordance, published weekly as part of the stylus project, horizontal lines of text which contain one of the spine words are lifted from international English language newspapers. [I wondered why only English, and, what would happen if/when we truly intersected our meaning-making with the multi-lingual experiences that many of us share/claim.]The selected lines are thus pulled from their original context in the newspaper and arranged according to the alphabetized list of principal words. Through this process, the composition intersects the interior structure of the stylus with the exterior of world of events.

This process of creating a concordance of the words of stylus with lines of text from the world's major newspapers results in fields of text with juxtapositions of accounts aligned to created new possibilities and contexts for meaning. As you read the fields of text, you are invited to respond to your own register of how you read it, aloud or silently, within the interior of the piece.

One entire wall of the main exhibit hall is lined with shelves that contain replicas of hands made out of wax and paraffin (I think). In the middle of the main hall, tall ladders are erected as stations from which photographic images are projected onto blank walls. Toward one end is a large drawing table where you can sit and play games and speak into a microphone which has been connected to a piano in a back room. When you speak into the microphone, the words that you say are then translated into notes that are then projected throughout the building with amplifiers. Strange, you think? It is quite interesting, though, to see how words, ideas, and actions are translated, retranslated, and transformed from one medium to another. I quite enjoyed the experience, although I did wonder why no one talked to each other. In some sense, we were quite limited in our human interactions. Shyness? Maybe, maybe not.

Mexican jumping beans on a steel table

When you walk up to the Mezzanine, you will see a gigantic table outfitted with wired microphones that point down at the tabletop. On this giant steel tabletop-canvas are approximately 3,000 Mexican jumping beans, crackling away and you can hear the crackle vibrations amplified through speakers in the floor of the Mezzanine. You can read more about it here.

As the Sister and I were conversing with the gallery assistant, we started mulling over the primary questions raised by Hamilton's exhibit: How do we communicate? How are relationships enacted (or not) by the spaces we inhabit?

I noted out loud to the gallery assistant that I was surprised Hamilton would choose jumping beans to illustrate a point about communication and interactions, especially since her exhibit seemed to invite the participant to engage in modes of human social interaction -- I mean, we were discussing modes of human interaction, not bean-talk. But, that was not something for us to figure out right on the spot, I suppose. Another point that kept nagging at me throughout the exhibit was that the entire exhibit was in English. Even the newspaper print concordance, which claimed to pull texts from several international newspapers, contained only English text. To construct an entire exhibit of this magnitude and scale about human interaction and human communication, an artist must think about multilingual, polyphonic communications, mustn't she? As a bilingual speaker from multi-cultural backgrounds, I am disappointed to see that we are engaging only in English, thereby undercutting the depth and richness of human experiences.

Although it has been several weeks since I visited the Pulitzer, I invite you to go see the exhibition for yourself. It will run through January 2011. Admission is always free. Go here for visitor information for the Pulitzer. Or, visit the blog.

Framing for Change: Creating Memes and Stories that Matter by Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough of smartMeme

Framing for Change: Creating Memes and Stories that Matter by Doyle Canning and Patrick Reinsborough of smartMeme

An excerpt from the article:

"Collective, cultural stories are embedded with powerful frames that define cultural norms and shape common perceptions of what’s possible. The mythologies and memes of Plymouth Rock, Manifest Destiny, 40 Acres and a Mule, and the American Dream are the narratives of the past—but they continue to haunt our political discourse today. When we are working to change the dominant stories about racism, immigration, war, and protecting the planet, these narratives are already in peoples’ minds, acting as filters to social change messages, and often limiting a collective sense of possibility..."

Evening, at Ottawa Beach

Evening (by Rainer Maria Rilke)

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls;

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternately stone in you and star.

(tr. Stephen Mitchell)

Missed Opportunities: Closed Doors

 

I was disappointed to discover (1) despite the sign, Pi pizzeria was not available at the STL Science Center, and, (2) Miss Saigon on Barack Obama Blvd (formerly Delmar) is closed.

Saint Louis Arch at Night

We ventured out to the riverfront and the Arch at about 11pm one night. I had never seen the arch or the Mississippi River at night, and we were awarded with a brilliant, yellow full moon. The little point-and-shoot Canon that I carried failed miserably in trying to capture the rich colors of the night, yet, there is something slightly magical in the blurry images. It makes me feel like we're in the midst of fairyland and are about to turn back into pumpkins at the stroke of midnight.