Churches and anecdotes

As we drive to church each Sunday, we pass a huge billboard for a large and popular church in our area. The picture is a close-up of an electric guitar, and the tagline is 'For people who don't do church.' I've received flyers for this church in the mail, all of them touting its coolness, acceptance, and non-traditionalism. If you think church should be fun, without the hassle of conscience-pricks or pleas for money, then this is the place for you!

It occurred to me that part of the problem with watered-down theology and worldliness in the modern American church can be traced to personal laziness. We keep hearing, as churches push the limits and leave the sacred and the traditional for the cool and hip, that it's all in the cause of reaching the lost.

But is this a proper application for the church? Or shouldn't the church be sending out disciples and ambassadors into the world for that very purpose? After all, the church is defined as the Body of Christ. Throughout the New Testament, the church is described as consisting of the gathering of the Believers. Church, therefore, in the corporate sense, should be concerned with feeding the flock and edifying the saints.

I'm not saying that evangelism shouldn't be on our plate - it should be. So much so that nourished and edified saints should be so full of love and enthusiasm that they cannot help but tell others of Jesus Christ and bring these new converts in droves to church with them. We are supposed to go find them and convert them, not lure them to us by pretending to be like them and then - surprise! - trick them with a bait-and-switch.

I don't think the church is an appropriate place for unrepentant sinners. After all, we're actually commanded to excommunicate unrepentant back-slidden Christians and have no fellowship with them. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't be loving and accepting toward those who are searching - just that our mission to them should be outside the church, not in.

Making church a fun place to hang out, proffering the excuse that it's a great evangelistic ploy, is an easy cop-out from true evangelism. After all, it's so much easier to invite someone to church (a hit-and-run seed-sowing, if you will, as contrasted with the years of one-on-one discipling Jesus modeled) than to actually bare one's soul and talk about the Gospel. 'Hey, you want to come to church with me this weekend? Don't worry - it's really cool. You won't feel out of place. It's so fun you won't even know you're at church!'

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I'm moving more and more away from the model of using anecdotal evidence from Scripture to justify doctrine. Perhaps this caution comes from an overdose of this kind of Biblical interpretation when I was younger, when I accepted all these theories as principles at face value. I'm not suggesting that we can't learn from others' examples. We should do exactly that. That's why so many of those stories were written: as an example for us, as Scripture itself says, not as common law precedent. We are supposed to learn from them, not copy them.

The most misguided example of this kind of extrapolation, in my opinion, involves the teaching that dancing is wrong because, among many other things, we read of Miriam leading the women of Israel in a dance after the defeat of Pharaoh's armies and the very next time we hear of her, she is teaming up with Aaron to challenge Moses' authority. Clearly, dancing gave her the uppity spirit of independence, so it was wrong for her, and it is wrong for us to dance. Now that's a real stretch. Are you going to argue that since Aaron got off the hook with a mere slap on the wrist, we should all join the priesthood to enable us to get away with sinning, because it worked for him? Nonsense! You can extract all kinds of morals from any given fable, which is why you can't rely on stories for building a creed.

The specific application of this particular train of thought came to me when I was pondering the best kind of tax system, and had just about concluded that a poll tax was really the best. 'And it's even Biblical!' I thought with triumph. Then it dawned on me to question whether, just because it was how God assigned taxation for the children of Israel in the Old Testament, it was necessarily the best system for America today. I think it has a lot going for it. But such a system should stand on its own merits, not be our first choice just because It's In The Bible.

What I really need...

I was always inventing things when younger which, if they had come off, would have been an enormous boon to the world. Actually I didn't really invent them, merely conceive the ideas and wish that someone else would come up with the specs for such things as magic wands, individual flying machines, shrinking/enlarging machines, invisibility bubbles, and the like. No one has stepped up to the task, however, so I submit a revised list of helpful things to invent:

- 'Polite' setting for car horns. The fear of being thought rude all but renders the horn useless, since its original intent as warning device has been so abused as a mouthpiece for frustration. What I want is something the equivalent of a car clearing the throat, so I could tap on it when the car in front of me has sat at the same light for five seconds together.

- A reverse dictionary. It's all very well and good to look something up if you know what you're looking for, but if you can't remember the word, or don't even know what it is, then you're left seeking both the dream and the interpretation thereof. It's no use looking it up, because online dictionaries may not use the same words to describe it that you do.

Gripe of the day: I dislike this new trend to describe all babies as 'she,' simply as a cheap refuge from having to use the generic male pronoun or the grammatically correct but rather cumbersome he or she. Parenting Magazine does it all the time, but it's everywhere these days. Ugh. How is that not sexist in the opposite direction?

Oh, I remember now

The other thing I was thinking about (that was my rant, and now this is my rave) was a question of income and choices. Now, I don't want to judge others for the choices they make in life. But I do want accuracy in conversation, and that's why it irritates me so much when people mistakenly make the assumption that it has to be a certain way. I've heard this repeated many times in my life, but I've gotten it especially within this last year, when people heard that I intended to quit my job to raise my child: 'Oh, you're so lucky to be able to stay home. I wish I could, but I have to work.' And I smile politely and think, Not so!

Please don't get me wrong. I am not criticising these families' decisions. I am simply pointing out that it is, in fact, a decision they are making. With very few exceptions in today's world, there is probably no reason why any family could not live on one income. Of course it would require certain sacrifices. What these ladies really mean is that they are not willing to make those sacrifices to live on one income. Sometimes it could mean really drastic sacrifices. But it is, ultimately, a matter of priority. Basically, what they mean to say is that they cannot afford to stay home and support the lifestyle to which they are accustomed, or even one which they would prefer. I know it's not always easy, and I'm not implying that everyone two-income family has a plush and extravagant lifestyle. But I do wish to insist that it can be done.

Thursday (but it's really Wednesday)

On Saturday we trotted off to the portrait studio to get our picture taken, because I'd a coupon for a free sitting and free 8x10. This one had the advantage of applying to any number of persons, so we made it a family portrait, which meant, of course, that I wanted Michael to shave. Which threw his schedule off for the whole rest of the week, because instead of Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, he skipped Sunday, shaved Monday, and shaved this morning. All of this to say that when I smell aftershave during our good-bye kiss in the morning, I know it's a Tuesday or Thursday, so I'm off this entire week also. And this explanation really only makes sense if you base your life on trivialities and habits, like Miss Bates in Emma. 'Remember, Mother? Not Jane's Day. Oh, sorry - napkin.'

Hard to believe we'll be flying to Oregon in just two days!

While the sun does not stand still

First, I've been mulling over the issue of abortion. It saddens me in a general sense that so many people are making the common-enough mistake of the Right, that of allowing their opponents to define the terms and arguments and trying to argue back. We shouldn't have let them set up the premise that it's us v. them, the baby-lovers v. the women-supporters, because then all we can do is lamely try to argue that, well, a baby's life should be more important than a woman's convenience, the matter of life having been sufficiently drawn into question as to muddy the waters on that score. But more importantly, we have failed as Christians to communicate God's love effectively. Yes, it's true that God loves all His creatures, and that we should protect the innocent by championing the cause of the babies. But that stops far short of agape love. Shouldn't we express the love that God surely feels by pointing out that we love women too, and that's why we want to protect them? Making them the enemy ('baby-killers') is wrong, as is any wholesale condemnation of fellow sinners who could also be saved by grace, but it's also politically stupid. What we need to do as policy-makers and conservatives is to redefine the playing field to extend our championship to the women in these situations, as Christians should surely be doing. Actually, you can see this in the private sector in the form of pregnancy care centers, but that attitude needs to be pursued in the realm of public policy. So when the charge comes up that we are just agitating about the fetus and don't care about the woman, we need to be able to reply, 'No, we do care about women, which is why we are calling you accountable for this terrible exploitation of women and the incredible cover-up. You are not interested in helping women, you are interested in prolonging policies that will enrich your cause, and you know that there's big money in the abortion industry. You know that abortions do not help women, and it's because we care about them and want to protect them from the proven physical and emotional consequences of this terrible experience that we want to help them.' Then we should call their bluff. If all they really care about is helping women, then turn the abortion industry into a non-profit and see how long these passionate doctors and policy-makers will cling to their chosen charity if there's no money in it. Are they really doing it out of the goodness of their heart? Of course not.

Second....oh, bother, I've forgotten the second thing. I know there were two things I was mulling about...can't remember it now.

Well, anyway, it's been a busy week. Last night I was on the way to bed when I noticed Michael studying a spider which had built a web between two stalks of gladioli I had brought inside. It was pretty neat, actually, to see how quickly the spider had constructed his parlour, even though I detest spiders. Michael fetched an ant, and threw it at the web, and we both watched as the spider scampered over and tied up its victim. This was so fascinating that I ran off and caught an ant too, and this time Michael got a magnifying glass so we could see in detail how quickly the spider worked, spinning its victim around and around as it threw more web over it and produced a tightly-trussed ant in no time at all. Really amazing. And if I had noticed the spiderweb first, I would have shuddered and thrown out the flowers! Things like this convince me anew what a great father Michael is going to be to our lucky kids.

Random thought: I detest the phrase 'Just a gleam in his father's eye.' Why shouldn't a mother's eye gleam, too? Ugh. I hate stereotypes.

Long thoughts on the second-longest day of the year

But, when it comes down to it, I haven't time to do them justice. So I will defer them until tomorrow, by which time the title will be obsolete.

Friday frivolity

Owing to a recent trip to the library I'm all stocked up on reading goods, and I've much enjoying some Wodehouse. One description of London mentioned Piccadilly Square and Charing Cross Station, and I felt so homesick thinking, 'Yes! That's real! I've been there!' I did a double-take when I came across a mention of the Drones' Club, though. My first thought was, 'Wow! So it wasn't made up for Bertie and Jeeves, after all! It's a real landmark, like all the rest!' My second thought recollected that I was reading Wodehouse, and pounded my humiliated little first thought into oblivion, burned it alive, and kept it on bread and water for six weeks.

When we were in England I stumbled across a missing linguistic link. As our picture was being taken, the photographer announced, 'Smile, everyone! Say Cheers!' 'Cheehs!' responded my British fellow posers in impeccable British accents, thus paving the way for the American and not-nearly-so-elegant-sounding counterpart Cheese.

At her six-week check-up yesterday, Jane discovered that she is now 9.25 lbs. and 23 inches long, up from 7 lbs. 6 oz. and 20.5 inches at birth, which puts her squarely in the 89th percentile for height but only 37th for weight. I strongly fear I am succumbing to dotage, in the Doting Mama sense. I actually painted her toenails yesterday, and then went outside and took still-life pictures of flowers on her toes. Only she was very much alive, and not very still.

Speaking of pictures, I've gotten so dreadfully behind at posting them (or at saving them into a temporary folder so Michael can post them later) that it is time to post some more again. Which means, as most long sentences - especially those punctuated with interjections and detours (cleverly designed to distract the reader from the main trunk of the diagram) - do, absolutely nothing.

Thursday thoughts

Ode to tonight's dinner, dressed down because Michael is once again going to Fiddler practise:

The sun is hot
And so am I
And like as not
There is no pie.

Another list which interests me, invariably short because I haven't written down anything else:

Annoying Things Which I Have Seen In Writing, Caused By People Who Haven't Read Enough And Are Just Guessing At What They Hear:

-Could of
-Taken for granite

I still can't come up with a grammatical sentence in English for the first one. You may think I have a heart of stone, but I will not be taken for granite!

Wednesday wonders

I wonder whether the mail has come yet. I could go out and check. It would be good exercise. Nah, too hot out. I'll just get it tomorrow morning.

I wonder whether the roasting pan has stopped soaking from last night's chicken. I should probably go scrub it out. Oh, well, I'll just let it soak a little longer.

We had a discussion at breakfast about slap-wrap bracelets. I peeled the thing off the lid of the milk carton, and when it retained its shape, Michael remarked that it could be a bracelet for Jane. 'Or a slap-wrap bracelet,' I added, trying to slap in onto Jane's wrist, which didn't work. And Michael didn't know what a slap-wrap bracelet was! Wonder of wonders!

Me: Are you kidding? They were all the rage in 1988! I would go around slapping them on everyone's wrist!
Michael: In 1988 I was 18 years old.
Me: And I didn't come up and try to slap one on your wrist? Obviously our paths never crossed back then.

Tuesday trifles

Yesterday evening, being not yet six weeks old, Jane discovered the fun of blowing spit bubbles. There she hung, draped over Michael's arm, placidly blowing bubble after bubble and enjoying (I suppose) the resulting spray each time one broke. Where did all the drool come from? I don't know, unless she's teething three months early...perhaps not so unlikely, considering how precocious we think she is. =)

Michael: Hey, little girl, you're getting my foot wet!
Me: Oh, don't worry. Baby drool is the most innocuous substance there is.
Michael: Yeah, well, if you had gallons and gallons of it, you could drown in it.

This morning in honour of her six-week-birthday we tried taping a few of her adorable signature moves. Michael held the camera while I narrated. The result was something like this:

Me: Now we're going to show off her little chin wobble, a really cute trick. (I pull her arms gently, which always has succeeded in inducing the chin wobble in the past. Jane remains placid and expressionless.)
Me: Well, first we're going to show off her strong muscles. Stand, baby! Stand! (I lift her up and balance her so her feet can support her weight. She's been 'standing' like this since week two. I try to get her to stand up, but her legs collapse. Nothing doing.)
Me: Actually, let's show how well she tracks movement. Here, Jane! Look! (I flutter my fingers and move my hand around, trying to catch her eye. Her face remains fixed on the strange thing Papa is holding.)
Me: Well, today we're just going to show off what a good, well-mannered baby she is. What a sweet temperament! How peaceful and quiet she can be!

Monday madness

It's a pleasure to have a baby that I can actually take care of properly, now that I'm old enough to understand why we take care of them the way we do. Obviously my younger brothers all turned out fine, so it's a moot point now, but I have vivid memories of scraping off their cradle cap, scratching away their peeling skin, and prying open their eyelids while they slept. My mother told me not to, of course, so I did it while she wasn't around, because it was too fascinating to resist. The question is how to protect my younger children from the ravages of their curious older siblings. Of course, the older sibling in question is going to be Jane, as we now know, so if we can just get her to set a good example for the younger ones then all will be well. It's rather odd to realise that all our hypothetical conversations about 'our kids' now apply to at least one person, who is now revealed to us as Jane, and that when I think about 'how busy it would be with a baby and a toddler,' for instance, that toddler would be Jane. And six weeks ago today we didn't even know her!

Tips for helping your team win at Taboo:

-Yell 'Graceland!' or 'Leftovers!' whenever you're not sure what the word is. There is a possibility you might be right, since those words are in there. (Note: 'Kleptomaniac' and 'Cleopatra' work the same way for Guesstures.)
-When it's the other team's turn, if one of their team members says something that strikes you as remotely funny, play it up (loudly) and don't let the matter rest. 'Turkey! Ha, ha, ha. That's a good one! That's hilarious. Turkey! Ha, ha, ha! How funny!' (If you start talking loudly on a random topic, the other team will suspect you of running a blockade and call a time-out until you silence. As long as it's game-related, and you appear to be uncontrollably amused, you will probably get away with it.)
-Don't get in the habit of saying, 'Okay...' when you flip to a new word and are pondering how to describe it. It's fine as a stall tactic, and more eloquent than 'Ummm...' but it could have tragic consequences when the word is Wyatt Earp.

Rainy Sunday

...on which my husband is rehearsing for Fiddler on the Roof, my daughter is sleeping soundly, and I should be taking a nap. But I'm never sleepy when the baby is!

It puzzles me no end how the bottle-craze of the Forties and Fifties ever took such widespread hold. It seems to me that between boiling the equipment, buying the formula, mixing it up, heating it over the stove (because microwaves create dangerous hot spots), and washing all the bottles, you have absolutely no net gain in convenience. Nursing is portable, convenient, healthy, and - best of all - free! I think it must stem from the all-too-common human assumption that of course the medical establishment knows best, and that any advance in science must be an improvement on the status quo.

Yesterday we attended a wedding that must be the shortest ceremony I have ever witnessed. We arrived during the gathering music, just before the processional. I don't remember exactly what time we arrived, but the wedding was supposed to be at 2:00. At 2:14 the bride and groom were recessing. Jane (who was invited, fair and square: the inner envelope we received weeks ago was addressed to 'Michael, Rose, and Baby') was as good as gold the whole time.

On the way to the wedding we passed a sign for the town of Braselton.

Michael: Did you know that Kim Basinger owns the town of Braselton?
Me: What about the people who live there?
Michael: Yeah, she owns them too.

Of ships and shoes

Yesterday I spent an hour on the phone tutoring my brother Thomas on math. I told him about the concept of pi, and discovered that he is on the third grade Bob Jones math book, which is the exact same book that I learned from and in which I doodled mustaches. (The theme of the third grade book is ships; hence the title of the post, which I was going to use anyway, but this was a nice tie-in.)

I've been wondering all week which shoes to wear to a wedding on Saturday. Traditionally I wear my purple silk dress to weddings and on my birthday, but since I was great with child during my last birthday I couldn't wear it. One night earlier this week Michael caught me trying on clothes in the closet. 'I'm trying to decide what to wear to the wedding,' I explained, to which he pointed out that the wedding wasn't until Saturday. But still!

Presents for Jane continue to trickle in, and it's so exciting to open them and get all happy for our baby all over again. It reminds me a bit of our wedding, when I was writing thank-you notes for months afterwards, because I tried to open the gifts a few at a time so I could savour them properly. It worked: to this day I remember each friend who gave me each gift whenever I use it. I hope I'll have such happy memories of generous friends each time I put Jane in the stroller or dress her in a particular outfit. 'I've written off the last thank-you note!' I told Michael triumphantly last week. 'No, you just caught up. It's a temporary condition.'

'Good news!' I announced happily last night. 'I figured out which skirt and sandals I'm going to wear to the wedding. Now I just need to decide on a blouse.'

Soaps, silks, and bon-bons

Well, that's not exactly the tenor of my days now. (And thanks to reading Eats, Shoots and Leaves, I now know that the comma after silks is known as the Oxford comma - believed to be unnecessary by some, but extremely elegant in my opinion.) But since Jane's 11:00 feeding just happens to coincide with the 11:00 re-runs of Frasier, and since I'm sitting in the rocking chair anyway facing the TV, I've taken to watching the show. It's quite clever, really. I've collected some delightful lines in the last week or so, such as the following exchange:

'Did you know that [blah, blah, blah]?'
'I do now, it seems.'

Last week we were happily settled in when Jane's hand crept stealthily up my side. My first inkling was a faint tickling sensation, which felt exactly like a huge, hairy spider had crawled up under my shirt and was making for my neck. Naturally I sprang up in alarm and almost dropped the poor child before realising my mistake. Oops. Where would such a huge, hairy spider have come from anyway, I asked myself in retrospect. Oh, well. Somehow in such cases instinct always gets the better of reason.

One trend I have noticed, though, from watching daytime TV, and which annoys me excessively, is the assumption that all people who watch daytime TV are complete idiots. This must stem from the belief that anyone who sits around with nothing better to do at 11:00 in the morning must inherently be a loser. The two ads that I see the most recurrently are: 1) a law firm insisting that if you are an accident victim, you must call them in order to get the settlement you deserve; and 2) various colleges promising you an exciting new career in whatever field your heart desires with less than a year or so of classes, and bright-eyed guarantees of job prospects mobbing you as soon as you graduate. D people really fall for this nonsense? Alas, yes, which is why the commercials keep running and targeting their underachiever audience.

Maternal musings

I wonder whether all parents are convinced that their children are geniuses. It seems so obvious to us that Jane is one spectacular baby, because she's already rolling over (so what if it was on a little bit of a slope?), holding her head up, smiling consciously, and frequently wrinkling her brow in obvious deep thought. She could practically be a model for Rodin's Thinker. But one thing she hasn't quite figured out yet is how to eat quietly, slowly, and calmly. The unfortunate result of her bad table manners is the frequent inadvertent ingestion of excess air. Often this situation can be addressed by a few minutes of brisk back-patting, but sometimes nothing avails. What a pity that there's no sure-fire way to coax unnecessary air out of the digestive system. Once, when I lived on a farm in Oregon, our cow got into some overripe apples. She expanded, rolled over onto her side, and lay bloated and mooing. We ran a garden hose down her throat and sat on her side, which cured her. I shared this anecdote with Michael, but it seemed to have no relevance to the present case.

Overheard on the drive

Me: What's that lighthouse-looking building? Is that new?
Michael: No, it's been there for quite a while.
Me: Well, I've never noticed it before. And I'm sure I would have noticed it if it had been there.
Michael: Oh, yes. The world revolves around Rose. (Later) Have you ever noticed that building over there with no windows? That's the Archives.
Me: No, that must be new too.

The lost roll

'Lost' is such a delightful adjective, conjuring up misty sensations of mystery, wistfulness, and regret. I do not use it lightly here. Indeed I am sufficiently devastated to go off and write poems about it~

Where, oh where, is my lost roll?
I thought my col-lec-tion was whole.
But now, alas, I see my lack.
I wish I'd gotten my roll back.

~Or maybe not.

Anyway, over the last few days I've taken on the project of sorting and filing my pictures. This is a task I've neglected for the past few years, merely stuffing envelopes of developed film in a drawer and vowing to get to them later. Later has now come upon me. The legendary nesting instincts, which never struck beforehand to tip me off that I was about to give birth, have now struck full force, and I've been catching up on long-dead projects with a vengeance. Ideally I would like to enter all my pictures in a scrapbook, with intelligible captions and complimentary stickers. But I must pragmatically face the brutal fact that I am never going to get around to scrapping twenty+ rolls of film, save that happy thought for the wedding album, and simply resolve to slip the photos into boring but acid-free sleeve albums.

It's not at easy as it sounds, actually. First I had to look through all the rolls and sort chronologically. Then I had to place the photos in albums in a well-thought-out order. Straight chronology won't work here, since I need to take into account such aesthetic considerations as horizontal v. vertical shots, appropriate sequence, etc., all while maintaining a reasonable sense of historic accuracy. Each time I approach the goal, I discover another stash of pictures that someone has sent me, which now need to be worked into the books. The one drawback of sleeve albums is that there's no easy insert. I figure I've moved each picture about three times now.

But it was nearing completion, and I was reviewing the books to double-check everything when I noticed an eight-month gap during which no pictures document events in my life. I am fairly obsessive about taking pictures, so the thought that I simply didn't find anything worth snapping for eight months at a time is ludicrous. What happened to me between my post-graduation trip to Arkansas in May 2000 and the inaugural ball in January 2001?

I know my grandfather died in June 2000. I know I started a new job in July 2000. I know Darren and Sara got married in September 2000. I know student life was...alive and well, shall we say...during October-November 2000. I know I attended the office Christmas party in December 2000. But why don't I have any pictures of all this?

It finally dawned on me that I lost the roll of film. So just like that, a huge chunk of my life is missing. Now all I have of that time are memories...

All right, it's not so bleak as all that. Considering that I got my first camera at age seventeen, there's a much bigger chunk of my life missing off the front of my albums. But still.

Overheard at breakfast

Me: Why, Jane, do you have the hiccups?
(Silence)
Me: Well, never mind. It was a rhetorical question anyway. You didn't have to answer it.
Michael: Isn't there a line in Pride and Prejudice about conversation with Lady Catherine being so easy because she answered all of her own questions?

Word play

Once I saw a delightful little puzzle that involved guessing famous places and landmarks based on a (somewhat) descriptive phrase that - admire the clever intricacy here! - began with the same letters. For example:

Staunch Old Lady (Statue Of Liberty)
Big Humps (Black Hills)

I wish I could dig up that puzzle and play it again. I can remember only a few:

Great Crack
Giant Parallelograms
Commons Paramount

It annoys me how some words lose their meaning through constant misuse. There are thousands of examples of this, but the one to arouse my particular ire is the instance of specified use, where a word that really means so much more is relegated to the inglorious task of holding down only one job. I thought of three examples earlier, and have already managed to forget one, but the other two are:

-Slavery (involuntary servitude without wages; it's been around for millennia, and emerged in countless cultures, yet today it's almost synonymous with the importation of African slaves to the ante-bellum American South).
-Moon (generic satellite or orb; yet the word practically means the waning and waxing one we see in the sky).