if you have checked this blog for any period of time... you need to find more to do in your life AND you know that i love to throw a good party. or a bad party. any party at all. for any reason.
i read some better blogs this week and read two things that i liked because they spoke to my need to throw parties... first from my bff shauna neiquist on her blog post about a baby shower and why i love to throw parties...
“Keep in mind that this is kind of my deal, my favorite thing in the world. Not baby showers, specifically, but taking the time to gather people we love together and celebrate life and God’s goodness. Putting time and energy and creativity into marking these moments feels incredibly worthwhile to me. I kind of have a ‘Chariots of Fire’ feeling about it—the part where he says, “when I run, I feel God’s pleasure.” When I create space and opportunity to celebrate with people we love, I feel God’s pleasure. For real.
That’s why I love officiating weddings, throwing parties, hosting showers. There are so many things in life that I can't do for the people I love, but this is something I can do. I fixate and plan and focus on a party with obsessive joy, and almost nothing else I do brings me such a sense of happiness.
I say all that because sometimes people imply that I get pushed or pressured into all this hosting, or that I must feel some sort of obligation. Not true at all. If anything, I’m sometimes a little pushy myself—please let me host it, please have it at our house. I’m not saying that everyone has to host events as often as we do. I’m just saying that we do it because I love it and because it matters to me on a deep level, one of the ways I love people, not for any other reason.”
and in all honesty... shauna and i aren’t bff’s. but we TOTALLY would be if she knew me. or came to my house for a party.
and then i read this from a study in brown’s blog... and it is really from a letter written by eugene peterson that was in a book called “wisdom of each other”. eugene peterson is the guy who translated the message version of the Bible. which you all know that i like. it is so Bible-ish. and sometimes very fresh and real to me in a way that makes me love God more. any who... here is eugene’s letter to someone named gunner. which just begs the question of who is named “gunner”?
Dear Gunnar,
What I have in mind for you in your new job as adult youth advisor to those seven or eight Norwegian teenagers is simply this: Invite them over to your home to cook a meal with you. Make it a regular thing, say, once every couple of weeks. And that's it.
But there is more to it than meets the eye. First, its something you like to do and are good at. You have that huge county farm kitchen, furnished with every conceivable cooking device - in a culture of fast-food and efficiency, your kitchen opens up a world of care for food and its painstaking preparation will strike them, to use one of their words, as awesome. Second, you will be taking them seriously as persons, without any condescending adaptations to their status as adolescents. You are inviting them into your adult world and making them participants in it - work that is not make-work; work, not entertainment (although not without its pleasures.) Third, you will be working out of a context of hospitality, probably the very best setting in which to develop personal relationships and develop conversations that include Jesus. [...]
You have scores of delightful and sometimes imaginatively complex recipes - they're not likely to get bored. And you will have provided a setting in which they will experience themselves in ways which are rare for them: treated with dignity, not exploited to some program or other, and treated as "souls" to be nurtured, not psyches to be fixed. [...]
I'm sure by now, you can discern the conviction that is behind my suggestion: that "ministry" is organic, growing out of who and where we are in circumstances in which we know and serve Jesus; not something we impose on a person or setting as "mission" or "evangelism" or "youth ministry."
When you get around to making bouillabaisse, try and get me invited, even though I qualify as neither hungry nor a stranger.
The peace of the Lord,
Eugene
seems that eugene and i would get along also. and gunner and i would not have that much in common with gunner’s HUGE kitchen with every conceivable cooking device... where is this gunner and why isn’t he sharing some o’ those cooking devices with me?
anyway... i have to go and plan a shindig for monday night. a dinner for the village square speakers. i hope to use one of my “scores of delightful and sometimes imaginatively complex recipes”...
and p.s. do any of you know where the title of this post comes from? “party on garth”? it is from one of adam’s favorite movies...