Jennwith2ns

Moving Along

2011-01-05T19:23:00.004-05:00

After a while, it gets depressing to keep hearing about people who try to post comments on here and can't, while meanwhile the spam comments keep right on coming. So, after a little thought and a whole lot of facebook comments yesterday, I bit the bullet and bought myself a domain name and have started up a blog not on blogspot.

I feel a little bummed and nostalgic about this--this blog and I have been through a lot together. But I do think it's time. In spite of not "believing in" New Year's resolutions, I've kind of made one under my breath, and it has to do with being more intentional about writing, and I think that might mean I also have to be at least a little more intentional about blogging and marketing. So, I have moved. My official url is http://thatsajennstory.com/ I'm still working on setting it up, and probably will be for a while, but there is something short for you to read on there in the meantime.

I plan on maintaining some sort of continuity between these two blogs, because, frankly, they're all "Jenn stories." (If you want to know what that is, just ask. Or maybe there will appear a blurb about that on the new blog eventually.) There will be link-backs and such. But the action is moving to a different location.

Thanks for sticking around and reading. Here's to more dialogue and more stories. Don't forget to share your stories, too!

New Year's Bash

2011-01-04T11:12:00.004-05:00

So far, 2011 is indeed turning out to be amazing, though not in quite the positive way which was what I meant when I said it.

Yesterday, I intended to take Oscar to the vet, to check out a few issues which had come to light after his New Year's Eve performance. I figured we'd be there an hour at most, and then go back to work for a few more hours and then go home. Or go up to the North Shore to finally get some books for this research paper I still have to write. (This thing is turning into a logistical bear.)

It was a bright and sunny day, and I was hoping that whatever was wrong with him wouldn't be too severe because . . . I love him, and also because I am broke. I was considering how nice it was that I had such a good car now, because now that the car repair bills have stopped with the offloading of the Corolla, I have dog repair bills on occasion.

About five minutes later, the truck in front of me stopped suddenly in the middle of an intersection with no warning, no blinker, and potentially (unless the sun somehow made them invisible) no brake lights. By the time I realised he was not moving, there was about a foot and a half between me and the truck's back bumper--not even enough time for my brakes to squeal as I slammed them, and then slammed into the truck itself. Next thing I knew, the airbag in front of me was deflating, black smoke was going up everywhere, and Oscar was sitting hunched over in his seat, mercifully alive because of his harness, and shaking with terror.

I thought wearily that I was supposed to get out and exchange information with the driver of the truck and then I remembered I had had such a good car and I had just destroyed it, and I didn't know how I could afford to pay more on my insurance, and all I had wanted to do was take Oscar to the vet and now he probably had more stuff wrong with him, and he was so scared and I couldn't unhitch him and hold him and comfort him because this stupid airbag was in the way and plus it felt like someone had thrown a rock at my chest.

The truck driver was very solicitous and told me just to stay where I was and wait until "they" got there. "They" turned out to be both the EMTs and the local police, and I was too disoriented to tell the difference, so when the EMT tried to ask me what was wrong with me, I started to give a description of what had happened to the car. They recommended I go to the hospital just to get checked out, and then they put a neck brace on me and had me lie down on a stretcher. They taped my head and the neck brace and my chest, and maybe my legs, to the thing, and all I could see was beautiful blue sky and clouds and occasionally one of their heads.

I kept asking about Oscar and I couldn't get in touch with anybody to pick him up at first, and the cop took him, trembling, out of the other side of the car and said he'd keep him at the station until someone could come get him, but as it turned out later he brought him to the local shelter instead. I was wheeled onto an ambulance, and the EMTs tried to take my coat off, but they should've thought of that before they taped me down, because it was impossible, and every time they tried, the neck brace felt more constricting. I noticed that the board was very flat, and that my spine was curving upward a little more than normal, and thought that perhaps these guys needed to work on their technique, because if they had had a person with actual back and neck injuries, this position couldn't be a good one. As for me, my worst problem was motion sickness. And worry about Oscar, but I managed to raise my arm up enough to text his Favourite Babysitters, and they picked him up forthwith. I was glad the EMTs hadn't been able to take my coat off, because that ambulance was cold!

After feeling sure I was going to vomit into my own larynx, I didn't and the ambulance stopped, and then they were wheeling me down some hallways, and it got a little warmer and I could see signs above the nurses' stations (even though I couldn't see the nurses' stations) that said things like "North Pod." It made me feel even more like I was in a Star Trek show, or maybe Dollhouse, going in for a "treatment." Except that the dolls usually walk in.

I was transferred to a "bed" and then propped up some, and spent most of the day waiting, updating Facebook from my phone, and then talking to one of the Favourite Babysitters after she showed up and my phone died. I learned that, if I had ever thought I wanted to work in an ER (which I never did think, I don't think), I really didn't at all now. I realised that, again, as in my cancer experience, I could've had this so much worse. I realised it even more when a guy around my age died while we were there.

Also, by the time I was allowed out, I had figured out for my own self that there was nothing more wrong with me than sore muscles and a bruised sternum. I didn't really need the doctor to tell me that. He was a sympathetic guy, though, who did the right thing by the crazy dog lady and wished me and my dog well as I left. Also, when he was examining my back, I got this 30-second massage, about which I was really tempted to say, "Actually, could you just keep doing that?" Why do doctors not prescribe professional massage? I'd be okay with putting that on my insurance.

Oscar's Favourite Babysitters fed me and then brought my doggie and me home. One of my friends offered to loan me a car, which was a tremendous Godsend, as my insurance doesn't cover rental fees. When I lay down in bed that night, I really didn't think I was going to be able to fall asleep, but I did, and slept quite well, actually. (Of course, it might have been jacked up Motrin.)

I'm not sure what God's trying to teach me, except I have a hunch it's what I said the other time: that sometimes bad stuff just happens. I can't say I didn't spend a whole lot of time wondering what the heck I was prevented from going to Minnesota for, because this might never have happened. Or why I didn't just leave work a few minutes earlier or later. But I also have to say I've seen God's face in my friends and family, near and far, who reached out to me with their concern and their help, and who have reached out to God for me in their prayers. I guess it's just as open to question why God spared me as to why He allowed the accident. I can't say I'm not still confused or worried or a little bit angry sometimes. But I also find that I'm a little bit grateful.

Happy (?) New Year!

2011-01-01T11:03:00.003-05:00

Last evening as I was heading out for the New Year's festivities in which I planned to engage in lieu of celebrating with Brother-Dave and family, I was talking to my friend the Matchmaker about this little theory I have. This falls under the category of Superstitions I Have in Spite of Disapproving of Superstitions. It seems like, if you're going to have a cause-and-effect kind of superstition about the New Year, it should be that the New Year's celebrations should be a direct reflexion (or maybe foreshadowing) of how the rest of the year is going to go.

In my experience, however (well, okay--two years that I can distinctly remember), the "fun-ness" or misery of the New Year's experience is actually in direct contrast to how a year is going to go. For example: the party we had at my church in London as the year turned to 2000, along with the "after-party" at a friend's house, is hands-down the best New Year's Eve memory I have. But the year itself? Well, I guess I learned a lot or something (you know, like we were talking about last time), but it was miserable. So, I think, was the New Year's Eve following. But then 2001 (apart from, you know, 9/11) was actually pretty great. For me.

Anyway. If this little pattern I imagine I have discerned is true, then 2011 should be amazing.

I was already thinking this yesterday morning when I realised the cold I've been fighting had called for back-up and I was feeling miserable and might have to spend the evening with a box of tissues and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. But after a day in pj's and a nap, I was feeling ready to go out and enjoy the evening, so I headed up to Boston to join some people I barely knew for part of Boston's First Night. The main reason I was going up there was because Jason Harrod was playing at Park Street Church and the last time I heard him live was at a coffee house at Wheaton College when we were both undergrads there. He has no idea who I am, but I still like to feel like there's a connexion.

The plan, for me, was to go to the concert with these new friends and then cut out early and head back to the City for another party with some friends I actually know better. What I probably should have done, however (even though it was nice to meet some new folks, all of whom seemed very nice), was gotten there on my own steam, too, because leaving from the station that everyone else left from meant we had to park our cars a 15 minute walk away, which in turn meant that I had to walk that 15 minutes back myself at 10.00 at night on New Year's Eve. And I got lost. (I did enjoy the Jason Harrod portion of the evening, however.) By the time I found my car it was 11, and I thought I might just make it to the other party before the ball dropped.

I wasn't, however, considering the fact that I was in Spaghetti-Land. This is a part of Boston outskirts (Harvard, Allston, Arlington, Watertown, Newton) of many roads moving in and out of each other with insufficient signage. I'm sure if you live there, it all makes sense, but I don't, and I rarely visit--certainly not at night, on New Year's Eve. I ended up having to call Brother-Dave all the way out in Minnesota to get me unstuck, since he had lived on the North Shore once. I got to the party at 12.30. But at least I wasn't lost anymore when 2011 started.

I got home at about 2 a.m., and as I got out of the car in the basement garage, I thought, "What's that smell?" It was even stronger as I entered the basement. "Smells kinda like diapers." An ominous thought crept into my mind. As I emerged from the basement into the kitchen, there was no doubt.

I don't know if Oscar got sick and therefore became distressed, or if he got distressed and therefore became sick, but this little dog who only one other time (when he was sick) has defecated in his crate, had somehow bounced the crate partway across the floor, and the inside of it and the outside of him were both utterly caked with what had once been inside of him. (I'm sure you would all appreciate it if I made a New Year's resolution to stop blogging about Oscar's poop, but it's momentous, guys.)

This is how it was that, at 2.30 a.m., I found myself scrubbing my unhappy dog, scrubbing his cage, completely disposing of his blanket that was his Christmas present in 2009 and a dog-toy which fortunately he rarely plays with, and then washing my hands, arms and face about 25 times. I know people say dogs have no concept of time, but I think that's rubbish. My dog knows when to wake up in the morning, and when it's time to go for a walk at lunch time, and when it's time to go home from work. I really think that, because I left him alone for far longer than I ever have before (except once when Dear-Friend-Paulina and I went to an Over the Rhine concert), he began to fear I wasn't coming back, and freaked out. Poor doggie. And poor me.

So this is why I'm saying I think 2011 is going to be amazing. Or . . . it had better be.

I hope yours is, too.

Better

2010-12-28T16:21:00.004-05:00

If you're a person who believes in some sort of personal Divine Being, do you ever play this little head game? Something disappointing happens, and either someone says, "Well, God must have a better plan," or you think something like, "God is sovereign and things happen for a purpose, so clearly I'm supposed to learn something from this, or He knew something bad was going to happen if my wishes were fulfilled, so it's all for the best." Then you sit around mulling this over for way too long and trying to envision all the scenarios that you might have been spared from, or trying to figure out what it is you're supposed to be learning.

Here's an example:

I was supposed to fly to Brother-Dave and Sister-in-Lu's yesterday. I was going to use up my last week of vacation for the year during the last week of the year playing with TWCN and Smiley-Guy. But I live in a usually-cold, wintery northern state, and Brother-Dave's family lives in a pretty far away cold, wintery northern state. My northern state had been a little tardy as far as snowfall and winter weather, in comparison to Ireland, where my parents live, which isn't even supposed to get snow, and was having a blizzard along with the rest of Europe the day my parents were scheduled to fly over here. Closed European airports notwithstanding, my parents actually got on a plane, which actually left, and actually arrived safely in our cold northern state that hadn't had any snow yet.

You would think if it had waited this long to snow, it could've waited a little longer, until the winter festivities were over or something. But it didn't. We managed not to get a white Christmas (snow on Christmas is, of course, totally irrelevant to the holiday, but it sure makes for a lovely landscape), but the day after, we began to get a blizzard. In this neck of the woods, it doesn't even seem like it was that bad, overall. But the timing was miserable, and the short version of the story is that I am now not going to Minnesota to see my brother and his family, and my parents, who were supposed to leave today, now have to wait to fly out there until Friday, and are still working on extending their stay, re-hiring a rental car, and getting back to the house here in the meantime.

This is when someone comes along and helpfully says, "Well, God has a better plan." This is probably true, but it sure doesn't seem like it from this vantage point. There's no use in pretending that any of this is of earth-shaking importance, but if it's important enough for God to have another plan than it, it must be important enough to get kind of a reaction from the people affected. The reaction, at least from me, is that being stranded at home on vacation with nothing to do (but church history paper research, which I can't do much of anyway, because the seminary offices are closed and it's hard to find info on the Protestant modernist-fundamentalist controversy anywhere else in this heavily Roman Catholic part of the world), as contrasted with playing tea party for a week with TWCN is a weird kind of "better." I'd debate it.

Then today I woke up with a cough, which has now established itself firmly in my lungs. So--maybe it's "better" that I was prevented from going because Brother-Dave's family spent pretty much the entire time at Sister-in-Lu's parents' house over Christmas, sick as dogs. Surely they do not need to get sick again, even if it's a completely different type of ailment. But really? Wouldn't it have been simpler just to keep me from getting sick?

Maybe God's trying to grow my character, and maybe it's even working, because in spite of this rant, I'm not actually angry, as I might have been in the past--just a little put out and kind of cynical/curious about reasons. Or maybe He's trying to grow my brother's character, by giving him surely one of the most miserable Christmas/New Year's seasons he's ever had. Or maybe He's trying to show two-and-a-half-year-old TWCN that life's just not fair and the sooner she learns it the better: apparently she cried when she found out I couldn't come to visit her. I wonder how she'll take the delay in my parents' itinerary.

Well, it isn't fair. None of this is the biggest deal ever, but it's disappointing and frustrating and disrupting and . . . not fair.

On the other hand . . . This is the kind of thing that leads some people to decide there is no God, or He doesn't love us, or He isn't all-powerful, and that, to me, seems like overkill. If there is a God, it makes sense that He might not make sense. I mean, made in the image of God we may be. God Himself, we are not (in spite of worldviews that try to tell us differently). In the first place, who am I to think any of this should matter to Him, really? And if, as I believe, it surprisingly does, does that mean He's going to step in at every moment, insuring that everything about my life is smooth sailing? (Evidently not . . . because it hasn't been!) I'm not writing this to prove anything. (Fortunately, since I'm not succeeding in that.) I'm just mulling this over. And here's what I'm thinking:

Maybe somehow, in some miraculous, sparkly-snowflake, cheesy Serendipity-movie kind of way, I'll meet this amazing guy this week and be married by next Christmas or something crazy like that, or maybe I'll just be stuck here with a chest-cold and no little-girl tea-parties. But either way, I still believe God is good, and God loves me, and God is all-powerful. I just don't think any of that requires Him to wait on me hand-and-foot, or forestall any disappointments, and I don't even think there has to be a "reason," or a "better," honestly. At least, not one that I'll necessarily ever see. The world is broken, and "broken" things happen here.

We celebrate God's coming into the brokenness at this time of year. He came ultimately to fix it--to fix us--but first He submitted to the brokenness and darkness, the disappointment and frustration and disruption (do I think His leaving Heaven to hang out down here with us wasn't a disruption?), and even now we're waiting for the final "fixing." It'll come. I hope I learn something from this, even if I'm not married by next Christmas, but maybe it's all just part of living here, and maybe, with God around, even if He isn't fixing it right now, that's okay.

Becoming Human

2010-12-22T20:29:00.004-05:00

Earlier this month I was emailing a little with my friend Stephen. He was talking about how he approves of any holiday which involves his getting presents. He was speaking of Hanukkah mostly (and acknowledging that the reason presents are exchanged during that holiday was so Jewish children wouldn't feel bad that they weren't getting presents during their holiday the way the Christian kids were during theirs). I could kind of resonate with this sentiment, if the truth were known (as it is about to be).

"I like presents, too," I said.

I am fully cognizant that my pretty Christmas tree and the digital camera that my family are pitching in to get me for Christmas have nothing to do with what I believe to be a celebration of God becoming a human being. However. I guess you could make the stretch and say the presents are a celebration of the material world which God validated if He did, in fact, become a human being. Or you could just make a pun on the word 'presents/presence.' Anyway. I'm just saying, I like the gifts.

Let's be honest, here . . .

"I have to say," Stephen replied,

that as an outside observer, I've always been fascinated by the fact that Christmas seems to be a bigger holiday than Easter (when I was working retail, I had a customer berate me for us being open on Easter while she was buying stuff - I love irony). It always seemed that Christ rising and becoming God was kind of the point of Christianity. You're the first person to ever phrase Christmas as the day that God became human. Quite interesting...

At which point, I e-blurted,

I can't believe I'm the first person you've ever heard express that Christmas is about God becoming human. No offense to them, but my gut reaction was to blurt out, 'What kind of Christians are these people?' (I.e., the ones you know who haven't expressed it like that.) Easter isn't about Jesus becoming God. Christians believe He was God the whole time. Easter is about "reversing the curse," if you will--death (including separation from God) being the "curse" and consequence of the general human rebellion against God. God didn't want us separated from Him, but at the same time He is just and requires restitution for the upending of the order of things we caused in His creation. The offended party is the only one who can forgive, and the offending party is the only one who can make restitution, so God became human Himself so He could both make the restitution on our behalf and extend forgiveness to the rest of us after restitution had been made. By submitting to death (including a rift in His own nature--most Christians believe that for a moment God the Father turned His back on God the Son on the cross), He took on His own curse, and by coming back to life, He broke it. Not, of course, that we don't all physically die--it's just that the ultimate effects of death can be different. (Presupposing life after it, of course.) Anyway. That's why Easter is so awesome--it's the culmination of God's becoming human and releasing us from our fear of death and giving us a completely new direction for life both now and later.

I know--that's a long "blurt." But this is me--did you expect a short one?

Amazingly, Stephen actually responded even after all that, but he did make the point that, "I have a funny feeling that if I were to post a survey on Facebook asking why Christmas is important to Christianity (as opposed to the day everyone gets stuff), most would simply say 'It's the day Jesus was born' instead of any reference to God becoming human. But don't hold me to that."

Okay, I won't hold him to that. But it really got me thinking. Many Christians want to "take back Christmas." Even though most of the time I am at least partially thinking that in fact it was we who commandeered a pagan holiday or two, and while I don't feel bad about it, it does seem maybe a little hypocritical to phrase it quite that way--in spite of such subversive thinking, it does feel pretty good to have someone random that isn't from either of my churches wish me a Merry Christmas. Like my long-lost Muslim friend who just contacted me on Facebook this evening, for example. But I think sometimes we Christians think that all we have to say is "Merry Christmas," and that is magically going to translate into everyone's head everything that Christmas means to us. Let's face it--those words don't even translate that to most Christians half the time, busy as we are trying to make the holiday significant. Frankly, I'm more likely to be thinking of how stressed out my wallet is this month than I am about how God invaded human history as one of us.

It seems to me that if we really want to get Christmas "back," we should worry less about correcting people who cheerfully and well-intentionedly tell us to "Enjoy the holiday!" and focus more on the fact that God became human. And that He did so, in part, to help us become more human, too, and give us endless reasons to celebrate.

Indispensable

2010-12-12T13:32:00.003-05:00

It is a wry joke in many circles that religion and guilt go together. I would argue that genuine trust in and commitment to Christ don't go with guilt, but the general "religion + guilt" thing might be true, I guess.

Whatever the case, I always feel this low-level guilt if I happen to miss church. I was ill a couple of Sundays last winter and had to skip out on Sunday mornings and even cancel youth group, and I felt like I had to do some kind of penance or something, even though usually there was also an accompanying sense that God was trying to get me to take a break because I wasn't doing a very good job of it on my own. This morning I missed church because I pretty much slid off my driveway while trying to get out of it this morning. So, it's not like I didn't try to go to church. I tried a couple of times, actually. I also tried not to slide down the embankment on one side, the stone wall on the other, or the woodpile at the bottom. I couldn't even walk Oscar this morning it was so icy out. But still I felt guilty, and so I decided I was going to spend some time on a novel I've not been writing about Mary the mother of Jesus, because I'm working on the birth of Christ part right now and that's Christmas-y and a good use of Sunday-morning-not-at-church-time, right? But I ended up on facebook instead, and then I felt guiltier.

I think this guilt thing is even worse because I actually work for a church. So not only do I feel like I'm shirking some kind of spiritual responsibility, but also that I'm skipping out. I spent a large part of the morning worrying about the Sunday school, because I knew two of the teachers weren't going to be there, and at least one of the subs couldn't make it, and I couldn't sub if I wasn't going to be there, and what about the youth group, and we already couldn't do our plan A for the day, which was a trip to Boston, but if I still couldn't get out of my driveway by this evening, could we even do plan B?

I sat cozy and worried on my couch for most of the morning and then 10 a.m. came and went and suddenly church was over and there was no Sunday school to worry about anymore. They either managed or they didn't, but the moment was passed, and likely everyone survived, even without my hovering presence. It dawned on me that, although I helped get a new Sunday school programme going this year, and although I more or less organise it (I say "more or less," because we all know I'm mostly less when it comes to organised), the teachers are the one who teach it, and they're all adults and they could figure out what to do. And although I do believe my church hired me because they needed someone this position, and I actually feel that God orchestrated the matching of me and the church and this job, somehow, it's also good for me to remember that I'm not indispensable. Or . . . good for me to remember that part of the point of my job is to set things up which empower other people to take leadership in the church, and that I don't have to be in control of everything (because anyway, I'm not)--if I'm really doing my job right, people should be able to make things happen (or make the decisions to cancel things, even) whether I'm there or not.

I still feel responsible for being present on a day that's supposed to be a workday. But I guess this can count as one of my sick days. I haven't had one in almost a year, and it'll be 2011 in just a few more days . . .

The Voyage of the Lost Treader

2010-12-11T21:32:00.002-05:00

So once there was this guy named C.S. Lewis, and he wrote this amazing series of novels about a magical land called Narnia. One of the most amazing of these seven stories is called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The framework of the story is a sea voyage, but the themes are deeper themes of personal development and . . .

. . . the new movie based on this book touches on some of them, and they get in most of the key episodic elements, but I kind of feel like they missed the overall point. Also, somebody in Walden Media is clearly a Lost fan. I don't really think mini green Smoke Monsters were exactly what Lewis had in mind. Somehow. I dunno. There was also something highly reminiscent of a hatch moment, some "Others," eerie whispering voices, and some sort of nameless evil that had to be overcome by a more or less arbitrary action which, in the end, didn't seem to answer any questions or have much to do with anything.

Also, not related to Lost, the undragoning of Eustace was pretty disappointing . . . although not as disappointing as I was afraid it was going to be.

I think if you don't know the story, it was probably a decent movie as far as entertainment goes. But I just threw in a spoiler so . . . maybe not. Heh.

Happy Hallowe'en!

2010-12-09T10:59:00.003-05:00

No. I am not confused. Not more than usual, anyway.

This is a post I was going to write around Hallowe'en, but I got distracted, and anyway, it's really just a spin-off of my annual posts about saying "Merry Christmas," so it's not totally unseasonable. Every year since at least 2007, I say something about the whole "meaning of Christmas" issue, whether it be an emphasis on Easter instead, or how sometimes applying the word Christmas to everything might border on taking God's name in vain. My basic stance is that I do not want to be censored for saying "Merry Christmas," but at the same time, I don't think everyone should have to say it, and I wonder if they even should, if Christ is not who they're celebrating.

But it's the issue of censorship I'd like to address here today. I am going to be really politically incorrect for a moment. Bear with me.

I live in New England. I don't know if it's the "witch-hunt" history (which seems to have had the ironic ultimate effect of drawing a lot of pagans to this part of the world) or the fancifulness of dressing up or a genuine fascination with dead things, but I have a lot of friends for whom Hallowe'en is their favourite holiday. And let it be their favourite holiday. It's their choice. I'm going to say, though, that I personally think it's the most hideous holiday going. Maybe it's just because I'm not a fan of the orange-and-black combination, but I think it's more that I just don't get any enjoyment out of seeing skeletons and hooded grey beings and gravestones and clawed hands coming out of the ground. It just doesn't really do it for me. I also don't really support the trend of Hallowe'en being a time for women to look as skanky as possible. I apologise for the language, but really, is there another way to put it? I'm not sure if this trend is more exploitative of women or men, but either way, I don't like it.

However, I do understand the overall appeal of dressing up and pretending and I also understand that some people genuinely like this holiday, and so if the occasion presents itself, I don't object to wishing someone a "Happy Hallowe'en." The general public doesn't either. There may be Christians or other religious groups who choose simply not to acknowledge it, but nobody goes around telling people they should say, "Happy Holidays" or "Season's Greetings" at Hallowe'en, even though it is not a purely secular holiday either. I went to my e-card-making application the other day to find a Christmas card template, and there were only two options with the word "Christmas" in them, and they were super-cheesy. Everything else was genericised. But you can find Hallowe'en cards, and they actually have the word "Hallowe'en" on them. People just say, "Happy Hallowe'en," to each other and nobody bats an eye.

So, could everyone please stop batting their eyes if I choose to say, "Merry Christmas"? Or, if I'm in the UK, where merry means tipsy, "Happy Christmas"?

Pageantry

2010-12-06T14:32:00.006-05:00

On Saturday and Sunday my church put on their annual Christmas Pageant. People--especially the people who are in it--go nuts over this thing. My first autumn at this church, I was enlisted to be a "Traveler," in the "King's Procession," and in the "People of Other Lands," and I hadn't even seen the production yet. I mean, I know the Christmas story, of course, but I hadn't seen this version of it, and by the time it was all over, though I had a rough idea of all the components and how they all came together, I was still a little uncertain about what I had just been involved in. Mostly all I knew was that we were talking about Jesus' birth and that at the end the narrators said that one day people of all walks of life and all nations of the earth would come and worship the One who gives us life, and then there I was, a white girl in a sari, walking down the aisle.

Last year I got to opt out of the "King's Procession," but I still didn't get to see the whole production until this year, when one of our three narrators couldn't participate. I jumped at the chance. My family read aloud to each other up through the time I graduated from high school, and beyond, so I love reading and being read to. It didn't occur to me that by taking this role, I would also get a different perspective on the Pageant.

On the night of the dress rehearsal, it was not maybe such a good different perspective. Everything was chaotic and we kept having technical difficulties and the whole thing lasted far longer than I had expected or hoped. (God promises to do more than we can ask or hope, but . . . somehow that wasn't what I had in mind.)

On Saturday I had a raging migraine, such as I have not had in a long time (though I've been getting them more often again, of late). I sat up in the balcony far earlier than I needed to be there and tried to relax and stay warm and drown out the low hubbub that was going on around and below me. Then it got to be 2 o'clock and they turned off all the lights and I sat in the quiet darkness and waited for the first scene to go by before I had to read anything. The Pageant had begun.

As it went on, the pain all over began to subside, and I watched as adults and youth and children I know and care about made postcard-scenes in their bits of cloth and glitter and gold lam'e. And I noticed something strange. The best descriptor I could think of for it was Picasso's pithy saying to the effect that "Art is a lie that uncovers the truth." Here we were, a whole bunch of ordinary people, telling an extraordinary story, but not telling it in a very realistic way. There were songs and darkness and spotlights, and no one's costume was, I don't suppose, legitimately first century or Middle Eastern. We had two sheep and a donkey (who at one point almost stole the show because she did not want to exit stage left), and magi wearing bits of drapery and upholstery, and the combined effect was truly beautiful. I hadn't thought those things, which in real life would be quite tawdry, really, could have that kind of a result.

Maybe it helped that I know people here now and all the teens who played Mary and Joseph and the major angels are "my" teens in "my" youth group, but it just seemed like something about everybody's getting dressed up totally differently and putting themselves in a completely "other" context brought out things about them that highlighted who they are, that ennobled them. People carried themselves differently, or the colours they were wearing highlighted certain features about them that made them "more" than they usually seem, or someone caught just the perfect facial expression for the character they were portraying, or the spotlight hit someone just right so that they looked glorious.

Churches nowadays are really "big" on authenticity, and rightly so, I think. I'm really big on authenticity. But sometimes (and I feel I can say this because I feel I've fallen prey to it on more than one occasion) what is touted as "authenticity" turns into self-promotion or self-indulgence, and maybe it's time to recover something that other Christians of other times understood, and that was a sense of wonder and a sense of pageantry and that sometimes, while you don't want to make the costume and mask the place that you live, if they are just temporary measures, they uncover a truth greater than we would have expected.

Leave It

2010-11-27T15:23:00.002-05:00

Today I went out to rake some leaves. The lawn actually has looked pretty good, because on some windy day, all the leaves came down but ended up blowing to the edges of the yard, so I didn't think this was going to take too long.

But then I started thinking about it. Apparently some place in the north of England got somewhere around 10 inches of snow this week, so if they're getting that much already, it's probably likely we'll have some by the time my parents get here just before Christmas. And if we do, then all the leaves nestling in snow-like drifts among the flowerbeds would just disappear. On the other hand, and in the meantime, I realised it would look a whole lot better if I raked the beds out, too.

The short version of the story (because I know you don't want to read about every pile of leaves I picked up by hand and chucked in the wheelbarrow and wheeled across the lawn to the driveway to dump into the woods on the other side) is that it took me two hours to rake a quarter of the lawn. And then, just as I was wrapping up that quarter of lawn and muttering under my breath about how that was all I was doing today and I needed some lunch!, the wind changed directions. This meant that the leaves in the adjacent quarter of lawn that I had not touched yet, began to blow into the quarter I had. I valiantly resisted to the urge to swear, and I still went inside and had lunch, but do I ever hate raking! Especially by myself.

After I went in, Smug-Neighbour came out with his leaf-blower and tidied up his already pretty immaculate lawn. Former-Roommate-Sarah and I used to note with some disgust how he always came out with his fancy lawn equipment whenever either of us was doing lawn-work over here. Today I was telling myself we must have made that up, but . . . I really don't think we did.

Musing on Reform

2010-11-16T18:43:00.006-05:00

You do know, don't you, that by and large anything I post in this blog is my thought-process and not my conclusion? I will rarely post conclusions because . . . well, maybe because I rarely get to any, honestly. "Jesus loves me, this I know" (to the extent of dying a horrific death and coming back to glorious life), and He loves you that much, too, and I'm certain of it. I'm also certain I want you, whomever you are, to know Him in a life-giving way. Other than that? I just think a lot. Usually in circles. Here are some more thought-processes to share:

This church history class I'm now taking is "From the Reformation," and I have a mid-term in it tomorrow, so there's a lot about the Reformers going through my head. It's a Protestant seminary through which I am taking this class, so little has been said about the Counter-Reformation and the Catholic Reformation, but even though I knew at least a little something about the four initial branches of the Protestant Reformation, I'm finding it interesting to poke around in their history in a little more depth. I'm finding out (or remembering) things like:

Apart from the reputed anti-Semitism, and that unfortunate link to the Peasant's Revolt, I think Martin Luther was the man. No--not the Man. But just . . . really cool. By and large, I like his theology and his tenacity and his kind of earthiness.
As I thought when we went to visit Grossmunster in Zurich when I was 14, I still think Zwingli was a bit of a twit. I daresay he had a true conversion experience (even though he claimed an earlier date for it than it probably really happened, so he could make it look like it happened for him before it did for Luther), but some of us take a little more "converting" than others, and . . . well, he's just a little harder to like.
As he may have done to others who actually met him face to face, Calvin makes me uncomfortable. Too smart for me, I think. But I don't dislike him.
I rather like the Anglican church . . . but how it got there is kind of obnoxious.
I've got some Swiss Anabaptist in my background, and although I'm not one, I agree with their view on (ta da!) baptism. And, as we all know, although I can't seem to completely identify myself as a pacifist, I kind of lean that way. Here's something that interested me (although I guess if I think about it, it doesn't surprise me): The Anabaptists' emphasis on the radical separation of church and state was "new." This approach was the first time Christianity had been separated from the government since Constantine.

Good grief.

I've already mused a tiny bit about the effects of Constantine on the Church. I guess I think that the Anabaptists were right to keep it separate. I mean, I don't know that it's possible anymore to truly separate religion from government. It seems like either Christians (or religious people--there can be a difference!) try to infiltrate the government, for example, or the government tries to legislate against them. I liked it when I volunteered at a primary school in London and could tell the Easter story freely because religious education (about all religions) was included in standard school curricula. I don't, on the other hand, like the idea, real or threatened, that symbols of my faith should be removed from public places or that I can't say Merry Christmas if I want to.

God calls people to different vocations and maybe He calls some to be politicians. I mean, I guess He does: I don't think there can be any question, for example, that He put Wilberforce in place for a specific time and purpose. I do believe that God can work through political leaders and that if a Christian is in power, I would hope that their relationship with Christ would have an effect on their policies. However, I don't believe we will ever have a theocracy this side of Heaven, and I think most of even our Christian politicians end up with too much of themselves mixed in. (I think most of us--me, for example--have that problem, but when someone's in the public eye, it affects more people.)

I am starting to think the Anabaptist idea that the Church would always be a persecuted minority in the world, and that it and government could never mesh without unhealthy compromise, is probably true. I struggle with words of separatism at all, as highlighted in my last post, but at the same time, I know the Bible talks about it, sometimes in ways I can't understand, and I know there still is sometimes, somehow, a place for it. I guess I'm still just trying to figure out how and where and when it works.

How do you become and remain incarnational, yet without compromise?

Unequally Yoked

2010-11-08T15:36:00.003-05:00

Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said:
“I will live in them
and walk among them.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
Therefore, come out from among unbelievers,
and separate yourselves from them, says the Lord.
Don’t touch their filthy things,
and I will welcome you.
And I will be your Father,
and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”

(2 Corinthians 6.14-18, NLT)

Lots and lots and lots of Christians like to use the above passage to prove that Christians should not marry people who aren't. This interpretation isn't totally unreasonable, but I have said before and will say again that even if this passage applies to marriage, it isn't about marriage. And neither is this post.

Once upon a long time ago, during the Roman Empire before Constantine, the emperors were persecuting the Christians and even though there were a lot of really noteworthy and amazing Christian martyrs, there were also a bunch of regular people and they ended up recanting their Christian faith until things got a little easier. Then later, when they wanted to go back to church, some of the churches wouldn't let them because they saw them (understandably, I think) as being duplicitous, or weak. They said they wanted a "pure" church. Thing is, they weren't really offering a whole lot of grace.

Then Augustine came along and, citing Jesus' parable about the wheat and the weeds, said that no one should be kept from church fellowship if they had repented and wanted to be reinstated. And from there (going through a number of permutations, naturally), the concept/practice of a "parish church" type of set-up was born. The idea is that anyone can be a part of the faith community, whether they're an actual believer or not, as long as they play by some basic rules. So when a baby was born in a community, he or she would be baptised right away because the family was a part of that parish . . . everyone "belonged" to a church. You didn't have a conversion experience because you were "in."

Once the Protestant reformation hit the scene, ages later, this concept began to be switched up a little bit. The Lutherans and the Calvinists, who believed (in different ways) that church and state should work side by side, maintained the sort of parish/wheat-and-weeds setup. They hung onto infant baptism and But the Anabaptists, who believed that the church would always be a persecuted entity until Christ's return and so must therefore be totally separate from the state, wanted to see a "pure" church, where the only members were people who had a genuine faith in Christ and been baptised as adult believers. Their idea was total separateness.

So here I am, this mix of a Germanic Anabaptist and Swedish Lutheran heritage, who grew up in a Baptist church with Reformed leanings, working at an interdenominational church which baptises any little baby whose parents walk them through the door. And I'm taking another big ol' church history class (could you tell?), so I'm thinking about this "what is the church" thing a lot lately.

I will always be a Baptist on the issue of . . . baptism. But I kind of go back and forth as to whether Augustine was right or whether the Anabaptists were, as far as the whole "separateness" thing goes. The passage above seems to indicate fairly unequivocally that a Christian separation from the world is required. Keeping apart from "the world" makes it a lot easier not to "touch their filthy things." I myself have seen and heard of churches and other organisations who have "teamed up with unbelievers" toward a good common cause, and then the Christ-centered aspect of the cause for the believers gets watered down and washed out, and sometimes the entire enterprise tanks. Compromise is maybe inevitable, and, if these verses are anything to go by, it is unacceptable.

On the other hand, I have a really hard time seeing that Jesus did this. I do believe that all Scripture is inspired by God, and so therefore the above verses are something God wanted said, and so therefore Jesus must somehow have abided by them, but however He did it, it didn't look anything like the way I've ever seen those verses interpreted. He is, after all, the guy who got accused all the time of associating with "tax collectors and sinners." If He was exclusionary of anyone, it was the religious folk, the ones who would probably cite verses like the above, if they had been written yet. And I keep thinking about when I was in Gospel Choir in college, and how our drummer who toured with us wasn't a Christian, but how after touring with us for a while and seeing God answer some prayers, he became one. And I think . . . I'm still confused. What is this 2 Corinthians passage really telling us to do. Because how do we make sure the church keeps its necessary distinctives? But how else are people who don't know Jesus going to meet Him unless they're in our lives?

Voting

2010-11-03T11:36:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I voted. It has already been well-established in this blog that I am one of the most uninformed voters out there, but at least according to the letter, if not the spirit, of the thing, I did my citizenly duty. Going into the voting booth for me is kind of like going in to take a standardised test that I didn't study for . . . only less stressful. I guess I'm still kind of cynical that my vote matters. It's just that I kind of feel like my non-vote matters. It would be so much easier if I were a member of a particular political party but that, my friends, goes against the grain.

You knew that.

Anyway, yesterday I was in line waiting to go into the booth and this woman I knew was two people behind me and this woman she knew was between us and saying wouldn't it be so much better if you could just go to a voting center in any city, and they could scan the barcode on the back of your driver's license, and you could vote wherever was closest to where you worked.

"Yes!" I agreed emphatically, although I had never met this woman before in my life. "Also," I added, "it would be really great if you could vote for the district and precinct where you worked instead of where you lived." I mean, look. I might actually get more into local and state-level politics if I could do this. I sleep (and watch Netflix) in my Hometown. I work and do just about everything else in the City. The children and teens with whom I work--my own "constituents"--live in the City. I have no idea what's going on in the district in which my Hometown participates, and therefore my vote is even less informed than it would be otherwise, because frankly, until we adopt a dictatorship (which could happen, I guess), whoever I vote for there is not going to affect my sleeping and watching Netflix.

On the other hand, I actually personally knew some of the candidates for office in the City's district, and their presence or absence in office might actually impinge on the people I'm working with and for, or even on my work itself. I get paying property taxes and such to the town where one lays one's head. I also get that for the sake of simplification of bureaucracy, allowing people to vote where they worked would probably not . . . work. (On the other hand, when else has simplification of bureaucracy been a real consideration for the way politics happen?) But I still think it would ultimately be more relevant and effective. That's my vote.

Faultlines

2010-11-02T15:18:00.004-04:00

Oscar and I spent most of Friday and Saturday hanging out with Folk-Musician Gale. Usually she comes and stays with us on her way to and from gigs, but this weekend was happily agendaless--for me anyway--so our visit was much more relaxed. We talked a lot over food. Well, Gale and I did. Oscar's still pretty quiet.

Gale told me about a talk she had been to recently, where some historian/professor guy had spoken about the Connecticut witch trials--which had started much earlier and lasted longer than the more famous ones in Salem. I guess he cited the witch trials that had been going on in Europe (in particular, Germany) as the environment for such a similar environment to grow up over here. (Interestingly, I just listened to a lecture on that for my second church history class, and Dr. Rosell said that the witch trials were the result of the failure of the Puritan dream--a sort of backlash in reaction to the fact that what they had attempted hadn't worked. But I digress). This historian pointed out that most of the people accused of being witches were single women over forty who were about to become self-sufficient. Perhaps they were widowed, or had never married, and had somehow come into an inheritance. Whatever the case, they didn't "need" a man "in charge" of them anymore, and in that patriarchal society which was, as Dr. Rosell's comments point out, trying to build itself literally off of Old Testament laws and such, surely having independent women running around was seen as threatening.

Gale and I mused on this for a while, citing instances where it has been clear to us that, despite the feminist movement and other cultural shifts, people are still not comfortable with the idea of single, independent women. We don't have the word "spinster" anymore (thank goodness), so what do you make of us? Nowadays it's assumed we're all lesbians, but that is often not the case either. (Neither Gale nor I would fall into that category. It's still okay for us to hang out, right?)

Later in the day, the topic of "uncomfortable women" came up again. Gale mentioned how she absolutely can't stand it when people are talking about women in abusive relationships as women who have "made bad choices." As if it's the women are the only ones who need to be held accountable, and not the men who are perpetrating the abuse, whether it's emotional or physical. It would be just great if more women had enough self-esteem to notice when they're being abused and say, "Enough is enough!" and get out. But what about the women who are married to these guys and don't believe in divorce? Or what about the women who really love the men who are hurting them and are trying to do the right thing? Can you fault them for loving? Maybe it's a misplaced love, but God does it.

I do believe that men are misrepresented in society, too. It's pretty standard and pretty cliche to say that men are stupid and insensitive and all around jerks. That might be a subject for another post, because I actually feel pretty strongly about that. But right now I'm feeling strongly about marginalised women, who, in spite of the just-mentioned trend and the so-called advances in feminism, are still being marginalised. When women are verbally or emotionally or physically attacked, why are they the ones blamed for it? That happened all the way back in the Victorian era. Surely we're beyond that now? Isn't there some way to help people learn to trust each other . . . and to deserve each other's trust? Isn't there some way to hold people accountable when they jeopardise another's faith in them?

Rest

2010-10-21T13:28:00.004-04:00

You know those times when you're reading a familiar passage of the Bible and all of a sudden you stop short and think, "Um . . . when did that get in there?" Something strikes you a different way, or you're reading a different translation so an aspect of what's written becomes more apparent or something?

Yeah, well, that happened to me yesterday.

Hebrews is a potentially confusing book of the Bible. Probably particularly to those of us who are not ethnically Hebrews. I like to think I have a pretty good handle on the Old Testament, and I think my "handle" on it is probably better than a decent number of Gentile Christians', but I'm still not Jewish, nor do I know many Jewish people, and I can't very well pretend I am or do.

However, I do have this Bible . . . the Complete Jewish Bible. It's part translation and part paraphrase and you can read about the philosophy behind it on the website, but I guess what I'm getting at right now is that, because it's been translated/paraphrased by a Jewish person, there are occasions where I have a minor epiphany that has more to do with a Jewish worldview peering through the words than simply the fact that the words are slightly differently ordered than the NIV/NRSV/KJV conglomeration of words I imbued as a child. Then again, surely I've read Hebrews in this version before . . .

Yesterday I was reading Hebrews 4 (all ensuing Biblical quotations will be from the CJB unless otherwise noted). "Therefore," it begins, "let us be terrified of the possibility that, even though the promise of entering his rest remains, any one of you might be judged to have fallen short of it."

Really?

The writer of Hebrews has just been using the account of God's "resting" on the seventh "day" after creation as a picture of His promise for all of us. Said writer is warning his (or her!) readers not to ignore God's voice if they hear it, and so miss out on His "rest," like the ancient Israelites did when they doubted Him in the desert. So now here's this injunction to be terrified in case you miss out. I'm going to be honest and tell you that the first, not very politically correct, thought that entered my head was, "Okay, so there are some verses in this book that make 'works theology' seem pretty biblical!" I guess what I meant is, this verse in this translation makes it sound an awful lot like you have to try to earn your own salvation.

Of course, this verse sounds a little different in, say, the NRSV: "Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest is still open, let us take care than none of you should seem to have failed to reach it." Seem to have failed, huh? What does that even mean? That makes it sound like the whole thing is about appearances.

The next verses completely turn the "works theology" around, though: " . . . for the Good News has also been proclaimed to us, just as it was to them. But the message they heard didn't do them any good, because those who heard it did not combine it with trust. For it is we who have trusted who enter the rest" (4.2-3). Ohhhhh.

This is one thing I really like about the CJB. It never uses the word faith, which I feel is one of those words which has been spiritualised to the point of being well-nigh meaningless. Any time another translation would say faith, the CJB says trust. So . . . those ancient Hebrews didn't "enter God's rest" because they didn't trust Him. They didn't trust He was going to get them through the wall of giants and . . . so He didn't. Not until the next generation, anyway.

The thing that really jumped at me yesterday, though, was verses 9-11: "So there remains a Shabbat-keeping for God's people. For the one who has entered God's rest has also rested from his own works, as God did from his. Therefore, let us do our best to enter that rest; so that no one will fall short because of the same kind of disobedience."

"Rested from his own works." I've read this chapter so many times, and I think I've always thought, "Yeah, yeah . . . Sabbath rest, a Jewish concept . . . good symbol for Heaven . . . " I never until yesterday saw this passage as talking about the here and now. Because of Jesus, our great High Priest/Mediator between us and the Father (a concept which the Hebrews-author will talk about at length shortly), we can rest from our "works" as God rested from His. At most I saw it as an injunction to take time off every seven days. But this passage does exactly the opposite of defend a view of salvation in which we have to purchase our own by our own good works (including, maybe, taking time off every seven days? Which I still think is a valuable practice, regardless). It clearly says that the only thing we have to do is trust. Trusting implies resting. That resting trust is the keeping of the Sabbath that the writer is talking about here.

The disobedience that causes us to fall short is our own works. As any good born-again evangelical will tell you, you can't do enough good works to get to Heaven, or to get in good with God. If that's what we're trusting in, there will be no rest at all, and we will certainly fall short of the rest. That kind of lifestyle is completely opposed to rest--antithetical to it. It's not so much that God shuts us out of His promise, as that we shut ourselves out.

Why is it so hard just to trust Him and rest?

Personal History

2010-10-11T21:32:00.002-04:00

Yesterday Grandma Madeira turned 90. Today we had a party. I was the only one of her direct progeny who was able to be there, far-flung family that I have, but her brother and most of his daughters, and her sister's kids, and another brother's granddaughter, and my Grandma Grosser and Auntie Jane from the other side of the family were all there. Also The Swedes, a couple of family friends who just love my grandmother and who more than deserved to be there.

We reserved a room in the retirement community where she lives, and we sat around a white-tableclothed table and ate cake and drank coffee and told her a little of what she meant to us and some of our favourite memories of her. There are certain family stories that get told over and over so many times that even though I may not have been born until 50 years after the event, I could probably tell you the story and make you think I had been there. Some of those got re-aired today. But there were also stories or things I hadn't known before. Or at least, I don't remember knowing them.

I didn't know that Grandma Madeira had been proposed to by two different men at pretty much the same time, and had to pick one. I didn't know that her Swedish immigrant parents had moved back to Sweden after emigrating to the States for a while, and that she was conceived there and her mother was carrying her in the womb when they returned to America on behalf of their children. I didn't know how much she and Grandpa Madeira had meant to their nieces and nephews.

I also don't think I knew that her father came to the US in the first place at age 16 because he didn't want to be drafted, because he didn't believe in fighting. You can tell me my great grandfather was a draft-dodger, but the thing is, I don't take that as an insult, and I'm proud he was a pacifist. It was subsequently pointed out that Grandpa Madeira's father was also a pacifist and conscientious objector, as a "plain person" from Lancaster County, PA. I guess I'm about 99% pacifist, and I guess I've mostly come to that perspective myself, but do you think there are pacifist genes? Because maybe I come by this naturally.

Blue Like Jazz

2010-10-07T13:59:00.002-04:00

Look--my "Uncle Steve" is directing this project. I wanna help . . .

Duck Tales

2010-10-06T09:44:00.003-04:00

Apparently my life is for the birds right now, as that seems to be all I'm writing about (besides Jason). Today I was escorted down my street by an eider duck.

It is more or less pouring this morning. I had just set out for work when I noticed something with what appeared to be considerably more heft than a leaf, flapping about in the puddles in the street. As I approached, I could tell by its silhouette that it was a duck. There are mallards that sometimes live across the street from me; they moved out this summer when their pseudo-pond dried up, but it's probably back now, so maybe they are, too, though I though mallards flew south? Anyway, I assumed this guy was one of them as he spread his wings.

He seemed to be having a little trouble achieving lift-off, and also seemed to have an aversion to the side of the road, and so instead he flapped along, very close to the ground, right in front of my car, as if daring me to exceed the speed limit. As if I would ever exceed . . . oh never mind.

He landed a couple hundred yards down the street, and there the lighting was better and I could see that he was, in fact, an eider duck. I'm not sure I've seen one of those in the wild before. I was afraid, though, that he wasn't going to move and I was going to end up either thwarted in my commute, or seeing a dead eider duck in the wild. Or on the road, to be more precise.

He took off again and led me down the street a little further, and then finally flew a little higher and disappeared over a house. When I got to work, Office-Assistant-MaryAnn said, "Another day of duck-weather!" She had no idea . . .

Birdfeeder of Horror

2010-10-05T14:27:00.003-04:00

So the last time I filled the Birdfeeder? The Squirrel cleaned out the whole thing in a day. Apparently I have a pet squirrel. That I didn't ask for. When I manage to catch him on the thing, I leap out onto the deck and yell at him, and then Oscar runs up the stairs and hides under the bed, as if he thinks I'm yelling at him instead.

But that isn't the worst of it. Yesterday I stepped out onto the deck to bring the deck chairs inside, finally, and to fill the feeder again, maybe (although this Squirrel is making me feel very ambivalent about the whole thing), and I almost stepped on a dead tufted titmouse lying among some fallen leaves on the boards right outside the doors.

I can't figure out whether this bird had just gotten old and decided my back deck was a good place to die, or if, during some of the excessively windy days we've had lately, he somehow got blown into the door, or if the Squirrel mauled him. Or the Nuthatch. The Nuthatch has been bullying the titmice lately. Anyway, it was kind of horrifying, and even though I wanted that thing off my deck as soon as possible, I actually waited until the morning to take care of it, because I was just a little too grossed out to deal with it right away.

The birdfeeder's still empty. If Nuthatches and Squirrels are killing other birds, I'm not sure they deserve the food anyway. This may be one birthday present that goes the way of the Dodo.

Happy October!

2010-10-01T08:52:00.002-04:00

The wind is blowing, the rain is spattering the exposed part of the air conditioner unit in the window . . . which hasn't been turned on in over a month. The leaves are falling, the acorns are trying their darnedest to smack holes in people's windshields--or heads--and the frogs are committing hari-kari (or something like it) by leaping into cars' undercarriages. Taking Oscar for a walk has become an exercise in dodging frog-guts.

Why do I like this season so much?

Squirrel! Or . . . Nuthatch!

2010-09-30T10:29:00.008-04:00

I got a birdfeeder for my birthday. This is because I wanted one, and that is because I like to watch the feathered creatures flitting back and forth all day . . . or at least the part of the day that I'm home.

I picked out the birdfeeder myself, and I chose it because it has little metal leaf decorations on it which I thought were kind of pretty, and because it had this spring mechanism which was supposed to make it "squirrel-proof." I was a little skeptical about the squirrel-proof business, but I was willing to give it a shot, because the last time there was a birdfeeder at this house, the Squirrel was pretty obnoxious . . . and hungry, evidently.

I had the feeder for about a week, and the Squirrel knocked it off of its hanger onto the ground, where it proceeded to get immediately warped such that the spring-mechanism is no longer operable, and the feeder is no longer squirrel-proof. If it ever was. I suppose I could get another one (since I replaced the hanger) and find out . . . but I'm too cheap.

Unfortunately, the Squirrel doesn't seem to care about my financial situation. I filled the feeder up last week right before I left on a sort of last-minute trip to New York to visit Dave who was there on business. I was only gone for a day and a half, but when I got back, the feeder was empty again already. I think the birds around here are pretty hungry, but they don't eat THAT fast.

The morning after my return, I happened to look out of the upstairs window and see the Nuthatch fly to the feeder. "Oops," I thought. "I still haven't refilled it." Less than 30 seconds later, I noticed that someone was knocking on the front door. Who could it be? Who do I know who lives in my town and would be beating a tattoo on my front door at 10 a.m.? Because seriously--they weren't stopping. It seemed just like one of my friends to decide to hammer rhythmically against the door just for a joke . . . but I couldn't figure out which friend. I went down the stairs and opened the door. Away flew the Nuthatch. Behind him, he had left a nice little hole in the wall right next to the door. (He had also hammered one of the nails deeper into the wood. He has to have had a headache after that.)

Why did the Squirrel think it was okay for him to eat all the birdseed in one day? And how did the Nuthatch know to go to the front door? And how did all these animals get to feeling so entitled? And why can't they work it out between themselves. I'll just keep supplying birdseed.

Photos: Nuthatch, by Heather Larrabee 2010.
Knock-knock, by Jennwith2ns 2010.

Things I Think About While Commuting

2010-09-15T22:51:00.003-04:00

1. Why is it that businesses put a number (usually the number of their physical address) in their name to make them sound classy or more viable? Loft 266. Salon 15. Even Pho 54. And furthermore, why does this convince me? I seriously think, "Wow. I want to go there. 266. Must be cool." (Actually, it kind of is.)

2. CVS and Walgreens are currently fighting over flu shot customers. Walgreens is trying to convince people that "A flu shot gift card is a good gift." Is it? I'm not sure how I would feel if my birthday were in October and I opened up my birthday present and got a gift card that could ONLY be used to have someone in a white coat jab a needle into my arm. Meanwhile, CVS is offering "personalised" flu shots. What does that even mean? Decaf nonfat with foam? Huh?

3. People should not put bumper stickers on their cars. I am too fascinated. Someday? I will rear-end one of them. Especially those hippies that I want to be like. Their cars are essentially wall-papered. Even the light at Park and Salisbury isn't long enough for me to read all of their pronouncements. The vampire in the car next to me this morning with the "If it's wrong to eat humans, why are they made of MEAT?" bumper sticker . . . well. How would my morning have been complete without that?

4. Oscar peeing on a windy day is a dangerous thing. Make a note to tell all his sitters . . .

Amazing Grace

2010-09-09T15:30:00.002-04:00

Last night I rewatched the amazing movie Amazing Grace and I got to thinking about how popular it's been among American evangelicals, and how potentially weird that is. I think we like it because it's finally a well-done movie with actors we've heard of before (well--at least if we watch British costume-dramas), portraying a genuine Christian as--a little eccentric, perhaps, but--a really positive, liberating, historical figure. There is no question in the movie that Wilberforce's faith was the driving force behind his movement to abolish slavery in England, and there is no apology made for it. I think, for most of us, this comes as something of a relief. And it should. We should be proud to have a man like Wilberforce in our "family history."

Here's the thing I find potentially weird, though. Most of the American Christians I know (and I love you truly, but if you know me you probably already know that our politics don't match) today take a political attitude that is not unlike that propounded by Wilberforce's opponents. Those guys were the conservatives. Wilberforce was a threat to the then-current capitalist system. The entire economy was built on the backs of slaves, and getting rid of it was going to turn everything upside-down. Wilberforce was accused of being unpatriotic and a rebel and immoral and all kinds of things, all because he loved Jesus and therefore loved people, and he wasn't afraid to give up the comforts of his life and to identify with the oppressed . . . and to recognise that his people were among the oppressors.

Look. If you're a regular here, you know I don't like to talk about politics. Furthermore, I know I'm not exactly a woman of action here--it's not like I'm doing a whole lot, by myself in my parents' comfortable house, with my dog, to ameliorate the plight of the homeless or the slaves around the world or the sexually-trafficked. And in this day and age there is so much oppression and so many different things we could focus on that it's almost overwhelming to talk about any of it. But I've been wanting to say something about immigration for a long time, so I guess I'm just going to say it.

I really don't get the majority evangelical attitude on immigration. It seems to me that when we get all bent out of shape over people obeying our immigration laws or not, we're kind of losing sight of something--namely, that our identity should be found in Jesus, who loved all people no matter where they were from and whether they were law-abiding or not, and that our identity is not first and foremost as conservative Americans. What are we trying to conserve, anyway? By all means, let's conserve unborn babies. I feel very strongly about that. But it just seems to me that, at least when we're talking about people from other countries and whether they're allowed to be/work here or not, what we're trying to conserve is our own white sense of power and superiority and our own cultural convenience.

It seems to me that a more Christlike approach would be to see the influx of immigrants as an opportunity. Guess what, all of us whose churches send people to foreign countries to tell people about Jesus (and I'm not saying we shouldn't)? We can tell people from foreign countries about Jesus, too! And guess what? Getting all kinds of angry and moral-high-road with them, and then kicking them out, is not going to help. I'm hearing an awful lot these days about how this nation was built on Christian principles and most of the founding fathers were Christians and and and . . . but I say if that's true, then indeed--let's go back to our roots, and remember that with a few exceptions all of us were immigrants here, and this country was built with the premise that "all men are created equal." This place was designed to be a haven . . . for religious, political and yea, even economic refugees. At least, so it seems to me. Did I miss something, or did my Swedish great-grandfather show up here because of a job? Is that okay, and if it is, is it just because he's white?

Jesus hung out with "tax-collectors and sinners," and what I get from that is that He didn't require people to get their act together before He spent time with them. He was perfect and never sinned, but He never told anyone they had to be the same before they could follow Him around. Sure, a nation needs to have its laws. I'm not a proponent of anarchy. But I think the general refrain, "I don't mind if they immigrate here as long as they're legal" is frankly simplistic and self-referential. And I think as Christians we need to have a bigger picture about the whole thing. Jesus told us to go into all the world and tell it the Good News. If all the world is coming to us, does that mean we should tell it the opposite? I suspect it means we all have the opportunity to change the world with Good News instead of bad.

Sure. Terrorists might get in. Or we might breed our own. (Warning: this video is offensive . . . but it makes a point. And it makes me think that if we were still talking about a war on terror, we might want to look within before we start pointing fingers.) Bad things are going to happen either way, and I don't think we're going to keep the bad things out by keeping people out--or by giving them a hard time for getting in. Sometimes, by making immigration laws more stringent, worse things happen. It seems to me that if we're going to tout this country as being a Christian one, we should be reaching out to the world the way Christ Himself did. We should be on the front lines like Wilberforce was, standing up for human . . . humanness. Not preserving our own comfort-zone and living in fear of the Other, but loving, come what may.

I know. This is not a bullet-proof argument for relaxing immigration laws. It probably isn't even an argument at all. Someone will accuse me of being a "bleeding heart liberal" or whatever people are calling them these days. I don't know about that, but I'm fine with it if it's true. I'm just saying, if we say we follow Jesus, I think we should stop getting all sidetracked with manmade laws, and stop living in fear, and reach out to people.

Begging

2010-08-28T16:02:00.005-04:00

Sometimes--most times, actually--when I am in the kitchen cooking or doing some other form of food preparation, Oscar will come clicking in there (nails against the hardwood floor) and station himself either on the mat in front of the sink so he has an unobstructed view of my profile, or on the other side of the kitchen peninsula so that he can make direct eye-contact with me. From either position he will sit on his haunches and stare and stare and stare at me with his sad, pleading doggy eyes . . . as if I never fed him anything in his life.

Except that of course I have, and some of it has been people-food, and that is precisely why he knows he can come to me and silently beg--because he knows me and he knows I love him and that sometimes, if he and food are in the same place at the same time, they might actually get to meet up.

His chances of getting a little taste of something are actually pretty good, particularly if I am utilising eggs or cheese . . . or green beans . . . or avocado . . . Sometimes I don't indulge him; I won't give him anything with tomato or onion or garlic or grapes or chocolate, all of which are reputedly doggy-destructive. It doesn't matter how enthralled he is with the smell of frying onions (and really? who isn't?) . . . I'm never going to give him any. But with most other things I feel that a tiny little bite isn't going to hurt, and it's going to make him really happy.

One day this week Oscar came in when I cracked an egg into a bowl. I almost invariably give him egg. But I kind of wanted to finish making the entire breakfast, so I decided I'd give him a little piece when everything else was ready. He sat hopefully in the kitchen for a very long time, but eventually he must have decided I wasn't going to give him anything this time, because he got up and loped back into the living room. (It's kind of tough for such a little dog with such clicky toenails to lope, but on occasion he still manages it.) I guess he figured if he wasn't going to get his preferred option of some Jenn-food, he was going to take the second best thing and chill out on the comfort of the couch. "Too bad for him," I thought to myself. "I guess he's just not interested enough." If he had stayed in the kitchen, I definitely would have given him a taste, but I wasn't going to go bring it out to him on the couch . . .

That day, he ended up coming back into the kitchen for one more try, which was rewarded. But he doesn't always, so it isn't always. Sometimes he will stay in the kitchen until I clear everything away and return to my computer in the living room, just in case I might decide to give him something. And sometimes he misses out because he isn't patient enough and decides not to stick around.

I got to thinking about it, and started wondering if sometimes praying isn't like that. Some things, I suppose, would be to me what tomatoes and onions would be to a dog--no matter how good I think they "smell," it would not be loving of God to let me have them. But I suspect most things aren't like that, actually. And I wonder how many things I miss out on because I feel God's taking so long to get them ready, and I just assume His answer is no, and He's being a killjoy, and so I go off into the living room to sulk on the couch. I wonder if sometimes God doesn't give me what I ask for, not because it's the wrong thing, but because I have gotten impatient and stopped trusting Him and His timing and taken myself out of the right-place-at-the-right-time.

Maybe not, but I wonder . . .

Survey Says . . .

2010-08-25T14:55:00.002-04:00

Mr. Junior-High-Science-Teacher used to like to show us "film-strips." These, naturally, bore the brunt of much mockery. They were a little jumpy, they genuinely started out with that number count-down which films like to add in for retro-effect nowadays, the picture was kind of grainy, and the narration was kind of grainy, too. I'm not sure if this was because we were in the 80's or if it's because these film-strips were actually older than the 80's.

Anyway, I guess they were probably pretty boring, and, as I say, all my classmates made fun of them. I sort of secretly liked them, though--maybe because it was something different, and maybe because it was pictures, and even grainy pictures were better than "drawing sketches," which was the other thing Mr. Junior-High-Science-Teacher used to like to have us do. I have numerous memories of the beginnings of these film strips (4, 3, 2 and then a POP of light, and then usually a picture of the Milky Way Galaxy or something and a man's disembodied voice). But I only really remember what two of them were about.

One was about GPS, which, until a couple of years ago, I had relegated in my head to other unfulfilled promises of my childhood ("By the time you're an adult, the US will have converted to the metric system" being the most cliched one, followed until recently by, "By the time you're out of college, they will have built a tunnel system under Boston to decrease the volume of commuter traffic." They now have the tunnel--finally--but I don't know that it's significantly improved the volume of commuter traffic).

The other film-strip I actually remember was about land-surveying. I'm not sure why we were watching a film-strip about land-surveying. I have no idea what we were studying in science that would have made this relevant. I furthermore have very little idea why this film-strip, among all others, is so embedded in my brain, unless it was the question, "Who would want to be this when they grew up?" which lodged it there. I remember being more or less mystified as to what the point of land surveillance was, and I certainly never did figure out how those weird camera-looking things worked. But, in spite of being somewhat agog that anyone could find this a fulfilling career choice, I remember being sort of excited and impressed the first time I saw anyone on the side of the road using one of said weird camera-looking things. I guess I felt a little bit like I was witnessing a celebrity in action. After all, I had seen land-surveyors on a film-strip.

Today I saw some more, and every time I do, I think of junior high and that film-strip, and sometimes I think that, in spite of the fact that the Big Dig is finally over (more or less) and people now have GPS's in their cars--whoa--we still haven't established the metric system as the dominant "rule" of measurement in this country, and land surveillance technology doesn't look like it's changed much since the 1980's either. Although it may have, I suppose. But I'll probably never know without another film-strip to tell me about it.

My Dog Never Ceases to Delight Me

2010-08-25T10:26:00.003-04:00

Like a small child who is growing into a bigger one, Oscar's habits change every couple of weeks. Right now he's in a phase where as soon as I walk into the room, he flops over onto his back so I can rub his tummy. He is also (being a morning dog, which is fortunate, as his person is a morning person) is getting lots more playful in the mornings. After we come in from our first Walk of the day, he tumbles himself up the stairs and runs around my room like a crazy thing until I follow him up, drop on all fours, and the two of us mock-growl and run at each other. Then we play tug-of-war with what remains the only dog-toy with which he will pass the time of day: a cheap plastic Wal-mart bone.

Yesterday I told him we were taking today off, not going to work, because I have to work on Saturday. I didn't really expect him to understand this, but I think he might have, because today, instead of following me round the house for every step in the getting-ready process, he parked himself on the couch and stayed there most of the morning. He did, however, come running into the kitchen when my cell phone started ringing upstairs, looking at me as if to say, "Your phone's ringing. Aren't you going to get that?"

Such a smart doggy.

Autumn--A Month Early

2010-08-23T21:53:00.003-04:00

If you are single with no roommates and there is therefore no one waiting for you at home with a hot meal, the next best thing on a blustery, rainy, chilly day is definitely this:

Get home, slightly damp, and change into sweats or pjs or something. Feed the dog. Feed the birds. (The ones outside, I mean. I don't have indoor birds.) Feed the woodstove. Make a fire in the woodstove which, in itself, is a thing of beauty--starting with the first match, no smoke in the house, no wet wood (on account of Mark-the-Plow-Guy putting some in the garage last winter). Heat up a meal that you made the night before so you don't have to prepare anything else. Curl up on the couch with your meal and a book or a movie and some crocheting (after the meal, naturally), in front of the fire, with your feet on the dog. Finish up with a cup of hot chocolate.

The only thing--and I really do mean the only thing--wrong with this picture is . . . hey, did you notice the date-stamp on this post? August 23rd, people. I do not live in Alaska. Why did using the woodstove seem like the best idea in the world on August 23rd? If I'm writing blogposts from a permanent relocation to Costa Rica come February, you'll know why.

Children

2010-08-15T16:02:00.002-04:00

The Good Neighbours just had their baby son christened today. Between the two of them (and therefore in their one baby) the comprise some mix of Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, I think Finnish, and something else. Not surprisingly, their party next door was pretty mammoth, and I'm pretty sure everybody there was somehow related to the baby-of-honour, except for me. I just learned how to crochet at camp last week, though, so I'm making him a blanket, which is almost as good, right? Not surprisingly (what? am I stereotyping? okay . . . yes) the Italian strain at this party was particularly strong, incorporating food, accents, hand gestures, a couple of fresh-off-the-boat teenagers, and a cute but slightly skeevy cousin telling me I was gorgeous while serving me a cheeseburger. (Are cheeseburgers Italian if an Italian makes them?)

Like a wedding in which one only knows the bride and groom, I felt a little awkward for most of the party, though Good Neighbour Dad's dad was friendly. It helped when I brought Oscar over. Then a couple of elementary-aged girls came over to pat him and we sat on the grass and talked for a long time. I told them about the two weeks of day camp I had just finished running, and said that I thought they would like it and maybe they should think about going next year. They were a little uncertain when they heard it was a church camp; they said if we talked about the Bible all the time, it would be too much like CCD. I assured them it wasn't, but then, what do I know? I've never been to CCD . . .

Anyway, while I was sitting there having a smashing time with these children and Oscar, I also found a moment to feel relieved. The Sixes have been back and staying in my house again this fall, and while their presence is a pleasure and we've had some really nice moments (when I've been around and not on teen mission trips and church conferences and day camp to have them). But their kids are--well, kids--and I just spent two weeks running a day camp full of kids, and I tend to be a rather low-energy person anyway, so all this energy has been a little overwhelming. I found myself feeling, on Friday . . . and yesterday . . . and this morning . . . more than a little disappointed with myself. I mean, this is the chick who used to want to run (or at least work in) an orphanage or something. What has happened to me, that I only feel comfortable with teenagers and no younger these days?

It's probably a good sign that I shouldn't have kids of my own, but evidently, if this afternoon is any indication, I can still enjoy spending time with children, and they can still enjoy spending time with me. It just kind of helps to be able to turn them over to their parents at the end of the day.

Too Something for Somebody

2010-08-14T13:42:00.002-04:00

Pastor Marty retweeted something from a guy named "Pastor Tullian" the other day. The tweet (and the retweet, amazingly enough) said, "If you follow Jesus faithfully you will seem too pagan for your Christian friends and too Christian for your pagan friends."

Something inside me that wasn't John the Baptist leapt at those words; they seem very true to me, although I suspect if I thought about it long enough I could think of a circumstance in which you could be seemingly "too Christian and too pagan" and not be following Christ at all. All the same, that little summation sentence really describes the way I feel most of the time. And reading it like that, it made me feel sort of triumphant. Is triumph a worthy response to something like that? I don't know--that's just how it was. Maybe I just sometimes feel quite certain I am relating to Jesus but that so few Jesus-followers really "get" where I'm coming from that reading that just made me feel a little better about it.

Here's what I've gotta say about the downside to that, though: It makes it a heck of a lot harder when you're visiting dating websites . . .

All Change

2010-08-07T16:47:00.002-04:00

Do you ever have those moments when it suddenly dawns on you that even though you're still the same person you've always been, you're starting to react to the same scenarios in slightly different ways?

I'm a Director of Christian Education at a church in the City, and for the last three summers I've directed their two week day camp. The first summer I shadowed someone else, and last summer was my first one as full-fledged director, and it was scary and stressful because I'm not a very organised person, so trying to organise a whole bunch of other people as well as myself was kind of a 24/7-type of experience . . . even though day camp is supposedly a day camp and only runs five out of the seven days of the week. (It isn't really a day camp though, but that's another story for another time.)

This summer I think I thought was going to be more stressful because we have more teen staff than we have elementary school campers, and I wasn't sure how to keep everyone busy and productive as opposed to destructive and make sure the campers were all happy and not totally overwhelmed by big people. And maybe it should be. I mean . . . there have been a few minor incidents. (There were last summer, too. There probably always will be when you have a considerable posse of kids together.) But about halfway through the week I realised that I was spending much more time with the other adults in the screened-in porch off the lodge, and that it wasn't because I was hiding or shirking responsibility, but because everyone (for the most part) knew where they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to be doing, and they were doing it.

I'm pretty sure that would have been the case last summer, too, but last summer I was running from activity to activity, hovering and feeling slightly hyper-ventilated. This summer I've been grouchy, I've told some people off, I've forgotten a couple of things and had to make far more trips to the grocery store than anyone should have to make . . . but I'm not stressed. There is, of course, one more week to go, but I still feel like I must be growing or something, and that, my friends, is a good thing.

On the Side of the Road

2010-07-30T19:16:00.003-04:00

Now that we're done with bumper stickers for a while, how 'bout billboards?

There are some really dumb ones out there lately. McDonald's are just weird. Clearly they're trying to be clever ("Good things come to those who wake"), but . . . I dunno. Something just seems to fall flat. My favourite one is "Our hotcakes are going like . . . " but after that, it's just "If coffee is Joe, ours is Joseph." Huh? What does that even mean?

The most bizarre billboard up on the main highway going through our City right now, though? It depicts three women, each in a different decade of life. They all look like they're laughing hard enough, if they had any sort of bladder control problem, to . . . have a bladder control problem. The caption says, "Not your mother's hysterectomy." Okay. Guess not.

Everything You Think

2010-07-30T18:47:00.004-04:00

Here at Jennwith2ns' blog, we're analysing popular cultural catch-phrases. Why are we doing this, you ask? Because they're there, and I, Jennwith2ns, overanalyse everything. (You mean you hadn't noticed this yet?)

Previously on Lost . . . I mean, on this blog, I analysed an email forward, and then right before this here post here, I analysed a couple of bumper-sticker sayings but this afternoon, because I found the previously-mentioned awesomely-hippie site, Soul-Flower, I have a whole lot more bumper-sticker-catch-phrase fodder in which to revel, so here are my bumper-sticker reviews. I'm not going to give the nod to every single sticker on the site, but it turns out I have something to say about quite a few of them, so here I am, going to say it.

Bumper stickers that make me feel very un-hippie (i.e. make me want to punch someone in the face):

1. Coexist - Indeed. Please let us exist together peaceably. But I don't intend to stop talking to people about Jesus and the fact that I believe He has a vested interest in their lives, and also, I don't believe that all religions are on the same level, so seeing all those symbols mashed together on a dark rectangle makes me start having extremist feelings, which I don't really want to have.

2. Treehugging Dirt Worshipper - "So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. They traded the truth about God for a lie. So they worshiped and served the things God created instead of the Creator himself, who is worthy of eternal praise! Amen" (Romans 1.24-25, NLT).

3. Karma Happens - I actually kind of agree that it does--I kind of agree that there is something like karma out there. I just feel like Jesus came to free us from it. If it was really for freedom that Christ has set us free, I'd rather not get tied up again in slavery to the law--even by acknowledging it on the back of my car.

Turns out, though, that there are a lot more bumper stickers on here that I actually do like, even though you might not expect all of them to be right up my street.

1. Peace Be With You - Hey guys, they say this in church. 'Cause Jesus said it first. I'm down. (Interestingly, though, He isn't cited. Unlike Bob Marley, Gandhi, and John Lennon on other bumper stickers.)

2. Lord, Help Me to Be the Person My Dog Thinks I Am - This might not be a bad thing to pray, really.

3. Support Organic Farms - 'Cause I do.

4. Support Your Local Revolution - Especially if it's the next Great Awakening or something.

5. Break the Chains! Shop Independent Stores - I like this sentiment. I would never put it on my car, though, because it would make me a card-carrying hypocrite. I shop at Marshalls and Old Navy and I used to work at Starbucks, for crying out loud.

6. Change is Inevitable. Growth is Optional. - Both things are true. As I have observed and personally experienced.

7. Roots Run Deep - I don't know if I even know what the hippie meaning for this is, but they do, and I want to be rooted deeply . . . in the Jesus-life.

8. Compost Happens - Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

9. If We Don't Change Direction, We'll End Up Where We're Going - Do I need to explain this?

Okay. The end. I'm happy to have got this off my chest. What are some of your loved or hated bumper stickers?

Well-Behaved Hippies

2010-07-30T17:15:00.004-04:00

So . . . remember how I have this pipe-dream (pun sort of intended) of being a sort of abridged hippie? By this I mean I maintain somewhat old-skool, monogamous, etc, sexual standards, and I have no desire to take up recreational drugs, but I like the clothes and the colours and the wind-chimes and the barefootness, and stuff like that. So today, thanks to a Facebook side-bar ad (because you can't tell me you never click on those), I discovered Soul-Flower.com. How much more hippie can you get? For the record, I would wear almost any of the women's clothes on there, minus the slogan ones, or ones with identifiably Bob Marley and/or Grateful Dead designs. In case anyone wanted to know. You know.

I confess I scoured the site to see if they were secretly selling marijuana on there . . . not 'cause I wanted any (honestly), but because it just seemed like they might try to be subversive in that way. Hippies want to be subversive, right? The closest thing I found was incense and hemp lip balm. But maybe I just don't know how to find out about these things. I could never be a narc.

Anyway, one of the things they did have was plenty of bumper stickers and graphic tees, as any good hippie shop should, really. I have a love/hate relationship with the types of slogans that end up on these sorts of things, for similar reasons to my ambivalence toward emails like the one I analysed last time. For example, I actually love the one that says, "Don't believe everything you think," but it's because in my head, I turn it around toward the idea that things are "true for you" as opposed to there existing an objective Truth "out there," like they told us on X-Files. I'm sure the writers of the sticker want me to stop "thinking" about my faith and just "feel" things, but frankly, although my feelings toward God are often somewhat obstinate or confrontational, I both think and feel that He exists and that the story of Jesus as recorded in the Bible is true, and if I have to submit to some sort of esoteric drug-induced experience to stop thinking and feeling that . . . well, it all seems a little suspect to me.

One of the slogans on Soul-Flower, usually found on bumper stickers but in this case on a woman's t-shirt, was the one mentioned by George Norman Lippert in a comment to my last post. (George and another guy named Darren have been blogging it up on Pastor Marty's blog this week. You might want to check it out.) One of GNL's pet peeves, evidently, is the slogan, "Well-behaved women rarely make history." The first time I, myself, saw said saying, it was paired with another bumper sticker which said, "Eve was framed." I think that's the peeve-making thing about it. In spite of being something of a feminist (maybe an abridged one of those, too) and an attention-seeker, I do believe that Eve (and Adam) actually sinned--hey guys! I believe there's such thing as sin!--and the implication that we should "break rules" for the sole reason of making our presence known to the world sort of drives me crazy. GNL puts it best, I think, when he says, "As with any of us, the breaking of the rules is only meaningful, methinks, when it is done for a powerful reason, and not just to be cool."

I probably hate the "well-behaved women" thing slightly less than GNL does, but only because I choose to look at "well-behaved women" in a different way than probably the authors of the phrase were actually thinking of it. By which I mean I can think of some women who broke rules for powerful reasons and not just to be cool. True it is that there have been mistresses and scandalous queens (Jezebel comes to mind) and Yoko Ono (sort of--though I'm a little skeptical that she and Angelina Jolie will be historically viable in a real sense if human history gets to muddle on for a few more centuries) who have made history because they have not been, in the traditional Western sense, "well-behaved."

On the other hand, there are ways of "misbehaving" against society which are actually Biblically moral and upright and still end up being subversive. GNL points out the Biblical Ruth and Esther (each of whom asserted themselves to men in a culture where that was not usual or even acceptable, but did so for family or the nation, and to uphold the larger law of God). There are also people like Mother Teresa, who subverted a selfish, capitalistic, shallow society where arbitrary value is put on human life. Also, in my church history class this spring I learned about people like Catherine of Siena and . . . some other Catherine--I'd have to look her up . . . who worked to reform aspects of the Roman Catholic Church before the Reformation even happened. I suppose people who slap "well-behaved women" bumper stickers on their cars don't really know about the Catherines. But it doesn't matter. They still, in some way or other, made history. But in all cases, I don't think it was because these women were trying to make history. Or even trying to be subversive. They were just trying to do the right thing.

Does that mean they were well-behaved, or not?

Carpe Diem

2010-07-15T20:08:00.005-04:00

Dead Poets' Society came out one summer when I was in high school and captivated the minds of a generation . . . or at least of my compatriots in both youth group and at school. One of my guy friends resonated with one of the characters and one of my girl friends had an aunt or someone who lived in New Jersey or something and somehow vaguely knew some of the actors. My friend and I spent our entire senior year fantasizing about a trip to visit her in which she introduced us to those young gentlemen, but naturally no part of it ever happened. For my own part, I had to give a speech at the beginning of school that year, and I chose as my theme that of the movie: carpe diem--seize the day.

I don't really remember what I said, but I remember feeling very inspired and, as I went to a Christian school and was very intent on its being as Christian a school as possible (as if I had much to do with it), I tied the theme in with our faith. As I say, I really don't remember how I did this. And, as I implied in the last post, I don't know that I lived it out very well, as "spontaneous" and "Jenn" are not usually words that show up in the same sentence. Not this Jenn, anyway.

After my friend's comment the other week, though, I had to reassess whether "carping" the "diem" is truly a "Christian" approach to life. I think I decided I can still at least mostly agree with the sentiments behind the email; on the other hand, the way in which I perceive them is likely different from the way my friend does, and, if I am genuinely trying to walk in the steps of Jesus in some way, it probably should be.

So now I'm going to "explicate" that email I mentioned last time, with the Bible in mind. (The last time I explicated anything, it was for a literature class in college, so whoever wrote this email forward should feel really honoured at all the attention their writing is getting over here.)

Life is short.

Yes. It is. "As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more" (Psalm 103.14-15, NIV).

Break the rules.

I'm gonna go with yes, but probably not in the way the writer of the email meant. There are the 10 Commandments and the perceived traditional morals which are usually implied as being the rules that need to be broken in this sort of thing. But it seems to me that those are just convenient scapegoats for a fairly amoral society which wants an excuse not to take responsibility for decisions. There certainly are and have been societies or pockets of society where oppressive legalism is the, er, "rule" of the day, but I kind of feel like the "rules" in this society are about living completely for oneself and running roughshod over other people, ideals and beliefs that differ. So . . . I'm okay with breaking those rules. Yeah. Let's be counter-cultural. Let's actually think about the results of our actions and make decisions based on true, self-sacrificial love, and not self-love. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law" (Gal. 5.22-23).

Forgive quickly.

I don't know that that's always realistic--I think true forgiveness is a process, and if what's being forgiven was a true injury, too quick a forgiveness is probably more of a suppression. BUT--the whole point of the Bible is forgiveness, and if someone has wounded us, forgiveness and it's process isn't even really optional. "For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins" (Matthew 6.14-15).

Kiss slowly.

Um . . . okay, how 'bout we not talk about kissing?

Love truly.

Along with forgiveness (being a specific manifestation and capacity of love), the whole point of the Bible is love. "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" (1 John 4.8). The "truly" part is kind of important in this context, though. I think the general understanding within this type of email is "love with feeling." But God's love is beyond emotion and has a lot to do with choice and decision, and less to do with spontaneity. This isn't some "love the one you're with"--although, I suppose you could argue you should love the people you're with. It's just that true love doesn't necessitate the physical, and the danger of emails like this is that if you were so inclined, you could always justify doing something "spontaneous" . . . and not God's idea of the best way to live life and love others . . . by saying you were "loving" in the "truest" way that you could, when really, it was just the most physical, or immediate, or convenient--or self-indulgent.

Laugh uncontrollably.

I'm pretty down with that. It raises your seratonin levels or endorphins or something. You know, "Science has shown . . . " Plus it's fun, and in my own experience, the times when I've laughed the hardest have usually been the times when the humour has been the most innocent. It's a little tough to find a Bible verse about this. But there is always this: "A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit" (Proverbs 15.13). Which I guess kind of implies that true happiness, smiling, and even laughter, overflows from who a person is on the inside to begin with.

And never regret anything that made you smile.

This is probably the bit with which I disagree most. There are plenty of things that can make me smile, I suspect, for which the time or place or means is not actually pleasing to God. I guess that's probably the main difference between the possible different interpretations of the advice in the email. You can interpret it in such a way to provide short-term pleasure for yourself, or in such a way as to provide pleasure to God. The second way sometimes (but not always) limits the responsibility. I tend to think, though, that it also provides a longer-term, deeper, more repeatable pleasure that you end up enjoying yourself, even as God does.

Fwd: March!

2010-07-11T14:28:00.005-04:00

I don't like email forwards. I realise this isn't a very original sentiment, but it's a genuine one. I especially dislike the ones that promise some kind of pagan good luck--or bad luck--(conditional on one's forwarding the forward) and tack Jesus or some saint onto it, or the ones that say, "If you love Jesus, you'll send this to 25 of your friends. If you don't send it on, you hate Him." I often feel like the true test of whether or not I love Jesus--and the 25 friends--would be my not passing the forward along. The thing that might be mildly unique about my relationship to email forwards, however, is that in spite of my honest-to-goodness dislike of same, I usually read them.

And every once in a great while, there's one that I pass along. Usually not to 25 people, and usually only if it doesn't have a threat at the end. Like the one I got from Y(outh)G(roup)-Dave (not to be confused with Brother Dave) this week. It had lots of crazy and creative and mildly disturbing photos of food art in it like this:
and this:Interspersed with the photos was the stock email forward text about laughing and loving and dancing, with a few small twists. But the photos were, in my opinion, so great, that I decided to pass them along to a friend.

"Text aside," I emailed, "these photos are awesome."

On receipt of the email, however, he wrote back, "I found nothing wrong with the text."

"Oh, good," I replied. "I thought you might have found it cheesy." The last time I emailed anything with a similar sentiment to this friend, he pointed out how trite and attemptedly guilt-inducing it was, so I was a little skittish I guess.

"I thought," he said, "you were objecting to the 'live for the moment' sentiment . . . "

"Nope," I said. But then I started thinking about it. There's no question that I'm not the most spontaneous puppet in the theatre (I just made that up--not sure it works, but it kind of makes me grin so I'm going with it). And there are plenty of pseudo-Christian email forwards, and genuine Christians who forward them, that espouse "live for the moment sentiments." But now he really had me thinking. Is spontaneity about beliefs more than it is about personality? And were the injunctions in the forward, most of which I kind of enjoyed and agreed with, things that I, as a Christian, should instead be wary of?

Sometime this week I'll explicate the email and give you my so-far conclusions. In the meantime, here's what it said. What do you think?

Today is International Disturbed People's Day

Please send an encouraging message to a disturbed friend... just as I've done.

I don't care if you lick windows,

take the special bus

or occasionally pee on yourself..

You hang in there sunshine, you're special

Every sixty seconds you spend angry, upset or mad, is a full minute of happiness you'll never get back.

Today's Message of the Day is:

Life is short, Break the rules, Forgive quickly, Kiss slowly, Love truly, Laugh uncontrollably, And never regret anything that made you smile.

Send to all the people you care for and don't want to lose in 2010 , even me..

If you get 3 back, you are a great friend.

Life may not to be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance.

Is the Hiatus Over?

2010-07-10T14:46:00.003-04:00

This year I answered two emails when they were each over a year old. How does this happen? you ask. Well, basically, I waited to answer them because I wanted to take the appropriate amount of time to give the thorough and thought-out response that these emails, and there just never seemed to be the right time, and the longer I lagged in answering, the more embarrassing it seemed to me to be to remind the senders of my existence by answering in such a belated fashion.

I'm pretty sure that's what has happened to this blog, even though the silent time-span was a month instead of a year. In the meantime, I went on vacation during which time I did not have my computer and did a bunch of writing by hand though none of it was very inspired and also during which I discovered I actually remember much more French than I thought I did. I also went with nine teenagers and one adult on a mission trip with a lot of other youth groups in Upstate New York. I have further taken yet another week of vacation--this time not alone, and not very far afield; instead, my parents, Dave, Sister-in-Lu, TWCN and Patrick all descended on my (I mean my parents') house and we had a great time as a family. It has actually seemed like summer around here, and not just because the temperature has been in the 90's and 100's all week.

I'm not sure that any of that makes for a good excuse for my not having written in over a month, but it's the best I've got. I hope you'll come back and visit.

Alone

2010-05-21T12:43:00.006-04:00

On Earth Day I took the train into Boston to go to a free Earth Day concert near the New England Aquarium, and this lady on the T (the Boston-area commuter train/subway, to the uninitiated) started talking to me. The bulk of our conversation was about faith and God--turns out she lives in the environs of the City, is Jewish and goes to a Unitarian Universalist church. It was pretty interesting, and I haven't had one of those random chats with someone I didn't already know, in a long time, so I enjoyed it. But that isn't actually the topic of this post. Along with this woman's curiosity about my "religion," she was fascinated and impressed that I would go to a concert by myself. She was middle-middle-aged, had been married before but had been single for quite some time, but she confessed she never went and did anything unless she had a group of friends to go do it with.

It wasn't that I hadn't invited other people to go, of course, but when everyone declined (or just ignored the invite) I still wanted to go to it, so I just went. Sometime around that time I got together one evening with a friend from church and told her that I'm going to Quebec on vacation. I had wanted to visit Dave and Sister-in-Lu and TWCN and Patrick in Jerusalem, but finances and timing and other logistics weren't lining up right, so I googled "pet-friendly hotels," found an adorable-looking and affordable one in Baie St. Paul, Quebec, and booked myself (and Oscar) in for four nights.

"Who are you going with?" my friend asked.

"Oscar," I said.

"You're going by yourself?" she exclaimed. "I don't think I could ever do that!" At present, she is single, too.

I admit, most of the time when I travel, I go where I know someone, stay with them and get to know their area from a local's-eye view. This suits me very well. I get to see people I care about and I get to see a place from a slightly different angle than the normal tourist traps. Hopefully my hosts find this arrangement acceptable, too. If they don't, they're all very good liars.

But there have still been times when I've struck off on my own. It isn't, in any case, something I think twice about anymore. I remember having recently moved to London and first visiting Oxford. I did have a friend there to go see, but she was a student and so she had classes and appointments and things, and I was taking a day off, which meant I had a lot of solo-wandering time. At first I didn't like that; I kept fantasising about a nonexistent "special someone" to wander along Addison's Walk with me . . . or at least my family of origin to enjoy the C.S. Lewis haunts with.

But they weren't there, and the special someone continued not to exist, and eventually, starting that day and spanning across my time of living in the UK, I discovered that there is something truly enjoyable about traveling by myself. I can meander as slowly or march as quickly as I want. There's no one else around to get bored or to tell me I'm walking too fast for them (something I get a lot . . . it's a height thing). I can keep company with my own thoughts . . . and actually do some praying, too. I can go into a shop that "becuriouses" me and not worry about someone else thinking it looks weird or dumb or just hating shopping.

It's not to say I wouldn't enjoy having a travel partner. I had actually invited Dear Friend Paulina on this trip, and would have liked having her company. But I think I'm equally happy having the time and the auberge and the exploring to myself. I guess what I'm saying is that I like that I like going off and doing these things by myself as well as with people. I have spent most of my adult life wishing to be married and actually being single, but there are times, like right now, when I'm really happy that I've been single this long so that I've learned not to be afraid to go off and do what I feel like doing, instead of waiting around and wishing I had someone else around to validate my expeditions and interests.

. . . it Happens

2010-05-20T10:27:00.005-04:00

Bryancti told me to post this story. I do have a filter, believe it or not. Possibly not a very fine one, but there are things I will not post. Also, long ago the Milk Guy said in no uncertain terms and with a look on his face that presaged vomiting, "No more poopy stories!" But the Milk Guy no longer reads this blog I think, and anyway, when I was talking to Bryancti about it, I got this deep spiritual insight (for real) and then I felt like I had to post it. Please don't read this if you're faint of stomach and can't handle fairly graphic descriptions of dogs' bodily functions. I would censor it if I could, but then the point will be lost, so . . . just don't say I didn't warn you.

Yesterday during my lunch break at work, I took Oscar for a walk, as is my wont. Oscar, as is his wont, began to relieve himself. Only . . . he got stuck. I'm not entirely sure why he gets constipated when he does, except that he's an intense little guy . . . Anyway, so we're standing out there for quite some time, poor little dog struggling away, and then finally he produces something. Yay for him! Sometimes, after he goes, Oscar does that doggy butt-dragging thing to wipe himself on the pavement, and it's fine, only this time when he did it, there was still a big ol' poop dangling from his rear end. It got all over the sidewalk and all over his hindquarters. Disgusting!

I knew that if I brought him back into the church and he sat down anywhere, soon poop was going to get all over that "anywhere," and so my brain started churning as I tried to figure out how and where I was going to clean him up. I finally settled on the Sunday school bathroom in the basement, which is where we immediately marched as soon as we got back inside. I hoisted him onto the counter with his hindquarters over the sink and turned on the water.

Paper towels only went so far. He's got tons of really curly fur (this was, of course, the day before his annual grooming/shaving), and his waste products had gotten all stuck in this, so eventually I had to use my bare hand. It took about half an hour to forty-five minutes to get him all cleaned up, and then clean the bathroom, and then wash my hands about twelve times, and I really just didn't want to touch anything for a while, let alone my lunch, which was a bagel and really familiar-looking sunflower-seed butter. (Looks like peanut butter, only goopier. You get the idea, I think.)

After telling him this story, Bryancti said, "I hope Oscar appreciates all you do for him." I would hope so, too. But of course he doesn't. He hasn't a clue. He wasn't enjoying the process much either, and when we got back to my office, all cleaned up, he went straight over to the table where I keep his cookies, sat down expectantly and looked at me as if to say, "Sheesh! I need a treat after all that!" I thought to myself, "Dude. I'm the one who needs a treat."

After Bryan said that thing about Oscar's appreciation, though, a lightbulb went on in my head. I thought . . . this must be a little bit like what it's like for God to take care of us. We go along our way, doing our thing, and then suddenly, somehow, we get poop all over ourselves. I really don't think the analogy is going to far. Life's sometimes like that. We might want to blame God for the poop, but it isn't actually His fault. We digest, sometimes better than others, our live experiences and then, uh, poop happens, as the bumper sticker likes to remind us. I suspect most of us are fairly talented in somehow wallowing in it when it does, even if we think we're trying to get out of it.

Then God, because He loves us even when we're poopy, and also possibly because He'd really prefer not to get poop all over the Kingdom of Heaven, mercifully picks us up and begins the process of cleaning us up . . . by hand. The cleansing process is usually less comfortable and less fun than getting poop-covered was in the first place, and we think God is so mean, and after we're through it we think, "Man. God owes me!"

I don't think I ever realised in quite this way how much God Himself goes through to clean me up. I mean, it's the Incarnation, and the Cross, and the Resurrection, but sometimes those words just sound like theology and it just sounds general . . . for all the world (which it is) and for all sin (which it is), and I forget to think how God is personally involved in my personal and individual processes, and that maybe He feels stuff about it, and that maybe we still get Him messy. He's the one, of course, who we owe, but he doesn't ask for us to pay Him back, just like I wouldn't ask Oscar to.

God knows we're never going to fully appreciate what He has done and keeps on doing for us; I suspect He knows we can't fully appreciate it. But when Oscar comes over with his tail wagging and wants to play or licks my face or snuggles up next to my shin on the bed, it's worth it to me, just as God delights in our enjoyment of Him. I'll never realise what God goes through to put me right, I don't think. But having washed Oscar's poopy butt, I think I have a slightly better idea.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding

2010-05-13T15:37:00.004-04:00

When I was around 22 and living and working in Nannyfield, my employers (Terry-and-Karin-the-Great--they really were awesome) were kind of concerned about the fact that I had never had a boyfriend. Terry-the-Great knew this guy from work that he wanted to set me up with. Said Guy was somewhat older than I (at that point, such a feat--being older than me--was not difficult to manage), and Terry thought he was a little weird, but that we'd be good together because we were both "religious." The Guy invited me to go with him to a Star Trek convention or something once, but I declined, and never met him in person. Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if we had met. Frankly, I don't think I became proper girlfriend material until I met the Milk Guy, and now I don't care anymore (maybe that's the difference), so probably nothing would've happened, but these are still things you think about sometimes.

Like, when you're studying about the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Long before the Star Trek invite, The Guy invited me to go with him to a celebration of the anniversary of "his church." He sent me, via TtG, a whole lot of literature about it--the Eastern Orthodox church. I'm not sure if this celebration was of the anniversary of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic split, which I would think would be a little tricky to pin down, since there was tension between them for quite a while before they actually divided, or of his own branch in New York City. The latter is more likely, I think. I just learned that US Eastern Orthodox churches do not have patriarchates in this country, but are linked to other ones in the Old Country. (Which old country? It depends, probably.)

I remember reading everything This Guy sent me, and wondering if it would constitute being unequally yoked if I ended up with an Eastern Orthodox guy. (Everybody that has been reading this blog for the last two years is free to guffaw loudly at this point.)

So, today, going over my notes about Eastern Orthodoxy, I thought about this again, and you know what? There are actually things I like about the Eastern Orthodox church--at least in theory. Apparently during the time of Constantine at least, the Eastern church believed that there should be a sort of seamless union between church and state, and so Constantine was allowed to perform some of the duties at religious functions, and the average Joe was so interested in theology that Constantinople was full of people debating the nature of Christ and stuff. Given what small talk has devolved to, I kind of like that picture. I like the understanding of the Church--that it reflects the Trinity (unity in diversity), is the Body of Christ (an extension of the Incarnation) and is itself the continued Pentecost (implying centrality of the Holy Spirit). I like the concept that the Church exists both visibly and invisibly and is both human and divine. I am definitely a fan of the understanding that doctrinal assertions act as a fence to keep heresy out, but don't (and shouldn't) fully explain or exhaust the mysteries of our faith. I also like that at least ostensibly, the line between clergy and laity is more blurred than in Western churches.

Here's what I think I'd have a hard time with, though. I don't like the concept (found also in the Roman Catholic church and plenty of others) that salvation is impossible outside the church. It kind of reminds me of that baptism scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which is supposed to be funny, but always makes me uncomfortable, because clearly this guy is "converting" for a person and not because he met a Person. But in this tradition, his entering the church and having undergone baptism (which supposedly brings the new birth itself), would be what saves him. I like what it says in the story about his love for the girl. That's all very noble and everything. But I don't like stories of forced or false conversions. Also what is the point of Chrismation (which is kind of a cool word if you think of it like "clay-mation"--does it mean animated by Christ?)? It's confirmation . . . of the children of believing parents. Why would you baptise a baby and then confirm a kid. When does anyone get to decide if they believe or care or not? I guess you don't, because you need to stay in the church, so you can stay saved. I'm a little uneasy about the idea of God the Father as the fountainhead from which the Son and the Spirit proceed, because it makes Him seem superior to them, and I really disagree that sin is a result of death instead of the other way around.

So yeah. While I think it would be fun to stumble across more people debating theology in random conversation (kind of like the third conversation I ever had with the Item, when, over the counter at Starbucks, he told me his background was Catholic but he was first alienated from the church over the doctrine of transubstantiation because it wouldn't allow his non-Catholic father to partake of the Eucharist), and while I like allowing the mysteries to be mysteries, in most other respects, I don't think I'd make a very good Eastern Orthodox. Good thing I never met That Guy.

P.S. I got all that info? from my professor's lecture outline. He is Dr. Garth M. Rosell. I would like to give him the credit, and not be guilty of plagiarism. Thank you.

Communes

2010-05-13T10:05:00.006-04:00

Someone, somewhere (like probably Pastor Marty, to whom I just intimated I might not be going to Life Group tonight since I'm studying for my final tomorrow), is going to think I'm slacking off from my studies just to blog. But I'm actually hoping this will be part of the studying process--I'm not even making an excuse.

So here are the first musings of the day. (That you get to know about, anyway!)

Remember that time I said I wanted to be a non-pot-smoking, non-promiscuous hippie? (Remember when I spelled "hippie" with a "y"?) So that little dream was kind of the hermit-hippie version, but for a long time--like, probably since college--I've also had this dream of living in a commune. Which might be why the discussion of monasticism in class kind of draws me.

Uncle Phil was an actual hippie who did live in a commune once, and it was a "Christian" one supposedly, but it got very controlling and very dysfunctional and he has nothing good to say about it. I was a little kid living in Honduras at the time, so I don't know much about it other than dark looks and oblique intimations that it wasn't a good experience. And an LP that came out of it, which I actually liked a lot growing up. But--maybe because I was a little kid and don't know much about it--I still find the idea of communal, sort of monastic living appealing. Jesus and his disciples didn't live in a monastery or anything, and it was a mixed group--men and women--and some of them were married and some of them were single, but they lived together. Some monastic orders, though not "co-educational," really weren't separatists from the world, but actually reached directly into their surrounding culture or sent monks off in groups to travel about and evangelise and care for people's needs. I like that. I think there's something fortifying about belonging to a group like that, working through all the personality differences and stuff, and reaching out together for the common cause of Christ. I don't really think there's another common cause that would make working through the personality differences worth it, frankly--it's too much hard work to just do it for the heck of it, but it's a great exercise in becoming a stronger disciple of Jesus if He's the reason for it. (And help in it!) I like the idea of people belonging to each other because of Jesus, and each being able fully to exercise their gifts for the community--because they're together in life, and not just for Sunday mornings and specific churchy stuff during the week. I like that ancient and medieval monasteries set a rhythm of work and worship, and that their adherents were constantly being reminded to worship God in their work, and also to take time to pause to be with Him together. I think I would learn to pray better if someone told me that at such and such time a day, we were praying, and not doing anything else.

A few years ago the nearby Yankee Drummer Inn went out of business. For the last seven years I've had this back-of-the-mind idea that a group of Christians should buy it. We could all have lived in the rooms, and cooked in the kitchen, and worshiped together in the events hall. I thought we could all keep going to our regular jobs so that we could keep making inroads into the wider community, and maybe people would be drawn to our smaller community and we could disciple them there and stuff.

Sometime this year they tore the whole thing down. Now there's just a chain-link fence and a bunch of weeds. There isn't even a hole in the ground. So much for that idea.

But there still is that controlling thing. St. Benedict, who established that rule of monastic life that so many other monastic communities since then have either ascribed to or adapted, said that the most important thing in communal life was obedience. You had to have an abbot, and the brothers (because of course these were celibate communities) had to have the humility to obey the abbot without question. I kind of wonder if he's right. I wonder if, in order for a group of people to live together effectively, you have to have a sort of authoritarian organisation. I wonder if "controlling" is the nature of monasticism or communism. In that case, Uncle Phil's experience is probably less than unique and maybe there is nothing good to be said about monasticism. The best that could happen in this scenario would be for the person in charge to actually not be a control-freak, and be trustworthy, and for the people not-in-charge to be committed enough to the endeavour and humble enough to not assert their own opinions all the time.

Something in me recoils at that idea. I guess if you enter a monastery you take certain vows which aren't necessary for being a Christian, but are necessary for being in the kind of community you're joining. You voluntarily decide to set your individualism aside, at least in some respects, for the sake of the community. Is that what we're supposed to be doing as followers of Jesus, or isn't it? He came to bring us into unique community and reconciliation with Himself and others. He told us the best we could do was to love God with our entire being and to love our neighbours as ourselves. That doesn't leave much room for selfishness, and it's pretty clear that God doesn't want to leave us any room for selfishness. That's why He came down here in the first place. I think there's probably something bracing and freeing about living in community if it's done well, and something that forces us to die to ourselves in ways that we can't when we're living out "this American life" or whatever.

I don't live in community right now, though (unless you count Oscar). I've looked for roommates on and off since Roommate-Sarah, and I had the Sixes here for a while (they're coming back this summer!), but it seems like intermittent hermit-dom is my lot for now. So I'm glad Jesus came for individuals, too. I suppose the main thing is to be His disciple in whatever state He calls you. It says that in the Bible somewhere, I think . . .

Scary, Isn't It?

2010-04-30T22:02:00.005-04:00

My friend the Item said that this might be the blogpost to get people commenting on my blog (actually on my blog and not on facebook) again. And he only heard the first part of it.

For the last five to seven years, my recurring dreams (when not about math or Starbucks) have involved one or some combination of the following themes:

being back in London or India (although the dream versions are usually fairly unrecognizable)
riding public transportation somewhere and missing the connexion and either having to get on another conveyance than the intended one, being stuck where I didn't want to be, or having to walk
hanging out with a big group of people, only one of whom I ever actually know (and that only in the dream, usually), at some sort of potentially sketchy meeting or event, and wanting desperately to leave early.

I suppose it wouldn't take a moderately creative person very long to come up with some hypotheses as to what my subconscious is saying through these themes. Besides that, I can usually figure out pretty readily where certain specific elements in my dreams (even the non-recurring ones) have come from in my day to day existence. But about two or three weeks ago, I had a dream which combined all three of the above themes and yet I'm still clueless as to where it came from.

This, roughly, is what happened in it:

I was back in London, with a friend of mine, and we were going to go out with a big group of other people for some other friend's birthday. I didn't know the Other Friend very well, but this Friend of Mine said I was more than welcome to come along, and it would be fun . . . and I'm pretty sure she was wanting to try to set me up with somebody. (I don't think I ever found out who, though.)

So we got on the Tube and went to this bar where everyone was meeting first to have a drink. And then we were apparently going to get on the Tube again to go to some other restaurant in a completely different part of the city for dinner, but we missed the train. Turns out, in this particular dream, there were these independent train drivers who could somehow just drive trains whenever and wherever, kind of like taxis, so we found this guy and paid him and got on his train. Just as we were approaching our destination, I happened to notice a severed human head--maybe two--on the railroad tracks. I kind of thought I must have imagined it, or maybe it was some kind of really realistic and creepy Hallowe'en decoration . . . so I didn't say anything.

We went to the restaurant and then got back on the train and started heading back. But as we were going, I began seeing more and more severed heads. It was frightening--even moreso when somehow one of us divined that it was our train driver who had severed them, and he was waiting to cut off our heads, too. In fact, there he was--coming at us with an enormous hatchet. (Can hatchets be enormous? Are they by definition small? I don't know. Hatchet sounds better to me right now.)

Somehow we managed to get off the train and get to the rest of the birthday party which had now converged on someone's house, but those of us who had been on that particular train knew according to the unspoken rules of the dream that our demon train-driver was going to hunt us down for our heads, so we spent the rest of the evening . . . and the dream . . . looking for weapons with which to pummel him to death. Someone told me to go find a baseball bat, and someone else would lure him and lull him into a false sense of security at which point it would be my job to bludgeon him. "I don't know," I said. "I don't think I can bludgeon anybody. Can I lull him instead?" At that point, or some other point shortly thereafter, I woke up. You can imagine both my amusement and consternation at having discovered such disturbing contents of my subconscious.

This week, I had a frightening dream of a totally different kind, although I have very little idea what it was about. I was driving home from work (that really should be all I need to say, but I'll keep going) and I was really really sleepy. I really didn't want to pull over, and the roads were busy so I wasn't really sure where I could have pulled over, and so I just concentrated on keeping my eyelids open and persevered. (Don't yell at me.) I was almost home, and suddenly I said to Oscar, "Well, I'm glad I ended up with the doggie."

At that moment, I mentally snapped to attention. I had had my eyes open the whole time. I had been very aware that I was driving and should not allow myself to drift off. It wasn't one of those scenarios where you drive the whole commute without really paying attention to it and you wonder how you got from point A to point B, really. I was very aware of where I was the entire time. However, some part of my brain had evidently sneaked off to have a dream anyway, and there was some sort of bargain at the end, during which I ended up with "the doggie."

So I'm asking you. Which of those two dreams was more scary? Hmmmm?

What's in a Name?

2010-04-27T23:27:00.003-04:00

I should be researching for a term paper. Or if I'm not researching, I should be sleeping. But I haven't blogged much, and I haven't read anyone's blog lately, either, and . . . this is clearly important. Watch.

There's a house around the corner on my way to work where they sell vegetables and rabbits all summer. Yesterday, while driving by, the rabbit hutches caught my eye and I thought, "I wonder if I should get a rabbit and housetrain it sometime." Dear Friend Paulina has a rabbit named Tivoli. I have not met her (the rabbit), but she sounds adorable.

When I got to work there was an email from Miss Annie, asking if anyone wanted an abandoned domesticated rabbit which had been found in the woods and is evidently litter trained. Weird.

I didn't answer the email, because hopefully someone else will. I'm not sure how Oscar would deal with a rival animal that wasn't a dog, and besides, on the rare occasion I can't take him with me somewhere, it's sometimes tough to find dogsitters. How would I find a dog-and-rabbit sitter? Besides, when I actually can take Oscar with me, what would I do? Bring the rabbit along, too? I don't think they make car harnesses for rabbits. (It would be kind of fun to say I'm taking my dog and bunny show on the road, though.)

Anyway, this morning I was thinking about this and about my looming term paper while I was drying my hair, and I decided that if I were to lose my senses completely and get a rabbit, and I was still taking grad classes, I would have to name the rabbit Turabian. Then I started thinking of all the other names I would like to give to animals for fun.

Like, I have this penchant for ancient Assyrian names. I think they mostly sound like cats. Tiglath-Pileser, for example. Also, last week I went and heard They Might Be Giants on Earth Day and they sang, "The Mesopotamians," and for almost a week now, the soundtrack in my head has been singing, "We're the Mesopotameeeans--Sargon, Hammurabi, Ashubanipal and Gilgamehhhsh . . . " I think you could name cats those names, too. If I ever got a hamster (which I don't think I ever would), I might like to name him Sennacherib, for a joke. 'Cause it kind of sounds like you're talking about snacks--and hamsters are snack-size.

Did I mention I should be in bed right now?

Acts of God

2010-04-20T13:45:00.003-04:00

The last time just my mom was here without my dad, there were "acts of God," too. You know. Those things that insurance companies like to hide behind so they don't have to fork out any money.

None of you work for insurance companies, do you?

The last time, I was getting ready to start radiation therapy, and my mother came out earlier than my dad for Christmas, to provide some moral support. This turned out to be a good thing, because worse than the radiation was the Ice Storm that happened while she was here, and the 6 days without electricity. Given everything else that was going on at the time, I probably would've curled up into the fetal position and become incoherent if she hadn't been here.

This time she came here because her mother just had cataract surgery. Her mother only has one eye to begin with (you really can poke someone's eye out, you know), so it was kind of a big deal. The plan was that my mother would stay with Grandma Madeira for a week or so, drive back up and stay with me for the weekend, and fly back to my father and Ireland yesterday. Then that unspellable Icelandic volcano erupted. So . . . she's stuck here indefinitely, and it's starting to stress her out. Fortunately we have electricity over here this time, but all the same, she's here and my dad's not, and she has responsibilities on the other side of the Pond that she can't take care of, and . . . I'm pretty sure she's sick of wearing the same three or four outfits over and over again.

If the Milk Guy and I were interacting regularly anymore (which I wish we were, but we can't be), he would say, "Well, Jenn, Who controls the volcanos?"

My mother says she's been having similar thoughts lately, and I don't blame her. I have similar thoughts pretty often about lesser things. But we both agreed there's something about the Christian perspective that makes things bearable (or get-through-able) no matter how bad they get. First of all, there's the whole world God's taking care of--not just us; in the end it's kind of a relief almost to know that the universe does not revolve around me and my perceived needs. But more than that, it's also a relief to know God does care about us as individuals, and He knows what we need and what we can take and whether He causes the perceived "bad thing" or not, He's in it, to redeem it and us and make us whole.

I still don't think there's a way to talk about this stuff without sounding hopelessly trite, and when I used to talk like this to the Milk Guy, he always thought I was trying to convince myself that there was a bright side to situations where there isn't one. Sometimes I probably do that. But I do think it's true all the same. Maybe God did and maybe God didn't set off that volcano Himself. Either way, though, He is in control of the volcanoes, and He knows our times and our seasons and what we (and those around us) really need. I think it's Him, actually . . .

Swords into Ploughshares

2010-04-14T14:36:00.003-04:00

Clearly when God inspired Isaiah to write the fourth verse of his second chapter (in whatever way He did it), the image was meant to be one of reconciliation and peace. Leave it to me to turn gardening into a contact sport.

So we've had a lot of rain lately, but also a lot of sun, and last week it even got kind of warm for a while, so I've been trying my hand at the gardening thing. On Wednesday I decided to go into the bracken at the side of the house and see if I could dig up some ancient compost from when my parents used to live here and tried composting, before the composter self-destructed.

What I should have done:

Gone into the garage, retrieved some shears, hacked myself a path. But no. That would have been both too easy and too much work. Instead, even though I was wearing shorts (on account of not being able to find the jeans I dedicated to gardening last year) and even though most of the previously-mentioned bracken is actually brambles, I decided to forge ahead, pathless.

Keep in mind that not only was the brambly bracken pretty dense, but also, my destination was on a slope, and I had, somehow, to wrest the remainder of composter off the remainder of compost. This was a little tricky, but I managed, and then I came up with the bright idea that the composter lid could be placed on top of the bracken so as to protect my exposed legs and make walking easier.

This might have been a good idea in theory. It was a terrible one in practice. The lid was smooth and therefore slippery, and my sneakers are about six years old and have been walked in pretty consistently, therefore lacking anything resembling traction. I stepped on this lid, set to the compost with my shovel, and suddenly went flying. If I remember correctly, both feet shot into the air (though that might be a later addition in my head). In any case, a nice long blackberry shoot slashed the back of my leg, and the ribs on my right side smashed, as I pitched down the slope, into the side of a tree at the bottom of it.

I didn't bother to get them checked out. They don't do anything for ribs anyway. I did disinfect the scratch. A few days later I was at Camp Selah helping with a clean-up day. Raking is tough on bruised ribs. But at least I managed to stay upright on all those pine needles.

Canine Revenge

2010-04-03T11:21:00.003-04:00

This is probably not an appropriate topic for Waiting Saturday, but it's too funny, and when else am I going to tell you about it?

I just love my dog.

Yesterday I began a two-thirds-hearted attempt at planting a garden in the big patch of weeds where my dad used to have an actual garden. It was a beautiful day. I made Oscar come outside with me. He usually spends the first half hour of any extended time outside trying to get back in the house, because he doesn't seem to know what to do with himself instead. I suggested to him he could just sprawl out on the grass like he does on the carpet, but he didn't really take me up on this.

After the first half hour, he lay down in the pile of woodstove ashes I had chucked outside a few days ago. Then he went for a wander in the undergrowth between my house and Neighbour-Justin's. By the time I was done in the garden, the knees of my blue jeans were not blue anymore, and Oscar was covered in burrs and other unidentifiable forest-detritus.

"Sorry, buddy," I said. "You need a bath."

I don't think he's entirely latched onto the word bath yet, but he might be getting there, because he's had about three within the last month or so. And he pretty much hates them, in a miserably-resigned kind of way. After his bath, I towel-dried him, but his fur is so thick that the towel got drenched and he still was. He doesn't like the hair-dryer much more than the bath, and it was a warm day, so I decided to let him air-dry a little. Plus, now I needed a bath. I don't normally take baths--preferring showers--the reasons for which could make a blogpost in themselves, but I was pretty grubby and Folk-Musician-Gale gave me this really fantastic bath oil once and I felt like using it. So I started running the water. Then I decided to go downstairs and make a cup of tea.

As I entered the living room, I noticed my soggy doggy lying on the couch. This is pretty normal for him--I think the couch wicks the water away or something, and it's kind of an old couch, so I don't really mind. Only . . . he was lying at my end of the couch. He never lies there. He started to get up with a look on his face that said he was anticipating my yelling at him, but I just burst out laughing instead. It was too perfect. There it was, a nice, already very damp spot on the cushion where he knew I was likely to sit all evening.

"That's okay," I muttered under my breath as I went to make the tea. "I'll just sit on the other end of the couch tonight."

He looked pretty well ensconced as I went up the stairs with my tea for my bath. Some time later, I came back downstairs. There was Oscar, still on the couch. On the other end. There was the big dark bath-water spot on my end. He may not have figured out that the point of Good Friday is forgiveness, but the outworking of his vindictiveness was pretty hysterical.

A Rock So Big He Can't Lift It?

2010-04-02T16:14:00.004-04:00

I have a feeling this question that crossed my mind this morning is kind of like the "rock" question in that it's missing some pieces in the logic department, but I kind of got on the merry-go-round of circular thinking while I was praying this morning. I'm sure glad my salvation is dependent on what Jesus did and not on my figuring out all the crazy things that go on in my head.

All the same, it was kind of an intriguing question. It started like this: I was thinking about the crucifixion. And I was thinking about some stupid, faithless, waste-of-time stuff I allowed myself to sink into this week, and so I kind of asked God to make me worthy of His sacrifice.

Then I thought, "Not that that's actually possible."

Then I thought, "There are a whole lot of verses that say all things are possible with God."

Then I thought, "But nothing can ever compare to or measure up to what Jesus did for me on the cross all those years ago."

That was when I thought about the "Can God make a rock so big He can't lift it?" question.

Now I'm thinking that God has answered the unanswerable question after all. Because of course, the point is that it is impossible for me to be worthy of Jesus' sacrifice. If I could pay it back, I wouldn't have needed it in the first place. I couldn't make myself worthy, and God "couldn't" either because to do so would be to undermine His design of our free will. But He Himself is worthy, so, as Isaiah 59 says, "His own arm worked salvation for Him, and His own righteousness sustained Him." His own sacrifice makes me worthy. He has changed my nature. I am a new creation. He has made me worthy. I just didn't have anything to do with it myself.

Weird.

Cool.

I hope the worthiness starts becoming more and more evident, is the thing. Because He is worthy.

LOST Gets in on the Act

2010-03-24T23:42:00.002-04:00

So I just watched last night's episode of LOST. Evidently Jacob is a Pelagian and the Man in Black is an Augustinian? But Jacob is the good guy (with his heresy) and the Man in Black is the villain. Oh how very trendy of them.

Just think. If I weren't taking a church history class, I might have been able to enjoy that last episode . . .

Getting It Right

2010-03-24T11:31:00.002-04:00

I'm sort of studying for my church history mid-term, only I think I've kind of forgotten how, and also? I'm not anywhere near as Type-A as I was in high school and college. (Maybe I was never really Type-A, but I was definitely very driven by grades.)

I'm hoping writing this post will help me get my head around some things and will, in a sense, be a way of studying. (At least, it makes a good excuse, doesn't it?) I feel like I'm still stuck on heresies.

I don't really have a problem with the idea that there is orthodox belief and heterodox belief. Unlike most postmoderns, I do believe that there is a Truth, that ultimately that Truth is Jesus Christ and effects the whole universe. I believe that you can be walking more in line with the Truth, or less in line with it. But, like any good postmodern, I guess I'm not always sure I understand how we know it. I guess what I'm struggling with is not so much that the church leadership in the third and fourth centuries needed to create creeds and formulas by which to evaluate faith and life. I agree that they needed to decide on a Biblical canon, and I feel that their choices of books to go into the New Testament were right, and the things that were left out were left out for good reason.

I'm just kind of wrestling with the whole process of how they got there. My professor says (in his CD lectures--I've never actually met the guy) that, for example, in the case of the Biblical canon, the Holy Spirit, having inspired the canonical books, infused them with a certain authority, and that "canonisation is a recognition of what has already taken place." I think this is true, but how did they know it had already taken place? How did they know that Athanasius' list of 27 New Testament books was correct, and Marcion's edited Matthew, Luke and 10 letters of Paul were not? (The fact that he edited them himself might have been an indicator, I suppose, but still--I'm just saying.)

Or how about this? Arius, a presbyter in Alexandria, started teaching that "there was a time when the Son was not"--that is, that the "Son" part of the Godhead had had a beginning, and that Jesus was this dude that God put His Spirit on and basically adopted into the Godhead, but who had not existed eternally like the Father. Athanasius said this was bunk, and that the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were co-eternal. Over the course of the Council of Nicea and the Council of Constantinople (dudes--I can even tell you the years of those!), Athanasius' view was vindicated and Arius' was defeated, but what the lectures didn't tell me and the textbook did was that they went back and forth on these issues a few times, with both Arius and Athanasius being condemned and exiled multiple times (although I think Arius died first and got condemned posthumously a couple of times, too).

Or what about the Council of Ephesus? I'm not even talking about the Robber Synod that came on its heels. I'm talking about how the Antiochene bishops got to the council late and the Alexandrian bishops (and presumably any others--if there were any others) met already and decided that they (the Alexandrians) were in the right in their views on the dual nature of Christ and the title of Mary. The Antiochene bishops were understandably upset, so they came up with this compromise called the "Symbol of Union" which sort of agreed more with the Antiochenes about Christ's dual nature, and sort of agreed with the Alexandrians about Mary's title. You can decide these things via a compromise? What if they compromised on the wrong parts? When told of the issues before being told of the results of the council, I frankly thought the Alexandrians were more correct about the nature of Christ and the Antiochenes were more correct about the title of Mary. What if I'm right and Pope Leo or whomever, was wrong?

Or what if I'm wrong? How wrong do I have to be before I am considered a heretic? If I love Jesus and trust Him to get me to the Father and to have died for my sins and forgiven me and to be gradually transforming me more into His likeness, do I still have to fully understand how He is both fully divine and fully human, or how God is a Unity and a Trinity, or whether the Spirit proceeds from just the Father or both the Father and the Son? What does that even mean?

I feel like there's heresy all over the place, still, today, and often I recognise it when I see it, but I don't always. I don't think anybody does always. How much of our salvation depends on our recognising it? Especially if our salvation is dependent on grace and not works? I think it all does come back to the work of the Holy Spirit. I think He does confirm what He has already accomplished or established. But so many people claim to be speaking for the Holy Spirit. How do you really know the difference?

Auntie Times 2

2010-03-18T14:57:00.005-04:00

Now that all his grandparents know, I feel like perhaps I can tell you that I have a new nephew! As of sometime today. His name is Patrick David, but not because of the holiday we just had. His big sister, TWCN, was babysat in part by esteemed blog-friend, K., whom I have never met in person, but with whom Dave and Sister-in-Lu have become quite good friends. Crazy connexions develop over the internet. Pretty cool sometimes, too, though, huh?

Congrats, Dave, Sister-in-Lu and TWCN! And Patrick, for that matter.

Thanks, K.!

Speaking of Heresy

2010-03-12T09:14:00.005-05:00

My "new" car is fantastic. I am so happy with it. The only things wrong with it are that I have no (working) way to plug my ipod into the sound system, and . . . it has a tiny, well-nigh tasteful, American flag sticker in the lower left hand corner of the rear window.

That's the heretical part of course--that having an American flag sticker stuck on my car would be "wrong." I don't know. I guess I just spent too long in the down-and-out East End of London to be comfortable with iconography that identifies me with one specific ethnic group or nation. Ever since my uncle came out with the album and song "Citizen of Heaven" (what? you've never heard of it? yeah . . . it was kind of like my book: worth it, but obscure) and I realised that was an actual Bible verse, I have had a little trouble being patriotic. (Either that or it gave me an excuse not to be.) Yes, I am an American, and I appreciate the freedoms that I have, and I daresay I take many of them for granted. I just have a little trouble wanting that to be my identity--the thing I'm known for.

When I was a little kid, living in Honduras, I thought the USA was Heaven. After all, we had to fly to get there. Through clouds and everything! Plus, everyone spoke English (i.e., I could understand them) and we could drink water directly from the taps instead of having to boil it first. After we moved back here, however, my attitude started slowly but surely to shift. I guess that happens when you've been exposed to another culture at an early age--even if you spend that early age trying to resist it (stupidly, I refused to learn Spanish). You just realise that there are other people out there and other ways of doing things, and while you may still prefer your way, the lines dividing cultures and nationalities get to feeling really arbitrary and frustrating. At least they did to me.

I've been reading Jeremiah lately. That book is fascinating to me, in part because Jeremiah was so faithful to God, and God was so faithful to him, but he ended up feeling disappointed with how God was demonstrating His faithfulness a lot of the time. Sometimes he just wished God would leave him alone--that he didn't have these words burning a hole in his heart and his tongue that he just had to speak but which got him in heaps (or cisterns) of trouble every time he opened his mouth. I haven't hung out in a cistern lately, and hope not to . . . ever, but there are still some things about this guy that I resonate with, I guess.

The other thing I find fascinating, though, is his message. Here he is, going to the priests and prophets and leaders of a country whose claim to identity was having been hand-chosen by God. They are telling the people, "God's not going to abandon us. Look--His Temple's here. That's His house. He won't let anything happen to that--or to us, either. We are the people of God." And Jeremiah's saying back, "Um, guys? Stop hiding behind this Temple and these religious practices, okay? God knows you haven't really been worshiping Him in a while now--all these idols and stuff instead--and He's getting ready to send in the Babylonians to take you all away for a good long time."

("No He isn't"--"Yes He is"--"No He isn't" . . . )

"So here's what you have to do. You've got to cooperate with the foreign army. Let them in, abide by their laws, go where they tell you, and seek their good, and you'll be spared. If you resist? It's not going to turn out so great for you."

Somehow, the people didn't like this message all that much. And I think I understand why not. For one thing, it sounds heretical. Here they are, the people of God, being told to capitulate to a bunch of heathens. (Never mind that they've been worshiping idols in tandem with God for a long time now.) To make matters worse, the guy that's telling them this is saying that God is telling them to do this. It's another one of those, "God wouldn't say that," moments, like "Go marry a prostitute" (Hosea) and "I'm going to form a child in your womb so it looks like you got pregnant out of wedlock in a culture where that's not okay--okay?" (Mary). Sometimes God asks us to do stuff which is according to His plan, His wisdom, His goodness . . . but it doesn't sound Biblical, if you will.

This message of Jeremiah sounded treasonous--well it was treasonous--and the assumption was that treason against the nation was treason against God, but the fact was, it wasn't. The nation had run away from God a long time ago, and the only way to get any of them back was to send them away for a while and stoke up the fires of repentance and true faith and God-seeking and character-building that God wanted.

I got to thinking about this. I got to imagining modern-day equivalents. I thought about how there are plenty of people in this country who don't believe in God, or believe in different gods, or are open about not caring less whether there is a God or not. But there are also a lot of people in this country who do believe in God and for better or worse are convinced this country once was a Christian nation and that it needs to become so again. I started imagining what would happen if some Christian somewhere began telling everyone that, say, extremist Muslims were going to take over the USA, and that we should let them. It doesn't just sound like we're giving up our national freedoms (which some people seem to equate with, like, the fruits of the Spirit or something anyway). It sounds like we're capitulating to the spiritual enemy. It sounds like by that very action we'd be denying our faith in Christ. Doesn't it?

I'm not saying that's what's going to happen. I'm not Jeremiah. As far as I know, God did not wake me up this morning to tell my occasional blog-readers to get ready for a terrorist influx by giving into it. (And I should probably also say, for any Muslim friends of mine who might be reading this, I am not tarring all Muslims with the same brush, but I think we both know there are people of that faith who want to take over the world by shari'a law, and that such a law does not exactly grant equal treatment to people of other faiths. Certainly such impulses exist within aspects of "Christianity" and Buddhism and Hinduism, too, but extremist Muslims seem to me a little more global with theirs at the moment.)

What I think I am saying is, I think it's easy to mix up nationality and national rights and privileges with Christianity, and I don't think they're the same thing. And while fighting for universal rights and freedoms is likely a good thing, I don't think they, as political constructs and national benefits, are as important to God as they are to us or as we think they are to Him. And sometimes I wonder, if there were to come another Jeremiah, whether we'd think he wasn't the anti-Christ and throw him in a well or something.

The Mother of All Tartars

2010-03-10T21:11:00.005-05:00

What in the world is cream of tartar anyway? In spite of actually having used it in a recipe that came from the Living History Museum where I used to work, I have a very very difficult time not imagining it as the dried and powdered form of the stuff they scrape off your teeth at the dentist's. Tartar. You know. How did the stuff get its name, anyway? Does it have anything to do with either cream or tartar?

Is cream of tartar what makes tartar sauce, tartar sauce? Why isn't that called "cream of tartar" instead? It's creamier. And how did all this stuff get the word "tartar" applied to it in the first place? Isn't "Tartar" an ethnic group? Not to instigate a racial slur, but do Tartars have exceptionally bad teeth? (I would think if that's how pre-plaque tooth-scum got its name, and we were going with notorious racial stereotypes . . . well, let's just say I can think of another people group whose name we could use instead.) Did the Tartars invent cream of tartar and tartar sauce?

Furthermore, where in the world did the phrase "the mother of all . . . whatevers" come from? Usually it is applied to some enormous, impressive example of something, but I would think that phrase should mean the first example of something. I, for example, am some inches taller than my mother, and not very much thinner than she.

That last musing came from watching a commercial last night in the middle of Lost, where some truck or something was "the mother of all . . . " trucks? Maybe? I don't know. As to why I was thinking about cream of tartar on my commute this morning? The answer to that question is, conveniently, exactly the same as the answer to all the other questions I've asked in this post: I have no idea.

"I See," Said the Blind Man, As He Picked Up His Hammer and Saw

2010-03-08T21:14:00.003-05:00

The above is one of the phrases of my childhood, of which there were many, mostly picked up and quoted by my father until the rest of us started employing them, too. This one is particularly quintessential, because it is somewhat rhythmic, repeatable, private-joke-able and contains a really terrible pun. My brother and I picked up the pun skilz. My mother deplores them.

Anyway, I thought of this out of the blue today because what I was really contemplating was the much shorter phrase, "I see." I would like to posit that it does not mean what it sounds like it means.

I think what "I see" is supposed to mean, or supposed to sound like it means, is something along the lines of, "Oh, I get it. I understand." It sounds a little formal or old-fashioned, so maybe leave out the "I get it" part. The thing is, some people still use this phrase, and the ones I know who do, almost never mean, "I understand" or "that makes sense." Or if they do, they don't sound like it.

When someone asks me a question and I answer and explain my answer and they follow up with "I see," they might just be making "I was listening even though I really wasn't" noises. Or they might (which is often the impression I get) actually be meaning something along the lines of "That's a silly idea, Jenn," or "Okayyyy . . . ?" or "I really disagree with that course of action but you seem set on it and I don't feel like arguing, so do as you like, I guess."

Really, I feel that "I see" fits into the category of Ambiguous Listening Noises, kind of like the ever-useful word, "Interesting." Sometimes the one being listened to might call you out when you use one of these stock Noises, but it's generally safer and more socially acceptable to just kind of take a mental note, if one wishes, and leave it at that. Or you could just write a blogpost about it.

What's Wrong?

2010-03-06T12:09:00.003-05:00

I've been thinking of heresy a lot for the past few months. That's enough to block up anyone's blogposts . . . at least, anyone who is having trouble "wordifying" what she's thinking about the heresies.

The triggers for this current train of thought have been legion, starting, perhaps, with an email from Antagonist-Andrew, which I still haven't answered. (Andrew, if you are even still deigning to read my blog, it's not that I'm ignoring you on purpose. It's just that I'm afraid of rambling again.) On the heels of the email came my Church History class, and in the midst of that came some ongoing discussions with Third Jon. (You have met both First and Second John, but you may not know them by these names.)

I think the main thing that kicked off the maelstrom in my head, however, was that question about Constantine. Overall good, or overall bad? If I say (as I said) that overall, he was bad for the Church, then what about the fact (as bryancti pointed out) that the new freedom and power that Constantine afforded the Church also afforded them time to work out doctrinal issues? When you're on the run from the powers that be all the time, there's not a whole lot of time to sit down and codify exactly what you believe. I could make a nice romantic assumption (and statement) that you also don't have time to come up with any heresies, but that's not true, because most of the big Early Church Heresies started floating (and I do mean floating) around before Constantine was even thought of. Lots of those people who got burned at the stake or chomped on by wild animals in the Coliseum were not only standing up for Christ in the face of polytheists who thought they were atheists, so different was their concept of God, but had already faced up to esoteric fallacies about Christ from people who claimed to have something to do with Him.

But I'm struggling. I think it matters that Jesus is the Son of God--that He is and always has been co-existent with the Father and the Holy Spirit--that they are an eternal Trinity. I think it matters that He was/is both fully God and fully human. I think it matters that there is original sin. I think it matters that God isn't a dualistic force and we don't live in a dualistic universe--Jesus came to prove it by sanctifying both matter and spirit and bringing them together in one. I can get pretty heated about this stuff, actually.

I also know that the apostles dealt with some of these very issues--Gnosticism was already around when Christianity got started. They just conveniently tweaked a few Christian ideas and absorbed them. The Apostles Paul and John both wrote against Gnostic ideas. It matters that God finally revealed Himself to us through Jesus, and we don't need some special hidden knowledge in order to be enlightened and saved.

The thing is, though? Sometimes I feel like even the orthodoxies turn into claims that we evidently do need some special hidden knowledge in order to be enlightened and saved. I do believe it's the Holy Spirit who convicts people of the truth and that we couldn't know or understand the Gospel without that enlightenment. But I feel like the way we "orthodox" Christians talk about this stuff? A lot of times our codification of how salvation happens sounds awfully Gnostic if you really think about it. I was listening to an evangelical speaker on a DVD this week, and he was very good, and the things he said about Jesus were true, but at the end he said, "If you believe and if you trust and if you understand such and such . . . you're saved."

Most of my life I have subscribed to that sort of teaching and understanding, and to some extent I still think that's true. But there's another extent to which that just sounds like more of "works salvation" to me--except that the "work" that "saves" us is accurate belief of certain propositions. You have to be enlightened enough to know all this stuff, and believe in it, and regurgitate it, and support the Republican party, and then you'll be saved.

And I just thought it was God-driven, God-initiated, we-never-could-do-it-or-even-think-it-ourselves, grace.

It's okay. I've already been called a heretic.

Firefly Distractions

2010-03-04T09:08:00.003-05:00

Maybe I'm not writing anymore because everything's just too serious . . .

So I took another "Which _________ character are you?" online quiz. This is probably not too surprising a result. Because I am, of course, both holy and mysterious. (?)

Your results:You are Derrial Book (Shepherd)

Derrial Book (Shepherd)		75%
Kaylee Frye (Ship Mechanic)		60%
Dr. Simon Tam (Ship Medic)		60%
Malcolm Reynolds (Captain)		55%
Zoe Washburne (Second-in-command)		45%
Wash (Ship Pilot)		40%
Inara Serra (Companion)		40%
River (Stowaway)		35%
Jayne Cobb (Mercenary)		15%
A Reaver (Cannibal)		15%
Alliance		15%

Even though you are holy
you have a mysterious past.

Click here to take the Serenity Firefly Personality Test

Seminary Sunday

2010-02-25T09:22:00.003-05:00

Pastor Barry is calling this coming Sunday "Seminary Sunday," I think because it is the anniversary of when he got ordained or something. Since I am half a class and a few transfer credits into an M.Div. myself, he wants me to say something to the congregation about my "calling" to the ministry, so one of my projects this week has been to try figure out what I'm going to say.

I feel that the paltry number of blogposts I have written this year so far is disgraceful, but it's mostly because I'm having a little trouble getting my head round the things I want to write about, enough to write about them, so I'm going to cheat a little and once again post something in here that I have written for another purpose entirely. This is my little "talk" for Sunday. (If you go to GPC, you might want to avert your eyes, so that my delivery on Sunday is not extra-boring for you.) Critiques are acceptable. So are theological debates, if necessary. Just try not to get the two of them mixed up.

So . . . I’m taking this seminary class? One of the most recent lectures touched upon how the earliest of the early Church didn’t make a distinction between sacred and secular vocation. To be called by God meant first of all that He had called you to repentance and forgiveness and reconciliation with Himself and with other people. Then that influenced your calling for what to do with your life. Early Christians lived out their Christianity no matter what they were doing; they all wanted the people they rubbed shoulders with every day to know about the love of God for them through Jesus Christ. So every job was important, whether you were a ship’s navigator or a carpenter or a seamstress or whatever, because every job was an opportunity to work toward excellence and to show people the love of Jesus.

I was listening to this lecture thinking, “Yes! That’s how it’s supposed to be!” It reminded me of this time at another church when I had just started working at Starbucks, and I really believed that that job was how I could best serve Christ at the time. This man came up to me and, knowing I had been a missionary once, said, “But don’t you ever think about going back into the ministry?”

I got so angry, it was all I could do to keep from losing my “Christian” cool and yelling, “Are you completely blind?! How can you be so narrow-minded?” Instead I said calmly, “Well, I think Starbucks is the ministry, too.”

And it was, so you might wonder how I ended up back working for a church and now starting seminary, if I feel that strongly about it. Sometimes I wonder that, too, but I guess even though I do feel strongly that God can reach people through any Christian doing anything and that no task is more noble or more “called” than another, I think I have been called to kind of church-y ministry, mostly. I don’t really know how old I was when I found out that not everybody knew about Jesus, but however old it was, I knew right then that I needed to make sure they found out about Him. I don’t think anyone told me this . . . although my parents were missionaries, so maybe I picked it up by osmosis.

Anyway, I’ve always had a very strong sense that God was true, and that Jesus was, too, and even though a lot of things have changed about me since I first made that decision to tell people about Jesus . . . I still like to talk about Him. And I find that I still care whether or not people know He loves them, and whether or not they know what it is He did for them, through His life, death and resurrection. And whether or not they know He is calling them and wants to make Himself known somehow through them, too.

I didn’t always think it was Biblical (and therefore “okay”) for women to be pastors. If you want to know how my mind changed on that one, you can ask me about it sometime, but anyway, it did, and as soon as it did, I wondered if maybe one of these days God might call me to be a pastor, too.

I’m still not 100% sure He has, except in the sense that “pastor” means “shepherd” or “caretaker,” and in reality I’ve been spiritually “taking care” of people in some way or other for years. Since it seems like I’m going to do that for the rest of my life anyway, I don’t think it could hurt to get some more training to help me do it better. I do know that sometimes He calls people to work at coffee shops or at Norton’s or at Shaw’s, but other times He calls people to buckle down and study about Him so they can provide strength and guidance for all those people working hard and rubbing shoulders with folks who don’t think they’ve met Him yet. I believe He has called me to GPC at this time, and I’ve sort of stumbled into the opportunity to get more training. The doors keep opening, so I’ll just keep walking through them and we’ll see where I end up!

Last fall, I applied to the Masters of Divinity programme at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Wenham, MA. Right now I am getting my feet wet with that church history class I mentioned. You would think that it might be boring, but I find it absolutely fascinating--I love it. So far all this seems to be a good move. As I take it a step at a time, I trust God will keep leading, and I hope you will pray for me when you think of it, that I will learn what He wants me to learn, become who He wants me to become, and do what He wants me to do.

Weather? Or Not. Oh, Definitely Weather.

2010-02-24T07:57:00.006-05:00

While the UK and Ireland, as well as Washington DC, have been having levels of snow this year that surprise, baffle and maybe even sometimes terrify them, we in New England have been having what we call "a mild winter." This doesn't mean we're not getting any snow. We are. It just means we can handle it. You can tell it's a mild winter when all the teachers you know complain about not having enough snow days (and when, two days after their February vacation, they're still saying, "I hope we get a snow day this week"). The two weeks before that, it seemed like the meteorologists and school administrators were teaming up to rectify this snow-day-less situation, because twice they cancelled or delayed school in advance for what were supposed to be "major" snowstorms, but which ended up being something that could only be considered major in Alabama.

So this time, when people started saying, "It's going to snow all week," you know, you took notice, but you were a little skeptical. By which I mean I was. Plus it was supposed to start snowing yesterday morning. And it didn't. It's true that last night, by the time I was about to drive over to the Other Jenn's to watch LOST together, I decided what was coming out of the sky might not be that fun to drive in by 10 o'clock at night. (We ended up watching the show from our respective living rooms, with our facebook chats open so we could "chat" things to each other like, "I knew it!" or "Ewwwww!" or "Psycho Claire!" or "Jack just wrecked everything!" or "Maybe he was supposed to do that . . . " Come on, LOST fans. You know what I'm talking about.)

This morning, however, the warnings of a major snowstorm had proved to be true. It's not that I've never seen this much snow before, although there was a lot. It's that every single beauteous flake seems to weigh 16 fluid ounces or something, so when you try to shovel the stuff? Well, let's just say I'm going to wish that professional massage the Other Jenn bought for me for Christmas which I accidentally missed the other night, was scheduled for Friday. The snow is beautiful, though, don't you think?

I suspect I may head out to church/work later in the day, but I'm going to take my time getting out. Mark-the-Plow-Guy says that it took him half an hour to get up Dead Horse Hill (yes, it's called that) with his plow because of all the cars that had slid off the road. Can I just tell you how happy I am that I no longer have a job that requires me to leave my house before 4.30 a.m. to serve coffee to people who don't know how to make it at home . . . or to people who probably won't even come into the store that early that day because of how much it's snowing? Very. Very. Happy. (I did say a quick prayer for whomever it is that had to open today.) Meanwhile, I'm going to sit here in my nice warm house with my nice warm dog and listen to the church history lectures I'm behind on.

Photos: February 2010, taken by jennwith2ns.

Constantine

2010-02-15T15:40:00.003-05:00

At the beginning of my on-line church history class, I ended up writing a little bit about Constantine. I remember learning about him while I was growing up--maybe in 6th grade history class or something--and getting the impression that he was this great guy because he made it okay to be a Christian. (I'm not sure I got that he made it well-nigh mandatory, but even if I had, I probably thought that was a good idea at the time, too.) Now I have some different views, although I suspect they are not entirely free of culturally-influenced thought. One of the "tutor"-type people for the class said that it was okay for me to copy my classwork responses to my blog, so for the sake of future discussion, I am duly posting my on-line discussion:

Discussion Question:
This question is simple. Has the role of Constantine been for the better or the worse throughout history?

1/16/10
Recently a non-Christian friend of mine accused me of having "something of an affliction fetish." I'm not sure that's exactly how I would term it (but I might as well get off to a shocking start with my interactivity assignments). However, I do think, as a follower of Jesus, that "trials" or "persecutions" or "afflictions" or whatever else we may want to call them, are probably meant to be par for the course. I suspect I have a tendency, from my comfy North American living room, to idealize and romanticize "the persecuted church." I don't feel quite right about saying, "Constantine should never have been part of church history because we as Christians should always be getting beat up for our faith." As cthayer [another student] states, "While it is clear throughout history that the church stunningly thrives under persecution, it makes it no less of an atrocity that men and women of faith throughout the centuries have had to undergo it."

On the other hand, I do think that in many if not most cases, our brothers and sisters in more "religiously dangerous" countries across the globe have a lot sturdier faiths than I or many of my compatriots have. I guess I'm grateful for my freedoms because I haven't experienced much of anything else, but it speaks volumes to me that many times people within what is termed the Persecuted Church ask for our prayers--not that the sufferings will end, but that they will bear up under them and not deny their Lord.

It seems to me that via Constantine (and by his successors in power-mongering), the lack of persecution did make the spread of Christianity easier and quicker, but it may also have declawed it in some senses and places. If we are not bearing a cross in the name of Christ, it's a lot harder for the Cross to be much more than a symbol [in the name of nationalism, like it was for Constantine]. It is, of course, possible, but it seems like, whatever his personal allegiances really were, Constantine did his best to imbue the Cross with power instead of with the humility and sacrifice that it actually portrays. I guess I have a mild, semi-conscious resentment of Constantine for kicking off the fat-cat Christianity that seems to have beleaguered Christ's Bride and her witness for the rest of history. I might also mention that when I'm trying to talk about Jesus to non-Christian friends like the aforementioned one, Constantine almost always comes up, in a negative light, and it's very difficult to witness around him.

Nevertheless, though on a personal level I feel that his influence was primarily negative, it seems to me too simplistic to term it that way. I tend to agree with kbacklund's reminder that God works all things together for good to those who love Him, and with awestmoreland's highlighting of God's hand is in history. The Church was able to work through certain doctrinal issues during Constantine's time that would not have been possible had it still been struggling with the persecution (though perhaps the Gospel would have remained a little more unadorned if the time for these things had not been available), and surely, whether God exactly ordained Constantine's rule or simply allowed it, He was not surprised by it and He is able to make good any situation. It seems that in some ways, He is still doing that up to this very day with all the church's past mistakes, and not just Constantine's.

Is THIS Ironic?

2010-02-04T09:08:00.003-05:00

Please tell me it is, or I may have to return my college diploma. A lot of people paid a lot of money for that thing.

First, some backstory:

The summer I returned to the States from London, I locked myself out of a friend's guestroom. I locked myself out of my car . . . twice. I locked myself out of the house--I think it was twice on that one, too. One of the times I was wearing my living-history-museum costume and had to walk about a mile down the road to find a friend who could get through the window three stories above the ground. At least it was summer. (Although let me tell you, that walk in that costume was pretty sweltering!)

After that, my parents had an extra key made for the house and we found a hiding spot for it, and I've been set, ever since. The hiding spot's not that convenient, but it's way more convenient than getting locked out.

So this morning, Oscar and I got up for our usual Walk and when I pulled the door shut after me, I made sure the doorknob was locked. Normally I also make sure my keys are in my pocket, but they're always in my pocket, and maybe I was still a little asleep. Anyway, I didn't check this time. But when we got back from our Walk and I put my hand in my coat pocket, my heart sank down to somewhere below the brick walkway. What about the extra key? you ask? Well, the extra key was sitting on the table right inside the door I was trying to open. And my usual keys were clearly (and unusually) hanging up on the hook designed for them in the hallway.

That's not the ironic part. It's the "go figure" part.

This is another "go figure" part:

The reason that extra key was in the house was because I had already used it in the last week or so, and had just been too lazy to put it back in its hiding place after I had finished with it.

This (I think) is the ironic part:

The time that I had used it before? My usual keys were actually in my pocket--I just hadn't been able to find them in there what with the kleenex and Oscar's poop-bags (no poop in them, by the way--I don't put those ones back in my pocket, in case you were worried) and receipts and stuff. It would be more ironic if the same thing were true this time, and I inconvenienced my Next-Door Neighbours and paid out for a locksmith and my usual keys were in my pocket the whole time, but they weren't. All that stuff was valid. What wasn't valid was why the extra key was inside in the first place. I hadn't even needed to use it that time. But now, when I did need to, it was patiently sitting inside for no good reason at all.

Isn't that ironic? No, you know what? If it isn't? I don't wanna know.

The Answers

2010-01-30T11:55:00.008-05:00

The World's Cutest Niece (now to be abbreviated "Twcn"--or possibly "Toucan") likes maps. Evidently. The second-to-last time I skyped with her and her parents, she spent much of the time saying "Camel! Camel!" while her parents recounted their trip to the environs of the Dead Sea. She had gotten to ride a camel with her daddy on the trip and was still very excited about it. Much of the rest of the time, she marched smilingly in front of the webcam with a book of Israeli maps. Then she climbed up between them on the couch and gave the book to one of them to "read" to her. Did I mention she's not even two yet?

The three adults (her parents, on one side of the globe, and me on the other) all laughed indulgently at this, and then Sister-in-Lu picked up one of those photo-illustrated guidebooks and waved it at me. "She also likes to look at this," she said. "She'll sit down and look through the whole thing." Apparently sometimes she makes her parents identify everything in the photos. Even the tiniest photos. Even if she couldn't possibly have any point of reference for the subject of the photos.

Dave describes it like this:

This happened again when Lu came back with a camera full of pictures from the City of David excavation south of the Old City of Jerusalem. The ruin is an archaeological mess of eras.

Hannah points at a specific feature of a picture. She says, “Bah-TANNN!” (or some combination of syllables we can’t agree on). Emmylou says, “Hannah, that’s a stepped stone structure (Hannah says, “Steps!”) that supported the fortifications of the ancient city.” (Hannah points at it again, saying “Bah-TANN!”) Lu: “It might have been from the Jebusite period, or maybe from when David was king.” Hannah points at something else in the picture. “The tower on the left is Hasmonean.” Something else is pointed at. “Bah-TANN!” Lu: “See that house in the middle with the four columns? (Hannah says “Co-UMs!”) That’s from the seventh century [BCE]. It was built right into the stepped stones! And see, those are steps going to the roof! (Hannah: “Steps!”) And that room over there? It still has a toilet seat in it! That’s where they put their stinkies.” Satisfied, Hannah is ready for the next picture. The next picture appears, and Hannah points to a specific feature and says, “Bah-TANNN!”

She did this for the whole photo shoot, which was around 45 pictures. She’s gone through up to 60 pages at a time of the pictorial travel guide this way too.

We were marveling over this together--the brilliance of TWCN and the mystery that is the mind of a small child. "Maybe," I said, "she just needs to know that you know the answers. She doesn't need to understand them. She just needs to know there are some, and that you, her parents, know them."

Life would be so much easier if I could just relax in knowing that Someone--my adoptive divine Parent--knows the answers. I have some other allegorical and analogous thoughts about this facet of my niece, but, as I am wont to do, I shall discuss them at another time.

Photo:

Underwater Observatory Marine Park, Eilat. Photo presumably taken by Sister-in-Lu. Stolen from Facebook by jennwith2ns. 2010.

Growl

2010-01-30T11:15:00.003-05:00

I think I might have mentioned that Oscar is a quiet dog. I have only heard him bark in my house twice. The first time was when he was still kind of new here and he caught the distorted reflection of himself in the glass front of the woodstove. His bark ricocheted off said glass front, echoing into his face and startling him so much that he never tried it again. The second time I heard him bark here was a few weeks ago when the Other Jenn came over for dinner and let herself in. We were both startled and impressed.

But usually, he just doesn't say much. He might whine a little, but that's about it. His tummy, on the other hand? Well, let's just say that if he doesn't eat his evening meal, I am bound to wake up once or twice in the middle of the night, because his stomach has a voice of its own. The first time this happened, I thought I was having some kind of supernatural, audibly-manifested, spiritual attack, the sounds were so weird. (I've never had one of those--nor do I want one--but these were my immediate thoughts upon waking up from a sound sleep at 3 a.m. with the bizarre utterances his stomach was making.)

Last night, Oscar for some reason declined his dinner again, though he had ample opportunity to eat it (we went to my friend Mom-Elizabeth's for dinner, but I actually remembered to bring his food along), but at least this time I had a fairly good idea what was coming. The sounds don't get any less weird, and when you have dreams like I have, the noises still sound like someone or something is trying to say something when you wake up to them, but at least I was a little quicker on the uptake this time.

I figured Oscar would run to his bowl first thing after our Walk this morning, but he didn't. He didn't drink any water, either. He's spent the entire morning so far either hiding under my bed, or snoring on the floor next to the couch. And while he always sleeps a lot, there's something about the quality of this sleep and the fact that he's missed two meals that is making me wonder if there's something a little more wrong with him than just funny tummy-noises. I'm hoping he'll recover and we won't need to visit the vet, come Monday. But mostly I just hope he'll recover. I'd rather he barked than starved.

Isn't It Ironic?

2010-01-26T14:31:00.004-05:00

The first time I ever heard anyone go on a rant about Alanis Morissette's song's use of the word "ironic," I was still living in England. The ranter was this somewhat arrogant young British chap whose British manner of self-expression made the rant funny even though he was arrogant and he was using his diatribe as a a sort of "proof" that Americans have no idea what irony is. I think he meant people from the United States. (Isn't it ironic that she's Canadian?)

Since that time, however, I have heard a few North American rants about this very same thing, except they specify the artist herself as the one who doesn't know what irony is. These rants are actually kind of trendy, as a quick perusal of the comment section under the YouTube video makes evident. I confess that I have ranted similarly before . . . when I didn't realise just how many people were experts on the meaning of the word ironic.

The latest rant I heard on this topic, however, came from Dave and was directed at me. I had used the term to describe a series of coincidentally badly-timed real-life events which were in nature not unlike Morissette's vignettes. It was at this point that I got both snippy and embarrassed, because I had to admit that, even though I have a B.A. in English Literature and am continually correcting people's grammar and spelling in my head (if not aloud), I myself am probably not overly clear on the meaning of the word irony. Dave, who has a B.A. in Philosophy which requires better-than-average language skills as well, became very intent on trying to tease out the knots of this issue for me. However, because the examples at hand were Morissette's lyrics and my bad luck, the explanation fell a little short of a language lesson. It may not be ironic, but it's kind of a bummer when your life is getting moderately sucky and you are wrong about the word you want to use to describe it.

We managed to agree that a more accurate adjective for the situations posited by Morissette and actually being lived through by me is annoying. But last night another such episode transpired, and I would just like to say, in both my and Alanis' defense, that the reason we want to use the word ironic for these kinds of situations is because annoying doesn't cut it. That word is too broad. Lots of things are annoying and don't incorporate these weird little twists of what-have-you. There isn't a word for these scenarios, is the problem, see. There are combinations of words, but nothing nice and concise like the word ironic.

"Who woulda thought--it figures," is Alanis' more accurate summing up of both her and my scenarios, but you can't go around saying that all the time. Even "doesn't it suck?" or "isn't your luck terrible?" or "isn't it bad timing?" doesn't really do it, even though all of those things do, in fact, describe the situations in question. None of them touch on that thing inherent to these situations that Alanis is calling irony--maybe it isn't, but it's something beyond suckiness and bad luck and bad timing. I think we need a new word, guys. Right now, I'm calling it "go-figure timing," but don't try to make a song out of it, because it's still really unwieldy.

You Learn Something New . . .

2010-01-20T19:35:00.004-05:00

I have enrolled in my first seminary course. It is "Church History to the Reformation," and I am finding myself surprisingly riveted. I've always had a sort of passive interest in church history (feed it to me and I'll gobble it up, but no hunting/gathering really happens here), but I think what surprises me most is that the main textbook for the class--naturally a weighty tome--is so well-written. I've never had a textbook, which wasn't a novel for a literature class, that I have looked forward to reading so much. (Well, except for maybe Dr. Blomberg's Jesus and the Gospels.)

As I'm reading it, I'm finding lots of thoughts entering my head, not to mention information I never knew before. Like this: in 1975, when this book was written? The author thought that Gnosticism had totally died out. Huh. Maybe not.

Here's something else. It is impossible, in a post-DaVinci Code world, not to have heard about the bad, bad, misogynisitc, racist, close-minded clerics who gave Gnostics and other heretics a run for their money . . . or tried to get them to totally die out. Said clerics may in fact have been misogyinistic and/or racist--or they may have been products of their time and not been thinking about those issues because they were thinking of whether or not Jesus was both fully God and fully human and what that meant. There were some less-than-pleasant characters among them. I'm just saying, they might not be the villains it is currently fashionable to paint them as.

Among the lesser-known details about these accounts is that on occasion, the heretics won out--at least temporarily. Arius, for example, was sent into exile, but for some time later his doctrine almost completely triumphed, dying out mainly because divisions within the group's own ranks.

I have friends who promulgate something like the Arian heresy and although I disagree, I don't feel inclined to exile them or anything. If I get brave and motivated enough, there may come a post one of these days where I wrestle more with the question of heresy and orthodoxy in general. But right now, because I'm feeling a little fed up with fashionable conspiracy theories, I feel like telling some heretics to stop whining--they had their day, and they still have it . . . heresies come and go and come back, for goodness' sake (or something?), so stop making stuff up about the 2nd and 3rd century theologians (not to mention, say, the apostle Paul) and try to deal with orthodoxy. Accept it, reject it, whatever. Just . . . is it really necessary to make up stories about Paul being a Gnostic and Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene just because we're uncomfortable with Jesus' life and claims?

Okay. Enough soap-box. It's going to come back to bite me (if soap-boxes can bite), via my own words or someone else's--or both--soon enough.

But here's the other thing I just found out. Evidently, in the time of Tertullian, when people got baptised, there was a lot more to the ceremony than there is in most churches I've ever been in, but also, after the baptism, the one who had just been baptised "refrained from the daily bath for a week after having received the rite" (Latourette, p194). I'm glad that tradition didn't stick around . . . although it might explain why people hardly bathed at all during the Middle Ages . . .

Don't Hate Me Because I'm . . . Complicated

2010-01-14T09:39:00.002-05:00

I used to go to a church where I was more liberal than most of the members. Now I go to one where I'm more conservative . . . at least on some issues. For the last two or so years I've had an on-again, off-again complex friendship with the Milk Guy, a man with whom I think I have a moderately deep connexion, but with whom I share very little in terms of background or faith. I had cancer for a while but (fortunately) nothing much came of it. And, though I am not a really great cook on any terms, I tend to cook better Indian food than American. These are just some of the ways that I suspect I don't live up to expectations . . . and I'm okay with that. (Today, anyway!)

This afternoon I shall be adding to my resume of weirdness by going on video record with my views on marijuana. One of the young men who grew up in the church I work for, but who currently . . . well . . . doesn't, is going to film school and is doing a documentary about pot. "I already have people to interview who are for it," he said. "I thought you might have another perspective." He is undoubtedly right, although my perspective may still not be exactly what he (or anybody else) anticipates. In any case, in a weird sort of way I feel kind of pleased and honoured to have been asked. If this documentary ends up on Youtube and I end up not looking too stupid and/or reactionary, I'll share the link so you can find out what I said. In the meantime, I did talk about pot once at A Wandering Line . . .

Nightmares

2010-01-07T10:49:00.003-05:00

If you know me well, chances are you know I tend to have pretty vivid dreams. By this I mean that most times when I sleep, I wake up with at least a faint recollection of having dreamed, and often a pretty clear recollection of what I dreamed about. (I usually have to talk about it almost immediately to retain the recollections, though, which doesn't happen so often since I haven't got roommates anymore and my family lives on the other side of the Atlantic.)

I also have recurring dreams; when I was a kid I was forever dreaming I was being chased by tv or literary villains, whose identities changed as I aged (ranging from the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk through Looney Tunes through Gargamel all the way up to Darth Vader). When I hit my mid-twenties, I dreamt often about being forced to marry some smarmy older guy I had never met before and was repulsed by. In my thirties, for some reason, my most-recurring dream has been that one where I'm in college, have signed up for a course I promptly forget about, and then the week of exams I'm suddenly freaking out trying to prepare for an exam and make up all the credit I've lost by not attending the class. As Former-Roommate-Rachel says about this kind of dream, "It's always about math." Yes. Yes it is.

Anyway, ever since quitting Starbucks in June last year, that recurring dream seems to have shifted setting, because suddenly Starbucks is turning up a lot. Right before Christmas I dreamed that the newish manager there had scheduled me for a week. I think Matty and Mouse noticed and caught on to the fact that, since I no longer worked there, no one would actually be filling that slot, and so they started trying to get people to fill it for the week, but in the meantime, I came in to get a coffee. The manager was out, and the shift supervisor on duty was someone I had never met but who somehow knew me, and she started browbeating for not showing up for my shift.

"Yeah," I said, "but I don't work here anymore. I quit."

"But you're on the schedule," she insisted. "You should at least have called around to get your shift covered."

"But I quit."

"But you're not working right now. Why don't you just come in and cover it? We need you."

"But . . . I'm not even on the payroll."

Fortunately at this point Matty the Hero came in and told her he had gotten all my other shifts covered. Some people are consistent to their characters even when they're in someone else's subconscious.

Then, about two nights ago, I dreamed that, because I'm so short on funds, I succumbed to working for Starbucks on Saturday nights only, just to get a little more income. They don't allow you to work one day a week anymore, but according to the Starbucks-in-my-sleep, because I was signing away every single Saturday night for, presumably, the rest of my life, they could make an exception.

I'm not even wondering what my subconscious is trying to work on right now. Are you?

Copy Cat

2010-01-04T12:10:00.004-05:00

Today I am trying to register for a SemLink course at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. I could probably do this pretty rapidly if I didn't have to wait 50 minutes for the registrar's office to re-open after lunch. As it is, I am finding all sorts of forms except the one that I'm looking for.

This one, though? Is my favourite:

Guidelines for Avoiding Plagiarism (Used with permission of the University of Indiana)

Citing sources, folks, citing sources. No double-standards for these guys.

Resolved

2010-01-01T15:43:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year!

I was recently asked by a Facebook Friend how many New Year's resolutions I was planning on making for this year. I replied by saying I wasn't making any, and furthermore, I didn't, as a general rule.

He seemed enough taken aback by this to make me think that New Year's resolutions are standard practice for him, his family and the people he frequents. I'm not sure they are for mine. Then he said I should blog about this.

I'm a little nervous to do so, because I'm not sure it's possible to argue either side of this debate without sounding sanctimonious, especially if you have a faith tradition underpinning the whys and wherefores of your everyday (or every year) practice. In reality, I think the making or disdaining of New Year's resolutions has more to do with personality than divine or moral mandate, but I don't know if anyone can really talk about it from a purely detached point of view. (I think plenty of people, both the resolution-makers and those who don't, can not-care one way or other if other people make them or not, but I'm not sure, if asked to defend their reasons for one course of action or the other, they could be entirely dispassionate.)

As I say, I think the real reason I don't make resolutions is that I don't really have the personality for it. I don't actively resist it. I just don't think about it. Or, maybe, care about it. But, imagining this as a Christian-liberal-arts-college exam essay question ("Do you think Christians should make New Year's resolutions? Use Biblical evidence to support your conclusions"), I would have to say Micah 6.8.

Actually, first of all, I would say I don't see people making resolutions in the Bible. People repent and "rend their garments" and put on "sackcloth and ashes." People get talked to by blazing shrubbery and heavenly lights. People even get talked to by each other. I just don't see people making lists of long-term decisions of how to better their lives.

Don't get me wrong. I don't think I personally have achieved perfection. (You might be relieved to know that I am aware of this). And I think the "little" things (taking care of one's body by eating right and exercising, say) are important. But my greater discipline in exercising this year wasn't because I wrote down, "I will exercise more this year," or even because I clenched my fists, squinted my eyes shut, concentrated really hard and said, "I will exercise more this year!" (Trust me--I had kind of been doing the latter for about 7 years, with little effect.) It was because my job situation changed, my schedule stabilised, and I no longer had an excuse not to exercise.

Resolutions may not have this effect on everybody, but what they usually do to me is make me feel guilty and resentful, or even rebellious. They make me focus on a thing, an action, even a state of mind, when my focus should be on Jesus and letting Him make me the person He wants me to be. Even if the things themselves are godly, once I put them into a resolution, I end up focusing on the thing and on my own efforts to achieve it, when, if it's really valuable, I'm not going to be able to achieve it without Him. I'm not advocating sitting around and waiting for the Holy Spirit to zap me with "godly-juice." I do agree that we have to be cooperating with the Spirit's work in us. But Jesus, talking about His Spirit, said that the wind blows where it will, and I don't ever know what God's going to want to work on in me next.

This is what I do know, and this is what I want my life to do: in Micah 6.8, the prophet tells people that all God wants of us is to do what is right, to be merciful, and to walk humbly with Him. I'd say that pretty much covers all the bases. I'd say I have a long way to go to get anywhere near that standard. I could make some resolutions about how to get there, or I could not, but unless He's the one moving me, I don't think it matters much.

2009-12-29T15:59:00.000-05:00

Make a Smilebox greeting

Something Merry

2009-12-22T16:06:00.003-05:00

It turns out that I already wrote a post far more articulate than the one I was just thinking about writing, which says basically the same thing, so you should really go read that. However, since I've been pondering this issue again, I do just want to say this:

I get kind of . . . at least uncomfortable, and at most upset . . . when the Milk Guy decides to throw out Jesus' name, randomly, without actually talking to Him. Most Christians I know don't like it when Jesus' name gets used that way, or any form of God's name gets used that way, really.

So why are so many of us so insistent that people who don't believe in Jesus, don't love Jesus, aren't actually talking about Jesus, aren't celebrating Jesus, use the word Christmas? How is it different from what we call "taking God's name in vain"? Is it? Isn't it? I'm just asking . . .

Green Eggs and . . . a Jewish Carpenter? or, What I Got Out of a Facebook Quiz

2009-12-21T12:00:00.004-05:00

At various times in my life I've had people who aren't particularly enamoured of Jesus say things like, "Do you really have to try so hard to find Jesus in everything?"

No. I don't. It just kind of happens, I'm afraid. Like last week when I randomly took a "Dr. Seuss Personality Test"on facebook. First of all, let me say that you should never take a facebook quiz too seriously. This one, for example, only asked five questions, and I'm not sure how they related to any Dr. Seuss characters at all, actually. Secondly, if I were going to really do this scientifically (?), I should probably take all the other Dr. Seuss quizzes online, just to see if they match up. There are quite a few of them, I've seen. But . . . I'm not going to bother.

Still, though, when it turned out that, according to this quiz, "I am Sam--Sam I am," and that cute little short guy with the sign and the plate appeared on my profile, I thought, "Yeah! That's me! Sam-I-am!" Well, except for the short part.

Check it out. Here's Sam. He's all stoked because he's got something he thinks everybody would (or, at any rate, should) love. He doesn't give the impression of thinking he's better than anyone. He's just so enthusiastic about green eggs and ham he can't let up until his friend/innocent bystander/person-that-doesn't-really-like-him-much tries them. He doesn't seem to realise that, to an onlooker or an outsider, such a dish looks at the very least sketchy, with any inherent delight being, to that perspective, indiscernible.

Not to be discouraged, Sam tries to "frame" his green eggs and ham in ways that might appeal more to his resistant friend. The two characters, now thrown together under more and more bizarre and extreme circumstances, continue their back-and-forth for several more pages. At the point when the train has driven off a cliff, the boat has sunk, and both Sam, his victim and an entire menagerie of animals and other characters are floundering in the water, the poor beleaguered green-eggs-and-ham-avoider decides that he will try the dish just to get Sam off his case. Then--joy of all joy and surprise of all surprises!--he likes them! Sam is vindicated! Green eggs and ham really are delightful! They're so great that the former hater doesn't even worry about swallowing his pride along with the green breakfast and whole-heartedly thanks Sam-I-Am for, as wikipedia calls it, "his persistence."

I dunno. It kind of reminds me of my life . . . a little . . . ? Here I am, both suddenly and gradually delighted and overwhelmed by the knowledge that, messed up as I was and still easily am, God Himself came here to join in my life and to sustain me through it. He came to be my life, and though life with and through and by Him can often be alarming, I also wouldn't (by His grace) have it any other way. And I just know that He came to be life to everybody, and I just want them to realise it.

So sometimes I can get a little annoying. I'll try to be "all things to all people" like the Apostle Paul, sometimes even to the point of ridiculousness, and sometimes even to the point of some suffering and inconvenience. But I still think that, though they may "swallow" the whole thing differently than I do, that the real source of life for anybody--anybody--is Jesus. And so . . . it's not that I want to be annoying. I just want my friends to experience how worth it this is, in spite of the difficulties and the sometimes sketchy-looking nature of what I'm trying to share. Right now, I guess I'm still pushing green eggs and ham on people in boxes and houses and trains and boats, but one of these days I really hope someone--or a lot of someones--will decide that . . . well look. I don't even care if they decide they want me off their case. I just hope they see that Jesus is for them--and that at the end of the day they'll thank somebody.

Writing His Own Reality

2009-12-14T20:24:00.003-05:00

So, for those of you who haven't been following along, in the last two posts I've been processing the idea of God's having created and set human history in motion as a way to work through His own issues. I don't think He did, but still, sometimes you have to process thoughts you disagree with, too, and give them an honest look.

While I was talking about this, though, I had one of those moments where you say something and then you wonder if it means something more than you meant when you first said it. This was the thing I said:

You feel, if you're writing a story through which to work out your issues, that you can't make anything happen that you don't want to happen to you, so you allow some conflict and stuff, but you can't let anybody get into really deep water, because you don't want to get into it yourself. You might end up writing your own reality.

It suddenly occurred to me that here was something God actually did. He wrote His own reality into the human story. I don't mean He wrote it through the vehicle of the human story. It's not that He had issues and has been inflicting them on us this whole time. It's that we have issues and He allowed us to inflict them on Him. I didn't love my NaNoWriMo characters and so I didn't want to get to involved. But God? Well, evidently He wasn't afraid of getting into the deep water Himself.

I didn't know, before, when people talked abstractly about how amazing it is that God entered the human story, or that God suffers when we suffer, quite what that meant. And I'm not sure I can really describe in words what those abstracts mean to me now. But I have this sense that "amazing" doesn't even come close, and that God knew what I only discovered by talking about it--that if I got close enough to my characters to create real, transforming conflict in their lives, I'd get close enough to get hurt myself. But God didn't just know it. He did it anyway.

We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.

(Isaiah 53 segment, The Message)

Unloved Characters

2009-12-05T08:30:00.004-05:00

Sometimes there are things you know, and then there are things that you confirm by doing, and I can certainly confirm, now, that a writer, a story-teller, an artist, might craft something solely to exorcise his or her own "demons." (Or, you know, zombies or whatever.) But here's something else I discovered through the whole NaNoWriMo project:

If the author doesn't care about the characters, nothing is going to happen to them.

I suppose it's not really a coincidence that right before NaNoWriMo started I read Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. (Or is it A Million Years in a Thousand Miles? Or something else? I can never remember. The book was better than the title.) Miller (or maybe his friend Jordan, actually: chapter eight, page 48) defines story as "a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it."

He makes the point that conflict is a necessary part of story, and if God is telling The Story, and He wants it to be a good Story, then there's going to be conflict. He even kind of implies or maybe even states outright that at least some of the time God puts the conflict right in there.

It's maybe a little presumptuous to imagine that every life experience I have can turn into a point-by-point analogy about God. On the other hand, even though I don't agree with the Milk Guy that image-of-God necessitates that God actually behave exactly like human beings (or that we always behave exactly like God), I do think it means that we can learn things about God through our experiences and even our reactions or those of others.

So, while I was writing the Story That Shall Likely Never See the Light of Day (oh wait--that's kind of all my stories except Trees), it finally dawned on me that if God is really a storyteller, it's not very likely that this story is just His way of working out His own issues. And I'll tell you why.

I do believe there is something cathartic about storytelling and that you can process what you are going through by telling a story. But if that's all it is--if it's just a psychological-healing exercise--if there's no actual story being unearthed in its own right, as Stephen King describes it, it's kind of rubbish. It ends up like the "story" I wrote during NaNoWriMo--boring. If I don't care about the characters (which I discovered I didn't last month), I can't be bothered . . . or even think how to . . . find out what they want or what conflict they need to overcome to get it. I don't know them, who they are, what they like, even if I'm writing from their points of view. Their personalities change from one day to the next, not because they are developing as characters but because they are subject to my allegory which, it turns out, isn't a very good one. In a sense, we (the characters and I, too) are slaves to the story, but since it is a lame story, we're all just stuck and bored. In the end the whole thing--characters, story and author--
grind to a screeching halt.

If you're in a frame of mind which makes you think God's writing you a lousy story, you might wish for it to grind to a screeching halt, or think that it already has done, but whatever got you to that point, though painful, was probably not boring, and just might have affected your character a little bit. And I will also posit that it doesn't mean God hates you, or that He is indifferent to you. To hate a character, I feel, requires too much energy and the author might then just as well become indifferent to him or her. And indifference, as I've said, does not elicit conflict or suffering--or peace, either. It elicits boredom and lack of resolution.

I'm not trying to justify God in this particular post, nor am I trying to minimise anybody's pain, because what do I really know about it? I am saying that, from the perspective of "creates worlds," I think it's pretty unlikely that all this creation is, is a cosmic attempt to sort out the psychological convolutions of the Divine. I thought it was unlikely before, in theory. Now I think it in practice.

A few more writerly thoughts on this still to come.

Working Out the Issues

2009-12-04T10:51:00.007-05:00

When the Milk Guy and I used to talk about this stuff (and by the way, we still talk about stuff--just not this stuff, nor do we hang out very much), he would say he thought if there was a God, that God was just working out his own internal issues through people's lives. He said that if we're made in God's image, then everything humans can do, God Himself does. Not that He is capable of it--He does it.

We would argue about this, and nothing the Milk Guy could say would make me see that this premise is a logical necessity, and nothing I could say would make him see that it isn't. Bummer about that.

I still think I'm right--that it isn't a logical necessity. There is nothing about the "image of God" doctrine that makes it impossible that that image could, given certain circumstances (like, you know, turning away from God), become skewed, twisted, malfunctioning. "Image of God" does not equal "lack of free will," although the Milk Guy denies free will if there is a God. (Also not a logical necessity, despite what he says.)

On the other hand, ever since NaNoWriMo, I have had to have a second think about at least the concept of God working out His issues through us. I don't think God had issues before He made us, although one might posit that He does now. And while I don't believe His issues cause Him to sin (He's still complete in His Triune Self and doesn't need to be ruled by anything), I have recently entertained the thought that this idea--this concept of God as a sadistic puppeteer--isn't a logical impossibility, either. (Actually, it is if you look at all the data, but just as an off-the-cuff theory it isn't.)

Here's why I had to take it into account: I started writing this novel at the beginning of November. I started it as kind of a sci-fi/fantasy allegory about cancer and the issues that I've had to mull over in the last year since I had it. This story at the outset was, I suppose, a way for me to work out my own issues. It was a way to process things like chemotherapy versus natural preventatives and remedies, via metaphor and symbol. It didn't take long before issues of God and His involvement, and even some of my tension over the Milk Guy, sneaked their way into the allegory, too.

By that time, the whole plot had started to get murky, and I realised that my characters, as mere caricatures of people I really knew or of concepts I was really dealing with, were kind of annoying. Like, all of them. The most interesting one (and even she was kind of boring) was the one who turned into the zombie-like manifestation of cancer. Thought-processes of semi-conscious monsters are kind of hard to transcribe, though, so I couldn't take it very far. Still, it turned out that if there were any of these characters who I wanted to succeed, it was really only her.

I didn't care about the other ones. They were just vehicles for my issues. They bored me. I could have cared less what happened to them. Let the poor monster-girl eat everybody, frankly, for all I cared. But of course that's not what I want to happen to me. I don't want my cancer to come back, and I certainly don't want it to take over. You feel, if you're writing a story through which to work out your issues, that you can't make anything happen that you don't want to happen to you, so you allow some conflict and stuff, but you can't let anybody get into really deep water, because you don't want to get into it yourself. You might end up writing your own reality.

I guess that's sort of magical thinking, but sometimes I think like that. (You might know that by now.) Realising all this made me really have to sit down and think about the Milk Guy and his theory. I did. I sat with it for most of the month. But stay tuned. I'll tell you later why (besides holding onto what I already believed) I realised that wasn't the whole story.

More About Apostrophes

2009-12-03T09:33:00.003-05:00

We have discussed apostrophes before. Then the other day, Antagonist-Andrew (long-lost Starbucks friend recently rediscovered on Facebook) pointed out to me this link. I find it delightful and I think I kinda want that t-shirt.

It did start me off on one of my etymological musings, though. I started wondering who decided apostrophes would be used for possessives and not for plurals, when normally they're used for contractions. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm really sorry. You can just skip this post. This is, perhaps regrettably, how I think sometimes.)

Then I wondered if originally possessives were contractions--like, maybe people used to say stuff like, "David, his book," and the "his" got smushed into the preceding word and ended up as "David's book." This, of course, doesn't immediately explain why we don't say, "Anna'r book" for women ("Anna, her book"), but there might still be some reasons:

1. When possessives started coming into the English language, it was a more patriarchal society so they didn't care about gender-inclusive language.

2. If you must say it, "Jesus's" is easier to say than "Jennifer'r."

3. No one except people from central Massachusetts wanted to sound like people from central Massachusetts by adding "r"s to the ends of words that ended in vowels.

So. Now we actually have a reason for possessives to have apostrophes and plurals not to have them. Listen up, apostrophe abusers! Just stop it, okay?

One Lesson Learned

2009-12-01T21:48:00.003-05:00

Much as I may enjoy reading (or watching) sci-fi/fantasy stories, I am utterly unable to write them. I've tried it before. This last attempt, through NaNoWriMo has sort of put the nail in the coffin on that dream for me.

But maybe I just need to read more of it. Even (or maybe especially) children's. Which makes me grateful to Son-of-Milk-Guy, who gave me his entire collection of Spiderwick chronicles. I'm pretty sure he never read them himself, but I was rather pleased that he thought I might like them . . . all by himself.

The End

2009-11-30T22:53:00.002-05:00

Ah! It's over! NaNoWriMo is over! I can now go back to watching TV and other useless activities in the evenings!

(I think I just overdosed on exclamation points.)

I think I kind of cheated. My novel ended up being this long rambling inside the minds of four characters. It got badly out-of-focus and off-topic and working on it was like pulling teeth for the last two weeks, because I wasn't going to start all over again. So tonight I spent my last thousand words modifying the "It was only a dream" cop-out . . . I mean, "construct." My version was, "It was only a NaNoWriMo novel gone wrong," and I had two til-then never encountered characters talking about the inconsistencies of the characters and whether it was a good story or not.

Look. I'm agreeing with you. It was a cop-out. But also look. It took me 48,500 words to get to the point I had intended to write about in the first place, so I wasn't going to be wrapping it up any time soon, and I had to, by midnight tonight. And . . . I wanted to, because if winding it up took this long, I sure didn't want to to see what wrapping it up was going to look like.

Tomorrow, perhaps, I shall give you a new list of things I've learned from this process, or otherwise bore you with the philosophical musings this has brought up. Meanwhile, take a gander at that nifty little new badge in my sidebar.

This Just In

2009-11-20T15:26:00.004-05:00

One of the life eaters (whose label I'm going to have to change because I somehow forgot about the Harry Potter Death-Eaters--which are not the same thing) just ate his human sister's arm and now she is about to turn into a life eater, too. (They're kinda like zombies, because I couldn't think of anything else in "character" that acted more or less like cancer.) I didn't think that was going to happen. I thought . . . well, I thought other things were going to happen. This half-eaten sister happened to be one of the characters from whose perspective I was telling this NaNoWriMo tale, so now I am about to be telling part of the story from the point of view of a monster. Or cancer. Which is the same thing.

If I succeed, I might actually be a good writer. Or crazy. But good writers often are, I've heard . . .

Run-ins

2009-11-19T23:35:00.003-05:00

So I've had my new car for about three weeks. Two nights ago, I got pulled over already.

I was driving home from work right around dusk, and had just gotten off the highway and was taking this short-cut bumpy-road home. I had just turned onto it when a car going the opposite direction suddenly turned into a police car. It flashed it's blue lights but then, as far as I could tell, kept on going. So did I, but you can be sure I was being pretty careful about the 30 mph speed limit.

All of a sudden the blue lights reappeared. What?! I pulled over. I rolled down my window. (Actually, I now have a car for which I don't have to roll down the window. Convenient for getting pulled over by cops.) I put my hands on the steering wheel. Oscar, quiet little black dog, sat up straight and still in the seat beside me. We both waited.

It seemed like it was taking this officer quite a long time to come over and tell me I had been speeding--which I was pretty sure I hadn't. Finally a dark shape started moving in front of the really bright headlights shining into all my mirrors. I looked up. The cop shone his flashlight into my face.

"You know you need headlights, ma'am?" he asked, sounding like he was trying not to laugh. "It's a little dark out."

Oh brother. There are only two things I miss about my Corolla: the tape deck (yeah, I said it) and the automatic day-time lights. I apologised and thanked him, because I am a Grosser and that, apparently, is what we do. (We also cry a lot, but I didn't do that this time.) I turned my headlights on. He shook his head disbelievingly and went back to his car. I get that a lot.

NaNoWriNotes

2009-11-18T14:05:00.004-05:00

National Novel Writing Month is just beyond half over, and I am just below the number of words I should be at, and I could be writing some more, but instead I thought I'd let you in on what I think of the process so far.

Week 1:
Two thousand words a day. If I just write 2,000 words a day, I'll be all set, and actually exceed the 50,000 word goal. Two thousand words isn't that many. I can do this.

The novel is begun. This is the first piece of writing I've ever tried which tells the story from multiple character's points of view. It's kind of fun. I always thought I couldn't do such things, but they even all have their own "voices," though I'm writing in the third person.

Week 2:
English-Jayne is here, but I still have a little time to write. If I get slightly behind, I can catch up easily enough.

I am reveling in watching the characters do their own thing right before my eyes. One of the advisor-priests (priests in this imaginary world are priests of science, not religion . . . although really? what's the difference) has suddenly and unexpectedly become a main character and, it turns out, is in love with the queen. The queen is best friends with a cook in the kitchens. And the way you can tell if a person has turned into one of the monster Life-Eaters is that they start growing extra appendages, while their original ones wither and fall off.

Week 3:
I can't get caught up. I like my ideas, but this story is progressing like molasses. I have taken all the hyphens out of all my made-up roles, like advisor priests and life eaters and my word count is still down. I have more blog-posts in my head than normal but I can't write them because I have to write this super-boring story, simply because I said I would. What if I quit? Can I quit? Why are all my stories boring? I will never get another book published because I put my own self to sleep with everything but Trees in the Pavement.

The individual voices are merging into one, boring, somewhat grumpy voice. (I wonder why.) Plus the advisor priest who is in love with the queen is probably going to turn out to be an unwitting villain. That could be interesting, but right now it's just annoying. Not enough things are going wrong for the characters, but the things that are, are the wrong things. Ugh!

So there. Back to writing. I figure I need to write about 6,000 words today to catch up. And I'll only get behind again, because this weekend I have an all-nighter with the youth group. Sigh.

Signs

2009-11-08T09:31:00.005-05:00

God and Moses are having their little back-and-forth about whether God knows what He's doing in choosing Moses to get the rest of the Israelites out of Egypt, and whether Moses is going to do it, and God says, "Here's how you'll know it was me who sent you to do this: after you guys all get out, you'll come back and worship me on this mountain."

The first time I really noticed that (and many times subsequently), I thought, "What kind of a sign is that? It's after the fact." You really have to step out in faith for that kind of thing . . . only finding out if you went the right way or made stuff up after you've tried it.

Well, Moses and the Israelites got out of Egypt, and they did worship God on that mountain, but it wasn't exactly easy sailing (or hiking, or whatever) anyway, and the Israelites were more prone to say, "Why didn't you let us stay in Egypt? Huh? At least we could eat leeks and garlic there." (I like leeks and garlic--a lot--but I have often thought that was a strange thing to choose as a consolation for slavery. You'll say anything when you're desperate, though, I guess.) Even though that worship-on-the-mountain sign was after the fact, it ended up being before a lot of other challenges, in the end, and I wonder if Moses hung onto that when the people he was more or less babysitting for forty years got particularly annoying. "Well. I'm not entirely sure how wandering around with this lot is God's will, but He did say we'd worship Him on that mountain, if it were true he sent me to get them out, and we did it, and here we are. I guess I'll carry on then." I suspect there were times, though, when he wished for a few more signs to keep him motivated.

Right now I have a much less history-altering (I think) application of this same after-the-fact-but-you-aren't-out-of-the-desert-yet-honey sign principle. Remember how I was trying to figure out if I should get that car? And I was wondering if the $2 over the monthly amount I was wanting to spend was significant or not? Then I made the decision to get the car after all, and took out a loan from a local credit union. Not only did I get an excellent APR (relatively speaking, of course), but I also learned that the amount I thought I'd have to pay per month was $27 less that $202. (It is not difficult to do the math. I just wanted to write it that way. So there.)

This, I thought, was kind of like one of those retroactive signs: "As a sign that I have chosen this car for you, you will have smaller monthly car payments that you asked or imagined." Pretty cool.

Only . . . then I discovered I'm not out of the desert yet. My car insurance rates just jumped up with this purchase, and I didn't realise just how much excise tax and all that stuff was going to cost, so I probably should've asked for a slightly larger loan, and in the meantime, my health insurance changed hands, so I'm now paying for premiums and deductibles again, and I have no financial buffer. Is this evidence that I made a bad decision and should have waited on the car? Or is it the Red Sea and dearth of water and the plague of poisonous snakes and the battle with the Amalekites? These are just some of the things I'm thinking about these days . . . but I'm kind of a fan of Moses.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm."

2009-11-05T22:00:00.004-05:00

Today I went into a Starbucks I'd never been to before. The guy taking people's orders looked like quite a nice young man, and sort of like someone I might have seen before. I decided that was probably because he looked like a Type. This is the thought that went through my head after I decided that:

"He looks like he might be an evangelical Christian . . .

. . . Or gay."

Then I had to stop and think about that. From a whole lot of angles. I'll bet you are now, too.

Respond.

Beyond Settling

2009-10-30T17:56:00.008-04:00

So really. How do you know when you're supposed to be content with something, seize the opportunity available instead of the one you might have wanted, and take things as they come, versus when you're supposed to hold out for something better? How do you know the difference between contentment, resignation, and settling? I've asked these kinds of questions before. Here's a new context for them.

You may have noticed that I keep obliquely mentioning I need to replace my car. Bela Corolla, serviceable as he has been, is rather ailing these days. Even though three years ago he got all new brakes, new tires, a new battery and a new starter, and even though last year he got his wheels re-applied (when they almost fell off) and a couple of other things, this year he's burning oil so that I have to put at least a quart in every week, I can't see how fast I'm going at night (due to all the interior lights having died), and the struts are shot. The car basically clunks along, no matter how smooth the road surface . . . and in Central Massachusetts the road surface is not always very smooth (regardless of ongoing attempts to fix this). There are also more minor cosmetic issues, like the fact that when a droplet of water hits a fabric surface in the car, it spreads to an unremovable stain 1000 times its size. And the fact that one of the lights on the passenger's side is taped on with packing tape.

Car-Shop-Dave, from my church, has been helping me in my quest for a replacement vehicle, and the other day when they were moving cars around at his dealership, he discovered a 2005 Nissan Altima with only 52,000 miles and an excellent Carfax, that he thought would be just what I was looking for. Even though they want to sell it to me for $1000 more than the maximum price I was willing to pay (since I am not entirely sure I have the money for this venture to begin with), yesterday I went in to look at the car.

As soon as I sat in it, I uttered an involuntary sigh, and thought to myself, "I had no idea my car was so uncomfortable!" Car-Shop-Dave and his car shop let me take it home for the night so I could have my mechanics check it out this morning, and naturally, the more I drove it, the more I loved it. But . . . it is still $1000 more than I was willing to pay for it. And . . . I discovered that Bela's trade-in value is only $1000. Not only are all those things wrong that I mentioned before, but I'm sure my Corolla's Carfax tells all and sundry that one particularly rough year, I crashed him. Twice.

There are people who would say God doesn't care about my car needs, mundane as they are, and I'm not one who subscribes to "prosperity gospel." (I find it kind of horrifying, honestly.) However, I do believe He cares about the details of our lives, and I also believe He is able to do, as the Bible says a few times "more than we ask or imagine." I have a pretty good imagination, so that's saying something.

So let's say I had this pipe dream of an expressly environmentally-friendly, safe car which I could somehow get for under $10,000, at payments of only $200 a month. Unlikely, but God can do anything, right? So . . . do I hold out for this? Or, when the opportunity arises to get a car with an excellent reputation and history, which is more comfortable and more spacious than I could have hoped for, but which costs slightly more than I had wanted, and when my car's trade-in value is less than I'd hoped for (though honestly probably better than I should've expected), and they tell me I can make payments of $202 per month, do I take it? Does $202 count as "more than $200 a month"? Or is this some kind of divine dig-in-the-ribs, where God's saying, "Oh no, darling--you don't get out of making an actual decision that easily." (Interestingly, today I saw a car with a license plate saying "UDCIDE." It felt a little more personal than the last one. Who are these people?) Another factor is that the dealership's interest rate isn't that good for financing, but my bank that could give me a better one apparently doesn't deal with them. On the other hand, the car's so good that if I don't decide to buy it by tomorrow at 2 p.m., the dealership owner wants it.

So really. What am I supposed to do? I'm asking. This car's pretty great. I want it. I do. But it's kind of none of the things I asked or imagined. Does this mean I'm settling, or that it's more than I asked or imagined? It doesn't feel like more. It just feels like different.

I have less than 24 hours to figure this out.

Cancer Updates

2009-10-28T18:35:00.003-04:00

Since pretty much last Thursday, everyone's been asking, "So, how were the ultrasound results?" And I kept having to say, "Not this past Wednesday. Next Wednesday."

Today I went to the Ultrasound Place and they said, "Oh. You were supposed to be here last week."

Oops.

Fortunately, they were able to "squeeze me in," which turned out to be a pretty apt turn of phrase, since I got a mammogram as well as the ultrasound. Neither diagnostic test showed anything alarming at all. The technician said, "We're about 96% accurate, so I really think it's safe to say you are okay."

I'm going with it. Thank God.

Have I Told You Lately That I Love . . . My Dog?

2009-10-27T18:44:00.004-04:00

Well, I do. I love how he follows me around everywhere and comes when called (didn't used to do that) and is starting to figure out the whole "playing" thing. I call him buddy and sweetie-pie more often than I call him Oscar, which, you know, is really saying something.

The other day I was looking at Petfinder.com, not because I want to "cheat on" my beloved dog, but because twice in one week close friends suggested I should get a second dog so that Oscar can keep learning how to be one. I had previously considered this myself, since he likes other dogs so much. I can't afford a second one, and I kind of like having him as my "familiar," going to hotels with me when I go to Emmylou Harris concerts and going to my Grandmothers' with me and such.

This morning we were at the full-service gas station right near the church and as the guy pumped the gas into my car, I explained to Oscar why cars need gasoline. It wasn't until I was finished that I realised how ridiculous that was. Sometimes I think I subconsciously imagine he's a toddler and if I repeat the same words enough times, one of these days he's going to come out and start talking. This would probably still happen with a second dog, but I kind of like the weird verbal bonding I have going on with this dog who doesn't bark.

So, I have no immediate plans for altering Oscar's and my tight little Pack, but there were some other cute dogs on Petfinder. Little white, curly-haired dogs to attractively contrast with Oscar's black curly-haired-ness.

I clicked on one of these and read the description of her. It said she had been a breeding dog. It said she had spent her whole life in a crate. It said she was shy and quiet and had a little trouble with housebreaking. It said she was good with other dogs, and needed to be touched on her own terms.

Oscar was a breeder's dog, and I have wondered all these things about him. Right now he's going through a phase where he won't sit with me on the couch (even though he refuses to let me out of his sight), and before that, when he would sit on the couch, he'd lie at the far corner, as far away from me as possible. But in the mornings after our walk and before my work-out, he comes up and leans against me to be patted, and when I'm washing the breakfast dishes (or, um, more typically the dishes from the night before), he sits right up against my legs.

Things that seem like they should be instinctual for a dog don't seem to come naturally to him, and he'll probably always be quirky. But this is my dog we're talking about. How could he not be quirky? Meanwhile, we've bonded, and he's blooming, and he really is a sweetie-pie.

Oscar is Now a Local Celebrity

2009-10-26T14:42:00.001-04:00

Click on the link and scroll down. We're so proud . . .

Decisions, Decisions

2009-10-24T17:39:00.003-04:00

Like many people, I have an "alternate email address." This is the address I give to grocery stores and Borders Booksellers when I sign up for their rewards cards and don't really want to get their advertising interspersed with the email I actually want to read. This means, though, that sometimes I miss out on some deals I might be interested in. (Not usually, though.)

Today I was checking Alternate Email and noted that CVS was offering to let me "Choose My Free Gift!" Woohoo! Of course I knew enough to be fairly certain it was going to be a choice between items they might want to give me for free which I might or might not be actually interested in. Sure enough. The choice was between a four-pack of CVS-brand disposable toothbrushes (Aren't all toothbrushes ultimately disposable? What makes these special? Do they dissolve in water? And isn't that counterproductive?) and a chocolate bar. So . . . basically? Between dental hygiene and not dental hygiene, evidently.

A Celebrity You May Actually Have Heard Of

2009-10-21T19:33:00.005-04:00

I seem to recall having made name-dropping disclaimers on this blog before, but the fact is, as you've probably observed, I like having connexions to famous people. Does anyone not like this, actually? I mean, maybe someone doesn't. I just don't know what that's like. So, just this once I'm going to stop fighting it and stop pretending I don't actually care, and am going to let it all out, okay? We've covered the (tenuous) Rob Bell connexion and the (late) Lloyd Alexander connexion. Here, as far as I can remember, are the rest of them.

My uncle, Phil Madeira, is one of those famous people you have to be in kind of an elite crowd to have actually heard of. No, I'm really serious--he hangs out with famous people and writes songs for them and plays in their bands, and his name is in all kinds of album credits, but unless you really pay attention to stuff like that (and, lately, listen to country music), you might not necessarily know his name.

When I was in high school, I was also a lot more into "Contemporary Christian Music" than I am now, so it was pretty cool to get autographed black and white tour photos of Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith. Even cooler, since my tastes have always been a little fringe-y, was hanging out with Phil Keaggy and his family, and Ben Pearson and his, at a party during fall break. And best of all was having breakfast at a Nashville pancake house with Steve Taylor and his amazingly talented artist-wife Debbie. (We went to their house briefly afterwards, which is how I found out Debbie was amazingly talented.) Since I'm being all braggy right now, I'd just like to observe that I met both Steve Taylor and Ben Pearson before Donald Miller did (for his Blue Like Jazz movie) . . . but neither of them offered to make a movie of my life.

A few years later, I went to a Steve Taylor/Newsboys concert and, after a brief reintroduction, Steve remembered me and suggested that all my friends and I get together with him for a photo. (Maybe I'll scan it in here one of these days . . . although I'm pretty sure I was in a bad-hair phase at the time.) He should have. My brother and I had black and white tour photos of him, too, and he had signed my brother's "Any nephew of Phil Madeira's is a nephew of mine." So when it came time for me to get my photo (the day of the pancakes), he just wrote, "Any niece of Phil and El's . . . Your loving Uncle Steve."

In more recent years, Uncle Phil has been has been hanging out with the likes of Buddy Miller, who I met in Greenfield, MA a few years ago. But this year, both of them are playing as two of Emmylou Harris' "Red Dirt Boys." They were played in Portland, ME on Saturday, and Uncle Phil managed to get me two passes to get in. My friend Folk-Musician Gale drove up with me and Oscar, we put Oscar up in the hotel room I had booked for the night, and we went to the concert.

It was truly amazing. The music, if nothing else. Also, can I just say that Emmylou Harris is, physically speaking at least, my new post-sixty-year-old hero--she could belt out an entire concert of songs and wear a sleeveless tunic and strum a guitar, and she never acted tired and there was no upper-arm jiggle. Not even a little. How does she do that? (I should note that my parents are my other post-sixty-year-old heroes . . . but I'm pretty sure even my mother wouldn't try the bare-armed guitar-strumming thing.)

Also, I was so proud of my uncle. Other band members just played their drums, or their guitars, but Uncle Phil? He played piano, guitar, accordian, and sang in a trio with the lady herself. It's cool to be related to him because of the connexions, but it's cooler to be related to him because of himself. Still, I don't mind, as a final punch, posting this photo:

Is the Definition of Crazy Ever to Do Something Different?

2009-10-21T16:46:00.005-04:00

I was studying at Denver Seminary when I first stumbled across NaNoWriMo. This semi-acronym stands for National Novel Writing Month, and it's this crazy internet endeavour to get a bunch of writing freaks to churn out 50,000 words of unedited fiction between November 1 and November 30. At the time, I thought it sounded cool, but I also thought I was in grad school, and I probably was also in the process of packing up my life to move back East. (Unless it was earlier in the year. In which case I was having personal problems and might not have had the emotional stamina for such an endeavour anyway.) So I sat there for a minute, imagined how much crazier my life would be if I signed on, said, "Nah," and probably shut down the computer. Or sent an email. Or wrote a paper. Or something. I didn't even have a blog back then.

I'm fairly sure NaNoWriMo crossed my mind at some point in the next three years, but I know I never returned to the site. Then I started this blog, and met other people through their blogs (or, as in the case of Scott, sort of got reintroduced) and then suddenly I knew people who actually did the NaNoWriMo thing. (A Musing Mom and Scott are the two who come to mind, but if you're a blogging buddy and a Wrimo and I'm leaving you out, please register your dudgeon (not dungeon) in the comments).

After that, every November someone I knew was talking about NaNoWriMo, and people like A Musing Mom have kids even, and I felt really wussy for never taking on the challenge. But I just couldn't, you know? You don't really get enough sleep as an up-at-3.45a.m. Starbucks employee anyway. And what do you do about Thanksgiving? And how about, you know, a social life?

Plus, although it has occurred to me that if I just sat down and started writing whatever came into my head for 30 days, it might be interesting to see what happened, I haven't had any story ideas in years. Ever since Trees, people have been asking me, "What are you writing now?" And the truthful answer is that all I have are two stalled novels, one of which has been stalled for eight years and the other for five. Even though, over the summer, I had a sudden and uncharacteristic burst of motivation and sent out a bunch of proposals to literary agents (after I found out the one I had was fraudulent) for one of them, I haven't heard anything back from any of them and that, my friends, is not a good sign.

At some point a few weeks ago, I had the fleeting thought that I should try NaNoWriMo this year; for one thing, I'm not a Starbucks employee anymore. And for a little while I thought I might be up for surgery again (who knows? I still might); what better way to spend recuperation time (besides, you know, working from home) than to churn out words? But then I remembered I'd probably be starting a Semlink course at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and so I'd probably be spending my recuperation time working on that.

Then suddenly, within the last two days, I've had a new story idea. I think a bunch of people have wondered whether I'd get a novel out of my cancer experience. I wondered about the same thing. But I'll bet none of us imagined the kind of idea I just got for it. I've been mulling over the concept of chemotherapy and how opposed to it I've become, and how Weapon of Mass Destruction on a Microcosmic Scale it seems, and suddenly I had a fantasy novel going on in my head instead of a "young woman survives (or doesn't) the ravages of cancer" story. Hmm, I thought. Too bad I'll be taking Semlink courses soon. And then this morning I found out the scholarship the church was planning on using to fund my education has already been disbursed this year, so I have to wait until sometime next year anyway. And so all of a sudden, at four o'clock this afternoon, I found myself registering for NaNoWriMo. Yikes.

Fifty thousand words sounds like a lot. But the powers that be over at that site say this:

Tell everyone you know that you're writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who've had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

I suspect this is true. So I'm telling you.

One Step at a Time . . .

2009-10-21T10:30:00.002-04:00

So on Wednesday I went to see the Surgeon. He said, "I don't feel anything." But he scheduled me an ultrasound of the area just in case. That will be happening next week (on Wednesday).

Either I was over-reacting (which the Surgeon said he'd prefer for me to do, given my history), or he's somehow missed it (last year he didn't think I had anything to worry about either), or, as our Pastor Barry says, "maybe there was a small miracle."

In any case, the verdict is still out. I'll continue to keep you posted. So far there's nothing definitive, but at least it sounds like there may well be good news . . .

Thanks again for all your prayers and support the last week.

Global . . . Snowing

2009-10-16T21:36:00.002-04:00

So, I know that Colorado already had snow in September or something. Maybe more than once. But they also had the biggest blizzard I've ever experienced in my life, in 2003, so I might kind of expect it.

Last night, on October 16th, it started snowing here. What.

It was still snowing this morning when Oscar and I took our First-Thing-in-the-Morning walk, and we were both probably still too groggy to do much with it, though it occurred to me to wonder whether Oscar had ever seen snow before, from his kennel in Arkansas.

When I let him out a little later, he was much more fascinated by the stuff, getting thoroughly distracted from his "Business" by the fascination of munching the cold white stuff off the grass. He probably would've tried to eat it off the whole yard, if I had let him. In which case he really would've had some Business to attend to.

The snow was mostly melted by 10 a.m., but it had stuck around enough to accumulate a little before that, and it was weird-looking. I mean, the trees haven't even finished undressing for the winter yet. They've scarcely begun. The effect was kind of like putting a slinky ball-gown on over the flannels and overalls you were just wearing to muck out the barn.

Here We Go Again

2009-10-14T13:05:00.004-04:00

It used to be that every year between September and April, I would get a run of about four flu/cold-type maladies that would last for at least three weeks each. Sometimes I would be sick for about 80% of that time. They incorporated everything: sneezing, coughing, runny nose, congestion, digestive issues--you name it. Because Starbucks never closes and can't really function if one of its scheduled people doesn't show up, I would go to work anyway, feeling terrible and trying not to alarm customers or sneeze into their beverages. (Sometimes I probably tried less hard than others.)

Now, is the new thing cancer every winter?

Last year, during all that cancer diagnosis/surgery/radiation nonsense, I didn't get sick once. I think I might have gotten a cold sometime in March, but it only hung on for about five days. I didn't even get a flu shot.

This year I got a flu shot, because I wasn't planning on getting cancer again and I figured I wouldn't have anything to trade in the colds for. But on Monday morning . . . I discovered another lump. Same side, different location.

I'm hoping it's nothing. Just like I hoped the last one was nothing. But none of the doctors are saying that to me anymore. Nope. Already had this problem once--now they want to see me as soon as possible. I expect my Surgeon (or his nurse practitioner) will call me imminently to set this up.

Meanwhile, if you get into praying at all, would you please pray that this will go away? Completely? I don't want to do this again, and I sense the Valley of the Shadow of Chemo coming into view. Can I just tell you? I'd rather die than have chemo at this point. I'll talk some more about that later. Just for now . . . please pray for me. I've known of--and expected--greater miracles than this.

How Do You REALLY Feel?

2009-10-13T16:01:00.005-04:00

I have an idea that it's politically incorrect to make a statement like, "I love Jewish novelists," even though it's a positive statement and it is, to date, true. Or at least I can accurately say I love the novels that Jewish novelists write. Chaim Potok, Bernard Malamud, and now Saul Bellow, are the writers whose books I love. I suspect I should and would love the works of Elie Wiesel also, but somehow I seem to have missed them thus far. Don't ask me why. (We could also include the Coen brothers in this, but they're not exactly novelists, and some of their stuff gives even me pause, though I have huge amounts of respect for them.)

Now what I'm trying to figure out is why I like Jewish fiction so much, and maybe also why, by and large, I find Christian novels so unappealing. There are exceptions, like C.S. Lewis (obviously!) and Tolkein (of course!), and I'm sure there are some out there today who write compelling or thought-provoking stories. I think the "Christian Publishing Industry" (can an industry be a Christian?) is trying to raise the bar these days on the kinds of books that hit the bookstore shelves, and three cheers to that, I say! But I haven't read the new generation of Christian fiction, because an enormous percentage of the small percentage of Christian fiction I have read is, in my opinion, just not that good. (That is probably not politically correct either.)

Even though I feel free to have strong opinions about this and to air them on the internet (potentially to my own undoing if I want to have any more play in arena of getting-books-published) I don't really feel very qualified to talk about this much because, as I say, I'm really only comparing the novels of three Jewish guys with the novels of a spattering of Christian ones, and I can't say that this is really a very well-researched point of view, or that there's a very representative cross-section of these books.

But here is my hunch. There are some similarities among the books of the three Jewish authors I'm citing. Often the action in the stories takes place as much in the characters' heads as it does internally. The characters may be at varying levels of Jewish Orthodoxy, but somehow their identity as Jews is ever-present. On the other hand, it is often not very overt. You can't forget that you're reading about Jewish characters in these books, even if they're not actually directly talking about it. The people in the stories are sometimes sort of caricatured (for example, Moses E. Herzog, about whom I'm thinking a lot right now because I'm reading Herzog), but they still ring true. They have identifiable thought patterns--either ones I've had myself or ones I must, come to think of it, have experienced others having. They struggle with the identity they impose on themselves, and with the one the world imposes on them. There's always a morality and there's always a message, but it is rarely if ever spelled out; the reader is, in a way, left to his or her own devices at the end of the book, to come to an interpretation themselves.

In the Christian fiction I've read (previously named authors mostly excepted, although even Lewis gets bogged down in his message sometimes), the characters generally seem flatter. The books are more plot-driven, and the plot, it seems to me, is often contrived. The characters usually have struggles, but they get worked out in the end, under the auspices of Christ. All the people the reader comes to care about (if the reader comes to care about them) become Christians by the end, if they aren't already. Things tie up neatly. There's an Answer. And just in case we didn't get it, it's usually spelled out for us.

This makes some people feel comfortable. I guess it makes evangelicals like me feel like the message got out there or something. But the problem is, I don't know that the people who we wish would hear the message are usually going to get it in this format. I think it's too bad. I think there is an Answer, and He is Jesus. But I don't think He usually ties up loose ends, exactly. I think walking with Him involves getting mad at Him, and trying to run away from Him, and fighting with Him, and then getting to the point where you realise life is often going to stink no matter what, but that you'd rather go through it all with Him than without.

How I Almost Got My Head Shaved

2009-10-09T14:54:00.005-04:00

I've mentioned Bledi before--he's the guy with the scissors. I go to him and his fancy salon for the best haircut ever. I really don't go there to get into theological discussions. Apparently, though, he likes to argue with me, because he keeps bringing it up. I guess we feel more comfortable with each other than when I wrote about him last. Our discussions are still not always entirely helpful ones. Today's mostly went like this:

Bledi: But see, I look at science.

Me: I look at science, too.

Bledi: No you don't.

Me: Yes I do.

Bledi: No you don't . . .

You get the idea.

The last time I was there maybe our discussion was a little more intelligent, but he got told off by his boss later, evidently, for talking too loudly with me about controversial religion-laced subjects.

He said it's a bummer I'm not hanging out with the Milk Guy anymore, because they probably would've gotten along. You know what? I think they would. And I wouldn't even have minded hanging out with the two of them together, although probably I would've felt a bit beleaguered by the end of it. I find these discussions, if not always stimulating, at least entertaining.

You know what drives me crazy, though? The current fad of blaming the spread of Christianity on some combination of the emperor Constantine, conspiracy theory and politics. Even if Constantine's conversion was not genuine (and I don't really see how anyone can prove it was or it wasn't), if Jesus had needed some power-mongers to spread His good name, the Church would've died out long before Constantine, and there would've been nothing to spread. I think it mostly drives me crazy because there is usually so little thought that goes into this accusation--it's just something somebody heard somewhere, very few people check out the facts, and they get exactly as dogmatic about it as any Christian might get about, say, the divinity of Christ.

This came up today, too. I got a little heated. I still got the best haircut ever, but next time I decide to get heated, I'm going to make sure I'm not in the hair stylist's chair. You know. Just in case . . .

Writing About Myself

2009-10-08T09:58:00.003-04:00

It turns out that, though I love writing about myself so much that I have two blogs, I really don't like it all that much when I have to do it. Like, for a proposal to a literary agent. Or for a seminary application . . .

I just thought I'd, you know, procrastinate a little bit to tell you that. By writing about myself.

What?

Newbie

2009-10-07T15:04:00.003-04:00

So, I am no longer the newest staff person at church. Last week, Pastor Barry officially started as our church's "settled minister." Everyone's pretty excited about that, although of course with any new person, there are always adjustments, and some people are already balking at change.

Even though Pastor Barry and I had met and have been shooting emails back and forth for a few weeks regarding programmes and such, it wasn't until yesterday that we were able to really sit down and talk and get to know each other. I have decided I like Pastor Barry. (I suspect I will like his wife, Mrs. Wendy, too, particularly as she was named after Wendy from Peter Pan, but I've had even fewer interactions with her.)

Last week had started out a little uneasily, because the Sunday school staff had decided to have a communion service once a month and Pastor Barry, on hearing this, was not happy at all, since he doesn't consider it to be communion unless an ordained person is administering it. I hadn't really thought this through much, but I thought it through a lot after that, and while I do believe communion should have a certain "set-apart" feel to it--it's not just french fries and soda and no thought involved--I also don't think you have to have a piece of paper from an acredited institution giving you permission to administer it, though I decided it wasn't worth arguing the point.

Yesterday, though, we had quite a nice chat, and I was impressed. First of all, I trust his book selection. Of the titles I could see at a near-to-middle distance on the book spines on his shelves, he has Celebrating the Disciplines and Prayer by Richard Foster, Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris, and Soul Friend by Henri Nouwen. Also, I was telling him about my car situation (about which I shall probably tell you one of these days), and he was very supportive. He said he didn't know anybody selling right now, but he seemed like he thought it was important for me to get an new (or at least improved) vehicle, and like he might actually look into it for me a little himself.

He was also really supportive of my getting ordained. Did I tell you I was thinking of getting ordained? I didn't really know I was either--at first all I knew was that the church wanted to pay for me to get some extra training. Then, right before they left, Pastor Ron and Mrs. Dona said they thought I should ditch the Christian Education training track and go for an MDiv. Given the fact that the last time I went to seminary before I quit, the classes I actually liked were the Bible ones, this idea did have a certain appeal. Given the fact that I have had, in the last four years, a complete reversal in my thinking about women in professional ministry that I wasn't even looking for, it doesn't seem like a complete non-sequitur.

I'm still trying to figure it out, and Pastor Barry said, "If this is something that God is calling you to do, I definitely support it." Right then, apart from the books, I decided I liked him. I'm glad he brought God in as the condition, not as an afterthought, and that he didn't just say, "What do you feel like doing?" I don't think God totally discounts our feelings (although in my more cynical moments I might say He doesn't discount them at all--He gauges them and then finds something for us to do that's exactly the opposite). I also don't think it's all that easy to discern what God wants all the time. But it matters to me, and I was glad to have His role in the process and in our lives in general acknowledged and reminded to me.

The church has some scholarship money available, and so I had written to the Trustees about the possibility of using it, but when I told Pastor Barry this, he said, "It's not just about handing out money! A decision like this needs the spiritual oversight of the church, too. You need to bring this to the deacons." I liked that, too. I also liked that he got right on it, telling me he was meeting with the deacons that night and I should send him my request that afternoon.

Apparently the deacons were enthusiastic about the ordination idea, as Pastor B was pleased to tell me this morning. "Now," he said, "we can take it to the trustees." I need to get cracking with my application, I guess!

I like this guy.

Things I Wonder About Sometimes

2009-10-06T14:10:00.003-04:00

1. Hybrid Words:

Why do I like making them so much? I was going to say, "Not only was the last post my cancerversary post, but it was also post number 444." Groundhog Day was the Milk Guy's and my e-niversary. I was inordinately proud of the word guacaritas the other week, and there have been a few others on this blog, like Buxerati. See if you can find them all. I can't!

And yet, hypocritically, I hate when other people do this. Actually, maybe I just hate when famous people and corporations do this. I liked it when the Milk Guy called his chihuahua/min-pin mix a doberhuahua or a chihuaberman. But daycation and staycation give me hives. Adding holic to the ends of words similarly makes me want to tear my hair out. I don't really know why.

2. Accords

Why in the world did the Honda corporation's advertising department never jump on the Pirates of the Caribbean craze and spoof one of the many scenes where a pirate says, "Do we have an Accord?" What? Because it doesn't look piratical? Psshhh!

3. Forgetting

Why do I never write this stuff down so that when I finally decide to blog about it, I only remember half of what I wanted to blog about?

Anniversary

2009-10-03T20:59:00.014-04:00

A year ago today, a game of phone tag with the man who became "my" Surgeon ended in a conversation like this:

Surgeon: Jennifer. It's never easy to give news like this, and I'm really surprised because the mass definitely didn't feel like this at all, but we got the results of your biopsy, and you do have a small cancerous tumour.

Actually, I'm not sure it was much of a conversation really. Probably some "oh"s and "uh-huh"s from me while the Surgeon said some things about what he anticipated the prognosis to be (good) and what things were going to happen next. I don't really remember too much about that, although I do kind of remember my brain going something like:

Brain: Oh. It's a cancerous tumour. Well, I guess that's what I got it checked out for. I knew it was something. They all said it was nothing, but I knew it was . . . wait a second . . . I have a cancerous? tumour? I have cancer. Oh my God [that was me not taking God's name in vain, okay?] I have cancer.

I remember me trying not to cry on the phone. Then the phone call was over and I called my parents. "Hello?" said my mother. I thought I was going to say something, but instead I just burst into tears. She's my mother, so she knew exactly who it was and exactly what had happened.

Then I called my brother. Then I called the Milk Guy. Then I talked to Heather-of-Six for a long time.

I remember thinking about dying, and not feeling afraid of it at all. Being with Jesus finally would be nice, I thought. Things had been pretty stressful for a while. It would be nice to just go rest with Him instead of dealing with all this stuff here. I was afraid to talk about any of this (wanting to die without wanting to kill myself) in this blog, because I thought someone would misunderstand and get alarmed and . . . well, it would just get complicated. But now I'm just remembering.

In the end, I didn't die, and although there were a whole lot of upsetting and difficult steps in the process, I have kind of a nostalgic feeling about the time from October through December 2008. It was kind of the best of times and worst of times for me. I don't know how I got the support system (all over the world) that I have, but they've always been amazing, and last autumn they really pulled out all the stops in ways I could never have predicted. The Milk Guy hung in there and helped me think through my medical decisions instead of abdicating all control to the doctors. My parents flew back and forth from their Alternate Country to be with me during the scariest parts.

Now it's a year later and sometimes I forget I had cancer at all, and sometimes I feel guilty that I "got off so easy," because most people don't. I am cancer free, I didn't have chemo, and after my last check-up my doctor said, "I don't know what you're doing, but keep doing it--you're in great shape." I am on tamoxifen, and it does kind of wreak havoc with the rhythms of womanhood, such that, for example, I had PMS for the entire month of August (if you didn't see me in August, be thankful). But when I think of what it could have been, and of what, in some cases, I was told it was, I'm so grateful to be in the state I am now.

Grin

2009-09-30T20:33:00.004-04:00

There are a lot of movies I like, but very few about which I can say I grinned almost the entire time (if not the entire time) I was watching them. Neither of them were ones I would have expected to feel this way about. The first one was Hairspray. Tonight it was Romancing the Stone.

When I was in high school, my youth group had an all-nighter at our youth leaders' house once, and we watched bunches of movies ranging from Joni to The Empire Strikes Back. Oh, and some episodes of Miami Vice, I think. At some point someone put in Romancing the Stone. I remember thinking I wasn't going to like it, but actually finding it kind of funny, but other people must have had different opinions, because the only part I remember is them staying in the fusillage of the crashed drug-running airplane.

Ever since then, I've sort of thought vaguely that I might like to see the whole thing sometime. And then I got Netflix. I know. It might have to go, given the whole budget thing (October starts tomorrow, people!) but anyway, I have it right now, and discovered that I could watch the movie streaming to my computer from the internet.

I don't really know what it was about this movie that I liked so much. The crazy-lonely-single-female-writer stereotype? The fact that she knew how to deal with traumatic situations because of what the characters in her books had done? The fact that people knew how to thwart her because they had all read her books? The totally inappropriate muzak during one of the chase scenes? Michael Douglas' mullet? A fun, light-hearted romance, where two totally mismatched people end up living happily ever after because they can because it's a movie?

Yeah. All that. Grin.

There's just one thing that's bothering me. Some time within the last six or seven years, I read a book by a Christian author who used this movie to illustrate some deep relational/theological point. It was someone famous in the evangelical world--someone like Philip Yancey or Donald Miller or John Eldridge. One of them. This has now turned into one of those things that is likely to bug me for at least a month now. So, kudos (and, if I know you and can think of something to send, a small prize) to anyone who can tell me who it was and what they were trying to illustrate through it.

Fuss-Budget

2009-09-26T09:36:00.005-04:00

So . . . not everything in life has come to me easily, but I have to say I feel like I've been able to "get away with" an awful lot from time to time. For example, until my surgery last year, I was essentially unable to gain weight--or at least, to gain it and keep it on. One of my friends in London used to joke with me that I had a tapeworm. Occasionally I had to ingest kind of nasty things like "Ensure" to . . . ensure I didn't waste away to nothing, but I've never had to go on a diet to lose weight. I'm not saying this to brag (although I'm sorry if it sounds like it, because it probably does)--I'm saying it to make a point.

Likewise, I've managed to live my entire life to this point without a formal budget. I've never made much money, and so I've never had anything left over, really (this means saving for things like Getting Old hasn't really gone too well), but I always have enough for "my daily bread," as it were. And even to do fun stuff. Like travel around the world, for example. Sometimes things get a little tight, or I get a little nervous, but it always works out.

Recently, however, I've decided that maybe it's time I put myself on a budget. I wouldn't call myself a frivolous spender for the most part, and now that I am working full-time at the church instead of at Starbucks, I have a little more settled income. However, I also have a few new expenses that I didn't have before, and I've noticed, too, that maybe subconsciously I've been imagining more of a pay increase than I've actually received, because when I go out with friends, I'm likely to be a little less thrifty with what I order than I used to be.

Thinking about this, I've decided I feel sort of like someone must who goes on a diet and wishes they didn't have to, and is maybe still not fully convinced that they do. Complete with the rationalisations and excuses, I mean. You know the kind I'm talking about. "Do calories count on weekends? Isn't it true that if the cookie is broken, all the calories fell out? Can I eat this bag of potato chips and skip two meals?" That kind. For a budget, for me, they're sounding like this:

"Okay, so I'm putting myself on a budget. But it's almost the end of the month, so I won't start until it's officially October. It'll be easier to keep track of that way." (Implication being I'd better get any splurging in between now and Thursday.)

"Does petrol, to get me to and from non-work-related events with friends, count as an entertainment expense, or can I just make a separate category for petrol? You have to have it, right?"

"If I'm hanging out with people who don't go to my church but with whom I once talked about having a Bible study, can I call it a 'ministry expense' and get the church to reimburse it? Even if the 'ministry' was guacamole and a margarita?" (Don't worry--I won't actually do that . . . next Friday . . . when my friends and I go out for "guacaritas" . . . but I'd be lying if I said the thought didn't cross my mind.)

"Can french fries count as groceries?"

There's a lot about discipline and integrity here, and both of those things are important values to me. On some level, I think I've generally exhibited them in my dealings with money. But as I start thinking about an actual budget, I'm starting to notice some chinks in the fence . . .

Decide

2009-09-24T10:07:00.006-04:00

I live about 12 miles away from where I work, which isn't all that far, I guess, really, but because of everything that is between Home and Church, it is very rare for me to get to work in less than half an hour. And then there's this five-minute block of time when, if I hit it just wrong, I end up behind all the school buses and all the other commuters such that if I would have left six minutes later, I probably would've gotten to work sooner.

Can you tell that happened to me today? Fortunately, I wasn't in a tearing hurry or anything. As I was not hurrying, and at the first intersection which is where all the cars get in front of me in the first place, this car . . . got in front of me. On the license plate was one word: Decide.

First I did that thing you do, you know, when you're an evangelical, and tried to figure out if there was some major life decision I was supposed to be making right then, and this was God's way of speaking to me through somebody's vanity plate.

I guess there are some things I could be deciding right now, but I honestly don't think the timing's right, and if I had taken that license plate too seriously, I would be making snap decisions which would probably have deleterious effects in the future. (Ooh--cool. I spelled deleterious right! I'm pretty sure I've never used it in a written sentence. And maybe not in a spoken one, either.)

So after convincing myself that it wasn't a personal message to me, I started wondering what it meant. Why would someone put the word Decide on their license plate? What are they trying to achieve? What kind of person puts a word like that on the back of their car with no explanation?

I actually have a whole bunch of ideas about this, and am now planning on putting some such person in a novel (if I ever get another idea for a novel besides the one I'm trying to get an agent for, which I think might be a lost cause). Look, I called it, okay?

All the same, it would be kind of fun to make a game out of it, too, and you could tell me what kind of character does this. I know, it's pure speculation, and I don't know anything really about the actual person who did this, but . . . that just means we aren't really talking about them. It's not character defamation because we're just imagining. And besides, I think if I were the type of person to put the word Decide on my license plate, I would also be the type of person who, if I somehow managed to stumble across this blog, would be pretty amused to see what kind of person people thought I might be. But you know . . . maybe I'm just making that up.

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Defacing Public Property

2009-09-23T21:35:00.002-04:00

I go through phases . . . with pretty much everything. Including the library. I will go the library religiously for a year or so, and then suddenly I don't feel like looking through the stacks for books I've never heard of that I might or might not like, and so I return whatever I had out last, and don't go back for another year or two.

Seriously, I don't think I've been to the library since sometime in the middle of 2008. But then the other week I was looking for a book to read in my mom's bookshelves, and I realised that I am no longer really into most of the types of books that she's into. She likes mysteries and historical novels, and I like . . . I don't know, really. What do I like? All the stuff listed in my blog profile, I guess. I read one of her historical novels anyway, out of desperation, and I ended up liking it more than I expected . . . or at least wanting to know what was going to happen. But I took today off from work and all of a sudden decided it might be a good idea to visit the library again.

Last time I visited there, they didn't have Trees in the Pavement in their stacks, even though I had told them about it. I suppose it would have been classier of me to donate them a copy, but frankly, I wanted as many sales as I could get. Anyway, I had this idea that they had quietly decided not to purchase it, and since I'm rarely very pushy about things, I could hardly blame them.

Today I found about four books that I thought I might like to read, with little effort, which was nice. I checked them out. Then, as an afterthought, I decided to search my book on the library computer. What do you know? They have it! In the children's section . . . so I went down to the children's section just to see my book on a library shelf. There it was, next to the Raggedy Ann stories (which, if you know me really well, you may realise is sort of apropos). It doesn't look like anybody has read it. Which--why would they, since they've never heard of me. Still, there it was.

I thought about going up to the librarian and thanking her for having my book on her shelves, and asking if I should autograph it. It seemed like a weird question to ask, though. What was she going to say? No? Besides, she was clearly more than occupied with a family who seemed to have very complicated things going on with their library cards. I went back to the shelves. I knelt on the floor and took a pen out of my pocketbook. I looked around, opened the book to the front page . . . and scrawled my name across it. I suppose I was defacing someone else's property. But it's still my book.