Phones, Kings, and Chris Rice

By the standards of my life at home, it was not particularly unusual to be roused from my QT (before I was dressed or in my right mind) and asked to rush off to Starbucks because Danya hadn't known that he was going on an ECHO retreat and needed his overnight stuff ASAP.

Nor was it particularly unusual to arrive at the office and be handed a phone, and told that, among my other duties, I would be playing receptionist all day. This entails answering a wide variety of questions which are mostly out of my league. Many people wanted to place orders over the phone too, because apparently the web server for online orders is down. So I had to learn or relearn the filling out of order forms, and took people's names and numbers for Nate to call with the rest of it. "I'm sorry, I'm just the receptionist," I joked with moms all over the country. "But I'll have our accountant (or our conference person, or whoever had the expertise to answer the question) get back to you!"

It was so awful that it was funny, and after a call or two I finally just decided to enjoy the experience of being out of control. The main thing in these instances is to be professional, take good notes, apologize profusely that the person they want isn't there, and make sure that they are called back when the right person arrives. I can do that much, but I still felt horribly incompetent. Fortunately, as Charity (the "conference person") observed when she came in around 2 PM, "These people are sweet." It's true, too. Our customers are amazingly gracious. Still, I was grateful to hand the phone over. I enjoy talking to moms about Tapestry itself, but I'm jiggered if I know what the shipping rates to Alaska are, or how to work the codes for media packets, or what the procedure is for voiding an order.

That concludes the "phones" part of this post, and gives you a thumbnail sketch of my day. What I want to talk about now is--in my opinion--more interesting. It is a train of thought begun by Danya, as I was handing him his bag of things in the Starbucks parking lot. He kissed me goodbye and said, "I love you, baby girl!"

Baby girl?

Let's get this straight. I'm almost two years older than he is, and was at least being a big sister (more like a mother) by bringing him his overnight things. Where do we get this "baby girl" stuff? He usually calls me Krasiva (Russian nickname), or SpaceBabe, or some such. And, oddest of all, why was I pleased by his choice of words?

This is the theoretical part. Warning: I am now going to speculate concerning things that I don't (and probably can't) know anything about for sure.

I think that Davy called me that because he's growing up. I think that, in a sense, men will always be "older" than women. They are the lords of the earth, not we; it is for us to be their helpers and playmates, not the other way round. On them rest the ultimate responsibilities, and on their shoulders is the leadership of each family, each marriage, each church, each (more controversially) government. And, as I have heard from the lips of so many, many women both young and old, including my own heart, we women want to be in that hierarchically subordinate position. It doesn't mean that we aren't equal. It means "complementary roles."

Women, in my experience, want men to lead. We want to be under someone else's protection and guidance. It's built-in. I theorize that this is why it pleased me to be called "baby girl" by Danya. It indicated to me that, though he may technically be my junior, he is become more and more my senior in leadership and responsibility. His cares are weightier; he is growing wise; he is beginning to be what men were created to be: lords of creation. He can, more and more, take care of me. More and more I can trust his leadership, and I don't have to be his big sister in the sense of knowing more and showing the way. He can show me the way. There's something profoundly right about that.

So yes, maybe it sounds condescending, maybe even disrespectful. I don't think it is, though. Davy is grown up (he's 19 now, and will be 20 in the fall) to the point where it is for me to say, "what do you want me to do? Speak--I hear and obey." It doesn't make me a robot or a slave. It simply means that I look to him for guidance rather than assuming the leadership of a given situation. It means that he's growing up into so wise and careful and responsible a person that I can turn to him. This delightes me greatly, both because I rejoice in his new maturity and because, hang it all, I want to be well led! :)

From Danya I moved on in my thoughts to a pet theory which I am currently developing, and which is related to my theory of men. It is this; that pastors are the last kings of the earth.

Think about it. I'll elaborate more on the subject some other time, but compare in your mind the Bible's definition of a pastor and the Bible's definition of a good king. And don't read about Saul; read about David. Maybe it's just me; maybe it is only that my pastors seem so kingly in my eyes, that I think they ought to wear gold circlets and have sceptres. Yet these are only outward insignia of the wisdom in their faces, and the kindness there, and the sense you get that they always have one ear on you and one pricked up to God. They carry so much, and with so much joy. I find it astonishing and humbling, convicting and exhorting, but above all, wonderful. There really are still kings!

Now, finally, Chris Rice. I don't know if you are familiar with his music, but he is a thoughtful poet and a passionate worshiper, whose works I find exquisite in every Latinate sense of the word (exquirire). I listen to a lot of music during the workday because, being so intensely auditory, it is my only way to block the background noise of a busy office which would otherwise drive me crazy. My first thought about Chris Rice this morning was, "what is it with poets and the concept of corners in the sky?" Rice has a line "across the cornerless sky" which echoed similiar phrases that I have read in Milton and Augustine and even modern contemporary poets.

Is there just some sort of a need to define the sky? Is that it? But why do they always use this word "corners"? The world is a globe: they know that: why do they say "corners"? And why always in the sky?

My second thought about Rice was that he has a rare focus on Heaven, one that reminds me of Danya or John Piper. There were two lines (spaced apart) which went something like, "I know there's someone behind the stars who loves me... but I'm still missin' you." He has a song called "Questions for Heaven" and several which I love especially: Life Means So Much, My Cathedral, and Untitled Hymn. There's a wistfulness and a longing about his work that appeal to me, probably because I find them so often in my own heart. I have personal favorite daydreams about Heaven, and I catch myself getting homesick for my real home, and most of all--oh, most of all!--for the face of Christ. Perhaps that is what makes me such a solitary creature. I have always felt like an exile on earth.

Enough musing. I can feel myself growing distinctly wistful, and that won't do for a busy day. Don't you know, O my soul, that evening and early morning are the times for longing after the Sun?"