thoughts on tipping

Have you ever wondered what is the right amount to tip someone who has served you? I wonder that every single time I eat out, get my hair cut, have my car washed, or ask someone to watch my children. I wish there was a hard and fast rule (15% doesn’t always seem right, esp. when the babysitting rate is negotiable from the get-go, or when the service is bad, just mediocre, or really fantastic). We went to the car wash today and as I watched this man (old enough to be my father) carefully wiping each and every interior surface of my large van, I wondered, “How much is this service worth to me?”

One summer in college, I worked at a nice sit down restaurant. Working in a restaurant, even for a short time, really gives you a chance to see how those who serve are treated by those who are served. Are our servants (so to speak) all hard workers? No, not necessarily. Are our servants all nice people? Hardly. Are our servants underpaid? Or overpaid? I do not know. Are our servants images of the living God? Absolutely. I can remember cringing at the derision in my coworkers’ voices when they had been left a tract by the customers—a tract accompanied by a lousy tip. Did they need to know Jesus? Sure they did. But what I found was more important was that they needed to know that those who claimed to love Jesus could show that love to them, to the stranger in the apron.

If you went to Wheaton with me, you will remember the Forum Wall in the MSC, where anyone and everyone could post notes, pictures, and treatises. Do you remember the one put up by the local waiter (or was it a waitress?)? I remember that he blasted each and every one of us for being rude, demanding, and cheap. I remember that he told us that local wait staff hated having us as customers because we could be relied on to never leave a good tip. I know students are notoriously poor, but maybe God would be better served if we stayed home instead of stiffing the waitress.

Over the past several years, I have decided that it is important to err on the side of excess in tipping some people: my hairstylist, for example, and the girls who watch my children for me. These are people I will ask to serve me again (and my children and my hair are both important to me). What about the car wash guy, though, or the waitress who forgot that I wanted another Diet Coke? Chances are good that I won’t see them again, or if I do, they won’t remember me. But what if I do? Or, if I don’t, does it matter? If that waitress saw me praying with my children, I feel like I ought to show her that her care for me is important, even if she didn’t do a fantastic job. After all, my children lavish me with kisses and hugs even when I do a lousy job as a mother. The car wash guy didn’t see me praying, but shouldn’t I show him generous love anyway? I hate washing my car and when I take it in, it is generally full of fingerprints and old crumbs. The service provided is worth a lot to me, probably more than the car wash charges (although I won’t tell them that). Maybe, just maybe, my tip will mean more to him than it does to me.

Maybe my tips aren’t noticed by those I tip. Maybe they are. If they are noticed, if I am noticed, I want it to be for the love I show to those who have taken the time to serve me. They are doing the work that I am choosing not to do for myself: cooking, washing dishes, vacuuming my van. If I am rich enough to be served, then I guess maybe I need to view it as an opportunity to love on a fellow child of God. I still don’t know how much is too much, but I hope that if I make a mistake, it is on the side of love.

butterflies

We adopted caterpillars from the local children's museum this year. They come in communion cups with lids; for about a week they do nothing but eat something that looks like peanut butter but probably isn't. After that time, they enter their chrysalis, spend another week or so in there (during which time you are supposed to make a butterfly house for them because the butterfly certainly won't fit in the cup... did anyone else read the poem about the monster in the mason jar? Thanks, Mrs. Brown, for officially and forever creeping me out about butterflies). One day, they magically emerge and you can either release them immediately or feed them sugar water for a couple of days, then release them. Here are the pictures from our family release. OK, never mind. Arranging the pictures is a royal pain in blogger. If you want to see them, click on the flickr link (the April set). The above picture is, in fact, one of the girls' butterflies. It was a fun experience but I have no profound thoughts about it whatsoever.

a happy day for me

This one will just go to show you once and for all that I am just as nerdy as the rest of my family. It is in the blood and I can say nothing else. You may ask what has prompted this latest revelation? I will tell you: I successfully installed a print server.

Yes, you read it right. A print server. See, Andy can bring his laptop home with him, access the Internet on it, listen to music, etc. but he has never been able to access our home network with it... or our printer. This is because of how his office network is set up differently than our home network (which is a really generous way of looking at the home setup). So he has been quietly and without complaint saving his papers, class notes, more papers, and Greek and Hebrew gibberish to his geek stick, bringing it to the big computer, and printing. I can print from my laptop, but only if the big computer is already on.

No longer. Now we can all happily use the printer, no matter what computer we are on. It was a stretching experience, and thank goodness for the NewEgg reviewer who shared in detail how he set his server up--because let me tell you, this manual was worse than useless (starting with when it told me to connect my parallel port server with a USB cable) and the website info discouraging--but it is done and done successfully. And that just makes me feel great.

just for fun

Thought you might enjoy this shot I took of Andy and Elanor at the beach last weekend. After I imported it, I applied Sean McCormack's Dragan/Cross Process to it (no clue what that means, but that's what I used... it is a Develop Preset that he created for Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom and shared with the rest of us) and we really enjoyed the result, especially the fine detail in Elanor's hair. (No, Andy is not going gray--that much--but that is what the process did to his hair.)

is this karma?

This is so beyond me. Did you know that bunk beds are really really hard to make? I don't mean construct; I just mean getting the sheets arranged in a somewhat tidy fashion. They are so hard that I'm embarrassed to tell you how often I change the kids' sheets (still way more often than any guy in college, though, don't worry). So what I want to know is why, why, why is it inevitable that one of my children will wet the bed the very night I have changed the sheets? Fresh, clean sheets?

i believe in fairy tales

These thoughts are largely inspired by the Easter service we experienced today at Mosaic. A podcast will be available through their website.

He is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Humanity has long dreamed of its gods coming to earth and entering into the human experience. The Greek gods especially were persistent in their visitations, mainly conjugal (and they seemed to avoid taking on human form). Other cultures imagined their gods descending, too: creating, teaching, interfering, and testing. Is the Christian dream of Jesus any different? Is Jesus humanity’s dream come true? What makes Christianity unique?

In Jesus, we find a god who refuses to come for a visit. Instead, he intentionally sets aside the powers, rights, and privileges of godhood and enters humanity on its lowest level, as a hungry newborn of outcast parents, claiming only the questionable status of an illegitimate child. Once he embarks on his inaugural tour of his chosen nation and people, he is shunned by the learned and embraced by the poor and “sinners”. Instead of awe and acclamation, he receives rejection and finally, crucifixion. The prophet Isaiah said it this way:

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

What was it about him that we just didn’t get? What did we fail to recognize? Does it make any sense at all that a god would walk among humanity and be told, “No thanks, you’re just not what were looking for” as if he were a job applicant?

I think that in this instance, truth truly is stranger than fiction. Our ideas of a godly visitation are waking dreams, visions of how this existence could be spectacular and elevated beyond the ordinary. This whole experience with Jesus doesn’t appeal to us. Somehow it seems so banal, even dirty, and it’s just not what we would have chosen. We could have written a better story ourselves if we were allowed. We love fairy tales; the prince is always supposed to slay the dragon and win the heart of the princess. The prince is never supposed to die. The god who descends for his pleasure or to evaluate some specimen of humanity and then retreats to Mount Olympus for high tea just seems so much more… well, godly.

My point is that Jesus makes sense just because we wouldn’t have dreamed him up. Our dreams do have a basis in reality; the fault lies with us if we refuse to accept the reality just because it doesn’t square with our wishes. While those other gods stopped by to take their pleasure, or to see if humanity was keeping up standards, or to sway a battle in one direction or another (poor Hector!), this god was different. Jesus didn’t come for himself; he came for us. I don’t doubt that he enjoyed much of his time as a man, but wouldn’t you have been frustrated by spending your time with a group of guys who were stubborn, confused, and only loyal until you were arrested and tried for your life? I would have been. Not to mention growing up as a social bastard because my parents weren’t married when I was conceived; not to mention having no roof over my head; not to mention going into all this knowing that the end of the story was my own death, that this prince would be slain by the dragon. Yeah, I would probably have spent some time looking over my shoulder for the next applicant, too.

Jesus doesn’t. In fact, he steadfastly refuses to take an easy escape route. Instead, he submits himself to the authority of those he created. The last hours of his life are spent in pain, humiliation, and torture. Finally, he receives a criminal’s death on a cross hanging between two thieves. The prince has died; the fairy tale has played false; there is no happy ending. Friday is desolate.

If the story ended on Friday, Jesus would be a character in a fairy tale read by no one. This god’s visit would be a failure and we would continue to tell visitation stories and dream of a true fairytale prince to lift us above our human existence.

However.

This isn’t just any god, or just any fairy tale. This is the One, the True Story, with the True Prince. And the ending? It is the ultimate Happy Ending. This story ends, not on Friday, but on Sunday instead, and the grave is empty. The Prince has died, grappled with Death, and triumphed. Death itself was the dragon, and Jesus conquered Death once and for all. Jesus’ victory over death, his resurrection, it was all for us—to rob Death of its power and renew our hope in eternity. Jesus has died, true, but Jesus has risen from the dead. For us, life is Christ, and death is now gain.

There are no more dragons to slay, but we continue to dream. We long for happy endings because we are destined for one. We are not destined for tragedy and for death. There is a fairy tale which is better than we could ever have imagined, precisely because it is beyond our wildest dreams. Imagine, if you will, a god who loves us so ardently that he cast everything aside, embraced humanity at its most visceral level, submitted even to Death itself, only to rise again in a new, glorified body, and crush Death’s power forever. Having done all this, he extends his hands, the hands that we nailed to a cross, to welcome us into his kingdom. Now that is a fairy tale to believe in.

happy birthday, little sea lion

Yesterday was one of the most anticipated events in our household in a long time. Caroline turned five. Why was she so excited about it? Only she knows. I must confess, I don't feel like we make much splash about birthdays at our house: we do aim for a special meal, cake, and presents, but no parties (so not my forte). However, this year was big news in her little life. I would guess that part of what makes it exciting for her is that she has been eagerly anticipating kindergarten like mad and she knows that this year is the year.

I haven't told her that she is already doing kindergarten work.

Funny thing: her birth is so vivid in my mind as one of the most harrowing experiences of my life, but the details slip through my fingers like sand. Lest you be concerned here, no, I am not going to subject you to a birth story (I recently read one of the funniest birth stories ever and know that nothing I can pen can compare). No worries, there was no traumatic 36 hour labor, last minute interventions, drug reactions, or what have you... all I can claim is an unsympathetic and obstinate triage nurse, an EMT student, and a hallway for a birthing room. No, I wasn't trapped in the hallway; the nurse and student were attempting to get me from triage to the birthing room (question: why didn't she take me when I actually wanted to go to the birthing room? Once she realized that I was about to deliver a baby RIGHT NOW, why didn't she leave me in the triage room? And why did I have to pay the hospital for a birthing room when I didn't give birth in it? I singlehandedly delivered this child (with coaching from Andy) and no one paid ME anything.). It just set the stage for the next fifteen months of her little life, which are pretty much a blur to me. This was not a happy infancy.

Other news: we have rented a moving truck. This train is heading east in mid June. Just in time for hurricane season, hooray! I will say that I am so looking forward to some good thunderstorms. I think it has rained here on maybe three different days since we arrived last August.

Also, we went to Yosemite for three days with my dad. We had a great time, but if this is Yosemite's slow time, I certainly cannot imagine planning a summer visit. We all went snowshoeing for the first time ever, which was a hoot. I am looking forward to David and Rabia buying their property now (wish, wish) so that we can plan a winter visit and snowshoe all over it! We also rented bikes and rode around the valley (snow up high, very pleasant in the valley), which was a neat way to see the park... the speed of driving with the silence of hiking. There are some pictures on flickr, but I didn't get as many as I would like; the light was very harsh.

A blessed Easter to you all.