The Bottom of A Black, Black Hole

The guy I handed my application to was white and pot-bellied, not unlike the pigs his restaurant smokes. His grey hair stood in a ridiculous two-inch spike pattern, and his thick wire-rimmed glasses kept sliding down his nose from the sweat. It was 110 degrees in the Inland Empire today, and I had walked all over downtown Riverside, ducking into coffeeshops and restaurants with the standard inquiry.

But I'm done with all that now. I'm done because this manager, in his striped short-sleeved shirt, looked over my application and suggested I could start as a busser. He looked at the front and the back of his restaurant's poorly copied application, saw my masters degree, saw the salary of my last job, and suggested that I could work for him bussing tables.

I offered that I had waiter experience, grandly overstating what it is to work in Princeton Seminary's private dining room. "Yeah," he said. "But we're high volume." The six people presently patronizing his establishment cast no little doubt on that assertion, but to point that out would have been foolish. So I thanked him for his time and stepped outside.

I think I'm done with this. I'm still waiting to hear from a handful of places, but this is a very bad use of my time, and it's making me miserable.

Next plan of attack: get a copy of Writer's Market 2007 and start working on my freelance writing career.

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On Self-Marketing

Driving back from the Santa Monica Pier on Friday, Meredith and I listened to a This American Life piece, an excerpt from a memoir about growing up in California during the aerospace industry boom. The theme running through the piece was reinvention: California is a place where people come to reinvent themselves, to make up something about themselves that was not true before they arrived and to live into that something as if it had always been true.

I'm pestered by the thought that perhaps I should take that approach to my present vocational fecklessness. Maybe I need to market myself as something I've never been before, something I'm really not, but something that I could convince others I am and so maybe become.

A church consultant? An expert on some topic related to religion, the church, or society? A master teacher?

A good friend talked with me the day before our move about possibly creating a training or a retreat for churches around media literacy. He suggested assembling an audience of friendly faces and videotaping a run through of that presentation, then burning to do a DVD for marketing purposes. He had actually done this himself once.

I might try to do that (if I ever find some friendly faces). It may be the only viable response to the reality that I'm only now seeing, even though I'd read and talked about it for years: the culture is changing and the position of the church is becoming marginal. That's for the good. But it was a lot easier to say when I had a secure position and role as a professional within the church. Now that marginality demands of me some creativity and a bit of enterprising gumption to figure out how to use my gifts and exercise my ordination.

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Notes on A Job Search

"Incontinence."
"Feminine Hygiene."

These are the words occupying my attention while Becki, the very friendly HR manager at Vons grocery store in Riverside, is explaining to me that the position in the store's Starbucks kiosk has already been filled. She's more detailed and courteous than she needs to be, because all the while I keep looking over her shoulder at the labels protruding from the shelves of aisle 3.

"It's over. This is stupid. Why did I even come in here? Why have I gone any of these places? What am I doing?"

I can't quite decide if this is a needed serving of humble pie or it actually is the humiliation it feels like. To have a Masters of Divinity degree and to be an ordained minister are not credentials that mean much outside of certain ecclesial or academic contexts; as my friend has put it, "We're uniquely unqualified" for anything but ministry. So I don't expect that the people at these restaurants and coffeeshops where I'm looking for quick part-time work will be impressed, it's still very hard to take.

Because I thought this part of my life was over. I thought I was done asking complete strangers, "Are you guys doing any hiring right now?" And what's worse is that these strangers are now uniformly my juniors by five, even 10, years. They are cordial and polite, but all the while I know they're thinking, "God, I hope I'm not that guy when I'm old."

Meanwhile I'm waiting for the phone to ring, and for church people to be on the other end. But I've been waiting for that since well before we moved. But it's not happening. It's funny, because as I left the church I was serving in Kansas City it was amidst a chorus of positivity, with friends and congregants affirming gifts and saying things like, "Some church in California is going to be lucky to have you." I knew what was really going on, though, how this place is full of people just like me and so every church out here is lucky to have somebody else. I smiled politely and was genuinely thankful for the compliments then. Now they echo like a taunt.

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Rising To The Surface

It's Tuesday of the first week in Southern California. Today marks exactly one week since we arrived. It's a new place, a new challenge, and a new set of opportunities, all of which calls for a new approach.

I haven't known what to blog about these past seven days. They've been an avalanche of events and tasks, and I haven't had the confidence or the energy to sort them out. But amidst the unpacking, the applying for restaurant jobs, and the phone calls to denominational personnel, there have been a couple of beautiful experiences.

There was lunch on Friday with a good friend at a great Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills. It's an oft-patronized spot for our friend, so the owner knows him well and treats his accordingly. He sat us outside and personally took care of us, bringing us free appetizers we didn't order, cracking jokes, and treating us to a dessert that wasn't on the menu but that they were "cooking up just for-a you." It was the proverbial red carpet treatment, and we are very grateful to our friend for it. We couldn't have felt more welcomed to California if the Governor himself had met us at the state line.

Then on Sunday we worshiped at one of three Presbyterian churches in Riverside, the one closest to our apartment. We went to their "contemporary" service, which was only contemporary in that they served coffee, used a projector, and played a guitar; most of the roughly 20 worshipers were over 50. But the three women who sat at our table (the room was arranged into circular tables) greeted us warmly. They were all lifelong friends and lifelong residents of Riverside, except for the short stint when they all went to Park College in Parkville, MO. It's little coincidences like that that make you say, "This place isn't so different. We can handle this."

By the end of our hour with them they had invited us to the church's 4th of July picnic and had drawn us a map to the best deli in town.

This is going to be tough, I have no doubt. But I'm hopeful.

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The End of An Era, Part II

The TV is gone. Not a TV. The TV. Gone, daddy, gone.

Just one more thing we've given away with the help of Craigslist. We have no plans to replace it immediately, so our new digs in Southern California will be TV-less.

NPH is actually pleased with this.

The TV was a gift from family at Christmas, 1999, when NPH was single and living without a tube. Family took pity and provided him with one, along with a VCR. It served us well these eight years. But it's big. And heavy. And we don't want to move it again.

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The End of An Era

In May of 1999, on the eve of a new millenium, a young man bought a car. It was his first car for which he was solely responsible, and he walked to the dealership from his aunt and uncle's house in order to buy it.

Today he sold that car. After eight good years that encapsulated almost all of his 20's, the time finally came to let it go. Only four days passed between the time he decided to sell it and the moment that seven $100 bills were pressed into his hand while a hasty buyer swapped the plates and signed the title with an unlit cigarette dangling from her mouth. It all happened so fast.

The first job, the broken-off engagement, the broken window and stolen stereo, the 10 hour trips to see a girl, the two-day drive to New Jersey with lampshades reaching out the windows;

Two hours on US 1, September 11, 2001. Five hours on the Goethals Bridge a week later. An hour and a half motionless on I 295 while a seminary assignment slipped away;

Back and forth on 71 Highway, day after day for three years. First sermons, first funerals, first weddings.

It all happened so fast.

Sold to the first one to see it. Sold on the last day in the office.

NPH turned 31 a month ago, but somehow it feels like his 20's just ended.

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No (Big) Box For You

NPH and Mrs. NPH are moving. For weeks now NPH has run back and forth to the local bookseller picking up their old boxes. It's been a really good experience, one that has boosted our opinion of the national big box chain. NPH has even gotten to be on a first name basis with Todd, the guy in receiving who has so thoughtfully taped these broken down boxes together and labelled them for us. We're moving across the country with this store's brand name all over our stuff.

But this morning we called for the first time in about a week and were told by the "bookseller" who answered the phone that they recycle their old boxes and don't make them available to customers.

NPH was a little stymied. "Actually, we've picked up boxes from there about four times in the last three weeks. Todd in receiving is who---"

"Actually I just spoke to the store manager," she interrupted. "And he said no."

What can you say to that? NPH was made to feel like a third grader denied access to the drinking fountain. We kindly said, "Thanks," and hung up.

Sure, NPH is sort of a parasite in this relationship. We're getting something for nothing. But the store's not really giving anything anyway. I mean, how much trouble is it to make old boxes available to people, boxes you're going to be getting rid of anyway? (we should point out that the whole chain isn't this way, as we've already arranged for one of their other stores across town to give us some boxes later today)

That "the manager said no" is a really terrible reason for a company to do anything. It's paternalistic and uncooperative. Which, of course, is how corporate business are designed to be. It's just that NPH had found a nice little soft spot in the midst of that chain, and our outlook on the whole thing was improving drastically. All that's changed now.

Now the prospect that we'll spend much time or money there is markedly diminished. The warm fuzzies of the public are good for something; they build trust and affection among prospective customers. Treating them like children "because you said so" is a really bad move.

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