The King's Karen

Isn’t it funny how this authenticity we crave comes at a cost to the buildings themselves? The Tower of London, for example, has been besieged, partially destroyed by fire and bombed. Yet this English landmark (with the help of some reconstruction, remodeling and refurbishing) still stands, as breathtaking and imposing a structure as when it was first built in the 11th century. [Insert your favorite old monument here and the same could probably be said of it.]

The point I’m trying to make is that these structures, to use a trite phrase, have stood the test of time. Part of my awe when I visit them stems from the mere fact that they still exist. The Black Death, the Tudor era, the overthrow and return of the monarchy, World Wars I and II all occurred, and the Tower of London pre-dates and has survived them all.

Could the same be true of the flimsy structures we currently build? Is there any reader who doubts that the building in which their local Pizza My Heart is housed would crumble at the mere whisper of an earthquake? If placed next to an aged, weathered building, the strip mall building might look similar (or even better). But we all know which one would probably survive a natural disaster.

I think the same could be said of you and me. Confession: I have this terrible tendency to focus on my outward appearance. Not so much physically (though I love clothes-shopping, I’ll admit it), but what I mean is sometimes I worry too much about how I’m perceived rather than how I actually am. Given the choice, I’d rather be thought of as kind rather than have selflessness and humility as integral parts of my character. The reasons are obvious: the former is easy to fake for a fleeting moment and the latter takes years and years of work, practice and self-denial.

Put me next to someone who’s been walking in the faith for 50 years, and our outward appearance may look the same. We may both smile to strangers we pass on the sidewalk, we may both murmur a greeting to the person at the store’s checkout counter. But if one of life’s storms comes, the 50-year veteran’s kindness and good humor will probably remain. Mine will likely be gone faster than you can say “sayonara.”

             It’s 1:00 PM. You’re a junior analyst at a big investment bank (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi, take your pick). You’re assigned to cover a company that will release its earnings report today. You keep refreshing Business Wire’s homepage. 1:02 PM. Nothing. 1:03 PM. Still nothing. Another minute goes by, then two. One more refresh click. A-ha! There it is! You click on the earnings release, silently curse your employer for not allowing you to use the much speedier Google Chrome instead of old-school Internet Explorer, which is taking forever to load the webpage, and then at last! You’re able to open the earnings release. You rub your sleepy eyes and start scanning the numbers, as are thousands of other analysts all over the city (and the country).

             What in God’s green earth is going on here?

              If you work in finance, law, accounting or a public company, the above scenario may be familiar to you. If not, never fear – I’ll explain: every publicly traded company publicly reports financial numbers every quarter. Companies like Apple, Netflix and Tesla announce their revenue (total amount of money that came in), earnings (profit left over after paying expenses) and cash flow (total amount of money going in and out of the company) every four months like clockwork on a specified day. Wall Street analysts, investors and journalists await with bated breath for the announcement (exaggerating, but only a little), which will be a few minutes after 1:00 PM Pacific on the day of a company’s earnings release (1:00 PM Pacific being 4:00 PM Eastern, which is when the stock markets in New York close). Almost immediately, computers and human analysts start poring over the company’s earnings release.

             Why? What are these poor analysts at big banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs looking for? Well, if you must know: they’re comparing the numbers Priceline, Mattel, and Facebook just reported against these companies’ guidance, which is they numbers they had said at the beginning of the year they would meet or beat. For example, if a company said each share of company stock would earn 20 cents of profit that quarter, analysts expect them to earn at least that amount, and would be delighted if they earned more.

How closely watched are these numbers? Peep this. Salesforce released its second quarter earnings report on August 31, 2016. While they exceeded the numbers they’d predicted for Q2 (that’s what those who are “in the know” call the second quarter), they provided guidance for Q3 (go ahead, say it; you’ll sound like a financial expert) that was lower than analysts’ expectations. Analysts expected Q3 revenue guidance to be $2.13 billion; Salesforce said it would be $2.11 to $2.12 billion. What happened next? The stock price fell a whopping 8% in a matter of hours.

             What’s interesting to me about this whole game is that nobody compares a company to its competitors. I mean, they do sometimes, but that’s not what really matters when it comes to the earnings watch. If Expedia releases its numbers on a Tuesday and Priceline does so on a Wednesday, sure, some of the news articles will compare them because they’re in the same industry. But whether Expedia or Priceline stock goes up or down hinges on one thing: how they performed compared to their own targets. Did they do what they said they’d do at the beginning of the year? Did they perform better? Worse? [Insert terrified emoji here. You know which one I’m talking about.]

             The same could be said for us, no? If you’re like me, it’s the new year’s resolutions, the goals and dreams you have for yourself that haunt you, not those of your sister or roommate. Furthermore, when we stand face-to-face with the Creator, He’s not going to compare us against a Nobel Prize winner or Becky with the Good Hair. Rather, I think he’s going to ask us how we performed against our targets. Did we do everything He specifically created us to do? Did we write that novel He intended for us to write? Did we start that business? Plant that church?

             It’s freeing in a way, isn’t it? It means you don’t have to worry about what others are doing (or not doing). The Apostle Paul told Timothy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day” (emphasis mine). What I like about this passage, other than it being beautifully poetic and inspiring, is that Paul is focused on his own race. He doesn’t say there is laid up a crown for others that the Lord will give to them. No sir. He’s looking forward to reward which our Savior will personally give to him.

Ice cubes in glasses made a knocking sound. Guests murmured in hushed tones, the way people do at a formal event when they fear drawing attention to themselves by speaking too loudly. A young woman with a slightly disheveled updo cradled a sleeping infant in a new-looking blue blanket, the state of both her hair and the blanket a result of the child’s recent entrance into the world. Two girls in white sleeveless dresses, blissfully unaware of the social faux pas they were committing, chased each other around the overly air-conditioned ballroom, weaving between the round tables covered in salmon-colored tablecloths. A string quartet, most likely made up of college students considering their ill-fitting black clothing, warmed their instruments in one corner.

               “How very interesting,” Mrs. Ballantine noted to her husband, seated next to her. Mrs. Ballantine habitually made an exclamation but said nothing further, forcing the listener to ask, out of politeness, what she meant. It was her way of reassuring herself that people were interested in her observations.

               “What’s that, dear?” asked the current unwilling participant in her conversation who, after 32 and a half years of marriage, found it less exhausting to ask the question she wanted to hear rather than try to outwit her. He sometimes did the latter as well, when he could be bothered, but he was at the moment preoccupied with surreptitiously watching the San Francisco Giants’ seventh inning against the Los Angeles Dodgers, a game playing in silence on his iPhone.

               “Andrew Lancaster is not great friends with either Clarissa or William. Why do you suppose they invited her?” she asked.

               “I haven’t any idea, dear.” He responded. He had learned that it was in his best interest to not exert himself trying to find an answer to these questions, which, despite their appearance, were always rhetorical. Mrs. Ballantine was not actually curious as to why he thought the bride and groom had wanted the twenty-something Beth to attend their wedding. Rather, she had a theory of some social machination underfoot and this was her way of exposing it.

               “I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re trying to set her up William’s sister, Beth. Not, mind you, that the poor girl doesn’t need all the help she can get, what with her stubborn tummy fat and that unfortunate set of teeth. But how can they honestly think he could be interested in her?” She said in a voice that, while lower than her normal volume, was still loud enough that any spouse who had not been married to her as long as Mr. Ballantine had would have been mortified.

               “You could be right,” he said, not having looked up from his smartphone’s screen once during their conversation.

               “Also, I thought David Singh and Louis Gonzalez were invited? Unless they’re late. I didn’t see them at the ceremony but it was hard to see everybody from where we were sitting, try as I did. Oh, and I don’t see Phillip Keyes either. I can’t imagine being so late to a reception. It’s like we’re at a party where all the clocks have been set back and we’re the only ones who don’t know it,” Mrs. Ballantine continued, undeterred by her husband’s refusal to make eye contact.

               “That would be quite a shame,” Mr. Ballantine said as he looked up briefly from the game. “If the clocks were set back, how could the musicians keep time?”

               I can’t believe I never saw it before. I love few books as much as I love Jane Eyre, an endlessly re-readable and always thoroughly enjoyable. I’m also a fan of The Secret Garden, though I’ve read it less frequently and less recently than Charlotte Brontë’s seminal work. And until recently, I had never seen the connection between these two literary chefs d’oeuvres.

               Dear reader, I confess that this blog post was inspired not by a diligent re-reading of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved classic, but by a viewing of the 1993 film based on the book. And wow. I had forgotten how deeply moving this simple story is. Mary Lennox is a spoiled, aloof 10-year old English girl who is raised in India by her ayah and ignored by her wealthy parents. When she is orphaned, she is taken in by her mysterious uncle, Lord Craven, who lives in a large English manor on the moors.

               Jane Eyre, as you may know, is the story of the eponymous girl, and later young woman, who loses first her mother and then her father to illness. Raised by her spiteful aunt and her equally nasty cousins, Jane is sent to a boarding school so horrific that you would be forgiven for thinking you were reading a Dickensian work. After surviving Lowood’s School for Girls, Jane advertises her tutoring services and sets off at the tender age of 18 to be a governess at Thornfield Hall.

               The discerning reader can already begin to glean similarities from my incomplete summaries of these two stories. The protagonists are two young girls, both of whom, we are repeatedly (even ad nauseam) reminded, are unattractive. Jane is compared with Blanche Ingram (the belle of the county) and Mr. Rochester’s exotic first wife. Mary cannot escape comparisons to her mother, who was a great beauty and who, Mrs. Medlock somewhat cruelly remarks within earshot of Mary, did not pass down any of her good looks.

               That Ms. Burnett was inspired by her literary predecessor, Ms. Brontë, seems more obvious the deeper one digs. The houses in which each story is set are important plot devices. In Jane Eyre, Thornfield Hall is the place where Jane first finds love. The dark and imposing estate, however, also conceals the very person who will prove (almost) fatal to that love. Jane hears strange laughter at odd times throughout her stay in Mr. Rochester’s home. Thornfield’s residents constantly explain away these noises with anything but the truth, which is that Mr. Rochester’s mentally ill first wife lives locked up in Thornfield’s attic. Likewise, when Mary hears eerie screams, Mrs. Medlock and Martha tell her it’s just dogs howling or a servant with a toothache; the sounds, of course, turn out to be coming from Mary’s sickly cousin. Furthermore, the many rooms and mysterious nature of Misselthwaite Manor and Thornfield Hall also lent a Gothic aura to the stories set within.

               Furthermore, there is a subtle supernatural thread woven throughout both novels. In Jane Eyre, after Jane flees Thornfield following the revelation that her beloved Mr. Rochester is married, she ends up at the home of a man and his two sisters who (surprise!) turn out to be her cousins. She settles into a happy existence with St. John, Diana and Mary Rivers until, one night, she inexplicably hears Mr. Rochester’s voice calling her name even though Thornfield Hall is many miles away. Later, once she and Mr. Rochester reunite, he notes in an offhand manner that he had called for her the other night. Similarly, in The Secret Garden, the lifelong invalid Colin is desperate for his father to return so he can see Colin walk. One night, Colin, Mary and Dickon start a bonfire in their garden and begin a prayer-like chant for Lord Craven to return. That same night, Lord Craven dreams of his late wife, who tells him that she is in her garden, the very one where the three children are crying out for Lord Craven’s return. He sets off that very moment and is soon joyously reunited with his son and niece.

               Speaking of Lord Craven, he, along with Mr. Rochester, are both quintessential Byronic heroes. Brooding, unpredictable, and with a mysterious past that the reader can only guess at, these men provide a counterbalance to the female protagonists about whom the reader knows almost everything: innermost thoughts, desires and fears. In time, Mary and Jane help Lord Craven and Mr. Rochester, respectively, heal from their dark pasts and the men come to love and appreciate the female protagonists. By so doing, the male characters endear themselves to the reader because they extend to our orphaned and neglected protagonists the love they so desperately lack.

               I fed my two dogs this afternoon. I’m not sure when or why we started doing this, but we boil some chicken every afternoon for their dinners. Let me tell you, it’s intensive work. I sometimes put more effort into cooking their meals than I do mine (hello, takeout!).

               Today, I got home from church a little later than usual and realized that my meal prep system for my dogs had failed. (Yes, I see the irony in the fact that my dogs’ owner doesn’t employ a meal prep system for herself, but that’s a blog topic for another time.) I didn’t cook enough food to last them until Monday, so I had to boil some chicken for them. In other words, it wasn’t a matter of quickly sticking the chicken in the microwave, shredding it a bit, and plunking down two dog-sized portions for Robbie and Terry (they have human names, don’t judge). Nope, this time I had to take the chicken breasts out of the freezer, stick them in a pot, fill it with water, wait until the chicken reached a boiling point, then lower the heat so it could simmer. Once it was down, I had to fish out a breast (a pun? If so, an unintended but welcome one), plop it in a bowl, and let it cool on the black granite countertop. Once it cooled, I realized that cutting the breast in two would result in too little chicken for each dog, so I needed to heat up a tortilla, dip it in the broth, and add that to the bowls. (What can I say? My dogs live in a Hispanic household.) Then, because I’d heated up the tortilla a bit too much, I had to wait until that cooled down before I could finally set the bowls in front of my ravenous pets, who were watching my every move the entire time.

               Given how hungry my dogs were, I’m sure that at any point during the long process of preparing their meals, they would have happily eaten the not-yet-ready chicken. They would have eaten the frozen, raw chicken breasts – and promptly come down with a foodborne illness. They would have eaten the too-hot chicken – and soon discovered what it’s like to burn the roof of their little canine mouths. They would have eaten the cooled down, fully cooked chicken that was not enough nutrition for them – and have been hungry 60 minutes later. They didn’t know it (and still don’t), but there was a reason for the wait. It was fully, entirely, completely to their benefit to sit patiently, tails wagging, noses sniffing, paws still. In so doing, they were rewarded with a germ-free meal that was just the right temperature and just the right amount to keep their bellies full for the rest of the evening. If I had fed them even a moment sooner than I did, I would be doing them harm instead of good. (I would also have done myself a disservice, since a sick dog makes for a worried and slightly grossed out dog owner.)

          It has happened to you. You get in your Ford Fiesta in the morning and it’s cold. Being the first-worlder that you are, you press a few buttons and presto! The heater is on. If you’re like me, you drive down Interstate 280 waiting to get toasty as you sip a green shake concoction your mom made for you.

          Ten minutes of your commute goes by and while jamming out to Carman you’re still not quite comfortable. (Remember I said “if you’re like me.” In all likelihood, you rock out to a much cooler band on your way to work.) It’s not the Carman that’s causing the slight discomfort (I know that’s the likely suspect, but trust me); rather, it’s that you realize you’re still a little bit cold.

          You look down and realize that your left foot is still curled under your seat instead of stretched out toward to the vents blasting warm air. Aha! You are uncomfortable because, while the rest of your body has been receiving the benefits of your first-world heater, your left foot is still cold. You gave into the instinct our bodies have of contracting in order to preserve warmth, without realizing that if you really want to get warm, you’ve got to stick your foot out toward the vent. It’s counter-intuitive, but there you have it.

“If your first concern is to look after yourself, you’ll never find yourself. But if you forget about yourself and look to me, you’ll find both yourself and me,” 

Jesus Christ said, according to the Message translation. The NKJV translation 

(“He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it”) 

is probably more familiar to you.

           The Kingdom life, my friends, is counter-intuitive, much like our car heaters. Want to get warm? Extend your limbs, in spite of every instinct that’s telling you that you need to contract to preserve warmth. Want to find your life? Lose it for Christ, in spite of your intuition telling you that you need to play it safe. Maybe for you, that intuition is telling you that you shouldn’t share the Gospel with that co-worker for fear of losing your job or being deemed a “Bible-thumper.” Maybe that intuition is holding you back from forgiving that person who wronged you long ago. Maybe there’s a YA dystopian novel, rap song, animated movie, or futuristic fashion line inside of you, but you’re afraid to send it out into the world for fear that you’ll be criticized or rejected.

           But the beautiful thing, the really lift-your-hands-in-praise-because-God-is-so-good thing, is that the world is not going to fall apart when you lose your life for Christ. Instead, you’ll find that proverbial warmth. You’ll be able to sleep at night because you won’t be stressed out about that one thing you’re not doing that you know you should. You’ll find peace that spreads all over your life like cinnamon roll frosting oozes into every nook and cranny of the roll.