Christmas Break...from blogging

Things are super-busy for me right now and probably won't let up until the after the New Year.

So, I am simply going to take a break from reading, commenting, and blogging for the most part.

Be well and have a Merry Christmas!!

Soccer Pics

The Rationalist is the furthest kid on the left in the orange Jersey. His team was so evenly matched with the opposing team that the entire game went by with no goals on either side.....several near misses for both teams...but no points. They each had good goalies defending the goal.

The Rationalist, while being much smaller than everyone else on his team, always makes a few good strategic moves in getting the ball away from the opposing team. He is a good support member and always gives it his best shot.

The Intuitive got to try his hand at being goalie for the second half of his game. His team is a lot like the Bad New Bears of the soccer league.

However, even though his team lost by several points, The Intuitive did make several important saves that kept the defeat from being even worse.

He was very pleased with himself.

The Fourteenth Apostle

I have become convinced that as far as Evangelicals are concerned, C.S. Lewis is officially the Fourteenth Apostle of the Christian church, St. Paul being the thirteenth.

Countless conversations that delve deeply into theology that I have been involved in will inevitably have someone bring Lewis into the picture, with a quote from one of his essays, or more commonly a reference to one of his novels, be it the space trilogy, or the Narnia series, or The Screwtape Letters.

He has affected the way modern, Protestant, Christians think and express themselves so deeply that most don't even realize the debt that they owe him.

Most interesting to me is the way that Lewis' stories have resonated with Christians and, sometimes, seem to carry a general authority in their portrayals. Conversations about hell will have someone quoting The Last Battle or The Great Divorce. Discussions about temptation or spiritual warfare will have someone referring to Screwtape and Wormwood.

Lewis' work has become so absorbed that there is no self-consciousness in even mentioning it within the context of theology and practical church matters. No one seems concerned with the fact that these concepts come from fictitious fantasy novels.

My point is not demote the stories' importance....but to turn that observation to something else.

Lewis' work successfully captures the imagination because he has taken our sacred stories and made them bigger . He has expanded ideas about God, mankind and salvation and sewn them into other dimensions and worlds. He has left the door open for a future that might indeed be perplexing to us; worlds with sentient, alien life, worlds with talking beasts, and dimensions of a reality just outside of our senses.

Whether those worlds do, or even could, exist is irrelevant. What is relevant is that he provides a way for us to imagine how it might be, or could be...and that speaks to people in powerful ways.

Jeff Dunn, over at internetmonk.com, has a post up about his disappointment with the newly released Voyage of the Dawn Treader. His disappointment is almost completely tied into his assessment that the theology of the book was somehow lost in translation in the making of the film. In a strange way his severe reaction highlights the weight given to Lewis' work, because although most book-lovers are frequently dissatisfied with movie renderings, few are so upset at the loss of meaning that he attributes to the rendering. He even goes on to discuss how a portrayal from the book has changed his life, or given him hope.

This jogged my memory of another post at internetmonk in July in which a father recounts reading a passage of Lewis to his children, barely able to keep from breaking down at the emotional impact it had on him after he had received bad news about his daughter's health. His post so closely identifies Jesus with Aslan, that I found it startling.

Part of my former evangelical self read his post disapprovingly. The more liberal part of me recognized that what this man was doing was what all people in all times do...they use the stories that convey deep meaning to their lives...stories that may, or may not, be literally true, factual stories.

This is a strange mixture of things. In circles in which people feel the necessity to defend the literalness of the biblical stories, there are also people who are incredibly touched by a modern fictitious story which they know is not true, but which has been equated as a valid representation of the sacred story.

This is how cultures incorporate and systematize their symbols, through the broad acceptance and reliance on particular distillations that speak to a particular group.

In my fanciful moments, I wonder if 500 years from now,--after more authors have continued to study and read Lewis and write books about him, and his influence continues to grow within Christianity--Lewis' work and symbols will be so ubiquitous that Jesus will be represent as a lion with a full mane.

And...I wonder what future generations would think of such a development.

DH's Links

DH sends me links all the time. I keep telling him he needs his own blog to feature the things he sends me...but he hasn't taken me up on the idea.

Here are a few links from him:

Dr. Seuss animates Star Wars

Cool, witty, still life photography

Freaky, amazing storm photo

TSA uses unwise tactics for children's pat-downs

Tax Cuts and Unemployment

So...let me get this straight. Republicans and Tea Party members who were overwhelmingly elected on a platform of cutting spending because of the doomsday scenario of our debt and deficit....are OK with extending unemployment benefits with money that we don't actually have.

And...Democrats are willing to not raise taxes, or revert them back to pre-Bush era rates, even though they know there is no way to dig ourselves out of debt until we bring in more income into the government in order to pay for things that we have already bought.

This is the worst of both worlds and part of why our country is so screwed up.

Politicians are not capable of unflinchingly doing what needs to be done. Either keep the tax cuts and don't continue to spend money we don't have....or spend money to alleviate the financial woes of the citizenry and raise taxes to help pay for it.

This makes Republican leaders look bad because it seems as if they are really only concerned with saving people within their own tax brackets from paying into the system.

It makes Democrats look bad because it seems like they are willing to just spend and spend and spend money that we don't have.

I don't think this is what "bipartisanship" is supposed to look like.

Instinctual Response

ugh.

Today, as I was walking to pick up the kids from school, I encountered a little, blond hellion of a boy who had just spit on another child and was inciting general violence. It wasn't his first time. I've caught him kicking and hitting at the same group of kids in the past as the sidewalk streams with kids on their way home.

This afternoon, without thinking, I caught him right after he had spit on another child and was dashing away.....and by "caught" I mean that I swooped my arms out and physically stopped him.

Automatic reflex. I didn't even think about it.

He began talking about how the other kids had said something mean to he and his sister on the "first day"...whatever that meant. I replied that it's not OK to spit on people, or hit them, or kick them just because they say mean things. I told his sister, who was older, to take him home and make sure that he stayed away form the other group of kids.

They left, and I finished walking to the school thinking to myself that I had done a really stupid thing by physically stopping the boy. I didn't grab him, or roughly handle him, but I did stop him. And....it's never a great idea to touch another person's child, no matter how completely awful they're being or how gentle the touch.

As I wondered whether or not I had made a huge mistake in intervening in the situation, I figured that I had better talk to one of the teachers and let them know what has been going on for some time.

This is when things get slightly worse. I approached the PE teacher, "Coach", and asked if he knew these children, who I described as a short, little, blond boy and went on to describe his older sister as taller, with blond hair and who is a little bit chubby.

Let's see...how could this go wrong?

Well, in the midst of my description, I hear a woman from about 5 feet away say, "Those are my children!"

Open mouth, insert foot. I hadn't said anything horrible, but who wants their child described in terms of being a "little bit chubby"?

I told the mother what had happened and she left pretty quickly, saying that she was looking for her children anyway.

Later, I went to the office and spoke with the Assistant Principal and told her about the escalating incidents and she took some notes and said that she would work on it.

Now I am sitting here wondering if this is all going to backfire on me and if I am going to have an irate mother in my face tomorrow.

Hopefully, she won't spit in my face and run away.

The Meaning of Jesus..some thoughts

I finished reading The Meaning of Jesus; Two Visions, by Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright.

Readers will remember that this was one of four books that I added to an impressive reading list. I have yet to finish, or even start, the other three, though I did renew them. Hope springs eternal, I guess.

The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions is a point/counterpoint book compiled of essays from Borg and Wright addressing Jesus' view of himself, his birth, his death and resurrection, the Second Coming and what it means to live a Christian life.

They mostly disagree, except when they don't. ;-)

I should end the review thusly.

Except, I won't because although the point/counterpoint did get a little tedious and bogged down sometimes, the book provoked several reactions in me.

I will admit that I am generally sympathetic to Borg's views and I anticipated that I would read his thoughts and find what I was looking for, a way to keep Jesus even as more and more of what I used to think of as literal truth seems to be slipping through my fingers. For the most part, I liked what he had to say, though there were times when even I couldn't take the vague, wishy-washy stances that would pop up. Even as I drift toward Progressive(?) or Liberal(?) Christianity, I still get irritated at the lack of conviction and certainty that I encounter. It's part of my make-up. I want to know what THE TRUTH is and plant my flag there. However, everyone has a different map and idea about where that location is, so I just wander around hoping that I am at least in the general vicinity.

It bugs me to no end.

I had previously tried to read N.T Wright's Surprised by Hope, but could never get past the first few chapters. He simply couldn't hold my interest in that book. I think that was partly due to the fact that I was very busy during the time that I was trying to read it. One other reason was that I couldn't read Wright without hearing C.S. Lewis. I've already read much of Lewis' work, so the unmistakeable voice echoing in Wright was quite familiar. The points about "chronological snobbery", the criticism of Enlightenment thinking, the reliance on Lewis' apologetic moves, they all seemed to be Lewis simply refitted and fine-tuned. I guess that's fine, but if I wanted to hear Lewis' point of view, I would read Lewis.

Curious if I was spot-on in my estimation of Wright, I decided to see if I could find out more about whether Wright credits Lewis as an influence and came across this article in which Wright both praises and criticizes Lewis. (I'm always surprised when I am right about something that I guessed intuitively.)

After finishing the book, I pondered an idea that has occurred to me before but I have had difficulty formulating into words.

Wright works mightily to put Jesus in a historical, literal, very Jewish context. He attempts to situate Jesus as a faithful Jew going against a corrupted form of Israel and Jewish religion. His interpretation is that Israel's desire for a national redemption, not unlike previous ones they had experienced through exile and return, was the wrong desire. Then, he claims that Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God were meant to portray a new way for Israel to "be Israel".

As Wright goes through his argument, I feel this version of Jesus who is concerned about "Israel" and who is trying to get Israel to become the light of the world by supplanting the current Temple and its administration with subversive truths, to be lacking appeal and cohesion for me, personally.

Why?

A Jesus who is trying to get Israel to "be Israel" in a new way, or what I think Wright implies, in the real way it was always intended to "be Israel", is a Jesus who ultimately failed. After the first wave of Jewish conversions, Judaism and Christianity split apart and Israel, as a historical, physical people, does not decide to take Jesus up on his offer.

Wright's literal, historical, mostly orthodox view of Jesus completely undermines any sense that Jesus accomplished what he wanted to accomplish.

In addressing the divinity of Jesus, Wright writes:

I do not think Jesus "knew he was God" in the same sense that one knows one is tired or happy, male or female. He did not sit back and say to himself,"Well, I never! I'm the second person of the Trinity!" Rather, as part of his human vocation, grasped in faith, sustained in prayer, tested in confrontation, agonized over in further prayer and doubt, and implemented in action, he believed he had to do and be, for Israel and the world, that which according to scripture only YHWH himself could do and be.

This ties in with my previous thought. Does presenting a Jesus who doesn't "know" that he is God help or hurt Wright's orthodoxy? I mean, he's presenting a Jesus who seems to be interested in getting Israel to behave and act in a certain "true" way, one which is quite different than the way Israel had seen itself throughout Scripture and history, and yet he seems to not "know" that he is God in the trinitarian sense with which many orthodox Christians are familiar.

It's unsettling.

Borg, on the other hand, presents Jesus as a Jewish mystic who was more connected with God than the average person, while simultaneously denying the literal resurrection, as it is normally understood and presented. Borg's Jesus seems bigger than Wright's Jesus even though Wright represents traditional Christian doctrine far more closely than Borg.

It has a strange effect upon me, this idea that tying Jesus into a very specific, historical mode, complete with a representative, 1st century mindset, somehow makes him less "real" to me than Borg's ethereal, metaphorical understanding of Jesus.

I'll post more on this later because I'm not quite done thinking it through.

Leaked Cables

Perhaps this is premature, because there is no telling what else is going to come out on Wikileaks, but I am completely underwhelmed by the leaked cables. Some of them are nothing more than pointed snark and gossip and the type of "inside" comments and politics that most of us suspect goes on, but never see publicly proclaimed.

Surely we don't believe that diplomats around the world play "nice" in everything they say and do.

Iran's Ahmadinejad responded with less fiery rhetoric than I would have expected:

Ahmadinejad — who was referred to as Adolf Hitler in one of the cables, just one of many slights made against him by other leaders in the region — called the documents “worthless” and an act of “mischief” by Iran’s enemies, an attempt to undermine Iran’s relationship with its Arab neighbors.

“They’re so worthless I don’t even want to waste time talking about them,” Ahmadinejad told an audience of journalists at previously scheduled press conference in Tehran on Monday.

Interesting response from a usually over-the-top personality. Maybe the realization that it's not just the US who has been against him, his regime, and the possibility of a nuclear Iran has shaken him up a bit.

It's never pleasant to find out what your "friends" and "neighbors" really think of you.

I think some of these revelations might actually help US foreign policy move forward. When the US is dealing with countries like Saudi Arabia who don't want to make their stances known publicly, it makes it seem as if the US is acting out of its own limited zeitgeist, rather than moving forward at the prompting of other nations.

The flip side of all of this is realizing how other countries can influence the US without the general citizenry knowing about it. When the Middle Eastern countries acknowledge that they lie to each other, what does it mean about the things that they say to us? And....if Saudi Arabia is so concerned about a nuclear Iran...why does it try to make the US do its bidding? They get to keep their hands clean and their money secure in a set-up like that, while the US continues to go bankrupt trying to police the world.

We have put ourselves in the position of "holding a wolf by the ears" in the Middle East. We can't let it go, and we can't keep holding it.

TSA Promotional Bumper Stickers

So bad...so funny!

Blogging Advice

James F. McGrath has pointers on how to know if you have a blogging problem, and how to know if you are a responsible blog owner.

Prescient points for all of us bloggers.

Happy Thanksgiving 2010!

So much to be grateful for...Family, Friends, Good Health, Being Employed, Not Suffering Any Imminent Disasters....it's all good for right now.

Our family is celebrating small this year, having already had an early Thanksgiving Day this weekend with the rest of our family.

For our small, family dinner we are breaking tradition and having ham instead of turkey...though we're still making orange/cranberry relish...because we like it!

The kids have already helped make a pumpkin pie, discovering along the way that putting undiluted ground ginger powder in your mouth is not a great idea. ;-)

I hope you all have a wonderful day of good times, fellowship and eating....maybe a few board games after everyone recovers from stuffing themselves.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Slow and Steady Wins the Race

Having cancer at a relatively young age changed me in several ways. One of the things that it did was that it revamped the seriousness with which I viewed my health choices and the power I had, and didn't have, to control my body.

In many ways, I had no control over what happened to me. There were probably thousands, hundreds of thousands, of 33 year old women who were about the same height, weight, and had the same health status(no known health issues) as I did when I developed cancer...and yet they didn't develop it and I did.

Why?

Genetics, maybe? Environmental circumstances or exposure to unknown factors, perhaps? A failure of my immune system to kill developing cancer cells, possibly? Bad luck?

Who knows?

However, having been through treatment and researched the disease extensively, I came to realize that even though I may not have ever been able to completely prevent myself from having cancer, I could have an effect on my chances of recurrence, or at the very least, in delaying a recurrence.

You fight the type of cancer I had by fighting it one day at a time over a very long period of time. Chemo is not highly effective against this particular type of cancer, because it is slower-growing and relies on the natural hormones that a normal woman's body produces.

The most effective strategy is to starve any unidentified cancer cells that might exist by taking an anti-hormonal treatment in pill form, once a day, for five years. That's 1,825 pills.

Another effective strategy is to engage in physical exercise for at least 3-4 hours every week consistently, for the long term. Studies have shown that this can reduce recurrence rates by another 30%-50%.

This is why I run, and also why I have lost about 25 pounds over the last 2 years...with unfortunately much more to go.

It has been a long, slow process to get into well enough shape in order to be able to run 3-3.5 miles several times a week. My weight loss has also been painstakingly slow. I will go through weeks and months sometimes without losing a single ounce, but because the exercise is useful in fighting off recurrence, even without losing weight, I persevere through the discouragement of working so hard and not seeing the scale move.

Inevitably, what happens is that after a couple months of no real progress, I will lose several pounds in a week, or my running time will dramatically get better even though I am simply doing the same things I have been doing for the last two years.

The progress comes in fits and starts after long periods of never-ending plateaus.

It has taught me something that I always knew, but never fully appreciated; great things are done in small, consistent steps over long stretches of time.

There are no shortcuts to anything worthwhile in life.

Want to be a good parent? Show up every day for 18 years.

Want to become a great musician? Practice every day and make a point to learn more every day.

Want to have a good relationship? Continue to consistently try to care for and support the other person/friend/spouse.

One or two impressive incidents don't take the place the of consistently trying, or faithfully working at something.

The same holds true for finances. After my dad passed away, we had hoped that we would be able to sell his house and use that money to become debt-free and save the rest. That dream was quickly dashed. Now, as we rent out he house, even that has turned into a long-term investment, not a huge money-maker, especially after taxes, insurance and normal repair costs. Yet, over the course of 5-10-15 years, the house has the potential to provide a huge cumulative profit.

Slow and steady. Bit by bit.

That is how a life is built. That is how hard tasks get done. That is how health is reclaimed.

Endless toil without many immediate results.

Very exciting, no?!

No, not exciting, but true. And, it has never been more true to me.

If there is something that you want to change in your life, or a goal you want to accomplish, you must simply take a step toward it, even if it is a small step.

Live your life. Enjoy it along the way.

Just be sure to take the one, little, daily step in the middle of everything else.

Eventually, it adds up.

Even DH has become proof of this. He started his Master's degree at the end of my cancer treatment, and right before my father died. It was chaos for him those first few semesters while I was still recovering and we were dealing with my father's death and lawyers and fixing a termite destroyed house on the weekends in our "spare time".

And yet, he still took classes and did the work and two years have passed.....leaving only this last one before he will have completed it.

Day in, day out, and before you know it...he'll be done.

That's my self-help advice for today. Don't use it all up at once.

False Security

If I hear one more person say, "Well, as long as it makes us safer.." in regard to full-body scanners and invasive security pat-downs, I think my head will explode.

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Wrong, because there is no proof that these methods are making us safer. Wrong, because people with medical conditions or prostheses or ostomy bags shouldn't have to go through further humiliation and extreme screening, something I posted about ages ago. Wrong, because children, elderly people, those trying to avoid extra radiation, and the religiously modest should not have to be subjected to these tactics.

These latest security developments are an illusion. They make us feel as if the government is proactively protecting us. Unfortunately, the government can't protect us from crazy people; people who would plot and scheme and attempt to kill themselves and others at the command of a leader who is no doubt safely hiding in a cave somewhere. There is no protection against the highly motivated killer.

That is why we are so terrified by serial killers, and random acts of violence from lone gunmen, and school shootings...because we know that we have almost no control over them. Death can come for us unexpectedly and without cause.

America...you have temporarily lost your senses!!

Freedom has a cost....and the cost is not invasive governmental intrusion...the cost is the risk that someone, somewhere, might do something bad that harms you, might make a choice that is not beneficial to you.

If you are not willing to assume that risk, then you are not willing to live free.

When we were discussing this, DH said to me, "Just imagine how much worse it would be if a terrorist incident actually occurred."

"How could it be worse?" I replied.

Seriously, what would be the next step? Cavity searches?

When the next level involves actual nudity, instead of virtual nudity, it's a sign that the train has gone off the rails.

Brand New Key--The Original Song

Stream of Consciousness Post...because I'm too lazy to organize a real post.

JS Allen has a post up about Moral Intuitions with some interesting studies, which he refers to in the context of a discussion about PST.

The post made me wonder if one of the defining characteristics of human nature is the ability to make choices, to live beyond mere instinct. In many ways, that reflects a very Genesis-like thought. The Human story doesn't quite take shape until the humans make a choice. And that choice leads them to the ability to know more than they did beforehand and to make more choices, good and evil choices. And that is then broadened to humanity, in general.

For some reason, when I was asking myself this, the story from Jubilees that portrays the animals in the Garden of Eden as possessing speech, before The Fall, popped into my head. Maybe because I was thinking about what it was that made humans more than merely animals. Speech came to mind.

Something else that occurred to me....that humans care, emotionally speaking, for animals. Do other animals care for animals outside of their species? Animals that seem to express caring for other species are usually animals that have been habituated by humans, dogs especially.

Although KoKo, the gorilla, comes to mind because she was allowed to have cats as pets, which, as far as I know, she never harmed. She also was being taught how to communicate with humans....so maybe language acquisition and inter-species emotional bonds are connected?

Or maybe I am grasping at straws.

Still, the point is that Genesis, even for someone like myself who no longer thinks that Adam was a literal person but was a metaphor for humankind, is full of the very same questions and theories that we pose to ourselves, or at least that I pose to myself, today.