Monthly Archives: August 2006

Padraigs and Ice cream

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Now there are two things that just go really well together.

My girls have had padraig slippers since Melody got some at her baby shower. I found they were the perfect antidote to footless baby outfits, and got a second pair so her older sister could have some too.

Here’s my plug: They don’t squish the leg like socks (don’t even need socks, in fact) in order to stay on. The average baby needs a bit more dexterity to remove them than to remove socks, and the soles are made of fuzzy-side in sheepskin. Put your finders into a new pair of baby booties and you’ll wonder why they’d ever want to take them off. And some don’t.

I finally bought myself a pair.

Once I got over the (shouldn’t-have-been-a) surprise that they have no support (what moc/slips do?) they were very nice. Easy slip-on, leave-on-all-day shoes. And b/c they have those leather soles they’re even good for a quick dash to the car.

I haven’t yet tried for me what I’ve done with the girls though: for them Padraigs are just another shoe. An in-a-hurry shoe, actually, since they can be worn with or without socks, and are rainbow and novelty, so they go with everything.

Oh, and the ice cream. I just made ice cream again last night, and as one who has trouble keeping my feet warm under even normal conditions I sincerely enjoy having now a pair of slippers my husband doesn’t object to.

Thought and poem of the day

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Totally like whatever, you know?
By Taylor Mali
www.taylormali.com

In case you hadn’t noticed,
it has somehow become uncool
to sound like you know what you’re talking about?
Or believe strongly in what you’re saying?
Invisible question marks and parenthetical (you know?)’s
have been attaching themselves to the ends of our sentences?
Even when those sentences aren’t, like, questions? You know?

Declarative sentences – so-called
because they used to, like, DECLARE things to be true
as opposed to other things which were, like, not –
have been infected by a totally hip
and tragically cool interrogative tone? You know?
Like, don’t think I’m uncool just because I’ve noticed this;
this is just like the word on the street, you know?
It’s like what I’ve heard?
I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions, okay?
I’m just inviting you to join me in my uncertainty?

What has happened to our conviction?
Where are the limbs out on which we once walked?
Have they been, like, chopped down
with the rest of the rain forest?
Or do we have, like, nothing to say?
Has society become so, like, totally . . .
I mean absolutely . . . You know?
That we’ve just gotten to the point where it’s just, like . . .
whatever!

And so actually our disarticulation . . . ness
is just a clever sort of . . . thing
to disguise the fact that we’ve become
the most aggressively inarticulate generation
to come along since . . .
you know, a long, long time ago!

I entreat you, I implore you, I exhort you,
I challenge you: To speak with conviction.
To say what you believe in a manner that bespeaks
the determination with which you believe it.
Because contrary to the wisdom of the bumper sticker,
it is not enough these days to simply QUESTION AUTHORITY.
You have to speak with it, too.

(Reprinted with blanket permission)

“Imaginary” good and evil

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From Phillip Yancy: (though most of it isn’t his, I got it from his article).

Simone Weil said imaginary evil, such as that portrayed in books, television shows, and movies, “is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

This, I have learned, is one of the hardest things about writing (and reading too). It falls into the same category as a discussion I heard/read somewhere about how much easier it is to maintain your image if you are an “evil” leader, than if you are a “good” leader.

The argument goes: For the former, everything you do reinforces your image– who you are (Even the “good” you may choose to do sets your people on edge, because everybody’s wondering what’s really going on, or when the other shoe will drop.); while, for the latter, no matter what you do, someone will be unhappy, and you will lose your reputation of “goodness.”

Most people today call Jesus a “good teacher” (if nothing more), and leave it at that (“How can anyone have a problem with a man going around telling everyone to love each other?”). But, other writers have pointed out, most people in Jesus’s day had very strong feelings about him. And not all of those positive.

~~~

Getting back to the original quote, I’ve always wondered how best to make Good and Right as complex and alive as all the bad that must inevitably be in a good story.

I think it was my husband that pointed out one element of this difficulty: Everyone has encountered evil. Many of them intense evil. Far fewer have noticed a good on that scale.

I’m not saying it isn’t there (though I can think of several cases where even I, on the outside, can’t see it), but good does not usually impress itself so unignorably on the individual as evil does.

The Blogger’s creed?

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I’ve seen this written or referred to on four or five different blogs, so I’ll just credit the original writer. (Okay, also as cited by JollyBlogger.)

I am the sort of man who writes because he has made progress, and who makes progress by writing.
— Augustine, Epistle 143.2-3

I cannot say that I am any sort of man. But for me, part of progress is processing, and processing is done by writing, so it’s kinds of the same thing.

“Held”

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I’m pretty sure this song is well known (for such an un-descriptive title I was interested to find it was the #1 in relevance at iTunes), but, for the sake of this “discussion,” here are the lyrics.

In itself the song makes very little sense. It’s been called a “tearjerker” by at least one reviewer, and, while it’s never made me cry, I can understand how it got the label.

Having just lost my grandmother, I am learning that all those movies that never affected me before might have lacked potency because I had no resonating event.  It is taking less and less to trigger a resonance now.

The lyrics begin as if they are going to tell a story, introducing a tragic event, and some thoughts about the situation. But rather than offer a resolution you hear the chorus:

This is what it means to be held
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

This is what? That question is not answered anywhere in the song. It is very dream-like and full of images, but no answers.

I’ve decided I like the song (it intrigued me before, since I only heard it on the radio, and kept wondering if I’d missed some key line, hearing no resolution). And I think it is the sorrowing people who are the “answer” to the This is.

I am exhibit A.

This is what it means …
How it feels… This is what it is to be loved
And to know…

My analyzer-side really likes that chorus. I’ve sat, quietly and alone (during nap-time) and listened to those words, feeling what I’m feeling and musing, So this is how it feels, hmm?.

…The promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

It’s simple, nothing new or earth-shattering, but still, it resonates.

And that works for me right now.

What’s so bad about a crutch?

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More from Kreeft’s The Angel and the Ants.

…But it is a stronger answer to say that faith is not a hypothesis at all. It is more like a crutch. People used to accuse religion of being a crutch. The answer is: Yes. That’s exactly what it is. What’s more necessary for a cripple than a crutch? And if you don’t think you are a cripple, you must have been on a long vacation from the real world for the past few decades.

From the chapter Some Common Christian Sense about Suffering

Let’s see, now what do I do.

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Last night was 23-days since my Grandmother died. Time keeps crunching along. I finally picked up a novel again. Inkheart. (I first read it a few months ago.)  And it felt like chicken soup.

Should that be embarrassing?

It was familiar, it whet my appetite and satisfied it too. A completely different “flavor” than the first time I read it. I wasn’t too impressed with the beginning chapters before, but they had the context of the whole story this time, and I was able to appreciate the author’s efforts to give them more meaning.

Tried a little too hard, maybe, but it was okay this time.

For the first time in more than 3 weeks I thought I might return to my own work.
Three weeks is a long time to wonder what you’ll do next.

Had to Copy this over here

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When I laugh as hard as I did, I can’t not-share.

This is from Mental multivitamin, and she has all the correct credits there.

Dorothy Parker was born in New Jersey. Challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence, Parker, a literary figure known for her “instant wit and cruel humour,” once quipped:

You can drag a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

I was in fits. Of course, it might not have been quite that funny if I’d read it before I should have been in bed. But I laughed again this morning, so it’s still pretty good.

Better than I thought

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I added it up today, and I guess I do read an hour (or more) to my kids most days. One more thing from my wish-list. Pretty cool.

And (small hallelujah) Jay’s agreed I can start looking for a dog in the spring. Specifically on my birthday. That will give us more time for deciding just what we’re looking for, and praying to find just the right one. And for Elisha to get bigger.

And if I can find an EOW (every-other-week) babysitter for Monday mornings I’ll be able to take a piano class at the U. (One woman has already agreed to do EOW, so I just have to find an alternate.) I figure the pressure of weekly lessons will be good for encouraging more consistent progress; I’ve been treading water.

I was debating between this and voice lessons for a while there, then found I have to be somewhat proficient in piano as a prereq. for voice (I have to be able to teach and drill myself on my own). So that solved that dilemma in a hurry.

Baby Steps

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When you (or, at least I) take a good hard look at yourself and your “spiritual life” (for lack of a better term) you will inevitably find somewhere you fall short.

The catch-22 of course is that if you don’t (have this disappointing epiphany), there’s another type of trouble brewing, and I hope you don’t find out too painfully.

I won’t bother making a list of my shortcomings here (NOYB, and having more people know them won’t help me anyway), but I do want to set up an “Ebenezer” for what I am beginning as a result.

Jay and I have started the Navigator’s Topical Memory System. It’s given me more focus for what I teach the girls, and it gives Jay and me some structure (a plan) for our own memorizing.

It was a “random” find during an alone outing at the Christian book store. Once I saw it (a little package with the plan and a fat book of perforated cards) the appropriateness of the project really grew on me.

Jay and I have been talking about our respective shortcomings and what we should do about them (only our own– we’re not picking at each other). We knew what we aught to do, of course; the trouble, as it always is, was doing it.

Or, rather, doing it ALL. It’s very easy to say: I need to pray more, read the bible more, wait quietly (HA!) on God more, etc. The difficulty is the same as that of trying to start every self-improvement project on January first:

This year I will eat five fruits and veggies daily, make one new dish a week, exercise aerobically for 45-min at least 3 days a week, pick up and put away everything I’m using before I move on to the next project, wash the evening’s dishes before sitting down to relax after dinner, read to the children at least an hour a day, implement Flylady/SHE/organizing strategy of choice. Oh, and brush the dog/cat/squirrel at least once a week to cut back on the amount of hair culled in my daily vacuuming sessions.

Believe me, if I could do all that, I would be sooo happy…

But I can’t, so I work on having dinner ready when Jay get’s home, and making my house a no-yell zone.

Those two things go a long way toward making home a peaceful place.

And starting with scripture memory is a natural and appropriate step toward more consistent and scriptural living. One problem with growing up knowing “everything” you’re supposed to be doing, but not necessarily how to do it all, is that you know how far you have to go, rather than celebrating how far you’ve come.

I have cleared my kitchen counter for nearly a week now. I feel so together.

I have reminded myself that the old has gone the new has come, more times now than I remember. It is an encouraging thought promise.