Kingdom Civics Figuring out how to be a good citizen in the Kingdom of God

But first, a brief story:

On Tuesday, I went with Luke’s class on a field trip to see a play.  Anna came, too, and we all sat and laughed as the silly animals onstage revolted against their silly farmer.  There was singing and dancing and plenty of comic relief.  It was great.  After the play was over and the house lights came up, Luke’s classmates, Darvon and Juan turned and looked at me, beaming.  I grinned and raised my eyebrows at them.  “Did you guys LOVE IT??”  I asked.  “Yeah!” was their enthusiastic reply.  Then, Luke and Anna started chatting with them about their favorite parts.  Much smiling and laughter ensued.

They chattered on while we waited for our bus to be called, and I leaned my head against the back of my seat while I waited.  “I hated that play,” said a voice behind me to his friend.  “Me, too!”  his buddy replied.  “It was so kiddish.”  “Yeah, I hated it, too,” said a third, “It was stupid.”  I glanced around and saw that the original speaker was an adorable blond headed boy talking to his friends.  His hair was long and swooped across his forehead like a little Abercrombie Kids model.  He and his friends wore the matching “field trip shirts” from a wealthier school in town.

“Please, God,” I silently prayed, “save my kids from that attitude.”

“Oh,” I added, “And thank you for Luke’s classmates.”

And now, a second quick story:

That same afternoon, I sat on my friends’ couch while our children played happily in the backyard.  She had told me on Sunday that she was praying for God to bring helpers to our church–our “little wisp of a church,” as I affectionately call it.  Just that day, two of her (Christian) friends called expressing interest.  One of hers approached the subject like this:  “My daughter is really starting to worry and frustrate me.  She feels so entitled all the time, and seems to honestly think the world revolves around her.  I’m not sure what to do…..So, tell me about your church.”  I laughed.  It’s no secret that our church will change your perspective on life and especially on materialism.  I understood her friend’s hope that maybe getting to know her lower-income neighbors would help her daughter reexamine the difference between wants and needs.

These two events rattled have rattled around in my heart and have finally coalesced into a silent prayer that my soul prayed all day yesterday:

God, please be with my children…our children…the children of your church here in the West.  Protect them from the self-absorption and greed that are such hallmarks of their culture.  Guard their souls from ingratitude and wastefulness–the wastefulness of their resources, their opportunities, their lives.  Show us as parents, Father, how to guide our children into your Kingdom.  Show us what it means to live in the world, but not of the world…because honestly, God, I’m not sure what that means half the time.  Show us how to spur our kids on to the radicalism to which you have called us all, without making them resentful toward it.  Show us how to challenge them without exasperating them.  But mostly, God, I pray you protect them from the evil one.  So often, I pray for their protection from the physical manifestations of evil.  Today, I pray for protection from the spiritual.  As scary as the physical can be, the spiritual dangers are so much more prevalent.  Protect them, God.  Protect us all.  Amen.

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What do you pray for your children?

In my mind, there is no chore worse than spot cleaning my carpets.  The carpets in this house are especially light, and thus, they inevitably get various spots on them throughout the week.  These spots drive me crazy, but in order to maintain sanity, I limit my cleaning of them to once a week when I vacuum.  In the meantime, I content myself with thinking bad thoughts about them and giving them the “stink eye” whenever I pass.  That way, once vacuuming and spot cleaning day comes, I am usually more than ready to take them out.

Each week, there are inevitably one or two spots that drive me especially crazy, perhaps because of their location or their darkness.  I tend to fixate on those big spots; whenever I pass them, I think, “Oh, I can’t wait to get that spot out!”  A funny thing happens, though, on spot cleaning day.  I come marching up to my spotty enemy, armed with Spot Shot (very aptly named) and a clean, damp washcloth.  And then, I annihilate that spot, much to my own satisfaction.  I bask in the triumph, but only for a second…because now that the offending spot is eliminated, I see a smaller spot nearby, a spot that went unnoticed while Big Daddy was alive.  Hmph!  I promptly take out spot #2.  But oh no!  Now that #2 is gone,  a cluster of five smaller spots comes into focus, a little group that would have never bothered me while the others were there.  In fact, now that I’m down at carpet level, I see all kinds of spots, and–even more alarmingly–there appear to be several swaths of light gray that I have successfully ignored until now.  Confronted with this horror, I tend to then fly into a spot-killing frenzy, zapping and scrubbing spots until I finally give up and admit to myself that I need to borrow or rent a carpet cleaning machine.  And then I realize that will probably involve phone calls (ugh) and money changing hands, and it all seems too hard, and I never do it.

I repeat this process every week.  It sounds lovely, doesn’t it?

Honestly, I think part of the reason that this futile, spot-cleaning cycle comes so naturally to me is that for years, I tended to treat my sin the same way.  I would identify a particularly egregious sinful habit that was bothering me, and then I would launch a self-control campaign against it.  With focused effort and willpower, I was often moderately successful at eliminating this sin from my life–at least for awhile.  The only problem was that once that sin was removed (pushed to the back burner, really), I would notice another sin that needed attention.  And then another.  All manner of sins would come springing into view once I started focusing on my shortcomings, and after a season of sin-zapping, I would find myself exhausted and defeated.

In truth, my approach to sinfulness tended to mirror that of Benjamin Franklin.

In his famed autobiography, Franklin recalls his attempt at achieving what he termed, “Moral Perfection.”  In order to reach this lofty goal, the young man created a list of thirteen virtues to cultivate:  Temperance, Silence, Order, Resolution, Frugality, Industry, Sincerity, Justice, Moderation, Cleanliness, Tranquility, Chastity, and Humility.  He then spent a week focusing on each virtue and recording his moral successes and failures with that virtue on a chart in a journal.  His plan was to perfect one virtue a week, which meant that after thirteen weeks, he would be…well…”morally perfect.”

Of course, Franklin freely admits that he was not perfect at the end of his project, although he does claim more success than I would have had, if my own track record is any indication.  And honestly, I tend to chuckle when I read of Franklin’s little experiment, and to think, “Yeah, right.”  Either he is being tongue-in-cheek in his autobiography, or he is deluding himself to think that this is a plan that would ever work.

The Bible portrays a different reality than is suggested by Franklin’s plan, and to be honest, the biblical reality is even more maddening to me.  In contrast to the “Protestant work ethic” so evident in Franklin’s little charts, the Bible tends to view us as ultimately passive recipients of transformation, which is effected by the Holy Spirit’s work within us.  Yes, both Jesus and Paul give much instruction regarding our actions in this life, but they also both acknowledge the futility of trying to achieve these things by ourselves.  Jesus says things like:

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

And Paul tells us to do such seemingly impossible things as “be transformed” and “be made new.”  Notice the passive tense there.  Clearly, Paul sees that another Force is at work to meet the standards that he sets in his letters.  That’s part of why I don’t see the Sermon on the Mount as a list of rules anymore.  While I view its fulfillment as the goal of my life, I have come to realize that only God’s Spirit, working within me, will ever meet that goal.

That’s why I honestly don’t take the “spot cleaning” approach to sin these days.  And I’m so over Ben Franklin’s charts and lists.  Maybe it sounds bad, but I really don’t have a mental list of “things I need to improve” that I keep with me at all times.  I’ve failed at that for too long, I guess.  I’ve given up.

Instead, I try to seek God with all my heart.  I figure that I’m nothing without Him, and so my only job is to make sure my wagon is firmly hitched to that Star.  Thus, when I get frustrated with myself and my daily failures, I don’t brainstorm ways to overcome them anymore.  Instead, I just say, “God, please help me!  I need your Spirit so much right now!  I’m screwing everything up!”  And then I just hope He comes through.

That passivity used to bother me.  I wanted to think of myself as a “self-made” person.  I have come to see, however, that that kind of thinking is delusional.  No one is self-made, and my own list of shortcomings is so long that I could never conquer it through willpower.  Instead, I have to surrender my efforts, my quest for moral perfection, to another Force entirely.  The funny thing is, I find that when I do turn my transformation over to God’s Spirit, I am much more effective in God’s Kingdom.  My acknowledgement of my dependence on Him makes me hunger and thirst for Him more, and I am finally able to see what David was talking about with that deer imagery.  Overall, it is a much more satisfying, peaceful existence.

At the very least, it sure beats that infuriating spot-cleaning!

On the spectrum from active to passive, how do you tend to see yourself in the process of attaining morality?

1.  We are having people over for dinner tomorrow.  It has been too long since we’ve had people over for dinner, and I’m really excited about it.  We are grilling out, and I’m making this apple dessert that I love.

2.  I had a list of people to talk to at church on Wednesday night.  I always had a “list of people to talk to” about various church projects while in South Carolina.  This was my first time to have that list in Tennessee.  For me, that means I’m starting to get plugged it, really plugged in to the church here.  It’s a good feeling.

3.  Also, I’m really excited about our church’s future.  There is just something in the air right now, and I can’t wait to see what happens.

4.  I only have a week of teaching left.  As much as I loved teaching, I cannot tell you how happy this makes me.

5.  I plan on spending my “teaching” time in May catching up on Project Life and working on some projects for church.  I can’t wait to get started on them.

6.  I feel incredible peace about homeschooling.  The more I think abot it, the more excited I get.

7.  My morning plans got canceled today, which allowed me to put a cleanin’ on the kitchen–and I mean, big time.  It was therapeutic.

8.  Then, Anna and I went to the zoo for a toddler class and a picnic lunch.  We had a blast, and she kept a smile on my face.

9.  The weather was beautiful today.  That has been a trend lately.  I am still not used to the beauty of Nashville in the spring.

10.  It was so beautiful that once we picked up Luke, we took him back to the zoo.  We went to see the new dinosaur exhibit, and the kids loved it.

11.  Then, we went to see the elephants, and they were eating hay and spraying themselves with water and dirt.  It was utterly fascinating.  I could have watched them all day.

12.  That night, when I asked Luke what his favorite part of the zoo was, he listed all the animals we saw instead of the Dinotrek, even though he insisted he loved the huge, robotic dinosaurs.  As he explained it, “It’s just that God made all those animals, and people made those dinosaurs.  I liked God’s stuff better.”

13.  I have an idea for my next “Citizenship 101” blog, and I”m excited to hash it out.

14.  We have been reading some really good library books recently, thanks to some online recommendations I’ve found.

15.  I thought of most of this list tonight while laying down with my adorable, four-year-old daughter, my arms wrapped around her and my face in her hair.  After a long while, I lifted my head up and gave her some kisses, which is the sign that I’m about to have to go.  SHe smiled and wrapped her two little arms tightly around my one, in order to get me to stay longer.  I obediently buried my face back in her air and stayed awhile longer.  I wish I could have stayed forever.

As a child, I never understood the idea of running just to run.  You ran from whoever was “It” in Hide and Seek.  You ran around the bases in your softball game.  You ran to hit the ball back in tennis.  Those things all made sense.  But running laps??  Running laps is what your coach made you do before you got to the fun stuff.  That type of running was ridiculous to me.  I remember being so frustrated, for example, when we got a new tennis coach my Senior year of high school.  He had never played, nor coached, tennis, but he was set in his opinion that we should run a mile before every practice.  Now, I had been playing tennis since I was five years old, had played in several leagues, had taken innumerable lessons, and had played for my school since the 8th grade.  No one had ever made us run more than a few laps around the courts to warm up.  That kind of running simply was not helpful for tennis.  I remember silently seething each time we had to run down to the school track, circle it twice, and run back to complete our mile.  “If I wanted to run around in circles like an idiot, ” I thought, “I would have joined the track team.”

A funny thing happened that year, however:  I actually began to see some value in doing this thing that I hated so.  Perhaps it was the conditioning of the dreaded tennis practices, or the fact that, his predilection for torture aside, I actually liked my tennis coach.  Perhaps it was the magazine article I read in either Seventeen or YM that lauded the mental and physical benefits of running.  Perhaps I just had a masochistic streak and decided to try to embrace this thing that caused me so much pain.  Regardless, I decided to tackle the teen magazine’s simple plan to become “a runner.”  I liked that the magazine’s plan talked about running in terms of time, not distance.  For instance, it would start with something like, “Run one minute, walk three minutes,” and then work up to longer periods of running.  Since we lived on our church’s campground at the time, I would either run the trails or run on the treadmill that was inexplicably housed in one of the sleeping cabins.

That’s where it all began.

In the thirteen years since then, I have been a regular “runner.”  I ran steadily through college, through the early years of marriage, and through these years motherhood.  I have even taken to recording the days that I run, which helps me maintain some consistency in my practice. Running, in short, has become an integral part of my life.  When I go a few days without running, I start to get restless and anxious, eager for my “fix.”

Here’s the thing though:  I’m still a horrible runner.

I mean it:  I’m terrible!  After thirteen years of consistent running, I am still not able to run more than two miles without stopping to walk, and I often can’t even make it that far!  Seriously, I’m freakishly bad!  Since I started running, I’ve known several people who are in far worse physical shape than I am–even some smokers!–who have started running, and are now running marathons!  Marathons, people!  And then there’s me…dinkin’ along on my little two mile course, huffing and puffing all along the way.

Truly, I have a problem.

Here’s the crazy part, though:  I still love running.  Well, I love it as much as one can love something that causes them endless pain and frustration.  I am usually eager to go for a run, and I miss it when I can’t fit it in to my day.  I have pondered the reasons behind this bizarre love, and I have come to a simple conclusion:

My body was made to run.

It’s obvious, really.   Our bodies were designed to move, to be used, to exercise.  It’s just part of being human.  Thus, even though I’m pathetically bad at running, it is still something that I was made to do.  

My unique relationship with running has made me ponder other things that I am bad-at-yet-meant-to-do.  I think sometimes we give ourselves a free pass to avoid the things that we are bad at, explaining to ourselves and others that “this” is the way we are made.  In some cases, though, I think that we are made to do more than just the things in which we excel.  There are some things, like moving our bodies, that everyone is supposed to do, even when we don’t feel like it.  For example, my husband has the biggest sweet tooth of anyone I know (well, maybe besides my mama).  Meanwhile, I love most fruits and vegetables and can’t resist any dish that has spinach in it.  Clearly, eating healthy is more difficult for him than for me.  And yet, we are both made to eat healthy foods.

It’s also the same with being a Christian.  There are some things that, I believe, every Christian is called to do, even if we are bad at them.  In my opinion, one of those things is hospitality.  Several verses in the Bible describe hospitality as a Christian trait…and yet, as an introvert, hospitality is not my strong suit.  My temptation is to excuse myself from being hospitable, since opening my home falls squarely outside of my comfort zone.  I am tempted to use the “one body, many parts” argument to say that hospitality is someone else’s job, while my job is to ramble about my spiritual thoughts on the internet.  I’m much more comfortable with that.  I honestly don’t believe, however, that “one body, many parts,” excuses us from the basic tenets of Christianity, which include such groaners as denial of self, love for (all) others, and following the radical way of Jesus.  Frankly, I’m not amazing at any of those things…but, just like I was physically made to run, I was spiritually made to follow these commands.  And the crazy thing is that when I do follow them, as bad as I naturally am at them, I come away feeling…happy.  Whole.  Free.  And just like with running, I start to get antsy when too much time passes between practicing those commands.  For example, my stingy self inexplicably starts to get jittery when too much time passes between putting money toward God’s kingdom.  My introverted self starts to sweat when two weeks pass without a visitor in my home.  My lazy self starts aching when I waste too much time on the internet.  Even though I’m naturally a hoarder, naturally private (in some ways), naturally lazy, as a Christian, I was made to practice generosity, hospitality, and self-control.  

As bad as I am at those things, they are as necessary to my spiritual health as running and proper diet are to my physical health.  Thankfully, I don’t have to be great at these commands to feel the benefit of practicing them.  As hard as they are for me, I was made to do them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go squeeze in a run before my morning gets going.

What things are you comically bad at, yet were made to do?

Earlier today, my friend, Courtney, wrote this article about cultural rebellion.  At least, that’s how I would characterize the article, which I very much enjoyed reading.  My favorite part came toward the end of her post, when she asks a series of rhetorical questions about cultural expectations, all beginning with, “Who says”:

Who says …that my house has to be presentable at all times?
Who says …that my laundry has to be caught up every day …or that we couldn’t minimize it by letting every kid have 5 shirts and 3 pairs of shorts ONLY!
Who says …that I or my kids have to a have 52 different church outfits so we are wearing something different each week?
Who says …that I have to be running myself ragged from morning til night, dragging my kids behind me?
Who says …that my kids have to be involved in every extracurricular activity I can find for them to do?
Who says …that I have to wear a size less-than-12?
Who says  …that my toenails have to be perfectly manicured all summer?
Who says …that my clothes have to be from somewhere other than Walmart (or Old Navy …either one).
Who says  …that I HAVE to coupon to manage my pennies well?
Who says  …that I have drive a car that matches everyone else?
Who says …that I have to have a house that is perfectly decorated OR that it has to have a certain number of square feet?
Who says…that I have to have an updated blog at all times?
Who says ..that I have to compare myself to any of those chics on Pinterest? ..or better yet, have the creativity to do any of the stuff on there?!

The whole time I was reading this list, I was thinking, “Ooh, ooh–I wanna play!”  This exercise struck me as an immensely fun game, and I thought that maybe we could play it together.

Okay, now it’s my turn:

Who says…I have to wear makeup whenever I go out (especially when my husband seems to honestly think I’m beautiful without it)?

Who says…I need more than one pair of jeans?

Who says…that it is “normal” to take a vacation every year?

Who says…the plight of the global poor is none of my business?

Who says…people shouldn’t be weird?  I like weird people!

Who says…we can’t ask for (or accept) help?

Who says…Christmas should break the bank?

Who says…I shouldn’t have a chandelier in my dining room that suggests that I’m 85 years old?  New ones cost money, you know!

Who says…my kids need to simultaneously participate in 17 extracurricular activities in order to become self-actualized human beings?

Who says…I need to wear earrings…or have more than one purse?

Who says…we need cable?  Or more than one tv?  Or a tv at all?

Who says…I shouldn’t drink 4 cups of coffee a day?

Okay, okay…doctors say that last one.  Other than that, though, I stand by my questions.  I would love to know who makes these rules.  Well, actually, I guess I don’t really care at this point who makes them.

Because I’m tired of following them.

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Okay, now it’s your turn.  Do you have any “Who says?” questions to ask?

For the life of me, I can’t remember the type of music that they usually play in a souvenir shop in Panama City.  Something poppy, I would imagine.  Breezy.  Upbeat.  I think they would play some light and happy tune to lift your mood as you milled around looking at shot glasses with beach scenes on them or snarky, inappropriate t-shirts.

I should remember the music, as I am no stranger to cheap souvenir shops in Panama City.  PC, after all, was my family’s #1 vacation spot while I was growing up, and we never met a roadside shop that we didn’t like.  As a child, I was mesmerized by the seashells, the beach toys, the brightly colored t-shirts that proliferated in these establishments.  I clearly remember once getting a little jewelry box, lined in red velvet, with little white seashells glued all over it.  I thought it was the epitome of class and sophistication.

The incident I’m thinking of didn’t occur when I was a child, though.  No, I think I was in college when the music in the gift shop stopped.  Maybe I was with my family, or maybe it was that time I had come down with some friends from school.  Perhaps this was the gift shop visit where I bought those shorts with the writing on the rear (speaking of the epitome of class and sophistication), or perhaps I just got a pair of sunglasses or some more sunscreen.  I can’t remember the details.  All I remember is that the song playing over the speakers ended, and suddenly, I heard only words coming out.  The words might have been put to some kind of beat, but all I recall was that I was immediately riveted.  I stood there, transfixed, in the middle of the aisle, holding whatever piece of kitsch I had been mentally mocking, as I listened to a very unlikely message to hear in a Panama City gift shop.  Here are the words I heard:

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a —-ing big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin can openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed-interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of —-ing fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the —- you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing —-ing junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing* your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, —-ed-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life . . . But why would I want to do a thing like that?

That was it.  No prologue.  No explanation.  Just those words.  Clearly, the speaker’s cynicism reflected his belief that those things were not really life.  Clearly, he felt that these trappings of life were ultimately meaningless.  But…who was he?  Thankfully, I remembered the words clearly enough to relate them to Greg later, and have him identify them for me.  Apparently, those words were spoken by Ewan McGregor in the opening of the movie, Trainspotting, which goes on to give the viewer a grim and unflinching portrayal of drug use (clue:  the speaker doesn’t choose life; he chooses heroin).  For me, though, those disembodied words pouring out of the speaker served as an accidental indictment of the emporium of junk in which I was standing.  It made me think, “What am I doing here?”

That question was not just about me standing in a gift shop, either.  Ultimately, that moment served as a microcosm of many other times in my life where I have been suddenly awakened to the meaninglessness of my actions.  Inevitably, I will get myself all caught up in a situation–maybe the details of a big event, maybe some kind of relational drama, maybe just the minutiae of daily life–and I will let those circumstances take over my thoughts and emotions.  I will let that situation consume me, stress me out, and otherwise distract me from the greater purpose of living.

And then, something will come along to open my eyes and remind me that I’m getting consumed by something that doesn’t really matter.  Usually, though, my wake up call doesn’t come from a Scottish actor playing a heroin addict.

Usually, it comes from Scripture.

You see, when I read the Bible, I find “Choose Life” to be a major theme.  It is stated explicitly by Moses:

See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed…

This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life…

The prophet, Haggai, elaborates on the theme in a different way, when he explains the feelings of frustration and futility felt by the Israelites after the exile:

“Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it”  (Haggai 1:5-6).

The reason the people are so frustrated, according to Haggai, is because they are focusing on the wrong priorities; they are building up their own houses while neglecting the house of God.  They aren’t choosing life, and so they are haunted by feelings of futility and meaninglessness.

Jesus drives the point home when he asks rhetorically,

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36).

Jesus’ question reveals the stark and humbling truth that I can go through my whole life, and even be “successful”–and yet miss the entire point.  How sad would that be?

Paul continues this underlying  theme in such commands as,

“Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is yourlife, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:1-4).

Together, these Scriptures form a chorus.  They tell me

Choose life.  Choose something better than what is all around you.  Choose to spend your precious minutes on things that matter.  Choose a higher path.  Choose eternal significance.  Choose meaning.  Choose purpose.  Choose love.  Choose God.

Choose life.

Every day, I try to choose life.  Often, I fail.  Often, I don’t even know what that means.  (Is doing laundry “choosing life”?  Well, I don’t know, but I do know that someone has to do laundry!)  But sometimes, I do see it.

I will look at my kids, really look at them, and be filled with love and awe.

I will try to help someone.

I will take two seconds to admire God’s creation and to thank Him for it.

I will work at something with all my heart, as working for the Lord and not for men.

And in those moments, I will think, This is life.  Surely, this is what Jesus meant when He said He had come to give “life to the full.”  Surely, life can’t get any more full, more satisfying than this.

In such moments, I am reminded that I don’t want to spend my life in the equivalent of a Panama City gift shop, thinking about useless junk that doesn’t even matter.  Life has so much more potential than that.  I want to choose life, and choose to live it to the full.

How do you choose life?

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I would edit that word, but I’m pretty sure that it means “drinking,” when used across the pond.