Recovering Sociopath

2012-01-22T16:27:00.004-05:00

I haven't had a computer of my own in 18 months. So heck, yeah, I'm entering the Sparkling Review MacBook Air giveaway.

God Has Entered Chronos

2012-01-21T12:00:00.002-05:00

This is probably obvious if you've read much of my blog, but I'm addressing this from an explicitly Christian perspective, and on the assumption that Melton shares at least some of that perspective. I think, though, that any secular Aristotelian could do mental language changes and probably still resonate.

My internets blew up a few days ago with links to Glennon Melton's piece, Don't Carpe Diem, over at HuffPo. A great deal of my internets consists of other moms in the trenches, and it seems like they almost all resonated very strongly.

So did I. Melton's objective, to release us from The Guilties over not enjoying every minute of screams and dirty diapers and stress, is one I wholeheartedly support. Our cultural discourse about motherhood is filled to the brim with blame language and mother shaming, and anything that helps us move away from that is awesome.

This CARPE DIEM message makes me paranoid and panicky. Especially during this phase of my life - while I'm raising young kids. Being told, in a million different ways to CARPE DIEM makes me worry that if I'm not in a constant state of intense gratitude and ecstasy, I'm doing something wrong.

Boy, do I hear that. A great deal of motherhood, especially in the early years, is just...boring drudgery. Ecstasy inducing it is not. Melton draws a comparison, a good one, to climbing Mount Everest:

They try because even though it hurts and it's hard, there are moments that make it worth the hard. These moments are so intense and unique that many people who reach the top start planning, almost immediately, to climb again. Even though any climber will tell you that most of the climb is treacherous, exhausting, killer. That they literally cried most of the way up.
And so I think that if there were people stationed, say, every thirty feet along Mount Everest yelling to the climbers -- "ARE YOU ENJOYING YOURSELF!? IF NOT, YOU SHOULD BE! ONE DAY YOU'LL BE SORRY YOU DIDN'T!" TRUST US!! IT'LL BE OVER TOO SOON! CARPE DIEM!" -- those well-meaning, nostalgic cheerleaders might be physically thrown from the mountain.

Haha! Yes. Parenting is basically the hardest thing ever. And I strongly resonated when Melton asked,

Why is it that the second a mother admits that it's hard, people feel the need to suggest that maybe she's not doing it right? Or that she certainly shouldn't add more to her load. Maybe the fact that it's so hard means she IS doing it right...in her own way...and she happens to be honest.

I agree: the whole "If parenting is so hard why are you having more kids?" line is irritating and specious. You don't not do good things just because they're hard. So far, awesome.

But.

Minor quibble coming.

From here Melton draws out two ideas of time:

Chronos time is what we live in. It's regular time, it's one minute at a time, it's staring down the clock till bedtime time, it's ten excruciating minutes in the Target line time, it's four screaming minutes in time out time, it's two hours till daddy gets home time. Chronos is the hard, slow passing time we parents often live in.
Then there's Kairos time. Kairos is God's time. It's time outside of time. It's metaphysical time. It's those magical moments in which time stands still. I have a few of those moments each day. And I cherish them.

She offers some examples:

And then I look at my cart and I'm transported out of chronos. And suddenly I notice the piles and piles of healthy food I'll feed my children to grow their bodies and minds and I remember that most of the world's mamas would kill for this opportunity. This chance to stand in a grocery line with enough money to pay. And I just stare at my cart. At the abundance. The bounty. Thank you, God. Kairos.

Gratitude for provision. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. Good, good.

Or when I curl up in my cozy bed with Theo asleep at my feet and Craig asleep by my side and I listen to them both breathing. And for a moment, I think- how did a girl like me get so lucky? To go to bed each night surrounded by this breath, this love, this peace, this warmth? Kairos.

Again-- humble gratitude is so very important.

Like when I actually stop what I'm doing and really look at Tish. I notice how perfectly smooth and brownish her skin is. I notice the perfect curves of her teeny elf mouth and her asianish brown eyes, and I breathe in her soft Tishy smell. In these moments, I see that her mouth is moving but I can't hear her because all I can think is -- This is the first time I've really seen Tish all day, and my God -- she is sobeautiful. Kairos.

Appreciating your kids for the glorious, unique little humans that they are: also incredibly important. The attitudes that she's cultivating in these moments are critical, emotionally, for having the stamina to get through the crappy days.

But here's my caveat:

My problem with Melton's definition of kairos is that she has reduced it to moments that are about feelings, moments that are the inconsistent and unpredictable irruptions into our consciousness of the reality that is always present. And the hard, messy, deeply real work of parenthood? Is about so much more than just our feelings and awareness.

See, God's time is not limited to kairos as Melton defines it. God has entered chronos. God entered chronos in the person of Jesus who worked, healed, preached, suffered, died and rose.

God has also entered chronos in the very mundane, messy, frustrating, squalling bits that make up most of life for the parents of young children. Parenting is sanctifying, humbling, character-building work. It's among the messes and frustrations--not the warm, fuzzy moments--that God does the work of redeeming and renewing us as human beings. They might not be enjoyable, but this job is not about our enjoyment, and we can be grateful for things that we do not necessarily enjoy. That flood of chronos moments is where we get to practice the kind self-sacrifical love and self-denial and unselfishness that form us into better human beings.

So I think we should be cultivating gratitude for all of that mess--intense, overwhelming gratitude.

Every minute of the day.

2012-01-21T09:28:00.001-05:00

Have I mentioned how much I would LOVE to win the MacBook Air that Sparkling Reviews is giving away? A LOT, is how much.

2012-01-20T13:19:00.001-05:00

Oh, HO. Sparkling Reviews is giving away a MacBook Air!

Pretty vs Human

2012-01-16T10:12:00.000-05:00

Oh, look! A man has an opinion on why women should strive to be "pretty" and not "hot." I seldom try to respond to things like this anymore, but this was just so...wrong.

Let's start with Archbold's definition of "pretty." He calls it "a mutually enriching balanced combination of beauty and projected innocence."

Projected innocence. Projected innocence.

Once upon a time, women wanted to project an innocence. I am not idealizing another age and I have no illusions about the virtues of our grandparents, concupiscence being what it is. But some things were different in the back then. First and foremost, many beautiful women, whatever the state of their souls, still wished to project a public innocence and virtue. And that combination of beauty and innocence is what I define as pretty.

Reality doesn't matter, then? It's all about show? No matter what I'm really like, or what my experiences have been, I need to project innocence? I need to pretend?

Now, I would like to pause a moment here and interject that I am in some ways a great fan of hypocrisy. This is because actions are formative. It's by acting like the people we wish we were that we become them. We habituate ourselves into a certain way of being. A frivolous example: The first time I tasted Guinness, I almost spit it out. I really did not like it. But I kept drinking it--because, sigh, I wanted to impress a boy--and after a while I found that I appreciated it, and then I found that I actively enjoyed it, and now I love it. Character works just the same way. You can start out a jerk, but if you repeatedly do good things you will become a good person. So, I'm all for aspiring to be better than I am, and trying to behave as if I'm already there, because that behavior is part of what gets me there.

But innocence--and this is a big problem--cannot be acquired; it can only be lost. Merriam-Webster defines innocence as "freedom from guilt or sin through being unacquainted with evil," which is certainly the usage I'm familiar with.

Friends, once you've known evil, you can't forget it.

Furthermore, as a Christian who believes in original sin, let me tell you this, men: If you are looking for an innocent, pure woman, you can quit now. She doesn't exist. If you think you've met her, you've met someone who's excellent at dissembling. And that's why I find this particular form of hypocrisy so pernicious: it doesn't cultivate innocence. It cultivates lies.

Why aspire to this version of "pretty" in the first place?

By nature, generally when men see this combination in women it brings out their better qualities, their best in fact. That special combination of beauty and innocence, the pretty inspires men to protect and defend it.

Lest ye forget, ladies: it's our job to civilize those beastly, hairy, icky men. We are somehow responsible for their behavior. We have to inspire them to protection and defense because of our pretty.

Silly me, I thought the best inspiration for defending someone was self-sacrificial love, or perhaps a strong sense of justice. That shows what I know. (Also, how is defense of the innocent the domain of men?)

Young women today do not seem to aspire to pretty, they prefer to be regarded as hot.

Know what I prefer to be regarded as? Smart and honest and loyal and kind. But I've always been weird that way.

Hotness is something altogether different. When women want to be hot instead of pretty, they must view themselves in a certain way...

And we all know what that certain way is, don't we? Sexual beings. Newsflash: most of humanity had that whole women-as-sexual-beings thing figured out way before the 21st century Western cultural concept known as hotness.

and consequently men view them differently as well.

Because, you know, if a woman is a sexual being she can't be pure. Is it just me or is this a skip and a jump from the kind of "she must have been asking for it" victim blaming that goes on in rape cases?

It is ironic that 40 years of women’s liberation has succeeded only in turning women into a commodity. Something to be used up and thrown out.

When in doubt, blame feminism! Besides, the above statement can be proved to be true by the fact that prostitution, pornography and sexual slavery did not exist before women's liberation. Oh, wait.

Once upon a time you would hear girls talk about kind of women men date and the kind they marry. You don’t hear things like that anymore.

Thank goodness!

I am not even going to spend energy on articulating all the issues with assuming that a woman's entire focus should be on getting married. Let's just assume for the sake of rant that we are only talking about the subset of women who do want to get married some day. Men date and marry exactly one kind of woman, and as it happens it's exactly the same kind of man that women date and marry: the fallen, sinful, messy, fully human kind.

Our problem is that society doesn’t value innocence anymore, real or imagined.

Given the number of women and children victimized in the international sex trafficking industry every year, it's difficult for me to argue with this statement. But to ask women to cultivate a projection of innocence at the cost of personal integrity, just for the sake of your oblivious and misinformed nostalgia, is selfish and wrongheaded. It will not suddenly decommodify and humanize the bodies of women.

How about, instead, we cultivate an appreciation for our fellow humans of whatever gender, in all their imperfections and flaws and goodness?

If you would like to see the beauty in every woman you see, sir, you need to do just one simple thing: look for the image of God in her. Unless you willfully blind yourself, you will find it. It is there.

Still Challenging

2011-11-21T07:33:00.001-05:00

Two years later, this definition of tolerance still challenges me deeply.

Another Reading Challenge

2011-01-03T19:40:00.002-05:00

Oh, hey! I'm doing the L.M. Montgomery reading challenge, too.

Feels kind of like cheating, since I'd be reading them all anyway. :)

Oh, hello, there!

2011-01-01T22:17:00.004-05:00

I am participating in a Jane Austen reading challenge. Which isn't really a challenge, given that I usually read all her novels at least a couple of times a year. But over at A Faithful Journey, there's a whole list of books inspired by or set in Austen's fictional universe. I'm going to read at least a few of them.

I will try to give them a fair chance, I really will.

But I might mock them a little. Or a lot. Probably a lot.

Anyhow, it's an excuse to talk about Jane and blow the dust off this here blog.

on Facebook and the expectation of privacy

2010-06-23T16:06:00.002-05:00

So this morning I signed in to Facebook and saw more than one friend who had posted this as their status:

Facebook is @it again. Go to the top right of your screen, click Account, then click Edit Friends. Go to the left side of your screen & click Phonebook. Everyone's phone # is being published. Please repost to let your friends know of this change in security, so that they may remove their phone #s or change their privacy settings.

First of all, to my knowledge, I have always been able to view the phone numbers of my Facebook friends who put their phone numbers on their profile, so that this is not a "change in security" but in fact what has always been the case.

Second, why are people so surprised at this? Facebook is a social networking site. The point of creating a profile is to create a thing you can share with people.

I've been musing on this all day, and I think we tend to think about digital spaces like Facebook the wrong way.

In the "IRL" world of embodied relationships and interactions, my body provides me with a certain level of privacy. No one but God can see what goes on inside my head (and whether He chooses to do so is a matter of some debate). I can choose to share bits of that inner self with others, but I have to make an effort to do it and, being a reasonably healthy person I don't share equally with everyone. I share bits of that inner self with Peter that no one else ever sees, somewhat less with my closest girlfriends and yet less with casual acquaintances. In a sense, every time I spend time with someone or have a conversation with them I am navigating the privacy settings of my self. It's something most of us do without much thought.

What I think happens is this: because Facebook serves as such a communal space for so many of us, we can tend to fool ourselves that whatever "place" we start from-- say our profile information-- is analagous to the private, embodied self from which we administer our relationships IRL. That is not the case, though-- there is no private self on Facebook, and I think lots of times people don't really get that. Your Facebook profile isn't like the inside of your head; it's not even like your living room. It's more like your picket-fenced front yard where you sit out every day and say hi to all your friends, and then take a walk down the sidewalk to other friends' yards and say howdy to them. Social convention dictates that you don't walk into somebody's front yard unless you are reasonably certain of your welcome, and in the world of Facebook, making a friend request is the way you make sure of that welcome. Because it is convenient to do so, you can leave messages in other people's yards, and leave messages in your own front yard for all your friends who walk by. But there's not really anything other than social convention and a decorative picket fence to stop anyone from coming into your yard who wants to-- advertisers can litter it with flyers, for instance. After you go to sleep for the night, there's nothing to stop anybody from vaulting the fence to take a shortcut across your yard, or even to come peek in your windows, or just getting distracted and opening the wrong gate when they meant to be going to their friend's yard next door. And so forth.

That kind of privacy-- the front yard kind, which isn't really much privacy at all-- is what we have with Facebook. If you expect anything else from it, you need to reset your expectations (and take the billboard with your phone number down from your front yard).

in which Sherri breaks her silence to talk about GBS and other icky critters

2010-06-14T12:13:00.003-05:00

So, I'm thinking about Just Saying No to that darn penicillin drip (and the heparin lock itself) during labor.

Why?

It HURTS. Not the needle itself, but the solution entering my veins. I think they keep that stuff in the deep freeze.
It wipes out the GBS, sure, but it also wipes out tons of valuable flora that are highly beneficial to both me and my baby.
Having the heparin lock in place, even though it theoretically allows me mobility, still reduces my comfort level and inhibits me from moving as freely as I'd like during labor-- thus reducing my overall ability to deal with labor naturally and without unnecessary medical intervention.

But here's the kicker: before I thought I didn't have much choice, ethically. After all, why risk my baby's health for my own comfort? But then I discovered that, while GBS positive moms who receive IV antibiotics during labor have a 1 in 4,000 chance of their babies getting sick, the ones who don't use antibiotics have a 1 in 200 chance. Comparatively, that sounds like a big risk until you realize that a 0.50% chance of infection is still comparable to some estimates of my chances of having a uterine rupture during VBAC. If I can reasonably and ethically choose to VBAC then I can reasonably choose to avoid IV antibiotics during labor, even if I am GBS positive.

I do not anticipate the hospital staff being real happy about it if I opt out of all this, but I'm not paying them to make themselves happy.

But I haven't made the decision yet. I'd welcome any input from you mommas, midwives, etc out there about this.

week 1 notes

2010-03-22T07:19:00.003-05:00

March 21 (Week 1)

CASE STUDIES: What have been your experiences of apologetics? Is it something new to you? What has been the most challenging question or objection anyone had given you regarding Christianity? How did you respond?

Introductory discussion:

1. What is apologetics?

Etymology: derived from Greek apologia, a legal term meaning a formal defense. Related to the Greek apologos, meaning a story or fable.
St. Paul uses apologia or one of its cognates in Acts 22.1 & 26.2, I Corinthians 9.3, II Corinthians 7.11, Philippians 1.7, II Timothy 4.16, I Peter 3.15; and the negative version (anapologētoi) in Romans 1.20.
Secular examples: apologias of Socrates (390 BC – Plato's account of Socrates' defense against the charges of corrupting youth) & Augustus Caesar (written by Augustus Caesar before his death; inscribed on his tomb by the Roman senate in 14 AD).
So what does it mean to us now?

2. What is the goal? When is apologetics useful? When is it not?

Is it the same as evangelism?
Defense of faith or defense of self? What would happen if you didn't offer a defense? Would Christianity go away?
Thoughtful apologetics can strengthen and clarify our own faith commitments (besides, we have to know what Christianity actually is before we we can defend or advance it).
Useful in helping us engage genuine questions.

3. Have the apologetics we've been taught met the goals we've stated? If not, why not?

4. Have apologetics changed since Paul's day? In the last 500 years? In the last 100?

Some notes bout the class discussion: when I asked the italicized question under 'case studies' people responded with apologetics conferences they'd been to or programs they'd seen. Nobody actually responded with a story of apologetics in action. Very interesting.

This class was intended to open up discussion and get people thinking & talking. Next week we'll talk about the intellectual context and consequences of modernism, particularly the Enlightenment, and how that has informed our current cultural milieu. Also, we'll do some 'how would you respond' sort of case studies from anecdotes I've collected.

without the faintest notion

2010-02-01T21:33:00.003-05:00

It would not perhaps be altogether surprising if, in this nominally Christian country, where the Creeds are daily recited, there were a number of people who knew all about Christian doctrine and disliked it. It is more startling to discover how many people there are who heartily dislike and despise Christianity without having the faintest notion what it is.

from Dorothy Sayers' Creed or Chaos

word about how I find my recipes

2010-01-28T09:30:00.003-05:00

So, in case you were wondering how I have the time to troll the internets to find all the different recipes I post on Facebook, the short answer is: I don't. Here is the system I have built up over time.

The first step is getting a good feed aggregator. I use Google Reader. Second, and ongoing, is that whenever I find a food blog with a good recipe on it, I subscribe to the blog so that the posts show up in my reader, on the logic that if they post one good recipe, they'll likely post another at some point. Some of my favorites are Pioneer Woman, Simply Recipes and Smitten Kitchen, but the most helpful one by far has been TasteSpotting, which does me the fantastic favor of collecting recipes from all over the web.

So I have all these subscriptions (plus some I haven't mentioned), and I organized my Google Reader so that they are all in a dedicated "Recipes" folder. At whatever point in the week I get to my menu planning, I have a look over my fridge, freezer and pantry to see what's on hand, and then search the "Recipes" folder for the ingredients I want to use up. At other times, I just browse the folder looking for something that sounds tasty; whenever I find something that looks good or has an ingredient I'm looking for, I star it. Then I can take the extra step of viewing my starred items in Google Reader and browsing them for yumminess. Then I write down the day's dinner recipes for a week ahead in my Franklin Covey planner, and use those recipes to construct my shopping list.

So that's how I bring the power of Google Reader to bear on the vast resources of the internet to make my cooking and menu planning a lot easier and more fun, without spending huge amounts of time on the project.

apple bag pie

2009-11-23T13:27:00.003-05:00

Another one from my MIL. She is, you have surmised by the point, an intimidatingly skilled baker. One of the high points of my life was the day I made a pie and Peter said my crust had reached the level of his mother's. A ray of light broke through the clouds to shine upon my head, and Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus" could be heard.

Where was I? Oh, yes. This is in the oven as I type, making me gleeful and glad.

Apple Bag Pie

8 c. peeled, sliced apples (my MIL insists on Cortland apples if they are at all available; I have found that Granny Smiths work fine if Cortlands are unavailable)
1/2 c. sugar
2 T. flour
1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. nutmeg
9 inch unbaked pie shell
2 T. lemon juice

Crumble Topping

1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. butter

Preheat oven to 425F.

Combine apples, 1/2 c. sugar, 2 T. flour and spices; toss well to mix. Turn into pie shell (they will pile up pretty high; it helps if you have built up a pretty high fluting around the edge of your pie crust) and sprinkle with the 2 T. lemon juice.

Combine the topping ingredients, mixing until crumbly (I find a pastry cutter helps with this). Sprinkle over apples. Place pie into a large paper grocery bag. Fold end over twice and fasten with paper clips. Place on cookie sheet. Slide carefully into the oven, making sure that the bag isn't touching your oven coils; you may have to lower the rack. Bake for 1 hour.

When you remove the pie from the oven, cut open the bag to remove the pie, but do so CAREFULLY; there may be steam and also hot caramelized sugar oozing out all over the place.

This is fantastic with ice cream. Or for breakfast. Or with ice cream, for breakfast.

spinach squares

2009-11-19T08:18:00.004-05:00

This is my MIL's recipe. I am not sure where she got it. She always has these out for something to nibble on while Giant Holiday Feasts are cooking. If I'm not careful, I nibble these until I'm full and then have a terrible dilemma when I sit down to the Feast. Ooh, these are good. I am making them this morning to freeze and then have out for nibbles on Thanksgiving Day. Some of these might not make it into the freezer, though.

Spinach Squares

1/2 c. butter
3 eggs
1 c. flour
1 c. milk
1 t. salt
1 t. baking powder
1 lb. grated cheddar (about 4 cups)
4 c. chopped spinach (4 of the frozen boxes, thawed and squeezed dry)

Preheat oven to 350F. Melt butter in a 9x13 pan. Beat together the eggs, milk, salt, baking powder and flour. Add the cheese and spinach and mix well. Pour into the pan and bake for 35 minutes. Let cool 30 minutes before serving. Cut into squares 1.5-2 inches on a side. If frozen, can be reheated in a 325F oven for 12-15 minutes. Or you can just microwave 'em for a few seconds.

I have been known to just eat a plate of these for breakfast.

Just for the record, I HATE squeezing spinach dry. It is my least favorite cooking task. I have been known to reject recipes based on the fact that I'd have to do it. However, I tasted these and became addicted before I saw the recipe, so for these I'm willing to do it. That's how good they are.

a really tasty breakfast sammich

2009-11-18T09:22:00.003-05:00

This is my approximation of the Vienna Sunrise, a popular sandwich at Cafe Vienna, a now-defunct cafe near my graduate school. I was on my way to Cafe Vienna for one of these when my mom called me on the morning of September 11, 2001 to tell me something crazy was going on in New York City. I went and got my sandwich and took it back to my apartment and watched the horror with my roommate and ATE the sandwich while we watched. I am not a monster. It was just a really good sandwich.

For a Vienna Sunrise you will need:

-a bagel of your choice, toasted (I advise using plain the first time and then figuring out what will complement the flavors best from there)

-sun-dried tomato mayonnaise (if you, like my husband, are a Crazy Person Who Does Not Like Sun-Dried Tomatoes, you may use regular mayo or just butter instead, but then it will not be a Vienna Sunrise, just a regular ham and egg and cheese breakfast sandwich, although still plenty good)

-one egg

-ham (I am normally a sweet ham kind of girl-- maple, honey, brown sugar, etc-- but I find more savory smoked ham works better in this application)

-sliced provolone cheese

For the sun-dried tomato mayo, chop up a few-- say, four-- sun-dried tomatoes (the soft or oil-packed kind, not the super dry hard kind) and mix them in a bowl with a big spoonful of mayo. This will make enough for several sandwiches.

Next, melt some butter in your favorite egg pan. Crack the egg into one side of the pan, and on the other side plop down your ham so it frizzles a bit in the butter and gets nice and hot.

While the egg and ham are doing their thing, toast your bagel. As soon as it comes out of the toaster, shmear both sides with sun-dried tomato mayo.

When the egg is just about done, transfer the hot ham to the bottom half of the bagel. Place the cheese on top of the ham. Place the hot fried egg on top of the cheese. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then top with the other half of the bagel.

Oh, so good.

tolerance

2009-11-04T20:50:00.002-05:00

Tolerance is not indifference, but a generous regard and even provision for those who differ from us on points we deeply care about. To support tolerance-- which is not the same thing as lacking intolerance-- more is required than just a lack of certainty concerning differences at issue. We must also care about people. Genuine tolerance itself must be based upon assured knowledge of what is real and what is right. And it always is. It is not a "leap of faith." Tolerance is not the lack of something, but the expression of a positive vision of what is good and right, a vision taken to be solidly grounded in knowledge of how things really are. It has often been considered knowledge that all human beings are equally loved by God, and the call to tolerance was based on that knowledge. It was this type of vision, regarded as knowledge, that led to the abolition of slavery and legal segregation, for example. Such a vision, held as knowledge of how things really are, undergirds the possibility of a neighbor love that comes from the heart and reaches across all human differences. --Dallas Willard, Knowing Christ Today

I have been musing over this definition of tolerance since I first read it several weeks ago. It is a lofty one.

Do you consider yourself a tolerant person? Do you cultivate "a generous regard and even provision for those who differ from us on points we deeply care about?" Do you, really?

If-- like me-- you don't always, but wish you did, how would your speech, actions and habits of thought change?

a nice comforting sort of cookie

2009-10-29T15:34:00.002-05:00

I made these today when Colin asked for vanilla cookies. They are easy, sweet, comforting and homey. If you like evaporated milk, you will like these cookies. If you don't, you won't. I like evaporated milk, and I'm quite fond of the cookies.

Caramel Jumbles (from The Art of Making Good Cookies, Plain and Fancy)

I don't know why they are called "Caramel Jumbles" when there is no caramel in them. Nevertheless, they are tasty.

1/2 c. butter
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 c. evaporated milk
1 tsp. vanilla (I recommend doubling this amount)
2 3/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. raisins or chopped dates (optional)

Cream butter and sugars. Beat in eggs. Add evaporated milk and vanilla. Sift together dry ingredients and stir in (well, that's what the book says but I didn't bother with sifting together; I just tossed them into the running Kitchen Aid as I measured them out), then add fruit. Drop on lightly greased baking sheet (or lined with parchment). Bake at 400 degrees for bout 10 minutes. When cool, spread with Caramel Jumble Glaze (or not; they're quite eatable plain, but the glaze is yummy, too).

Caramel Jumble Glaze

2 T. melted butter
1/4 c. brown sugar
2 c. sifted powdered sugar
1/2 c. evaporated milk

Stir brown sugar into melted butter until dissolved. Add sugar and milk (unless you want a very thin glaze, I would add the milk a bit at a time until I achieved the consistency I wanted); beat until fluffy. Spread over cooled cookies.

These freeze very well.

the new spanking

2009-10-22T09:07:00.005-05:00

Did you know that Shouting is the New Spanking? Indeed it is. The New York Times Fashion & Style section (?!?) tells me so.

I am so very tired of articles like this.

So very, very tired.

“My name is Francesca Castagnoli and I am a screamer,” began a post on Motherblogger.net earlier this year. “Admitting I’m a mom that screams, shouts and loses it in front her kids feels like I’m revealing a dark family secret.”

“It’s not kind,” said Ms. Klein in Oregon. “When I’m done I feel awful.”

To research their book “Mommy Guilt: Learn to Worry Less, Focus on What Matters Most, and Raise Happier Kids,” the three authors, Devra Renner, Aviva Pflock and Julie Bort, commissioned a survey of 1,300 parents across the country to determine sources of parental guilt. Two-thirds of respondents named yelling — not working or spanking or missing a school event — as their biggest guilt inducer.

And later:

“We are so accustomed to this that we just think parents get carried away and that it’s not harmful,” said one of the study’s lead authors, Murray A. Straus, a sociologist who is a director of the Family Research Laboratory at the University of New Hampshire. “But it affects a child. If someone yelled at you at work, you’d find that pretty jarring. We don’t apply that standard to children.”

Psychologists and psychiatrists generally say yelling should be avoided. It’s at best ineffective (the more you do it the more the child tunes it out) and at worse damaging to a child’s sense of well-being and self-esteem.

Here is a clue, O child development experts: we get it. If we feel guilty for yelling, that's a strong indicator that we already know it's not okay. You don't have to keep harping on it.

Now, I am highly unlikely to complain about all the things that make me, as a mom, feel guilty. Guess what? This article does not make me feel guilty; my conscience does that. Other people's condemnation and judgment may make me feel irritated or defensive or sad, but the guilt is aaaaaaaall mine. So I dislike it when moms whine about all the sources of guilt out there. I just don't buy it.

That being said, what I detest about articles of this nature is the implicit message that parenting is a perfectible task: if we just stop spanking and stop yelling and educate them in just the right way and give them just the right mix of parent time and organized social interaction and free time and feed them ideally nutritious meals and do everything just so, we will have reared perfect children! Or if we haven't, it won't be our fault.

What a crock. The fact is, I am imperfect, and I will, no matter how hard I try, fail my children. They are also imperfect, and will fail me at some point, as I have failed my own parents.

That's not a statement of fatalism, since I believe in a good God who can redeem our failures, who is strong where I am weak, who loves us and gives us abundant grace.

Relying on ourselves alone to parent our children perfectly is foolishness. This is not to say we shouldn't try our best and beg grace for the work, but that to try for an unreachable goal will set us up for a debilitating, paralyzing sense of failure, and I can't think of any surer way to really screw things up for me and my children.

footsteps

2009-10-04T20:20:00.003-05:00

The following account may or may not be true.

James and Cammie are good friends of mine from college. They got married right after graduation and had three kids-- two boys and a girl-- before James decided to go to seminary in the middle of nowhere. So they packed up the kids and rented an old farmhouse three miles from the seminary campus and much farther than that from anything else. They are crunchy types who home school the kids and do things like order their wheat in bulk and grind flour with a little electric mill in their kitchen, so they do okay out there.

The farmhouse is a great house-- the kitchen is enormous, there are two fireplaces-- one of them in the LIBRARY, and there's a porch with a swing that can fit all five of them. The water comes from a well, and the owners have even supplied them with a backup gasoline-powered generator in case the electricity goes out. Cammie's only real complaints about the house are that the hardwood floors, while easy to clean, turn the whole house into an echo chamber, and that the only staircase to the second floor, where all the bedrooms are, is ridiculously steep. Even though their youngest is three now, they still have a baby gate at the top.

One evening last summer, after a fun and exhausting family trip to a local peach orchard, Cammie and James got the kids to bed and then Cammie took a hot bath and went to bed herself. James stayed down in the library for some time, reading some Bonhoeffer until he couldn't keep his eyes open any longer. So he headed upstairs himself, carefully latching the baby gate behind him and taking a second to poke his head into the kids' bedroom and pray over them briefly before tiptoeing across the hall and into the master bedroom.

He had just snuggled in beside Cammie and switched off his bedside lamp when he heard several thudding footsteps in the hall outside the bedroom door. He waited a minute to see which child was going to try to sneak in with mom & dad, but instead of hearing the door open he heard the snap and sproing! of the latch on the baby gate, followed by more footsteps thudding down the staircase. Sighing, James rolled out of bed-- quietly, so as not to wake Cammie-- put his glasses on, and stepped softly back out into the hall. Sure enough, the baby gate was swinging open. He peeked into the kids' bedroom to see which one of them had gone tromping downstairs in the middle of the night like that.

They were all still asleep in their beds.

digging for gold

2009-10-03T20:09:00.004-05:00

The following account may or may not be true.

The year I turned ten, my dad got a camcorder-- the kind of enormous video camera that recorded directly onto VHS cassettes. He loved that camera, and used it to tape every occasion that could possibly merit a video-- family vacation, birthday parties, family reunions, school programs and that one time it sleeted so much it almost looked like snow!

We lived in Shreveport, Louisiana. Frozen precipitation was a major event.

And then of course there was Christmas. Christmas was an epic production when I was a kid. We would open all the presents under the tree on Christmas eve-- every single one. Those were the ones from my parents and other family and friends. Then Santa Claus would come that night-- after we had finally gone to sleep-- and we'd wake up to another mountain of presents on Christmas morning. Then we would drive over to the home of whomever was hosting the extended family dinner that year and play with cousins and talk politics and football and eat, and eat, and eat some more.

So. The first Christmas with the camcorder came, and my dad was determined to catch every second of it. He set up the camcorder on its tripod in the dark corner of the living room opposite the Christmas tree, put in a new tape, and let it quietly roll without pause during the entire marathon session of present opening. We didn't pay any attention, really-- the thing's novelty had all worn off, at least for us kids, so the days of trying to ham it up were past. Besides, there were presents to open, dang it!

I should mention here that we went in rounds for present opening: I would open and admire a present, my sister would open and admire a present, my mom would open and admire a present, and then my dad. Then it would be my turn again. So I had to wait (during the early part of the evening, at least, before the Grownup Presents ran out) for three presents to be opened and admired between each of mine. During the waiting periods I would back up from the action a bit, usually in a nice dark corner of the living room opposite the Christmas tree, and watch from there.

It was during one of these waiting periods that I got an itch-- a really, really itchy itch, deep in the recesses of a certain bodily orifice. I know you know the kind of itch I'm talking about. Being ten, and being unobserved in my corner by my parents while they gleefully gave my sister a present to open, I gave no thought at all to reaching around to the rear of my little nightgown and giving that itch a good, long, extended, satisfying scratch. Ah! Relief.

Presents, presents, presents. After the marathon ended and my sister and I went to bed, my parents sat down in the glow of the Christmas tree to review the video of our giddy faces and exclamations of delight. My sister and I were too excited to go to sleep right away, but eventually we began to drift off. I was almost completely asleep when I was jolted back into full consciousness by hoots and howls and screams of laughter from the living room. There was so much hilarity that I thought surely unexpected guests had arrived because two people could not make that much noise.

I leaped from bed and ran into the living room, where I found my parents curled up and practically paralyzed with laughter, gasping and pointing at the television. Stop. Rewind. Play.

Oh. My. Gosh.

I was pretty embarrassed, but not so much that I couldn't see the humor in it. Ha ha ha! What a funny little private family joke.

The next morning we woke up to The Biggest Haul Ever from Santa Claus, and what with candy to eat and new toys to play with and new books to be read, I sort of forgot about the video tape. Around mid-morning we packed up our potluck dishes and gifts for the gift exchange and headed over to Aunt Linda's house, which was full of aunts and uncles and cousins and really great art supplies (Aunt Linda was a Montessori teacher).

My dad was setting up his camcorder and explaining its capabilities to one of my uncles and roomful of various other relatives when he mentioned that he could plug the camera into the television and play back tapes on it just like a VCR.

"And oh!" he said, "Have I got a tape to show you. We call it, 'Digging For Gold!'"

I put down my fruit-scented marker and left my chair at the kids' table.

"Daddy," I said. "Daddy, please don't show that part of the tape. Please."

"Aw, Baby, you don't need to be embarrassed. It's funny!"

And I knew I would not be able to persuade him. I ran to my cousin's bedroom on the other side of the house and tried hard to focus on one of the books I found in there, hoping that if I could just get interested enough in the story, I would not hear the sudden shouts of laughter, and I could forget that I was being watched.

For various reasons, I'm doing NaBloPoMo in October this year. The October theme is HAUNTED, so I'm writing about things that haunt me: stories (truth and fiction) that I've heard or read, things I've done or haven't done (the accounts of which may or may not be true), problematic philosophical concepts, and so forth.

glint

2009-10-02T08:01:00.004-05:00

The following account may or may not be true.

Along a dirt road in central Louisiana walks a man with a child slung over his shoulder.

The child is about eight years old. Like his father, he is dressed in worn and patched denim overalls. Also like his father, he is quite thin. Cornbread and black-eyed peas form the largest portion of their regular diet; they occasionally get meat when the father shoots a squirrel.

The boy has not eaten anything this particular morning, because he is barely conscious. He has since toddlerhood been subject to frequent nosebleeds, but they usually dry up quickly. However, since he sneezed three days ago, a steady trickle has been issuing from his right nostril and none of the customary remedies have stopped it. So, when the sun rose this morning, the man picked up the boy and began the twelve mile walk to the nearest town with a doctor. The man is walking because there is no wagon and no horse or mule to pull it if there were. The boy's nose is packed with cloth, but the blood has soaked through and at regular intervals a drop of blood falls into a footprint.

It is a quiet walk. The boy, usually something of a chatterer, is too dazed to speak. The man does not say much at any time. The loudest sounds are the birds and the breeze brushing through the pine needles.

Louisiana warms up quickly in the spring, but it is early enough in the day for the moist air to be fresh and sweet rather than oppressive. The newly risen sun sparkles on the pines. The boy notices the glint on the dew in the treetops and then realizes with mild surprise that he is on eye level with them. He looks down and sees the dust on top of his father's hat and himself, flung over his father's right shoulder, arms and head dangling, mouth slack and ribs moving in a quick shallow rhythm. He shifts his gaze again and sees thick treetops in every direction.

The boy is the fourth of six children, all born in rapid succession and crowded into a series of two room shacks near whatever sawmill can provide employment for their father. The boy cannot recall a time before this when he had the undivided attention of the man now carrying him down the road. How long have they been walking? He checks the position of the sun in the sky and gazes directly at it for several moments before he realizes that doing so doesn't bother him at all.

The man pauses in the road and shifts his slight burden from one shoulder to the other. Two thin faces brush against each other. The boy opens his eyes.

and away we go

2009-10-01T08:54:00.005-05:00

The following account may or may not be true.

One of the earliest stories my father told me was, I believe, told in the pedagogical mode as a warning against the dangers of drunk driving. Why he thought I needed such instruction as a preschooler I am not sure. I was sitting in the back seat of the car on a trip to visit relatives. We stopped for gas and as we pulled away from the gas station my father told me the story of terrible thing that had happened there:

A young family had pulled in to get gas, and it was clear to onlookers that a domestic dispute of some ferocity was taking place. The husband, who was driving the car, was obviously intoxicated, and his terrified wife was begging him to stop. She took the opportunity of having to refuel to run inside with two of their small children, but by the time she returned to retrieve her other daughter, he had roared off with the little girl still in the car. Just a few miles down the road he crashed the car, and he sustained only minor injuries. But the daughter? She was decapitated in the accident.

"Of course they put him in jail for it," said my father, "But the wasn't any need for that. He has punished himself worse than jail ever could already, for the rest of his life."

And even at such a young age, I could see the sense in what he said.

But I had so many questions. Why didn't anybody else at the gas station try to intervene? What was that little girl thinking those last few moments of her life? Was she scared? What about the mother? How did she choose which two out of her three children to snatch first, knowing her husband might drive off with the third? Did she grab the ones who were closest? The ones who were littlest? Did she feel guilty or only angry and sad? Were the other children old enough to realize what was happening at the time? Would they remember it when they were older?

What story would she tell them?

boycotting Whole Foods?

2009-08-17T15:46:00.004-05:00

Keep boycotting. Maybe he'll be forced to drop prices to the point that I can actually afford to shop there.

The whole thing is just so bemusing. I frequently (well, as frequently as I can given my budget and two small children) patronize the local independent cinema. I have had enough interaction with the managers and owners to realize that we are on opposite poles, politically speaking, but it has never once occurred to me to punitively boycott their business because of that. Why on earth would I? I'd love to persuade them to my point of view, seeing as how I think I'm right and all, but punitive action doesn't seem to me to be a good first step to persuasion.

If your aim is coercion, on the other hand, it's a great start!

It seems to me very telling that the same people who were yapping about civil liberties a year ago are now doing every thing they can to punish a man whose great crime was to dare voice a dissenting opinion.

I think this is not really about health care at all; this is about pretentious self-identified progressives who feel they have been tricked. Shopping at Whole Foods is (or was) a seriously status-making consumption choice. Mackey has publicly robbed them of a major source of coolness, and that's what's really pissing them off. Now they will have to find some other expensive cultural appurtenance to prove how hip they are.

You know, Wal-Mart sells organic stuff now. I'll bet they'll even charge you more if it makes you feel better.

some favorite Tweets

2009-07-17T21:04:00.002-05:00

I got this idea from Veronica, who got the idea from me.

Just go with it.

Anyhow, here are some of my favorite Tweets:

lindastanley It almost never works out to take 3 cats and yourself into your designated tornado closet.

ayjay Some days the bear eats you, and some days the bear mauls you in a leisurely fashion and *then* eats you.

toddleddredge When I was a kid, I did not eat raisins for two years after my brother told me they put ants in the raisins at the raisin factory.

newsadvance Starbucks cart on way here said Snacks for Change. Hardly. #inaug09

SKEdman sigh. poor hubs missed train. I have stabbing pain in right eye, as if I had succumbed to my impulse to stick a ballpoint pen in there. Yes, I did favorite one of my own Tweets. So?

boomama Did you ever eat so much sugar in one day that you felt like you needed to eat a whole chicken just to balance things out? Yeah. Me too.

ahc You know, my memory of the last time Democrats had 370 electoral votes and 56 Senate seats is that it turned out be . . . complicated.

rocksinmydryer Suggestion: do not store a glue stick next to your chapstick in your desk drawer. Ahem.

pattondodd - about to do an interview with a French magazine. Considering talking in a Yosemite Sam voice the whole time

about math

2009-07-06T10:48:00.003-05:00

So I've been looking at all these different math curricula, trying to choose one for Colin (and possibly Marky). The Well-Trained Mind suggests several as good choices, and one of them is A Beka.

I was taught A Beka math in elementary school. And I hated it. HATED. IT. But just in the past few years I've realized that it's not the curriculum that's to blame. As I was reading Susan Wise Bauer's assessment of it, she mentioned as a point in its favor that it uses lots and lots of drill. Meh, I thought, That doesn't sound like a point in its favor to me.

And then it hit me. Drill is supposed to be for practice. Drill is supposed to be for practice.

See, at my elementary school, they didn't offer speed drills for practice. They administered them as tests. And graded them as such. And sent them home with students for parents to sign off on. And I was punished for bad grades (because I'd tested as gifted, you see, and so if I brought home bad grades I just must not have been trying hard enough, and by God I was going to receive some serious motivation to try harder).

So every time we had a speed drill, here's what would happen: The teacher would pass out the "test." She would start the timer. I would tackle the first problem and if the answer didn't immediately pop into my head, I'd start thinking about how I couldn't possibly finish in time, and I was going to make another bad grade, and then I would have to take it home and get a spanking (with a BELT) and I'd get nauseated with fear and frustration, and then any chance I had of concentrating would really be gone.

So my school's egregious misadministration of the curriculum plus my parents', ah, ill-advised policy of punishing me when I didn't perform up to expectations created a nice little perfect storm of math frustration for me. It was awful, and crippling. Even though I consistently hit the 97th percentile or so on standardized math tests, I didn't cease to fear math until college, and by then it was too late for me.

I'm not sure why I'm even blogging about this. Catharsis, I suppose. Elementary school math was over 20 years ago and I still had tears in my eyes while writing parts of this account. It was just all so damned unnecessary.

One lesson I sure as heck did learn. No matter what math curriculum-- or any subject curriculum-- we end up using, terror is not going to form any part of our encouraging our children to academic endeavor. I'm praying for deliverance from this. It's a hard slog. I just hope I can show more grace to my own children than was shown to me.

already standing on the ground

2009-06-24T08:57:00.003-05:00

"A equal partnership based on mutual respect" used to sound boring and unromantic to me.

Then I endured a relationship where that wasn't the case, where it became clear over time that no matter how smart or accomplished I was, I would never be admitted into the Special Super Secret Man Clubhouse. For years I was sore hearted about it, thinking that somehow the deficiency was in me-- that if only I had been somehow better read or more attractive or cooler I would have been admitted to real emotional intimacy with the guy.

When I moved from Texas to Virginia, one cultural difference that blew my mind was that some men-- including Peter-- actually respected women as their equals. This was not just lip service to the idea-- Peter actually considers me an equal, an intellectual peer. He asks for my input on things. Our emotional intimacy involves us sharing our whole selves with one another, not only a particular part reserved for the opposite sex. There's not this tiered arrangement where my relationship with him is secondary to his pursuit of some Aristotelian ideal of a Manly Friendship.

We are not only spouses and lovers, we are truly partners and best friends. And that's the most romantic thing I've ever known.

how not to read the Bible

2009-06-09T09:36:00.003-05:00

Kimberly just sent me a link to this article.

"You send me these things on purpose, don't you?" I asked. And she replied,

"I do, actually."

What can I say? She's a good friend. She knows what will get me fired up.

The troubling thing (one of 'em, anyhow) about this guy's approach to Scripture is his attitude toward it.

Is that weird, shocking and borderline unbelievable? Well, yes. But books like Daniel make clear that various aspects and meanings of scripture are ‘locked up’ for a time. I.e., they mean nothing until the context of events gives it to them. Such is the case with the Bible codes also — a phenomenon which has gained the highest scientific credibility after first being dissed.

The Bible is not some compilation of codes and secret meanings that we only get to figure out if our generation happens to be the one who gets the secret decoder ring in our cultural cereal box.

Sure, there's tons of cryptic metaphor in books like Daniel and Revelation; some of that is related to our loss of the cultural contexts in which they were written; some of it is because what God's promise and future actually is is so far beyond what we are capable of conceiving and communicating that at a certain point language itself begins to break down.

And then there's the unbelievable Americentrism that causes people to assume that whatever meaning is to be ferreted out of those passages, it must be something that has to do with US. If a Democrat is in office, they must be talking about an AMERICAN leader. If a Republican is President, they must be talking about the leader of AMERICA'S ENEMIES (I haven't forgotten growing up dispensationalist in the eighties, when everybody knew Gorbachev was the Antichrist).

I think the worst part about this attitude toward the Bible is that is causes us to miss what's actually there: the story of God's redemptive work throughout human history, and our hope in the fact that Jesus Christ is the Risen Lord of the whole world-- not just the United States.

an interview with Colin

2009-05-28T06:29:00.002-05:00

What makes your mommy happy?
Loving us.

Awww.

What makes your mommy sad?
Hurting.

Kind of a generic answer, but sure.

What is your mommy good at?
Coffee!

Well, yes. Yes I am.

What is your mommy not good at?
Meat.

Perhaps he's been more observant than I realized of recent grill fiascos.

What is your mommy’s job?
Working.

Another generic answer. Hmm.

How tall is your mommy?
That tall. (accompanied by an unintelligible gesture)

What does Mommy like about your Daddy?
Love.

Can anyone deny that this is my child? Mr. Lives In A World Of Abstractions.

What does your mommy always say?
No. You say "no."

Ouch.

an interview with Marky

2009-05-28T06:14:00.003-05:00

What makes your mommy happy?
Uh...something that is nice.

What makes your mommy sad?
Shouting.

What is your mommy good at?
Cleaning.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

What is your mommy not good at?
Umm...I don't remember.

Clever child.

What is your mommy’s job?
Cleaning.

Hrmpf.

How tall is your mommy?
Big. (raising his hand high above his head)

What does Mommy like about your Daddy?
Last night I dreamed about a dinosaur named Edwina who makes chocolate chip cookies.

What does your mommy always say?
I think I don't know.

I am so not surprised by this answer.

the source of empathy

2009-05-25T11:27:00.004-05:00

So, I just read Kimberly's post where she referenced Veronica's post that made very funny fun of this ridiculous article.

And I was put in mind of a conversation we had the other day with my friend, N., who was born and raised in DC, but whose parents are Nigerian. She was remarking that it is only her American friends who make remarks like, "I never understood what it was like to have kids until I had them." Part of it is culture and upbringing-- in N.'s extended family the younger folks were expected regularly to involve themselves in the lives of the small children of their siblings and cousins and so forth. N. has been babysitting since she was eight, and still frequently watches her cousins' children. She has never, even as a young single professional, seen fit to cleanse her life of children.

But N. is unusual in America, I think. So many young professionals-- especially in the ambition-soaked DC area-- go weeks and weeks at a time while having no contact with young children, even in a restaurant or other public place. This is partly because they live in expensive urban centers which are unaffordable for most families, and partly for other reasons.

But I think the larger issue here is about the failure of the moral imagination.

During that same conversation with Kimberly and N., N. brought up the remark common in feminist circles, some variation on, "Well, I know I couldn't possibly presume to understand where you're coming from because we have different experiences of the world." N. called this a cop-out, and I agree with her. Mostly it's earnestly meant, arising from a desire not to over-impose our own interpretive grid on someone else's actions or words.

But. The reason I think that attitude is also a cop-out is that the source of empathy is not shared experience, or at least not primarily. The source of empathy is the imagination.

This is why reading and hearing good, engaging stories from a young age is so important (or part of why, anyhow)-- allowing ourselves to be involved in the lives of characters with lives very different from our own cultivates the habit of mind wherein we learn identify with the Other. We do this primarily with our imaginations.

So when Roiphe drones on about how uninteresting mommy talk is, what she is doing is refusing to exercise her own imagination. Interest, like taste and like affection, is not something that we either have or don't, or something that we passively receive-- it is acquired and cultivated. As members of a community, we are to some extent ethically obligated to cultivate an interest in the lives of others. This interest, along with a well-trained imagination, is what leads to empathy.

Similarly, when I hear or read the childless whine about having to endure the screams of someone else's child on an airplane or in a restaurant, I always want to say, "Babies are only more upset when they sense their parents are upset. If you really want to defuse the situation, try OFFERING TO HELP instead of grousing and stressing them out further."

Well, that, or "You better watch where you wave that there sense of entitlement-- you're liable to poke out an eye."

Because entitlement is also what this is about: the idea that we are always entitled to dinner party conversation that we find immediately interesting, or silence on an airplane, or only pleasant muted noise in any given public sphere. Or whatever. When we cling to that sense of outraged entitlement, and refuse to put ourselves for a moment in the place of another, we are seated firmly at the center of our own universe.

What a miserable place to be.

where is Jesus now?

2009-05-20T09:18:00.005-05:00

N.T. Wright on the ascension and heaven:

...the ascension demands that we think differently about how the whole cosmos, so to speak, is put together and that we also think differently about the church and about salvation. Both literalism and skepticism regularly operate with what is called a receptacle view of space; theologians who take the ascension seriously insist that it demands what some have called a relational view. Basically, heaven and earth in biblical cosmology are not two different locations within the same continuum of space or matter. They are two different dimensions of God's good creation. And the point about heaven is twofold. First, heaven relates to earth tangentially so that the one who is in heaven can be present simultaneously anywhere and everywhere on earth: the ascension therefore means that Jesus is available, accessible, without people having to travel to a particular spot on earth to find him. Second, heaven is, as it were, the control room for earth; it is the CEO's office, the place from which instructions are given. "All authority is given to me," said Jesus at the end of Matthew's gospel, "in heaven and on earth."
The idea of the human Jesus now being in heaven, in his thoroughly embodied risen state, comes as a shock to many people, including many Christians...often it's because our culture is so used to the Platonic idea that heaven is, by definition, a place os "spiritual," nonmaterial reality so that the idea of a solid body being not only present but also thoroughly at home there seems like a category mistake. The ascension invites us to rethink all this; and, after all, why did we suppose we knew what heaven was? Only because our culture has suggested things to us. Part of Christian belief is to find out what's true about Jesus and let that challenge our culture.

and

The early Christians, and their fellow first-century Jews, were not, as many moderns suppose, locked into thinking of a three-decker universe with heaven up in the sky and hell down beneath their feet. When they spoke of up and down like that they, like the Greeks in their different ways, were using metaphors that were so obvious they didn't need spelling out. As some recent writers have pointed out, when a pupil at school moves "up" a grade, from (say) the tenth grade to eleventh, it is unlikely that this means relocating to a different classroom on the floor above...
The mystery of the ascension is of course just that, a mystery. It demands that we think what is, to many today, unthinkable: that when the Bible speaks of heaven and earth it is not talking about two localities related to each other within the same space-time continuum or a bout a nonphysical world contrasted with a physical one but about two different kinds of what we call space, two different kinds of what we call matter, and also quite possibly (though this does not necessarily follow from the other two) two different kinds of what we call time. We post-Enlightenment Westerners are such wretched flatlanders.

Both excerpts are from Surprised By Hope, Chapter 7.

pop quiz!

2009-05-16T22:32:00.002-05:00

Of whom are these words written?

...sometimes on no stronger evidence than the suspicions of an informer nursing a grudge, men were taken from their homes in the dead of night, thrown into dungeons, and held without explanation or communication with the outside world. Writs of habeas corpus were denied, including those issued by the Supreme Court of the United States. By the same authority, or in the absence of it, he took millions from the treasury and handed them to private individuals, instructing them to act as purchasing agents for procuring the implements of war at home and abroad.

a meme. whee.

2009-05-16T05:42:00.002-05:00

Eight Things I'm Looking Forward To

1. Reaching my goal weight. I'm getting there, slowly but surely.
2. Colin learning to read.
3. Marky being potty trained.
4. Having another baby (but only after #1 and #3).
5. Finally finishing Shelby Foote's Civil War narrative.
6. Finding a new curate for our church.
7. Visiting my family in Texas for almost the whole month of June.
8. The wedding of my friends Alex and Carrie in September in Pennsylvania.

Eight Things I Did Yesterday

1. Went to Wegman's. I love Wegman's.
2. Departed from my custom of buying the boys a scone or muffin at the Wegman's coffee shop and allowed them to have giant lollipops instead. NEVER AGAIN.
3. Went to the Father's Blessing service at Church of the Apostles.
4. Wore the shoes I got myself for Mother's Day. It was the first time Peter had seen them. "What do you think?" I demanded. And he said, "They're...formidable."
5. Read over the leadership profile for the curate candidate we're interviewing today.
6. Swept the kitchen floor AND damp mopped it. This is an achievement. Usually Peter does the floors.
7. Made chocolate mini-cupcakes and a small chocolate cake.
8. Made plans with my friend Julia to hike the Manassas National Battlefield Park this afternoon. I hope it doesn't rain on us.

Eight Things I Wish I Could Do

1. Remember all the Latin I learned in high school and again in graduate school. Ah, well, if all goes as planned with the classical homeschooling I'll be learning it again in short order.
2. Trust other people with my children more.
3. Simultaneously have the time, money and energy to see more films in the theater.
4. Magically turn our mortgage right side up. :(
5. Learn to like fish by sheer force of will.
6. Set a better example for my kids with respect to general tidiness.
7. Quote, at will, any passage from the Iliad or the Odyssey. In Greek. One of my graduate school professors could actually do this. Probably more than one, now that I think about it, but Dr. Sweet was famous for it.
8. Go to seminary. Also, complete my PhD in Literature. Also, get a PhD in Philosophy. And so forth.

Eight Shows I Watch

most of these I watch twice a year, when I visit my parents, whose home is inhabited by more televisions than people

1. Law & Order
2. Law & Order: SVU
3. Law & Order: Criminal Intent
4. Dr. G: Medical Examiner
5. Untold Stories of the E.R.
6. City Confidential
7. Mystery Diagnosis
8. Iron Chef (the old school Japanese one)

No tags. If you want to do it, just do it. But leave a comment, so I can read it.

that battle was a great story

2009-05-11T22:56:00.002-05:00

The sentiment sounded trite, but then didn't most good sentiments sound trite? It was hard to make goodness-- and good people-- sound interesting. Yet the good were worthy of note, of course, because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.

--Friends, Lovers, Chocolate, by Alexander McCall Smith

my stash, my self

2009-05-08T16:39:00.004-05:00

Today I noted, with some amusement, how my current bathroom stash of reading material actual gives a fairly accurate representation of my interests. And because YOU must be just fascinated by MY interests, here is an inventory of my bathroom stack.

This is what my blog has come to.

The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 14th edition. An excellent Big Fat Cookbook.

Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, which I've had for years but have never gotten all the way through. Maybe this time.

The May 2009 issue of Lucky magazine. There, I admitted it. I read a girly mag.

William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Norton Critical Edition. Quentin Compson just breaks my heart.

A sudoku book from the Target $1 bin.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's The First Four Years, a depressing, depressing book.

After Many Days, a collection of short stories by Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Magic for Marigold, also by LMM. Every time I read this one, I get through most of it and think to myself, what a nice little book-- I wonder why I remember disliking it? Then I get to the last pages and it makes me want to scream and hurl it against the wall.

Martin Buber's I and Thou, which is nice except for the snobby forward by Walter Kaufmann.

A Portrait of Yo Mama as a Young Man, an amusing gift from my friend Julia.

The August 2006, March 2007, April 2007 and April 2009 issues of Bon Appetit magazine.

The Well-Trained Mind, by Jessie Wise and Susan Wise Bauer. This book is my homeschooling inspiration. I can't wait to get my hands on the 10th anniversary edition.

Ines of My Soul, by Isabel Allende.

Spiritual Disciplines Handbook: Practices That Transform Us by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. A good, practical introduction to most of the historical spiritual disciplines.

Memoir From Antproof Case, by Mark Helprin. This was the first Helprin I ever read, and probably still my favorite. How can his stories be so hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time? And his prose-- it's stunningly beautiful and yet totally transparent. Just amazing.

Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready, by June Oberlander. I had big plans for this book when I got it. Our days were going to be filled with creative, amusing, developmental activities! Sigh.

Seven small notebooks, inherited from Peter's Great Aunt Helen, filled with recipes she collected over the course of her life.

So there.

You thought I forgot about Rilla, didn't you?

2009-03-22T21:35:00.002-05:00

Some thoughts from chapters 4-6:

His thoughts were full of this Great Game which was to be played out on blood-stained fields with empires for stakes-- a Game in which womenkind could have no part. Women, thought Rilla miserably, just had to sit and cry at home. But all this was foolishness.

There's an interesting doubleness about that last sentence, no? Rilla thinks the boys' going to war is foolishness, but the true foolishness is her idea that women on the homefront have only to sit and cry. It seems to me some of the program of maturation is being laid out for her here.

Ah, thought Rilla sadly, how trivial and absurd such a cause of tears now appeared to her. She could cry now with a right good will-- but she would not-- she must not.

This is one of the first points of maturation for Rilla; the exigencies of supporting family members she loves draws her into the practice of unselfishness, at least where keeping her composure is concerned. Yay, filial piety! If you've got that much to begin with, other virtues will almost surely follow. Looky here:

...and Rilla was glad to be made the confidante of his struggles-- to sympathize with and encourage him. She was of importance to somebody.

The self-centered desire to be "of importance" is being supplanted by her desire to comfort and strengthen Walter. Love is making her less selfish.

Of course, she is still Anne's daughter:

Rilla, after the first shock, reacted to the romance of it all, in spite of her heartache. Jem certainly looked magnificent in his uniform. It was splendid to think of the lads of Canada answering so speedily and fearlessly and uncalculatingly to the call of their country.

Also:

"But mother-- I've never done anything like that."
"We will all have to do a great many things in the months ahead of us that we have never done before, Rilla."
"Well"-- Rilla took the plunge--"I'll try, mother-- if you'll tell me how to begin. I have been thinkign it over and I have decided that must be as brave and heroic and unselfish as I can possibly be."

She is still in large part responding to the "romance" of it all, but in some senses it is her very love of "romance" that is drawing her into the practice of virtue. In this sense Anne and Gilbert have done their daughter a great service by teaching her to find courage, heroism and unselfishness attractive and romantic-- so attractive and romantic that she is willing to undertake the actual quotidian hardships that go into the real cultivation of those traits.

There's another quote from these chapters I'd like to discuss, but I'm putting it in a separate post.

Thoughts?

a teeny little rant

2009-03-08T20:55:00.003-05:00

Obama sees link between stem-cell work, 'scientific integrity'

You know what really gets me? The disingenuous pretense of neutrality. There is no such thing as ideological neutrality.

Let me say that again:

There is no such thing as ideological neutrality.

"What really is important is that ideology will not drive science," said bioethicist Jonathan Moreno...

I have news for you, Mr. Moreno. Science is ALWAYS driven by ideology. The question is which ideology we allow to drive it. "Scientific objectivity" is a fool's dream.

Secularism is a creed. It is not neutral. It is a creed. If you'd like to make an argument that it is a better creed than any others for the purposes of setting public policy, then by all means attempt the argument.

But don't pretend that this decision and others like it are ideologically neutral merely because they are based on the imperatives of a priori Enlightenment commitments to "progress."

sackcloth and ashes and days without eating!

2009-02-25T00:03:00.003-05:00

It's Lent again! Whee!

I am giving up:

sweets
meat
butter
recreational internet (including Facebook, Twitter and this here blog, so I guess that means the sporadic Rilla readalong will be confined to Sundays for the next little while)

Meanwhile, my parish is having a Lenten blog again this year. Posts will begin this coming Monday, and will consist only of Scripture readings for your lectio divina practicing pleasure.

See you.

a music quiz meme thing

2009-02-15T22:13:00.010-05:00

Here are the first lines of the first 15 songs to come up on my iTunes playlist. Your job is to guess the song title and/or artist WITHOUT consulting Google.

I was resting comfortably face down in the gutter. Life was serene. I knew where I was at.
~~Yes indeed, I'm alone again, and here comes emptiness crashing in. It's either love or hate, I can't find in between.~~
Well, my heart's in the highlands, gentle and fair, honeysuckle blooming in the wild wood air.
~~Living on the road, my friend, was going to keep you free and clean. Now you wear your skin like iron, and your breath is hard as kerosene.~~
~~When the rain is blowing in you face and the whole world is on your case, I could offer you a warm embrace to [song title]~~.
~~These are the [song title] declaring the word of the Lord, and these are the days of your servant Moses; righteousness being restored.~~
~~Have you ever lost your way? Have you ever feared another day? Have you ever misplaced your mind, watching this world leave you behind?~~
~~I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly. I'm crying.~~
You took a part of me that I really miss. I keep asking myself how long I can go on like this.
I stand there watching her, hand holds a cigarette. She tells me her name, but once again I will forget.
Well my nerves are exploding and my body's tense.
~~I'm walking through streets that are dead-- walking, walking with you in my head.~~
Chasing after the rainbow's end left me clutching my fistful of wind. That last adventure must have been just a waste of my time.
At night they would go walking ‘til the breaking of the day; the morning is for sleeping. Through the dark streets they go searching to seek God in their own way; save the nighttime for your weeping…
~~I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping [song title]. I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping [song title].~~

I skipped spoken word and instrumental tracks, obviously, but I faithfully recorded the songs otherwise. Some of them I am a bit embarrassed about. Ah, well. This list only partially reflects my currents tastes, as my iTunes is a limited repository-- most of my music lives only on the family iPod. I was supposed to use the iPod for this meme, but I didn't feel like fetching it from the car. For what it's worth, it wouldn't have reflected my tastes accurately, either, as my husband's music collection is on it, too, and there's a fairly limited overlap.

Anyway, there it is. Leave your guesses in the comments and I'll strikethrough as they are correctly identified.

Rilla of Ingleside, Chapters 1-3

2009-02-11T07:09:00.003-05:00

Sorry this took so long. Life got in the way. You know my part-time gig I have working from home? Turns out they only pay me if I actually work. Sigh.

So. Rilla.

I've always appreciated Rilla as a story of maturation. We're told right off by no less than Anne herself that Rilla "...has no serious ideals at all-- her sole aspiration seems to be to have a good time....I should like to see a little sense of responsibility in her, Susan. And you know yourself that she is abominably vain."

But this time around I was particularly struck by the connection between public virtue and private character. Rilla inhabits a world where public and private virtue are bound together; one follows on the development of the other. As she is forced by the exigencies of war to take on responsibilities and endure privations she would not have chosen for herself otherwise, her individual character is formed also.

But that's my overriding interest; I also have some other questions to explore.

Why does the book begin with Susan? I've gone and read so much epic poetry I keep expecting the first line to be about the protagonist. But instead we have another character, albeit a major sympathetic one. Remember how Anne of Green Gables begins with Mrs. Lynde? Why does LMM do this? What purpose does it serve in Rilla specifically?

What about the animals? What is up with Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde? Dog Monday? What can we glean from comparing the two?

What is Gertrude Oliver's place and function in the novel?

What are you thinking about Rilla? What strikes you?

WWI Canadian Propaganda Posters

2009-01-28T01:10:00.007-05:00

I thought these would be of interest in the context of the Rilla read along. You can view a nice gallery here. That whole site is a great non-academic resource, by the way-- the fellow who runs it does it in his spare time and has obviously put tons of effort into it.

I thought this one was lovely:

This one has some weird foreshortening, but I like the concept:

This one is my favorite of them all:

This one made me LOL:

And then there are the top two contenders in the cringe-inducing category:

Rilla it is!

2009-01-27T22:15:00.005-05:00

So the (first?) read along will be on Rilla of Ingleside.

I've never actually done a read along before, so I'm just going to jump in here (suggestions welcome!) and say let's talk about the first three chapters one week from today. I'll post something and we can carry on a discussion in the comments. It seems to me like three chapters a week would be a nice slow pace for the busy moms among us (even though some of us have read Rilla about eight jillion times).

Does anyone want to volunteer to guest post on a three chapter set?

Helpful links:

PBS' handy World War I chronology

The L.M. Montgomery Institute

The LMM Lexicon has a helpful listing of every literary and Biblical allusion in the novel.

UPDATED to add: If you don't feel like shelling out for a copy, the entire novel is available online here.

who's up for a read-along?

2009-01-25T16:58:00.007-05:00

If you are, tell me which book you'd like most for the read-along. I guess you should also mention if there's one of these that you just would not do.

L. M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside

St. Augustine's Confessions

Douglas Coupland's All Families Are Psychotic

Wendell Berry's Life Is A Miracle

Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility

Whichever one we do, it'll probably go pretty slowly-- one post/discussion per week, perhaps.

Let me know what you think.

what is the rightful place of science?

2009-01-21T08:37:00.004-05:00

What do you think President Obama meant by the "rightful place" of science?

What do you think is the rightful place of science?

What I think is largely informed by my Christian faith, as well as my reading of Heidegger (particularly his essay "The Question Concerning Technology") and certain contemporary thinkers like Wendell Berry (particularly his book "Life Is A Miracle"). I'll articulate this further when I'm not distracted by preparing for a road trip.

Talk amongst yourselves.

the weekly chow plan

2009-01-11T12:58:00.003-05:00

Unless specified, the meal named is for supper; lunch is typically leftovers, breakfast is usually oatmeal, eggs or smoothies.

Sunday

Birchermuesli (for breakfast); potluck dinner at homegroup.

Monday

Baked Oatmeal for breakfast; I am using a recipe provided by my friend Jen:

"I like to prep this after dinner so in the morning I just have to throw it in the oven. It reheats well in the microwave, especially with a splash of milk.

From Cooking Light-- I always double it and cook it in the 9x13 pan with leftovers for the next day or 2.

2 cups oats
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup raisins (I usually use Craisins)
1 Tbsp. walnuts
1 tsp. baking powder
1 1/2 cups fat-free milk (I usually use a combination of cream and whole milk)
1/2 cup applesauce
2 tbsp. butter melted
1 egg, beaten
cooking spray

Preheat oven to 375F. Combine first 5 ingredients in a medium bowl, then combine next 4 ingredients. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, stir well. Pour into 8 inch square baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake for 20 min.

Enjoy!"

I cannot wait to try that one.

For supper that day, we are having Panang Tofu Curry, courtesy of the current issue of Bon Appetit

Tuesday

Pioneer Woman's Cauliflower Soup

Wednesday

C.O.R.N. or Freezer Fishing

Thursday

5 Spice Beet Soup (another one from the current Bon Appetit) & homemade whole wheat bread

Friday
Crispy Black Bean Tacos with Feta and Cabbage Slaw
(so I like the BA)

UPDATE: Those tacos are really good! I was doubtful when putting together the separate ingredients-- the black beans tasted far too cuminy (and I like cumin), and the slaw tasted a little off somehow, too. But when I put them all together with the feta cheese in the crispy corn tortillas the flavors came together wonderfully. We will definitely be having these again.

Saturday
Vegetable Quiche

accidental environmentalist

2009-01-07T15:49:00.002-05:00

That’s me.

Environmental activism has never been a huge priority with me. My official stance regarding climate change is I Have No Opinion, but I’m enough of a postmodern (although not a postmodernist, there’s a difference) to be fairly skeptical regarding broad claims to epistemological certainty made by many in the field of natural sciences—and on a variety of subjects, of which climate change is only one. If you want more specificity than that, I will tell you that I usually resonate with Planet Moron on the matter.

So there’s that. But here’s what has happened: as I’ve tried to make my consumption choices more oriented towards the stewardship of our financial resources (read: as I’m turning into more of a tightwad) and I’ve become more oriented to living attentively in a specific space, place and community (which means, among other things, buying seasonally and locally, where practicable), I’ve started taking measures which happen also to mesh with the stated concerns of many environmentalists:

homemade laundry detergent

TipNut has about nine billion recipes, but I use the following, which is cheap, easy and effective:

1 bar Fels-Naptha soap, grated (I use my auxiliary food processor for this)
2 cups borax
2 cups washing soda

Stir thoroughly to combine. Store in an airtight container. Use 2-4 Tbsp per load, depending on your water (and your dirt). It works great, and HEY, no phosphates and no container to trash or recycle! I could buy some fancy pants “green” detergent at Whole Paycheck, but this is way cheaper, and I don’t have to go breathe the smug.

no more fabric softener

I got this idea from Christine Moers over at Welcome To My Brain: white vinegar in the Downy ball. Seriously. It makes clothes truly scent-free and softens just the right amount. And, a $3.50 for a gallon and a half of the stuff at Wegman’s, it’s the cheapest fabric softener I can imagine. Did you know commercial fabric softeners make your towels less absorbent? They do. Vinegar does not. This is a happy thing. And HEY, no icky heavy metals leaching into your clothes and skin.

Diva Cup

I love, love, love my Diva Cup. I bought (from Whole Foods, I admit) it to save money on feminine hygiene products, but it also saves waste, as it turns out. I can’t think of a way to recycle tampons, can you?

‘poo free

This is another idea from Welcome To My Brain. I have gone shampoo free. Like Christine, I just give my hair a good thorough rinse when I shower, and every few days I scrub in some—get this—baking soda followed by an apple cider vinegar rinse. My hair is in great shape and this is such a cheap alternative to shampoo. And HEY no sulfates!

Vinegar is so wondrous, its uses so manifold. What else will clean your hair AND your clothes AND your kitchen floor?

minimal meat

I love meat. I love prime steak, and pork chops, and ohmyheart bacon. Love them, love them, love them. I can’t imagine ever going totally vegetarian.

But I almost have. Meat is expensive, and we are on a tight budget. Also meat is not so healthful, at least in the quantities I would consume if the restraints of circumstance were totally removed. So we have meat about once a week (more often for the growing boys—thank God for Dino Buddies) at most. For special occasions my nice husband takes me out for steak or I take him out for sushi. But mostly we chow on veg, grains, dairy and eggs. And as it happens, the large-scale production of meat for food has-- according to some, anyway-- a high environmental impact. So.

There are more, similar strategies to be implemented in the near future: a CSA membership this spring (about which I am SO excited), switching to baking soda after my current tube of toothpaste runs out, experimenting with essential oil/ baking soda combinations in place of deodorant, and so on.

What are you doing in terms of frugality and/or conservation?

a triumphant return to blogging!

2009-01-05T12:37:00.007-05:00

Well, if you consider the discussion of mundanities like my menu planning triumphant.

My meal planning and production style is still evolving, and with a toddler and preschooler it's necessary to be flexible, but generally what happens is:

We have one primary meal for supper-- because that's all I have the energy to cook, even though I do love cooking-- and eat the leftovers for lunch the next day. Leftovers that go uneaten for more than a couple of days get divvied up into portions and stuck in the freezer for revival later.

For breakfast we usually have eggs, oatmeal (old-fashioned, not instant) or yogurt (homemade!) smoothies or, less frequently, bagels or cold cereal. The kids are more likely to eat the latter. I try for eggs most of the time (scrambled with cheese and lots of spinach, or with a sliced tomato on the side in season), as I have found that a high protein breakfast is really helpful for weight control. On the weekends we typically have a vegetable quiche of some kind on Saturday and pancakes and bacon on Sunday.

Daily snacks are usually string cheese (yay, protein!), seasonal whole fruit and munchable veggies like baby carrots or celery sticks.

One predictable effect of my visits to my parents' home is to make me appreciate how much my diet has improved over the years. After a visit to the House of Meat, Starches and Dessert, I really miss my mostly vegetable, whole grain and legume diet. So I was pretty excited to get back into my own kitchen and my own dear Wegman's and plan a nice tasty menu for this week:

Monday

(Sorry for the extreme close-up; the bowl was sitting on my embarassingly dirty kitchen island.)

Pioneer Woman's Black-Eyed Pea Salad (the cilantro-free version, of course) with Moosewood Cornbread, which, YES, uses sugar. I know. I fail as a true Southerner. Moving on...

Tuesday
Slow Cooker Bean, Sweet Potato & Corn Stew from Veggie Meal Plans. Instead of the cannelini and lima beans called for in the recipe, I am using black beans, since they are the kind my husband will eat-- and, frankly, they are my favorite, too.

Wednesday
Khichdi with Peas, Carrots & Cauliflower. I love Indian food, but Peter's not a huge fan of curry, so recipes like this one, which we both like very much, are happy finds for me. The only change I'm making is to use powdered versions of some of the whole spices she calls for, because even the Indian aisle at my beloved Wegman's doesn't have everything.

Thursday
Hummus & Whole Wheat Pita with Cucumbers, Sprouts & Sun-Dried Tomatoes. I don't have a set recipe for hummus-- I just add chickpeas, tahini, EVOO, garlic, lemon juice and salt to the food processor until it tastes right-- or actually, until it tastes-- to me, anyway-- as if it could use just a touch more garlic, since it always gets more garlicky as it sits. My beloved Wegman's offers great whole wheat pita, free of HFCS or trans fats, so I usually just buy it there rather than make my own, although I have made it on occasion.

Friday
C.O.R.N. (Clean Out Refrigerator Night) or Freezer Fishing

Saturday
The above mentioned spinach quiche for breakfast, then we have an all-day meeting at church where lunch will be provided for us, then more leftovers at home. My mnemonic for quiche is 3-6-12: 3 eggs, 6 ounces of shredded cheese (usually comes out to about a cup and a half) and 12 ounces of half and half (or cream if I have it). Sometimes I bother to make a crust, sometimes I don't. I pile a green vegetable (broccoli and spinach are the two I use most frequently) into the pie plate, sprinkle the cheese over, beat the cream and eggs together with whatever spices I feel like adding (lately, white pepper, crushed red pepper flakes and always plenty of salt), pour over all and bake at, oh, 375F or so until it doesn't jiggle too much in the middle.

I'll probably go grocery shopping again Friday or so, and will plan Sunday's meals into the next week's menu.

The above menu has a lot of what I aim for when I plan our meals: protein-rich combinations of whole grains and legumes, lots of vegetables and a wide variety of them, and mostly meals than can be cooked in one or two dishes and that freeze well. That mostly vegetable meals are incredibly easy on the budget doesn't hurt, either.

Also, I use butter and salt unstintingly and unashamedly in my cooking. They make everything taste better. I might be more concerned about their health effects if our diet was full of meat and processed foods, but it isn't, so I'm not.

What about you? How are you cooking these days?

for He wrote your name on my heart in flame

2008-12-16T15:10:00.003-05:00

I totally forgot to mention that Peter turned forty this past Saturday! We had two parties, one a brunch for family, one an informal small plates dinner for a few close friends. They were exhausting to prepare for, so I didn't have time for much blogging. But that's okay-- I was so pleased at how everyone was so eager to celebrate him (and to give him presents, which he has to share because we're married, ha ha!).

I publicly laud my husband with some frequency. I think sometimes this makes him a touch uncomfortable, as though my completely justified and ardent admiration could possibly be confused with the sort of dysfunctional placement-upon-a-pedestal move that can only end in disappointment. I can't IMAGINE why anyone would think that!

Have no fear, my darling. I know you have flaws. I just can't think of any right now.

Just kidding. That annoying habit of being right ALL THE F&$*!ING TIME is a grave flaw.

Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. I came across a song on the iPod today that I hadn't heard in some time. And I was thinking that, while Peter and I are not the type of couple to have A Song, as in, "Oh, honey, they're playing our song," if we were that type of couple, this would SO be our song.

Thigpen's Wedding
by Kemper Crabb

Here I set my face unto you,
Here I speak my heart's true vow.
Here I choose to walk beside you,
Loving only you, my heart speaks true,
Forever more from now.

I will love you in the dawning
And in the bright noonday.
I will love you in the even.
Everyday I live, my heart I'll give.
I'll love you from my grave.

I have heard God in your laughter.
I have seen on Him your face.
And it's clear now what He's after,
For He wrote your name on my heart in flame.
It's a wound I'll not erase.

We will rise on wings of morning;
We will fly before the wind;
We will dwell within the mysteries
And the glories of Jehovah's love,
A circle without end.

We will pitch our tents toward Zion
In the shadow of His love.
We will covenant between us;
We will covenant with the earth below
And with heaven up above.

We will covenant with the dust below
And the Spirit up above.

submission issues

2008-12-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

Note: This is not the gender post I have been promising. That one is still in the works. This is another, related one which I have been percolating for more than a year.

I have come to the conclusion that most evangelical churches don't teach enough about submission.

Hear me out, now.

I have a number of dear friends-- all men, all in their twenties and thirties, and all having grown up in relatively conservative evangelical churches-- who have serious issues with aimlessness, dissatisfaction, and general malaise.

Some of this, I think is a generational issue-- as a group, we Gen-Xers are sandwiched between the bloated, self-entitled hordes of the Baby Boomers above and the sparkling Millenials below. If that isn't a recipe for malaise, I don't know what is.

But this condition seems particularly exaggerated for these young evangelical guys I know-- not all of them, or even most of them, but a lot of them.

My hunch is that this is because they have heard a great deal over the last decade or two about how they are supposed to be leaders, men of authority and action and initiative. They are supposed to be Wild at Heart Every Man's Battling Promise Keepers.

But these guys have not been equipped with the skill of submission, either to members of their communities or to Christ. After all, why would they? Submission and obedience have become so heavily gendered.

Submission to Christ has not only the character of submission to a set of rules or behaviors, but also the character of I, a person, in a relationship with another person, Christ, and that relationship being characterized, at least partly, by my submission to Him. That is incumbent upon every believer, male or female, slave or free.

When evangelicals spend all their time telling women that they ought to submit and men that they ought to be leaders, they do men a great disservice. If a man is taught that his Biblical manhood is characterized by qualities of leadership, initiative, etc., and yet within the context of his relationship to Christ he is called upon to be submissive, to receive Christ's authority over him, some conflict arises. How can he do that which he has been taught will violate his gender-- which will make him a "bad" man: that horror of horrors, a passive male?

As evangelical culture tends more and more to advocating a hyperarticulated masculinity characterized by aggression, leadership, strength, self-confidence, what happens to the servant of Christ characterized by submission, obedience, weakness, humility? I recognize that the two lists do not contain categorical opposites-- but you wouldn't know it from the widespread dysfunctionality in so many Gen-X evangelical guys. It seems to me that, just as much as many women in the evangelical church struggle to live out their gifts and vocations over against the gender constructs of 20th century evangelicalism, so must many of these guys be undergoing similar struggles.

Now, as my friend Stan rightly pointed out in a conversation just last night, submission is not easy for any human being of either gender, what with our fallen nature and all. True enough-- we all resist it. Pathological selfishness is pretty much ubiquitous in us.

But it does seem to me that the demands for particular performance of gender placed on evangelical men can have especially pernicious consequences, seeing as how that performance not only lacks but actively opposes cultivating the habits of submission and obedience so necessary to healthy discipleship and spiritual formation.

Of course, this is all speculation on my part. What do you think?

a Christmas trauma

2008-12-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

Saturday our family were good parishioners and went out to support some folks from our church as they participated in the Festival of Lights in old town Fairfax. COA's participation began with carolers making the rounds at three different restaurants, and everyone was encouraged to have lunch at one of the three in order to be supportive.

Accordingly, we went to the Firehouse Grill, anticipating some above-average pub fare and the chance to sing along with some lovely old carols. We chose that restaurant because I hold a discussion group there twice a month, and I wanted to continue building the relationship.

So we walked in and got a nice corner table right next to the front window, where the boys could look out across the street at Christmas lights and merry making. The bartender came to take our order, and Peter asked what was on tap. The bartender recited the whole list, although he had me at "Guinness." When he got to the last selection, Peter asked what it was, and the bartender said it was a light ale infused with apricot. Peter gave a thumbs up*.

"A fruit beer?" I teased him, "You're going to have a fruit beer while your wife drinks a Guinness?" The bartender said,

"Hey, would it make it better if I served a shot of Jack along with it?"

"Yes," said Peter, "That sounds great."

"Hahahahaha," said the bartender, and then, "Really?" Peter nodded emphatically, and the bartender left to get our drinks.

Then the carolers descended upon us.

They were a group of three ladies from our church-- dear, sweet ladies; sincere ladies. The leader of the trio was a woman of tremendous enthusiasm. She passed instruments to our boys-- fruit shaped children's maracas. Colin got a potato. Marky had an apple. I was given a tambourine. Peter was given a set of adult maracas-- they had been welded together. I do not know why. Perhaps shaking them separately is somehow illicit?

But the best part was the lyrics. We were given lyrics sheets. We were expected to sing along.

"We're taking back 'Jingle Bells,'" announced the leader. I barely had time to wonder if we had ever had them to begin with before being jolted by what I read:

Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord,
Praise His Holy Name,
He's so good, He's so kind,
He's everyday the same...
Praise the Lord, Praise the Lord,
Praise His Holy Name,
He's so good, He's so kind,
He's everyday the same!

Dashing through the snow,
With Jesus on my mind,
Telling the Good News
To everyone I find,
Going where God leads,
To every life forlorn,
Spreading forth the Word of God,
That Jesus Christ is Born.

"This. Is. Awesome." I declared gleefully**, looking across the table at Peter, who was still staring in shock at the paper in his hand. I put on my most maniacal grin and gazed at him, teeth bared, until he raised his eyes to meet mine.

The ladies burst into song. I shook my tambourine as loud as I could to disguise the fact that I wasn't actually singing along. Colin shook his potato cheerfully. Peter was too dazed to shake his maracas (pity). Marky clutched his apple and glared at the church ladies with open suspicion. Being two has its advantages.

About the time the church ladies got to "with Jesus on my mind," the bartender returned with our alcohol supply. He elbowed his way through the church ladies and set the beer and whiskey (the whimsical order for which I concluded instantly was powerful evidence of divine providence) before Peter, who looked up gratefully and said,

"Good timing." I do hope the bartender knew Peter wasn't being sarcastic.

All amusement aside, we were deeply bothered by the experience. "Taking back 'Jingle Bells?'" Really? Why? If you want publicly to declare the gospel in song form, why not just sing a freaking Christmas carol already? "Joy to the World," is as blatant as you can get.

Why do evangelicals have this driving need to tweak everything? "Jingle Bells" is a perfectly cheerful, harmless (well, unless you take into account the potential psychosis induced by playing it 5,476 times in a row at your preschooler's insistence) little song as it is. But we had to go and change it about so it's churchified. This is in no way a move which shares the Good News with the community. It is not an invitation; it is a defensive posture. It's the cultivation of a safe identity: Look how Christian we are!

As Peter said, this is not the expression of a confident community. Sing the carols. Tell our story. Love our neighbors. Why is that so hard?

*Peter would like me to clarify that it was only noon, and a lighter beer seemed more appropriate than a stout.

**I think this is a Gen X thing: when a given situation is too awkward or awful, adopting a defense shield of irony is our default response.

do you think they did it on purpose?

2008-12-08T07:27:00.002-05:00

Here is the number two headline and blurb in my New York Times email this morning:

Detroit Bailout Is to Bring On U.S. Oversight
Congressional Democrats were drafting legislation for government control of the auto industry, including the possible creation of an oversight board.

Here is the number three headline and blurb, the one right next to the above mentioned:

In Hard Time, Russia Moves In to Reclaim Private Industries
The Kremlin seems to be exploiting the economic crisis to establish more control over financially weakened industries that it has long coveted.

"That must have been on purpose," I said to Peter. He shook his head in disagreement.

"The New York Times doesn't have any sense of irony."

In any case, wow. Just...wow.

a good Advent read for curmudgeons

2008-12-07T16:45:00.004-05:00

The Birds of the Air by Alice Thomas Ellis

This is just the sort of Advent read I like.

Mrs. Marsh, a widow, is hosting her two daughters and assorted neighbors and friends in her home for Christmas. Mary, the older, is still debilitated by grief after the death of her daughter some months earlier. Barbara, the younger, is coping with the the recent discovery of her husband's infidelity. So is her cranky adolescent son, Sam, although Barbara does not know it.

The book is soaked with grief, anger, betrayal and loss. It is also rife with acerbic and sometimes farcical humor, particularly in Mrs. Marsh's home on Christmas day. It's not too sweet on the tongue, but so piquant I couldn't resist savoring it anyway.

What the book ultimately does is invest the reader (the appropriately attentive and engaged reader, anyhow) with all the longing of the Advent season-- the double longing both for the hope of Christmas and that hope's completion in the second Advent of Christ: although set during Advent and Christmas, resurrection is the almost entirely unspoken need for the people in this novel.

It's a rich text, but so readable I'm sure I missed most of what's there to be sussed out. I'm going back for another read shortly.

Highly recommended.

View all my reviews.

bumper stickers I would put on my van if my husband didn't have an irrational antipathy to bumper stickers

2008-12-07T10:57:00.010-05:00

Cafe Press is SUCH a time sink.

this was almost too much for me to bear

2008-12-05T12:44:00.001-05:00

see more puppies

a great post on married love

2008-12-05T07:03:00.003-05:00

There's a link in my sidebar, but I wanted to make sure you had the opportunity to go read this post by Veronica Mitchell, who is not just one of my favorite mommybloggers, but one of my favorite bloggers, period.

Today love is something different. I know his flaws and he knows mine. There is no more room for adoration, not exactly. I know what an ass he can be, and adoration has been replaced by mildly baffled wonder at how much he loves me, now that I know what an ass I can be, too.

Yes, yes! Just so.

Advent and evil

2008-12-02T23:24:00.002-05:00

Last Sunday in church we sang song after song about the sovereignty of God-- His reign, His kingship, His power.

And I realized how much those proclamations are acts of faith and hope every time we make them, because from where I sit it doesn't always look like God is King.

Look, I know the women who have abortions suffer. And I know abortion isn't the only evil in the world. But it's the thing that, for whatever reason, has snagged my attention lately. I think it started when I read Jennifer's two excellent posts on the subject over at Conversion Diary. Then I spent a significant amount of time last Saturday night reading this post, and this one, and this one, and this one at Church of the Masses, and then, tipped off by a commenter, browsing Jill Stanek's blog (WARNING: most of those links contain graphic and disturbing images, not to mention unapologetic political right-wingedness). For those of you who don't know, Jill Stanek is the nurse who was fired from Christ Hospital for her whistle-blowing regarding the blatant infanticide going on there.

It's just so big, you know? Such a hulking monster. And we get up and trip cheerily through our days, or maybe trudge groggily through them, for the most part either refusing to acknowledge the wickedness and terror of it all, or acknowledging it and then pushing the awareness away, because after all, what can we do against such a tsunami of torment and death?

Why are we not driven mad by the horror of it?

The bald truth, plainly stated, about massive evil is not easy to read, and probably not just the thing to read right before going to bed. I lay in my husband's arms and cried for what seemed like hours before finally drifting off into nightmares.

A couple of weeks ago in my Bible study we talked about the widow of Zeraphath. She is the woman who took in the prophet Elijah and fed him even though she and her son were on the brink of starvation. Elijah promised her that if she took him in, the little bit of grain and oil she had left would last them until the famine was over. She believed him, and took him in, and sure enough they were preserved from starving to death. Then, after this miraculous deliverance, the woman's son fell ill. When the breath left his body, Elijah carried the boy up to his rooms and threw himself across the boy's body and begged God for the child's life. When the widow saw her son alive again, she said to Elijah, "Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth."

The persistence of the grain and oil was an undeniable miracle, but it did not draw from the widow the acclamation she finally delivers to Elijah. It was the miraculous return to her of her child that caused her to say, "Now I know..."

Our God is a God who conquers death. He is the God who gives our children back when it seems all hope is gone.

Here is a thing I found comforting-- in reading an interview with N.T. Wright the other day, I came across this:

One of the things that distinguished early Christians in the Roman Empire was that they didn't practice abortion and they didn't practice infanticide. This is why there were so many more Christian women than pagan women, which is one of the reasons Christianity spread. There were all these Christian women who, when they got married, insisted on bringing their children up as Christians. The Romans tended to expose female children after they'd had one daughter.

What comforts me about this is not that abortion and infanticide has been around almost as long as there have been babies-- if I think too long on the millions of children thus murdered throughout history, I start to lose it a little bit-- but that it has always been part of our identity as the body of Christ that we do not kill our children. And as long as we have been the church, it has been part of our job to resist this monstrous evil, this spirit of Moloch, wherever it is found.

But abortion is not going to go away. Even if it were illegal everywhere, people would find a way. I think this is the main reason I am fairly listless about the idea of changing laws. Changed laws are not changed hearts, and our hearts are desperately wicked.

We can and should fight it, of course, and do what we can to save what children we can, but ultimately this battle belongs to the God who has conquered death-- and that is another comfort. N.T. Wright uses a phrase I love: "putting the world to rights." This is what we are called to participate in here and now, however we can, and it is what we hope for when Christ returns, fully and finally to establish His perfect rule.

This is why Advent throbs not only with joyous expectation but also with a terrible yearning. Advent echoes not only with praises but also with desperate cries for deliverance.

He is coming, and He is going to put the world to rights.

He is coming, and He is going to fix all the broken shit.

I cannot conceive how the brutal and gruesome deaths of millions of children will be fixed-- no matter what happens in the future, what has happened has happened. But I know we have the promise of the resurrection, and I am sure that all those little humans are at rest in paradise, awaiting that day when their humanity and ours is fully and finally restored.

Maranatha.

well, well, well

2008-11-30T21:42:00.002-05:00

Here I am at the end of November, and with this post I complete NaBloPoMo!

Now I am going to take a break.

music recommendations for Advent and Christmas

2008-11-29T20:52:00.004-05:00

These are the songs getting a lot of play on the old iPod right now.

SeeqPod - Playable Search

What can I say about Sufjan Stevens? We only discovered him last year about this time, and last Advent was pretty much All Sufjan, All The Time. His "O Holy Night" fills me with merriment. Typically I prefer a more operatic treatment of the song, in keeping with the imperative, "Fall on your knees!" But somehow the mad plinkery of this version is just right.

I've liked Barenaked Ladies ever since my senior year in high school (1994, which feels like about two weeks ago), when we studied "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" and our teacher played "If I Had $1,000,000" for us in conjunction with that. Their collaboration with Sarah McLachlan on "God Rest Ye Merry/ We Three Kings" is both groovy and spine tingling, especially when McLachlan belts out, "Glorious now, behold Him arise/ God and King and sacrifice/ Alleluia! Alleluia! Worship Him, God most high!"

Yes, ma'am.

I know almost nothing about Steeleye Span, but I do know that there are few activities more pleasurable to me than driving alone in the car and singing along in Latin at the top of my lungs to "Gaudette."

"When I Get Home For Christmas" has all sorts of emotional resonance for me. Maybe I'll tell you some stories sometime. Not now. I will say I love the imagery of "We'll open presents between kisses/ Your eyes burn stronger than the fire."

Does anyone NOT love Vince Guaraldi's Christmas music?

Not included on this playlist are two selections from Kemper Crabb: "Down in Yon Forrest" and "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent."

Also, Sufjan Stevens' "O Come O Come Emmanuel," which is my favorite Advent carol ever ever of all time ever, no matter who is singing or what the instrumentation.

What are you listening to this Advent and Christmas?

Black Friday Pancakes, or, Something Different To Do With All That Leftover Cranberry Sauce

2008-11-28T09:48:00.004-05:00

The pancakes are an adaptation of the excellent basic recipe in the 13th edition of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

1/2 - 3/4 c. whole milk, depending on how thin you like your pancake batter
2 T. butter, melted
1 egg
1 c. white flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 c. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cardamom
1/2 tsp. dried ginger
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. cloves

You could also add cinnamon-- I think it would be delicious, but my husband is a Crazy person Who Does Not Like Cinnamon, so I didn't use it.

1 1/4 c. chilled heavy cream

Crockpot Lady's Cranberry Sauce

Combine dry ingredients. Combine egg, milk and melted butter and beat them together briefly. Stir into the dry ingredients. Lightly grease or butter a griddle or frying pan and set it over moderate heat until a few drops of water sprinkled on the man form rapidly moving globules. For small pancakes drop about 2 T. batter into the pan; for larger pancakes, use about 1/4 cup. Turn when pancakes are full of bubbles on the top and brown the other side. Place finished cakes in a 200F oven until you have enough to begin serving.

Meanwhile, whip the cream. You can sweeten it if you want, but I wouldn't, if I were you.

To serve, place a stack of pancakes on a small plate and top with a generous amount of cranberry sauce (think compote). Finish with a generous dollop of the whipped cream.

I see a lot of recipes like this one where it seems to me they're just as good without the whipped cream. This is not one of them. The cream really complements the spiciness of the pancakes and the tart intensity of the cranberry sauce-- all three together are a fantastic combination.

because there aren't enough recipes on Teh Internest

2008-11-27T09:07:00.005-05:00

~~Auntie Helen's~~Mary Ann's Spiced Nuts

1 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. nutmeg
pinch salt
4 T. water
4 cups nuts (I used pecans this morning, because they are DELICIOUS and also because they were what I had on hand)

Combine all ingredients except nuts in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan. Bring to a boil. Continue to boil for 2-5 minutes, until it reaches the soft ball stage. Turn off the heat and stir in the nuts. Stir so everything gets well-acquainted, as Peg Bracken would say.

Dump it out on waxed paper and spread it out. Let dry. Break up and store in an airtight container. These can be frozen, I've heard, but I've never had any last long enough for me to try. SO GOOD.

my church has an Advent blog!

2008-11-26T20:56:00.002-05:00

We settled on the title "Rejoice to Behold His Appearing," but what I really wanted was "Death's Dark Shadows Put To Flight."

Ah, well. At any rate, look for posts beginning this Sunday, November 30. I am among the contributors. So is Kimberly.

Back to baking!

a harsh and dreadful thing

2008-11-25T17:06:00.003-05:00

Never be frightened at your own faintheartedness in attaining love, and meanwhile do not even be frightened by your own bad acts. I am sorry that I cannot say anything more comforting, for active love is a harsh and fearful thing compared with love in dreams.
--The Brothers Karamazov

"Colin," I asked, startled, "What is on your finger?? Is that poop on your finger?"

"Oh, no, Mom," he said seriously, "I just wiped it on your shirt."

what I made today

2008-11-24T21:59:00.002-05:00

...in preparation for Thursday:

Spinach Squares for everyone to nibble upon while we await The Feast; I got the recipe from my MIL who got it I don't know where. Yum!

Tabasco Cheese Bread from Bernard Clayton's Complete Book of Breads-- I cannot tell you how hard I am trying not to get into the loaf right now, telling myself I can make another one later.

Tomorrow we move on to Apple Bag Pie and Light Yeast Rolls (also from the Clayton book), and Wednesday we do Pecan Pie and Cranberry Sauce, and Thursday we do a double batch of Pioneer Woman's Creamy Herbed Potatoes.

Links and recipes later. I cannot tell you how tired I am, and I still have so much to do...

a literary survey, part two

2008-11-23T22:12:00.002-05:00

What do you think of Fanny Price?

a) Hate.
b) Love.
c) Used to hate, now love.
d) Used to love, now hate.

Please give your reasons in your response. Also, if you've read Lionel Trilling's essay, "Mansfield Park," that would be good to know.

a literary survey, part one

2008-11-22T10:44:00.000-05:00

What do you think of Little Women?

a) I have always liked it
b) I have always disliked it
c) I used to like it, but now I don't
d) I used to dislike it, but now I do

Please to choose one and tell me why (or make up an "e" if none of the above fit).

I am trying to articulate something about this book and my experience of it, and your input on it would be helpful, I think.

More anon.

this week was FAIL week

2008-11-21T18:44:00.005-05:00

Warning: TMI. TMI. TMI. I am not kidding. TMI.

I should have known Wednesday wasn't going to be good when, first thing in the morning, I accidentally dropped my Diva Cup into the toilet.

But I recovered from that, made coffee, and then decided I was going to make this awesome potato omelet, so I broke out my ceramic bladed mandoline.

Hm, I thought to myself, That potato is awfully bulky and awkwardly shaped. I'll just run it over the blade with my bare hand until it's small enough to use the safety grip.

Sigh.

Everything is still attached, but I have my thumb shmeared with Neosporin and wrapped up in bandaging tape. I'm confident the cuts will heal well with time.

Have you ever been without the use of your dominant thumb? My world has become unnavigable. It is unexpectedly difficult to do things like crack an egg into a bowl or wash one's kids' hair or type a blog post or...

...mess about with one's feminine hygiene product. I love my Diva Cup, but there's knack to the thing, a knack I do not have with my left hand. So things aren't situated as securely as they could be. Yesterday morning as I was getting off the potty, I sneezed.

"CHOO!" said I.

Whizzz PLOP! went the Diva Cup.

I wish, wish, wish I was making that up.

Today, what with the jitters from fear of leakage and frustration from not being able to clean my house-- as fate would have it, I was in the midst of one of my rare cleaning streaks when the potato slicing FAIL happened-- I was pretty darn grumpy. I started the day by snapping at my half-asleep husband for snapping at one of the kids. Wife FAIL.

There was a sort of a win with the homemade cinnamon rolls I made for the kids and hubs, but then I ate four of them, so fasting FAIL and diet FAIL-- it was a twofer! And naturally that made me feel EVEN BETTER about myself.

And THEN I snapped at the kids in exactly the way I had castigated the hubs for earlier, only I did it ten times worse. Mom FAIL. Consistency FAIL.

By nap time, I really really really really really needed a break. Marky went down very easily, but Colin tossed and turned and sat up and played and told himself stories and had to use the bathroom and wanted to tell himself more stories and didn't want covers even though his room was freezing and finally capped the performance by digging a piece of poo out of his bottom and trying to hand it to me.

"Colin," I asked in groggy alarm, "What is that?"

"It's a germ, Mom. Take it, take it."

So I marched him downstairs for a hand washing. On the way back, I instructed him to leave downstairs a small toy with which he had been playing while in bed.

"Nooo!" he yelled, and headed up the stairs with it. I grabbed him and yanked him back.

"Yes!" I said, in Very Firm Tones, "You WILL obey me." He plunked down on his bottom and began to wail.

And then, I heard it. More wailing, this from the baby monitor. Marky had been awakened by the ruckus. My chance for a break was gone.

"RAAAARRAAAARRRRRRRRR!!!!" I said. And "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!"

In a rage I punched the nearest object, a rocking easy chair.

Have you ever been REALLY MAD and punched something bouncy? It's like tried to slap down a Weeble. It is the opposite of cathartic.

Boingy! went the chair.

Boingy! Boingy! Boingy!

"GRRRRRRRGGRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!" I said. Through a red miasma, my gaze fell upon a child-sized basketball in the kitchen floor. I seized it and hurled it at the linoleum with all the force I could muster.

The ball was not inflated very well. Thrummp, said the ball, and then, pfwoo.

"NNNGGGGGGRRRNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGG" I shrieked, through clenched teeth. With no other alternative before me, I pulled back, aimed my besocked toes at the wall in front of me, and kicked.

And my foot went through the drywall.

Homeowner FAIL!

Catharsis success.

the gender post IS on its way...

2008-11-20T21:29:00.001-05:00

...but not tonight. I have some urgent work. PAID, even!

Works For Me Wednesday: Feeding Toddlers Rice Without the Mess

2008-11-19T19:11:00.004-05:00

It's my first ever Works For Me Wednesday post! Go check out Shannon's blog for tons of tips. Here is mine.

Rice was my mashed potatoes growing up. I think it might be a Louisiana thing, but rice was our Default Dinner Starch. Midwesterners have mashed potatoes and gravy. We ate rice and gravy.

So, what with my husband's inordinate love of Japanese food and my cultural heritage, rice is a seriously comforting comfort food at our house.

Of course, the comfort of a big pile of rice can be severely compromised by having to clean up a million little grains from the tablecloth, your napkin, the floor, the toddler's napkin, the toddler's chair and the toddler's hair.

I suppose I could have just not served them rice, but both my kids LOVE rice, and they are picky enough that if there's a non-junk food they will eat with any consistency, I'm not going to withhold it. But the question remained: how to let them eat it without the mess and without them getting less than a tablespoon in them even though they spent the whole meal trying to cram it down?

Then I discovered yaki onigiri: grilled rice balls. They are a huge comfort food in Japan.

I learned about them from Biggie at Lunch in a Box. She is the queen of bento and often packs yaki onigiri for her preschooler's bento lunches.

So what are they? They are plain rice, compressed in molds or just smashed between your wet palms (my method of choice), and grilled-- or, in my case, cooked in black sesame oil in my cast-iron skillet. You can flavor them almost any way you want by mixing in a bit of the appropriate stuff-- a dribble of soy sauce or a squeeze of ketchup are our favorites. Properly made, they hold together wonderfully and a perfect finger food for little people (and big people!). My little guys snarf them faster than I can make them.

There you have it: yaki onigiri-- easy, tasty and TIDY. It works for me!

my concerns about homeschooling my kids

2008-11-18T10:14:00.006-05:00

Private schools are cost-prohibitive.

Public schools, at least the ones around here, terrify me-- not because I think they are particularly dangerous or violent or run by Evil Secularist Cabals; I just think the standard approach to classroom education in this country leaves a lot to be desired.

So there we are. Homeschooling it is.

Here are two things that still bother me, though.

1. While it is true that one of the wonderful things about homeschooling is that parents are completely in charge, it is also true that one of the desperate deficiencies of homeschooling is that parents are completely in charge.

We. Are not. Perfect. In fact, I am chaotically and perpetually disorganized and not a little lazy. I'm awaiting with great anticipation the release of the 10th Anniversary edition of The Well-Trained Mind, and I'm excited as all get out about using the methods described therein to educate my children. I love teaching and learning, and want to pass that on to them, and I'm pleased and happy to do it. I'm just a little frightened that I'll sabotage everything with my poor organization.

2. There are an overwhelming array of resources out there for homeschooling families. Yay! There exists a huge, benevolent, supportive community. Yay! Truly, homeschooling has gone beyond merely a movement to becoming its own subculture.

This subculture, though, is dominated by a conservative evangelicals. Which would be fine if we were adhering to a narrow definition of conservative evangelical-- I self-identify that way, after all-- but there's all the cultural dross to deal with, too.

One (but not the only) part of that cultural dross that really concerns me is the deliberate construction of particular gender identities and ways of thinking about gender. There are whole seminars at the Virginia home school convention on being "Biblical daughters" and training up one's sons to "lead" the home. Their proponents call them "Biblical," but I do not think they are, and they are NOT what I want to pass on to my boys.

I do not want my guys to grow up thinking that they must adopt certain behaviors or attitudes to be masculine, or that they are prohibited from pursuing certain interests because they aren't manly enough. I do not want them growing up with the notion that women are only there to serve them, or that women only derivatively bear the image of God, but rather that women are their equals and co-laborers, and that all of us, men and women, are called to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ, the risen King. I do not want my daughters, if we ever have any, growing up with the assumption that she may only exercise her gifts and talents within the domestic sphere (and I realize, complementarian readers, that I am painting with a broad brush here-- please indulge me and allow me to defer a discussion of the complexities until a later date, like tomorrow).

So again, it's a really great thing about homeschooling that the parents are completely in charge, because you can bet your boots that we won't be passing those attitudes along to our children. But they're going to be tough to filter out, and frankly, I know my beliefs about those issues are going to filter out a lot of the support that would otherwise be offered me-- so it's kind of a lonely prospect.

...and I guess I've mentioned gender stuff often enough on this blog that I'd better get cracking on a post about what I mean when I use terms like "complementarian" and "egalitarian," anyhow. Maybe you'll get that tomorrow.

If I'm not too busy cooking and cleaning and changing diapers and all.

Dear Creepy Guys Who Used Furtively To Watch The Endless Hi-Def Loop Of Nasty At The Front Of The Giant Victoria's Secret In Tyson's Corner,

2008-11-17T21:24:00.004-05:00

Please be furtive again.

It was creepy enough when you made a slow loop in front of the store in an attempt to conceal your ogling, but is even worse to push my stroller past you while you openly stand there and stare.

It is yet worse than that when I push my stroller past and see that some of you are openly ogling not the Endless Hi-Def Loop of Nasty, but the nubile teenagers picking panties out of the sale bins just inside.

Augh.

short post tonight; I have people over

2008-11-16T18:56:00.004-05:00

I am feeding them the Crockpot Lady's Pizza Soup. It is yummy.

We are playing games and drinking chardonnay and doing a test run of this cake for Peter's birthday. It is also yummy-- very, very yummy-- but I'd just as soon skip the cake part altogether and have the incredibly delicious mousse.

Peter is having a very Significant Birthday in December. I'll give you a hint: he has friends from high school who now have children in college.

All for now. Back to the table.

Mwah! I love you, my internet darlings. All of you.

Sorry, that's the chardonnay.

this is why philanthropists are important

2008-11-15T17:38:00.004-05:00

So. I just got my invitation to Q 2009.

I would LOVE to go. I'm all about fruitful exchange of ideas, especially when it comes to Christian ministry and cultural engagement. Many of the folks who will be there-- Andy Crouch and the like-- are super smart and engaged and really, really nice.

But the conference registration-- the early bird rate, mind you, and not including hotel and transportation-- is $625.

Six hundred and twenty five dollars!

That really bothers me, and not only because I can't afford it. I can't afford it, and my church's budget is tight enough (what with fighting off a vicious law suit and all) that I'd rather not ask them to subsidize. I'm sure the organizers did their best to make the cost reasonable, but it seems to be that ultimately that fee-- especially in this economy-- is going to price smaller churches and their middle class members right out of the conference (there are a limited number of scholarships available for students and church planters, but I am neither at the moment).

Peter made the entirely reasonable point that they have to cover their costs. Of course they do. It just seems like there are enough multi-million dollar Christian foundations out there that they could have secured a few grants to bring that cost down more. Sheesh.

Is this just me? What do y'all think?

ACK!

2008-11-14T13:41:00.003-05:00

I still stand by every word I said here, okay?

That being said, don't let me turn into this guy. If I do, please come give me a smacking.

Thank you. That is all.

I have been tagged

2008-11-13T07:17:00.004-05:00

Kimberly has tagged me with a meme: seven random things.

1. I prefer men's pants. They fit (me) better and they are significantly cheaper.

2. There are not words for how much I love Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

3. I cannot stand Thomas Hardy novels.

4. But I just adore Cormac McCarthy.

5. I made my own pita bread yesterday, for the first time ever! It was so cool! I am so excited; this is one more thing I can make for so much cheaper than buying it at the store. Yay!

6. Peter and I have not actually made clear to our very complementarian relatives that we are egalitarians-- we've just sort of let them assume certain things. I know I'm just being conflict-avoidant. We'll have to make it clear, soon, though, because we want to teach our children to think a certain way about gender, and our extended family is going to realize it.

7. I have this disturbing lump on my neck. My doctor ordered a sonogram, and it appears to be "nothing." But it still FREAKS. ME OUT.

MORE babywearing pictures!

2008-11-12T21:16:00.009-05:00

Aren't you excited?

Veronica was looking for babywearing advice, and as part of my response, I am posting these pictures of two month old Marky in what the Moby Wrap people call the Joey Hold (link goes to Lotus Hold; Joey is the same thing with legs out).

That was before the weight loss, by the way.

Dear Anonymous,

2008-11-11T14:42:00.006-05:00

I think most of the questions you raise are fair.

Let me see if I can try to address them, albeit not in the original order:

With regard to my motive, or rather motives, I'll say right up front that it would be disingenuous for me to claim the intellectual exercise didn't give me any pleasure. Of course it does; that's how I'm gifted, trained and, I believe, called. I enjoy doing the things I'm good at, and one of those things is the critical evaluation of certain artifacts of evangelical culture.

Maybe you should spend all your time attacking something that is worthy of attack, and heaven knows there are tons of them to pick from.

Some people are called and gifted to engage those ideas and attitudes which would attack Christianity from the outside-- Islam, for example, or radical secularism.

My own calling and gifts have placed me squarely in the position to prod the church, and specifically that branch of it known as north American evangelicalism, from within-- to encourage self-examination, intellectual rigor, and a general willingness to "test the Scriptures." When individuals or organizations within the church push bad teaching-- even with good motives, and I do believe Focus on the Family has good motives-- then they ought to be called to account, and as far as I can tell the behemoth of massed power and wealth that is FoF is accountable to exactly no one. But that's another blog post.

What motivated you to pay and go to the training seminar in the first place?

I mentioned what motivated my attending the training in the first place here:

Certain signs have led me to believe that the Truth Project's materials are going to make their way into the life of our parish, whether or not I have anything to do with it. So, I consider it my responsibility [as a member of the Discipleship Design Team in our parish] to vet the Truth Project to my satisfaction and issue [to the Design Team, at least] the appropriate warnings and correctives where necessary.

I was first introduced to worldview theory fourteen years ago, as a freshman English major at DBU. I was so enthralled with it that within two weeks I had decided to major in philosophy instead. In the intervening years, I have watched as the worldview concept filtered out into evangelical culture, and I have seen some people deal with it really well, and some people deal with it very poorly. So whenever I see anything coming down the pike which purports to deal with worldview, I hesitate to let it pass without making sure the people who produced it actually know what they're talking about, particularly if it's likely to affect my parish.

Also, I had help with the registration expenses.

Do you just like to be cynical?

I like to be cynical, but I don't just like to be cynical. Cynicism for its own sake is a waste of time and a good way to cultivate contempt for others, which is not my goal at all. Cynicism has its place, though.

Is your goal to make sure that all your friends believe this to be not only a waste of time, but also a venue of falsehood?

No; it is my goal to make sure that thousands and thousands of evangelicals believe this. Peter and I have actually tossed around the idea of working up an article together and pitching it to Christianity Today or Books & Culture (although the B&C audience probably doesn't need any convincing), or maybe even World-- I bet Olasky would at least give it a hearing.

Obviously (I hope) such an article would be considerably more polished and less ranting than what I slap up on this here personal blog.

I may not have a vast vocabulary with which I pontificate, but maybe my child-like approach to many things helps me view them in a clear manner.

Maybe. I would like to point out, though, that we are told to receive the kingdom of God like little children, not the Truth Project.

Just your statement of going stark raving mad…. It is a bit overboard don’t you think? No one is forcing you to watch these. Maybe you watch them with your own predisposed idea of what they are saying without really truly hearing what they are saying.

I am all for the appropriate practice of humility with regard to my own understanding. Believe me, I've done enough (and believed enough) extremely stupid things in my life to be aware of my own limitations. Every reader of a text encounters it within the context of their own commitments and assumptions. I am no exception to that rule (and neither, I might add, are children).

There's no such thing as a perfect prescription when we talk about our worldview glasses-- the nature of human finitude is such that we can never know the truth perfectly. This isn't the same thing as saying we can't know any of the truth, or that there is no such thing as the truth (if that were the case, what would be the point of this conversation?); merely that our encounters with it, while meaningful and important, are ultimately limited.

One implication of that limitation is the necessity, in any discussion of worldview, of carefully examining our own presuppositions and assumptions, our beliefs and commitments. Examination doesn't necessarily mean discarding those beliefs and commitments-- after all, we need some framework for making sense of the world, even if it's only provisional.

But we do need to be aware of that framework. That awareness, coupled with a proper humility in matters of our own knowledge, ought to be firmly in place before we begin an exploration of other worldviews. So believe me, I don't play a minute of those DVDs before I pray for discernment and wisdom and charity-- especially for charity, because I believe a hermeneutic of love is one of the best hermeneutics of all...but that's another blog post.

Incidentally, the phrase "stark raving mad" is an instance of hyperbole, although I do find it pretty frustrating to consider how much of the Truth Project's success depends on its having a largely uncritical audience. But that's why they have me. :)

With so many different articles, beliefs and issues that could be worthy of our time to criticize and argue with, I find it ironic that you are taking so much time to pick apart something that is not anti-God, anti-Jesus and can be a great tool to help us evangelize the world!

But that's just my point-- I don't think it is a great tool. While it isn't all error, on balance it's more harmful than helpful. In fact, I think it's actively pernicious (hi, Kimberly!). I think that vast numbers of people internalizing the creeping Platonism and the ill-advised commitment to Enlightenment categories propagated by the Truth Project could do grievous harm to the church and her cause.

And here we come to what ultimately motivates me: I love these people. I do! The evangelical church is the one in which I was reared and in which I came to faith in Christ. Much as I like to make sport of certain cultural oddities of evangelicalism, and as much as some of their peculiar blindnesses drive me up the wall, at the end of the day these people are my family. They are my brothers and sisters and, in the particular area of discipleship, I believe I am called to their care. I love evangelicals, and because I love them I refuse to consign them to the consequences of bad teaching.

it's international babywearing week!

2008-11-10T16:34:00.009-05:00

I have known of the existence of International Babywearing Week for all of three days. Then Kimberly did her post about it today, so I figured I might as well follow suit.

You've already seen me go on extensively about babywearing, and my Ergo in particular, here, so for this post I thought I'd focus on the awesomeness of the wrap.

In September we took a little mini-break with the kids and rented a cabin at Fairy Stone State Park. We hiked and hiked and hiked in the cool green forest; it was wonderful. They were long hikes, though, and little legs get awfully tired trudging up and down the mountains.

We had brought the Ergo, of course, but the Ergo, wonderful as it is, can only hold one kid at a time. So Colin rode on Peter's back in the Ergo, and we put Marky on my back in the wrap, which is 6 yards of cotton fabric I got off the dollar rack at Wal-Mart (before they went and got rid of the fabric section, darn them!). I haven't even hemmed the ends, so the total cost of the wrap was $6, and I'll put it up against any wrap out there for versatility and convenience.

In these pictures I have Marky in the back wrap cross carry. It is extremely comfortable for both kid and parent.

Also in these pictures I have Stupid Hair. It is at an awkward length right now, so I typically cover it with a scarf or bandanna. That day I didn't bother. We're hiking in the forest of southern Virginia, I thought. Who will see me?

Ha.

And, in case you are wondering, that is a dirty diaper tied to a stick. He pooped, there were not trash receptacles on the trail, and I didn't want to put the dirty diaper in the bag with the food and water. Peter says that, all things considered, it was a pretty appropriate standard for our company.

another year, another Hallowe'en Hallelujah party

2008-11-09T13:38:00.009-05:00

For the past year, whenever we visit Lynchburg and happen to be at my in-laws' church, Colin has talked with great fondness of the trunk-or-treating he did there last year.

So of course we went again this year, despite the noise and blood-curdling cheer.

I have found that one way to navigate uncomfortable social situations is to distance myself by means of intellectual curiosity. If I think of myself as on an anthropological expedition of sorts, I can view almost anything with a certain level of detachment and equanimity. Of course, this attitude carries its own dangers-- I do not actually want to cultivate contempt for people or even only to objectify them.

Some of that awareness and concern must have been on Peter's mind when he chided me for taking pictures of some of the games in the fellowship hall.

"Sherri," he hissed, "It's not a cultural artifact!"

I just looked at him.

"Well, okay, actually it is, but you know what I mean."

What have we got there? A blindfold on the floor, some band-aid wrappers, a picture of a guy....covered with bloody slashes?

I bet the name of this game was something like "The Good Samaritan Game" or a similarly benign designation. I prefer to call it "Stick the Band-Aid on the Martyr."

Then there was the "David and Goliath" game, aka "Little Jessalyn Makes Her First Kill." Goliath had been pre-trepanated for her slingshotting convenience.

Some horrors are less graphic than others, but no less horrible for that, especially when the victims have no voice.

Stand in line and pitch a ping-pong ball at the table top; if your ball lands in a fishbowl, you get to take the fish home with you, and the fish gets to take his PTSD.

Just LOOK at the fear on his face.

You have my sympathy, little fish. I've been there.

Virginia autumn

2008-11-08T22:12:00.003-05:00

Charged with the grandeur, indeed.

Click for a large version (you won't be disappointed).

actually, yes

2008-11-07T17:26:00.003-05:00

On waking, morning's happy hours before
Me, and the prospect dear of boyish grins,
A bearded kiss, and autumn trees that flames
Aflicker sport, the scarlet banners of
Our blessings waving, I in bed did lie
And contemplating courses clear to me,
Resolved responsibilities to reach
And grasp with all th'awareness love, my love,
Could muster of the mystery of grace.
That providence so seeking, sprang I forth
For just a moment gleeful. O! The screams
That greeted me, the bearded face and grim,
The whines, the wails, demands to break the fast--
Was this the wondrous work for which I'd asked?

I need to detox

2008-11-06T18:28:00.004-05:00

...so I'm starting my Advent fast a little early.

I've developed a standard fast over the years: no sweets, meat, butter, or recreational internet. I usually take on a positive discipline, also, like singing along with all the songs I don't like in church. I think NaBloPoMo will serve for that, at least until the end of November.

I've been eating poorly and not using my time well (darn you, Facebook! curse you, Google Reader! and don't even get me started on Twitter) and not praying as much as I should. The result is more than a little chaos-- mentally, physically and spiritually (although I hate even to distinguish them that way, I'm so paranoid about the creeping insidious neo-Gnosticism in evangelical popular culture; I am a psychosomatic unity!).

So it's time for me to strip down and cut back and all that. If you comment on my blog and I don't return the comment until the next Sunday, I'm not intending rudeness or neglect. I just need some focus.

my aid and comfort during the Truth Project

2008-11-05T23:30:00.004-05:00

So. As you witness my public struggle with the Truth Project, you might wonder, how does she do it without going stark staring mad?

The short answer is prayer.

The slightly longer answer is prayer and Lesslie Newbigin's Proper Confidence. He articulates in limpid prose many of the things I have been trying to say for years. I cannot tell you how refreshing it is.

The human person is not a mind attached to a body but a single psychosomatic being. The implication of this, of course, is that the gospel does not become public truth for a society by being propagated as a theory or as a worldview and certainly not as a religion.It can become public truth only insofar as it is embodied in a society (the church) which is both "abiding in" Christ and engaged in the life of the world.

Nice, eh? Then there's this:

Christian discipleship is not a two-stage affair in which a concept of truth is first formulated and is then translated into a program for action. It is a single action of faith and obedience to a living person, the response to a personal calling.

...and this:

Protestant fundamentalism is, like liberalism, a child of the Enlightenment. It has sought to reassert the authority of the Bible in the new situation created by modernity. The concern was right, but the method was wrong. I am referring to a kind of fundamentalism which seeks to affirm the factual, objective truth of every statement in the Bible and which thinks that if any single factual error were to be admitted, biblical authority would collapse. Human judgment would replace the word of God...I have every sympathy with the fundamentalist's rejection of scholarship that denies any real authority to Scripture, but I cannot accept a kind of defense of the Bible that rests on a surrender to the very forces threatening to destroy Biblical authority.

That "kind of defense" is exactly what the Truth Project is up to.

My 100 Things, Part I

2008-11-04T09:33:00.001-05:00

Apparently in the blogosphere there's a custom of listing 100 things about yourself on your 100th post. I am waaaay past my 100th post. But here they are anyway:

I have this thing for men with beards. My hubs has a beard. I'm pretty sure this stems from my early childhood obsession with Kenny Rogers.
I love the original Star Trek. Love it. Say what you will in praise of later iterations, nothing can beat the plaster rocks, the big orange knobs, the earnest unselfconscious Enlightenment humanism of the original series. Also, DeForest Kelley=yum!
I am 31, not 13, but sometimes my parents still make me cringe a little bit. I hate this about myself. Filial piety is a non-negotiable in my world.
I regularly use phrases like "filial piety" in the course of normal conversation.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to get that "I don't feel like it" is not a sufficient excuse not to do something I otherwise would, and that "I feel like it" is not a sufficient reason to do something I otherwise wouldn't.
St. Paul, Doestoevsky, Aristotle, and Jane Austen all helped me get there. Doesn't that sound like a great autobiographical account of a life change by literature? I wonder if I'll ever have the time to write it.
If it has Nutella on it, I will probably eat it.
I have been in love with the following literary characters: Walter Blythe, Sidney Carton, Ivan Karamazov, Alyosha Karamazov. Then I met my husband, who is an even finer human being than Alyosha.
On more than one occasion, I have entertained myself for hours by doing a GIS on the phrase "gruesome industrial accident."
At any given moment I am probably feeling guilty for not spending enough time fully engaged with my children. The misery and self-hatred of guilt makes me want to retreat inside my head, which makes me feel guilty for not fully engaging with my children. Repeat ad infinitum.
Dr. Seuss is overrated.
I would rather eat dirt than seafood.
Except for seaweed. Nom nom nori.
If I had the resources in terms of money and time, I would just collect degrees: theology, philosophy, literature, history, film studies, and on and on and on.
I smoked cigarettes for five years, from the spring of 1997 to spring 2002, when I gave them up for Lent and just never took them up again. I recognize the smoking impulse in myself as a self-destructive one springing from my self-hatred issues, and objectively, yes, they're really gross. And yet...on the first truly crisp evening of fall, or sitting in the pub with a pint talking philosophy, it's so hard not to go grab a pack.
I didn't read the Lord of the Rings trilogy until graduate school, when I heard Peter Jackson was doing the films. Since I have a rule about not seeing the movie before I read the book, and I really wanted to see the movies, I had to read them. And I realized that in so many ways they were the stories I had been longing to read all my life. They've been on pretty much constant rotation ever since.
The movies are pretty cool, but without Tom Bombadil the story just isn't complete.
During both pregnancies, as soon as we found out we were having a boy, I began a fierce and futile campaign for the name "Johnny Cash Edman."
If we are ever blessed with a girl, her name will be Anne Cordelia Edman. And I will call her "Ace," and she will take over the world.
I learned to like Guinness because I wanted to impress a boy. I'm still friends with the boy (hi, Trent!), and I still love Guinness.
I have fantasies about my adult psyche being sent back to inhabit my child self at about six or seven years old, and re-living my life and doing everything over the right way. But then I get to the part where I meet and marry Peter, but we have different children, and I realize that I've sacrificed Colin and Marky on the altar of my regrets, and I can communicate my grief to no one because no one would believe that this life is the second time around for me. So then I decide for a while to quit dwelling on my unpleasant history. For a while.
I'm highly introverted, but a verbal processor. So I talk to myself a lot.
I consistently establish grossly unrealistic expectations of myself, so I feel like a failure ALL THE TIME. I'm constantly surprised at how many people don't notice what a TERRIBLE JOB I did.
For my fifteenth birthday, my parents reserved a picnic shelter at the local park and my dad rented a volleyball net and my mom got tons of food and cake. I invited a couple of acquaintances from school and and a couple of college students from a Bible study I tagged along to sometimes with a college girl from church, and everybody from my youth group. Four people came. Four. Not one of the four was from my church.
But I'm not bitter. It was actually sort of a relief, and freed me from feeling guilty for not liking the youth group types more than I really did.
Only very recently-- like, in the last couple of weeks-- have I decided that a few very special cookies have my permission to be crisp rather than chewy and soft. But only a few special ones. The majority of cookies must. Be. Soft.
Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!
I have never seen a James Bond film.
I no longer wear makeup. I have some philosophical reasons, and also some financial ones, but really, it's mostly that I just can't be bothered.
If I have any ethical concerns about shopping at Wal-Mart, they are obliterated by my very pressing ethical (and practical) concern to practice good stewardship of my family's very limited financial resources.
I don't plan to have 16 17 18 kids myself, but I will enter in upon a spirited defense of the Duggars at a moment's notice. I don't agree with them about everything, but in a world where humans are so undervalued, they have shown they recognize what is truly important, and that is just spectacular.

To be continued.

this week's menu OR possibly the most boring post ever OR NaBloPoMo, have you brought me so low already?

2008-11-03T10:37:00.006-05:00

Monday:

Scrambled eggs with cheese
Leftovers
Quinoa stuffed peppers

Tuesday:

Yogurt smoothies or eggs
Leftovers
Lentils & rice

Wednesday:

Yogurt smoothies or eggs
Leftovers
Broccoli casserole & smoke sausages

Thursday:

Oatmeal or eggs
Leftovers
Spinach quesadillas

Friday:

Oatmeal or eggs
Leftovers
Black beans & rice

Saturday:

Sausage and spinach frittata
Catered lunch at church committee meeting
Leftovers

Sunday:

Pancakes
Leftovers
I'll Think of Something for Supper

As you can see, I love me some leftovers. "Leftovers" in my menu planning indicates not only the leftovers from the few days before, but also the individual portions I have stashed in the freezer. I've tried to make it a habit, when I make a big batch of something, to freeze it in small containers before we get tired of it, and then break it out a few weeks down the road. I can't tell you how helpful it is in terms of convenience and frugality. I didn't include snacks in the menu; they usually consist of whole fruit or string cheese.

Because I built the menu based on using up what we already had, I was able to bring the groceries in for right at the weekly budget amount of $50. Yay!

because of social networking, the past is never dead

2008-11-02T22:16:00.002-05:00

In first grade, I had a really aggressive crush on this kid in my class, Timmy C. I mean really aggressive, as in every day at recess we could be seen making a circuit of the playground as he ran from me and I pursued him tirelessly.

The other day I thought of him for the first time in years, and of course the first thing I did was search for him on Facebook. But Facebook doesn't let you see people's details, so on to MySpace. I found a Timothy C. of the right age and in the right town and, dying of curiosity, I sent him a message:

"Random question: are you the Timothy C. who went to Calvary Baptist Academy in first grade? If you are, I think used to chase you around the playground. Er, sorry about that."

And the next day he replied! He said:

"It seems the chase is over; I can finally get a good nights sleep. =)"

I was highly amused, but also a little disturbed because there are plenty of people from elementary school who could find me as easily as I found Timmy C., and I don't necessarily want to hear from them, you know?

unfulfilled

2008-11-01T17:00:00.002-05:00

"Here," I said to P. "Let me read you something, and you tell me if it's just me."

Throughout life, we are in quest of fulfillment. we are always seeking ways to meet the spiritual and emotional and physical yearnings within. The opening pages of Genesis give us the answer to why unfulfillment is a common human problem apart from God's help. We can learn about the fulfillment God created us to experience and the reasons why His desires were thwarted. In God's goodness and mercy, however, He has made a way of redemption.

"Baby Boomer much?" responded my nice husband.

"THANK YOU. It isn't just me."

The above quote is from the guide to the Bible study guide* we are using in the weekly Bible study I recently joined. We are a few weeks in now. I don't know if I can do this.

Look, it's not as if I didn't know what I would be getting into, at least to some extent. The church hosting the study is a member of our very conservative diocese, and, while I know of a few other Biblical egalitarians here and there, we are few and far between. So I was prepared for the complementarian point of view to reign in the literature-- although not as much for the assumption that every participant of the Bible study would share it. It's very silencing, actually. Well, it's silencing if you're the type to let yourself be silenced.

Which I'm not.

At any rate, what I wasn't prepared for is the whole idea that Jesus came to make us happy, that redemption equals fulfillment.

It's a little distressing to see that level of self-centeredness creeping into the study materials at a church that is taking great pains publicly to adhere to orthodoxy.

Of course, they're also doing the Truth Project in that same time slot every week.

Happily, the Bible study leader has so far managed to subvert the commentary into something much closer to Biblical, and the women in the study are great-- smart, questioning and unpretentious. So we'll see. What with my one-woman crusade against the Truth Project and all, I may not have the energy to complain about this too much. Which is probably just as well.

*You read that right: there's the Bible study guide, and then the guide to the guide. Seriously.

horizontal parenting, autumn edition

2008-10-31T14:49:00.002-05:00

setting myself up for another public FAIL

2008-10-31T09:08:00.002-05:00

Remember when I said I was going to do a project 365 and it turned out to be a project 9? Yeah, par for the course for me. I'm really good a making plans.

Perhaps this more modest goal will be achievable: NaBloPoMo. Beginning tomorrow on this here blog. We'll see, I guess.

that sound you hear is a soft whimper of longing

2008-10-24T23:22:00.002-05:00

Eeep! I just found out about Legacy Books, the new 24,000 square foot independent bookstore opening in Plano, Texas.

Apparently it is in the same area as the Angelika Film Center's Plano location, whose existence I had not been aware of until today.

The combined magnetism of those two could almost make living in Plano bearable. If Plano didn't serve in my mind as the icon for all that is wrong with sprawling, McMansioned Dallas suburbs.

PS-- Half-Price, you will always have a special place in my heart. You will never be dislodged by some fancypants new bookstore up 75, I promise. I think I AM planning a field trip when we come down for Christmas, though.

attention, blogosphere, et al.

2008-10-12T23:12:00.003-05:00

I'm going to vote for John McCain on November 4.

But you know what? If you are voting for Barack Obama? I do NOT assume that you are stupid, or ill-informed, or outright evil, or blindly following a religious leader. My default assumption, believe it or not, is that we've both given at least some thought to the same issues and have simply come to different conclusions about the best choice in the upcoming election. I fully realize that rational, thoughtful, good people can disagree with me without that disagreement being an indicator of intellectual or moral inferiority.

Now. Can you please extend to me the same respect? Thank you.

five years

2008-10-11T09:42:00.002-05:00

We got married five years ago today!

For five years I have been married to a man who is as charming a curmudgeon as Mr. Knightly, as smolderingly grumpy at Mr. Darcy, kinder and more considerate than Edmund Bertram, more constant than Frederick Wentworth, and not at all like that nincompoop Edward Ferrars.

I am an unbelievably happy woman.

Peter? I love you, love you, love you. You are the finest human being I have ever known. I've known unselfish people, and wise and prudent people, and smart people, and people with towering integrity, but I've never seen those qualities all come together as they have in you.

That I get to be married to you is one of the most spectacular examples I know of God's shockingly abundant grace. I'm so glad we are co-workers together in building the Kingdom.

Happy Anniversary.

husband

2008-10-03T20:32:00.002-05:00

I am stealing a meme from The Happy Geek. It is about one's husband.

1. He’s sitting in front of the TV; what is on the screen?

A Hiyao Miyazaki film. If we had a TV, which we don't.

2. You’re out to eat; what kind of dressing does he get on his salad?

Ranch. But he prefers sesame ginger when he can get it.

3. What’s one food he doesn’t like?

Liver. Original, I know. He doesn't care for (but will eat rather than making a fuss) cinnamon or nutmeg or cumin or curry-- naturally, all flavors I love.

4. You go out to the bar. What does he order?

A good beer. Or possibly a whiskey.

5. Where did he go to high school?

The now defunct Trinity Christian Academy in Derry, N.H.

6. What size shoe does he wear?

10 1/2 or 11, depending on the shoe.

7. If he was to collect anything, what would it be?

Speculative fiction (Pratchett, Bujold, etc). Also old dead Kleenex in the pockets of his lounge pants.

8. What is his favorite type of sandwich?

Anything with sprouts and wasabi mayonnaise.

9. What would this person eat every day if he could?

Raw tuna. *shudder*

10. What is his favorite cereal?

Froot Loops.

11. What would he never wear?

A septum ring.

12. What is his favorite sports team?

I don't know that he has one. He followed the Redskins, sort of, for a while, but it was more due to inertia than anything else. He's not really a sports kinda guy.

13. Who will he vote for?

McCain-Palin

14. Who is his best friend?

I am.

15. What is something you do that he wishes you wouldn’t do?

There are so many things. One of them is self-flagellation. Another is only buying chicken breasts at the grocery store (he likes dark meat, eeyh).

16. How many states has he lived in?

Four + the District of Columbia

17. What is his heritage?

Italian and Jewish. Here is a funny story that my father-in-law told me about our family name: "Edman" was originally "Eidman," but a few generations ago his ancestor ordered some business cards printed, and the printer screwed up the order and printed the name "Edman." So rather than go to the trouble and expense of new cards, he just changed his name.

18. You bake him a cake for his birthday; what kind?

Some sort of flourless chocolate orange thing, usually. He's not a great fan of cake, so the less cakey the cake, the better.

19. Did he play sports in high school?

Nope; he was band geek. Trumpet. Always I have been charmed by the horn players.

20. What could he spend hours doing?

He can and does spend hours on the internet and reading books, both to himself and to our boys.

why do I do these things to myself? Part II

2008-10-03T14:10:00.004-05:00

I'm viewing the DVD sessions of the Truth Project, and I hope to be able to comment on each one of them in turn on this here blog. But it takes a while to ruminate and articulate, and it's been a crazy* week.

In the meantime, here is some content from an email I wrote to a friend who request concrete examples of some of the problems I was ranting to her about.

Here's a statement from session one:

The truth claims of God are consistent and logical; they make sense; they work. And even in a fallen world, when we follow them, they lead to peace and prosperity and happiness.

Actually, as 2,000 years worth of martyrs could attest, following Christ can lead to poverty, suffering and death. Following Christ is not about our personal happiness and prosperity. And we follow a person, by the way-- we follow Jesus Christ. We do not follow a set of truth claims. Sets of propositional truth claims can often be useful in explicating various aspects of the faith, but they are tools. They are not the incarnate Word of God.

Here's another one:

Look at God's truth claim in any particular area and look at its opposite...it's pretty much dead on what the culture is saying.

WHICH culture? He speaks as if there's only one. There are many radically different cultures, many of which have some overlap with "God's truth claims." Islam, for example, holds that God created the world. So do we. Enlightenment naturalism assumes that the world is knowable to some extent. So do we. And so on. Using the old "everything of the culture is evil and anti-God" line is intellectually lazy and does not result in appropriate cultural engagement.

And another:

A Biblical worldview is built on the presupposition that God exists and has revealed Himself to us in two ways: One, through creation itself, and two, through the special revelation of Scripture.

No mention of the incarnation of God in Christ. None. That statement is only one instance of a Truth Project proclivity to leave a gaping hole where Jesus should be.

This one left me gaping: "Plato had it right," he says, about universal ideals, "he just didn't know where to get them."

Either the poor man has catastrophically misunderstood Plato, or his theology is catastrophically unsound. Plato argued that ultimate reality resided in universal forms or ideals. "Eidos" is the Greek term. The material world was illusory and in essence unreal (or, at most, contingent in their being). This is in direct contradiction to Bible, wherein God makes the world and calls it "good," wherein God Himself takes on real physical flesh in Christ Jesus, wherein we are promised we will spend eternity in God's presence in physical, resurrected bodies on a physical, made-new earth.

In some sense it really is like watching a hostile takeover of the Christian faith by the metaphysics of presence.

And I've only watched the first two sessions.

Like I said, I do intend to locate these particular flaws in the context of some overarching issues of assumption and approach in a future blog post. Meanwhile, I welcome your thoughts on the subject.

*I was peed on while composing this post.

uncut

2008-09-28T11:54:00.005-05:00

In the process of thinking through how to form my boys' attitudes and behaviors towards certain bits of their little anatomies, it seemed to me time to ~~make a shameless attempt to get comments on my blog~~ address our reasoning for choosing not to have them circumcised-- or, as I like to put it, leaving them intact.

We did our research, of course. It didn't really help with the decision making process. When we are talking about hygiene and health, sexuality and aesthetics, there are lots of arguments for circumcision. There are a lot of arguments against it.

Ultimately, our decision was a theological one. We chose to leave our boys intact for the same reason we chose to have them baptized: we are not part of the old covenant; we are part of the new.

The New Testament is full of this idea, but I think Colossians 2 sums it up pretty well:

For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority. In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. --Colossians 2:9-12

Circumcision was the old sign of membership in God's covenant family; the new sign is baptism in Christ Jesus. Just as the law of Moses dictated that baby boys receive the mark of membership in the covenant family, under the new covenant we baptize our children (all of them! not only boys) as a mark of membership in the new covenant of grace.

Note that the parallel holds up: a baby could be circumcised but fail to keep the covenant when he was grown, thus not fully entering in to his heritage and promise as part of the community. We baptize our children, but expect them to choose a saving relationship with Christ as they mature into adulthood; otherwise the baptism is emptied of its significance.

Right now their baptisms represent the hope and promise of grace. We have left their bodies intact because we believe in the reality of what has been promised: that they have been "sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ's own forever."

the moral universe of outlaw country

2008-09-25T21:30:00.001-05:00

"I never would have pegged you for a fan of outlaw country," wrote a college friend who recently caught up with me on Facebook.

Really?

Huh.

Let me tell you something, friends: I loved Johnny Cash before Rick Rubin ever got hold of him (not that I don't love the Rubin projects, because I do). I was country when country wasn't cool. I wasn't particularly cool, either-- a pretty big dork, in fact-- so me and country? We're a good match.

But there's country music-- the sequined, blow-dried '80s Nashville country I grew up on (Islands in the stream/ That is what we are!), and to which I can listen with a good dose of Gen-X irony-- and then there's outlaw country, which I unabashedly love.

The Recovering Sociopath loves outlaw country because so many of those guys are in recovery, too. "Songs of loss and regret," a phrase I picked up from someone whose loss I regretted, at least for a time, gets pretty much to the heart of outlaw country's appeal.

In "Mama Tried," Merle Haggard sings

And I turned twenty-one in prison doing life without parole.
No one could steer me right but Mama tried, Mama tried.
Mama tried to raise me better, but her pleading I denied.
That leaves only me to blame 'cause Mama tried.

The thing about outlaw country is that the guys self-identify as outlaws. This is important. They know they are outside the law. They know they have broken the rules. And they recognize that they were wrong for breaking them. "That leaves only me to blame" means Merle acknowledges that blame belongs somewhere. He recognizes himself as morally wrong.

"Mama," incidentally, is very important in the moral universe of outlaw country. She is consistently the voice of conscience and warning; the civilization to the outlaw's wilderness.

For the outlaw to recognize himself as an outlaw, he first has to recognize the law. And the story of outlaw country is the outlaw, having placed himself outside the law, is then driven-- either by force of circumstance, such as imprisonment, or by his own conscience-- to contemplate his guilt.

In the iconic "Folsom Prison Blues," Johnny Cash sings,

I hear the train a comin',
It's rollin' 'round the bend,
And I ain't seen the sunshine
Since I don't know when.
I'm stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin' on,
But that train keeps a-rollin',
On down to San Antone.

When I was just a baby,
My Mama told me, "Son,
Always be a good boy;
Don't ever play with guns."
But I shot a man in Reno,
Just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin',
I hang my head and cry.

Why is does he weep? Initially this looks like self-pity. But I submit it is more. Johnny Cash said that when he wrote this song he purposefully used the line "just to watch him die" because that was the most evil reason he could think of for killing someone. He wanted us to get that the protagonist in this song is Not A Good Person.

I bet there's rich folks eatin'
In a fancy dining car.
They're probably drinkin' coffee,
And smokin' big cigars.
I know I had it comin',
I know I can't be free.
But those people keep a-movin',
And that's what tortures me.

It's not merely self pity at work here: he knows that, in his case, justice (or at least its best human approximation) has been done. He deserves to be imprisoned. What brings him to tears is the thought of those who are free.

Why would their freedom be torture to him, if he recognizes the justice of his situation? I think it's because he's moved beyond contemplation of his own wretchedness to meditating upon the wretchedness of human beings in general: we all, including his hypothetical "rich folks," deserve punishment for our sins, though some of us dwell in ignorance of it, distracted by the trappings of material comfort. It's not the justice at work in Folsom Prison that drives him to tears; it his awareness of the injustice outside its walls.

My parents used to sleep with their bedside clock radio tuned in to KWKH in Shreveport. The volume was set so low you could barely hear it during the day, but when I used to wake up at night and sneak into bed beside my mom, I could hear it clearly, and I would lie there and stare into the dark and listen to all the mournful songs requested by truckers, passing through and lonely for their families or maybe just longing, like me, for another story of loss and maybe redemption. It seemed like every night, if only I could stay awake long enough, the DJ would play "The Ballad of Pancho and Lefty," and once again I would close my eyes and drift off to witness a betrayal under cold desert stars.

Livin' on the road my friend
Was gonna keep you free and clean
Now you wear your skin like iron
And your breath's as hard as kerosene
You weren't your mama's only boy
But her favorite one it seems
She began to cry when you said goodbye
And sank into your dreams

There's a lot in that first verse about the origins of the outlaw. He doesn't begin his life of crime with the desire to be evil, but the desire to be free. The problem, of course, is that no citizen of any society is totally free-- our liberty is always tempered (to various degrees, depending on the law of the land) by the necessity of certain rules to establish some measure of order. I contend that where outlaw country is concerned, this state of affairs is not merely political exigency but a reflection of the order of a moral universe in which human beings are at their best when they voluntarily submit their liberty to the demands of love. The opposite of love is not hate, but selfishness. When our desire for total freedom overrides our commitments to love others, we remove ourselves from civilization to wilderness. In the case of the outlaw here, he has abandoned filial piety (and, of course, the source of conscience in his mother) for the sake of freedom.

Pancho was a bandit, boys
His horse was fast as polished steel
Wore his gun outside his pants
For all the honest world to feel.
Well, Pancho met his match you know
On the deserts down in Mexico;
Nobody heard his dyin' words
Ah but that's the way it goes.

For years I thought the direct address in the first verse was aimed at Pancho (helped to that conclusion by the video, which I think misinterprets Townes van Zandt's words a bit), but now it seems fairly obvious to me that it's aimed at Lefty. He is Pancho's match-- first as a friend, and then as the one who brings him down.

All the Federales say
They could have had him any day
Only let him hang around
Out of kindness I suppose.

Again, I once believed these words applied to Pancho, but now I believe the "him" refers to Lefty.

Lefty, he can't sing the blues
All night long like he used to
The dust that Pancho bit down south
Ended up in Lefty's mouth
The day they laid poor Pancho low
Lefty split for Ohio
Where he got the bread to go
There ain't nobody knows.

Except that of course we, the listeners know: the Federales paid Lefty to betray Pancho out there in the desert. Hence the dust in his mouth. A life lived in service to nothing but his own desires has hardened Lefty to the point of betraying his friend. But oh, there's a price to pay.

Well, the poets tell how Pancho fell
And Lefty's livin' in a cheap hotel
The desert's quiet and Cleveland's cold
So the story ends, we're told.
Pancho needs your prayers, it's true
But save a few for Lefty too;
He only did what he had to do
And now he's growin' old.

A few gray Federales say
Could have had him any day
Only let him go so long
Out of kindness I suppose.

Of course their "kindness" is anything but. Leaving Lefty to his own guilt, misery and solitude is a far worse punishment than any justice the Federales could mete out to him.

Outlaw country consists not merely of loss, though-- they are, as I said, songs of loss and regret. Thus, despite its bleak ending, I find this song-- and the genre-- hopeful because of Lefty's misery-- the dust in his mouth indicates a conscience still at work.

Mama has not disappeared entirely from his dreams.

Munguyiko

2008-09-23T22:41:00.003-05:00

This is Munguyiko. He lives in Rwanda with his grandmother. And as of tonight we are his Compassion International sponsors.

I am so excited about this kid. We are so pleased we can do some small thing to help.

But may we always remember: God did not make him so we could get a warm fuzzy from helping (although the warm fuzzies abound right now). Munguyiko is a real and particular human being with a unique purpose and place in the world.

What moved me to do this was Boomama's series of posts about her Africa trip. Go read them.

"It's so easy!" says the Compassion site. No, it's not. Choosing only one of the many kids in need was so very hard. You should go do it, anyway. The economy sucks right now, but I bet you can find $32 a month somewhere.

And if you can't, you can pray for Munguyiko. I'll keep y'all updated on him, I promise.

why do I do these things to myself?

2008-09-22T21:40:00.004-05:00

This Saturday, I am attending a Truth Project training simulcast at a local church.

"But, Sherri," you may well ask, "Why? You have a degree in philosophy and another in literature, and you have made it your business to focus on issues of culture and worldview. You have already taught a worldview course at your church, using a syllabus of your own design. Moreover, you have a well-known aversion to all things related to Focus on the Family. Why on earth would you need training from the Truth Project people?"

The answer is I do not need training in worldview, but several members of my parish think they do. Certain signs have led me to believe that the Truth Project's materials are going to make their way into the life of our parish, whether or not I have anything to do with it. So, I consider it my responsibility to vet the Truth Project to my satisfaction and issue the appropriate warnings and correctives where necessary.

The more I browse the TP site, the more I am anticipating spending a great deal of Saturday either grinding my teeth in frustration or resisting the impulse to curl into a fetal position. I have not ruled out bringing along a flask.

From the 'About' section of their site:

The Truth Project is a DVD-based small group curriculum comprised of 12 one-hour lessons taught by Dr. Del Tackett. This home study is the starting point for looking at life from a biblical perspective.

Gee, all this time I thought looking at life from a biblical perspective came from READING THE BIBLE.

But let's get real, shall we? At the beginning of the same page, we read that

In a recent study, the Barna Research Group revealed a stunning statistic that continues to reverberate throughout the evangelical world. Only 9 percent of professing Christians have a biblical worldview.

Because of this, today's believers live very similarly to non-believers. A personal sense of significance is rarely experienced, we spend our money and time on things that fail to satisfy and we begin to wonder what life's ultimate purpose really is. We are, in short, losing our bearings as a people and a nation.

As a people and a...nation? Which nation? Why, the USA, of course! The Barna survey they quote was a national survey, which means that nine percent figure is misleading. It does not take into account the fact the 60% of the world's Christians live outside Europe and North America. Take, for instance, the church currently offering our parish episcopal oversight, the Church of Nigeria, which boasts 17 million Christians. That's one denomination in one African country. In case you hadn't heard, Africa, and the rest of the global south, is the future of Christianity. These people are taking on hardships and challenges most American Christians can't-- or won't-- imagine, and their churches are growing while they do it. Take, for another instance, Bishop John Rucyahana of Rwanda, who survived the 1994 genocide (although many of his flock and family did not) to found the Sonrise orphanage for children of victims. I could go on, but I won't just now.

My point here is that the Truth Project's premises, from the outset, seem a touch narrow in vision and, well, filled with unexamined assumptions.

The twelve lessons they offer range from Potentially Good to Cringe-Inducing.

Potentially Good:

Lesson 11 - Labor: Created to Create

Contrary to a great deal of contemporary popular opinion, work is not a "curse." God Himself is active and creative, and He calls man to share in the joy of His activity and creativity. Labor, economics, media, and the creative arts all have a role to play in magnifying the glory of the Creator.

Hey, that's a good start, although I'm unclear on what exactly they mean by "economics" in that context. Presumably I'll find out.

Cringe-Inducing:Lesson 6 - History: Whose Story?

Does the past have an objective actuality and significance? Or does it, as postmodernist philosophy asserts, exist primarily inside our heads? This tour considers the meaning of history as God’s story and shows us why remembering is so important.

Which "postmodernist philosophy?" The very nature of postmodern thought is fracture and multiplicity. There's no one monolothic postmodern philosophy, unless it's the article of faith that monolithic philosophies are inherently untrustworthy-- what Jean-Francois Lyotard called "incredulity toward meta-narratives." When we start tossing around terms like "postmodernist philosophy" without bothering to indicate which one we're talking about, that makes me wonder if we even know which one we're talking about.

Even More Cringe-Inducing:

Lesson 5 - Science: What is True?

Science, the "systematic study of the natural world," brings to light innumerable evidences of Intelligent Design. But Darwinian theory transforms science from the honest investigation of nature into a vehicle for propagating a godless philosophy. (Part One)

A careful examination of molecular biology and the fossil record demonstrates that evolution is not a "proven fact." Meanwhile, history shows that ideas, including Darwinism as a social philosophy, have definite consequences – consequences that can turn ugly when God is left out of the picture. (Part Two)

First of all, science and epistemology? Two very different areas of study. They have some overlap, but each is in itself a huge area to consider in light of one's faith and understanding. But of all the huge areas of science to think about, we get the narrow slice that deals with evolution, and it is evidently so important that it gets two whole sessions to itself, the only topic so honored in this curriculum.

Which is very telling. The Truth Project does not seem to me to have as its goal the study of other worldviews in order to gain empathy and build relationships. Nor does it seem to me to be propagating a merely biblical worldview. The Truth Project aims to inculcate in its students a specific set of answers to a specific set of questions, so that they may then congratulate themselves on having a biblical worldview, and more confidently enter into debate with those who would take issue with any of the given answers. This looks to me like very intentional reinforcement of certain cultural identity markers, such that, in a world with Big Bad Scaries like multiculturalism and postmodernism, hosts of American evangelicals can soothe themselves that they are the good guys: whew! I am one of Us, not one of Them! And I have the 12 DVD set from the Truth Project to prove it (and Focus on the Family has my $179)!

Of course everyone is culturally situated and the proper study of worldview, like the proper study of anything else, involves not a removal from one's cultural context but the finding of a way forward in and through that context. My biggest problem with the Truth Project is not its situatedness within Western Christianity, or even conservative American political discourse, but rather its cheerful ignorance and/or disregard of that situatedness.

In the proper study of worldview (as defined by ME), one of the first steps is to ask yourself questions that make you aware of your own assumptions and limitations. I don't see that anywhere on the Truth Project's site. I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised on Saturday. But I'm afraid I won't be.

Happy Constitution Day!

2008-09-17T08:19:00.004-05:00

All together now:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Read the whole thing here.

...and here's the Schoolhouse Rock video!

Friday book goodness

2008-09-12T15:57:00.003-05:00

Time for the second round of Pick a Flat Surface and List the Books Piled On It. This week's edition focuses on the Narrow Ledge to the Left of the Basement Stairs.

When Heaven Invades Earth, by Bill Johnson. Everybody at my church is getting very excited about this book; the senior warden of our vestry gave us a copy. I haven't read it yet. It's supposed to be very good-- all about miraculous healings, and how God still does them.

Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel. We love, love, love Arnold Lobel. The Frog and Toad books are very high on Colin's list of personal favorites. I have read this one approximately 1,576 times. The first story, "A List," is a scathing indictment of slavish devotees of the Franklin-Covey system. The last, "The Dream," highlights Toad's megalomaniac tendencies, held in check only by his pitiful emotional dependency upon Frog's tolerance. I love Toad.

Yukon Ho! by Bill Watterson. We do own the hideously expensive hardcover slipcased complete collection, of course, but we've kept our paperbacks around for everyday reading.

Weirdos From Another Planet!, by Bill Watterson. See above.

Reaching Out: the three movements of the spiritual life, by Henri Nouwen. We read through this for our homegroup last year. Wow. A choice quote: "It is the most basic human loneliness that threatens us and is so hard to face. Too often we will do everything possible to avoid the confrontation with the experience of being alone, and sometimes we are able to create the most ingenious devices to prevent ourselves from being reminded of this condition. Our culture has become most sophisticated in the avoidance of pain, not only our physical pain but our emotional and mental pain as well….We have become so used to this state of anesthesia, that we panic when there is nothing or nobody to distract us. When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an all-pervasive sense of loneliness that we will do anything to get busy again and continue the game which makes us believe that everything is fine after all…"