Where the Grey Lives

So much to write! So few quiet hours.

2008-10-26T14:58:00.000-07:00

I need to vomit everything onto this blog and I sincerely hope you will not get hit by the spray.

We bought a house! It's a cute little two bed, two bath in Edgewood which is on the East side of the city. We're still in the city but in a neighborhood, or "the hood" which is what our neighbors have proudly welcomed us to. It's a place where people smile and say hello but if you stand at your kitchen window at certain times during the day, you may see a drug deal go down. It's a place where your neighbors offer to help you with your yard work followed by the assurance that they won't charge you much. I like it a lot and I'm looking forward to seeing what our place will be in this community.

Craigslist! Is my new favorite thing. I sold most of our big furniture on it before we moved (almost all of it for more than I paid for it at yard sales), then I've furnished most of our new house on it. I've also learned how to make a few bucks here and there on it. I bought a lamp, ottoman, rocking chair and side table for $40, then sold the rocking chair and side table for $50. Yes! I love getting paid $10 to take a lamp and ottoman.

We're visiting new churches in our area. We love our church in Austell but we're just too far away now. We need to be a part of a congregation that is in our community.

I got nominated for a "Suzi Award" which I would like to say is like an Atlanta Tony, except that it's not. Because nobody's really heard of it, not even people in Atlanta. But I was nominated for featured actress for "The Last Schwartz", nonetheless. Here's the list.

Anybody else ready for this election to be over? I'm so sick of hearing "coverage" of 4 people talking in circles around ridiculous issues and acting like their policies are so different from the other guy/gal/changer/maverick. I'm sick of hearing people say "free health care, yay!" As though they have no idea that they still have to pay for it (or have never been inside a post office). Or saying we just have to vote against someone who supports abortion. As though there aren't hundreds of other issues that affect millions of fragile lives. I'm sick of not hearing any, ANY third party coverage simply because those parties don't have money. They don't have the cash to buy the media like Republicans and Democrats do and millions of people will vote for "the lesser of two evils" simply because they don't know there's something that they can actually believe in out there. So I'll be angry at whatever the outcome is on November 3rd but I will be so flippin' happy it's over.

Lastly, and this deserves a post of it's own which will come later, I said goodbye to my little brother, Joel, for two years. He's serving overseas and left about two weeks ago. It was a sad and exciting weekend of goodbyes. My whole family (all 7 of us - 8 including Eric) were able to be together which was wonderful. I cried probably 4 times over the weekend which is a lot for me. There's a connection between siblings that can't be described or likened to any other relationship.

Next time, I will narrow my focus and write something more than vomit. For now, thanks for helping with the clean up.

The Ultimate Love-Hate Relationship

2008-09-05T15:47:00.000-07:00

Politics and I have a love-hate relationship.

I love picking my guy/gal and rooting for him/her much like I did the U.S. women's gymnastics team at the Olympics. Except somewhere, deep down, I'd like to believe my life will be affected by the winner of this one.

I hate that maybe it won't be. Or if it is, we'll just fight over who to blame it on.

I love yelling the logical fallacies and screaming against the ridiculous rhetoric until my throat is sore and the T.V. is covered in my saliva.

I hate the conventions. The lies. The painted faces. The lack of free speech.

I love the faces of politician's children who hate it almost as much as I do and I can hope that maybe the next generation won't be so fake.

I hate that this will never be.

I love that I have friends (mostly from a church I have attended at some point or another) who are staunch, hard-core, 'til they die Republicans and friends (mostly from a theatre I have worked with at some point or another) who are staunch, hard-core, 'til they die Democrats.

I hate that they would never really have a good conversation with each other.

I love that they say the exact same things about each other, in the exact same spiteful tones, and I just laugh and laugh and laugh and wish they could hear their counterpart.

I hate that they wouldn't recognize themselves in the mirror lying at the political line.

I love being a mostly-libertarian in that world. Because Republicans just nod about that. They don't really know what it means and don't care unless they hear we don't think the federal government should be in charge of abortion and gay marriage. And democrats feel it is their post-modern duty to be cool with whatever works for somebody else. As long as that is not Republicanism.

I hate that we all think we are right but somebody has to be wrong because we can't all be right and we can't even try everybody's way because we don't have time so somebody has to give in or loose or die and we all have to try the ideas of whoever won the most power by telling the prettiest lies and it will still never work because we live in a world filled with pain and sadness and sorrow and run on sentences and mostly self-centeredness but at least...

I love that politics make me look forward to heaven.

Because then, it will be done. Where there is no Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Green Party, Independent, Communist, Socialist, etc. And we'll finally see Right.

I love that Right won't look like anything I've ever, ever, ever seen before.

Fall's Fingers

2008-09-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

This morning I awoke to the fingers of autumn pulling back the veil of a humid Georgia summer. It was a thick veil. One you'd see on a bride full of shame or sadness who wished to remain hidden. But the groom, beautiful Fall, forgives her oppressive stinginess and blaring judgments and begs to slowly open the veil a bit more. She gives in. And Fall, in all his soft loveliness, cools the harsh rigidness of Summer's days and not only forgives but forgets.

The Path to Fairyland

2008-08-26T15:01:00.000-07:00

Some of you know I took a trip recently to Prince Edward Island with my bosom friend Laura Kate. My expectations of the trip were extremely high but I could not have even imagined a more lovely, gorgeous, imaginative, home-away-from-home, heart-breakingly-delicious, so wonderful it awakes an unquenchable thirst, and restful trip than the one we experienced. We saw the L.M. Montgomery sights, the "Anne" sights (though not the overly touristy ones), and lots of gorgeous scenery with red cliffs pushing their way into clear blue oceans and grass covered hills bathed in tall, swaying patches of Queen Anne's Lace and Golden Rod. I hope to write more of my experiences, though I could never cover it all.

Laura Kate gave me a copy of The Story Girl for my birthday which is a lesser known L.M. Montgomery tale written not long after the publication of the first Anne book. The author claims it was her favorite. Today, I read this paragraph and have probably read it about five times since:

There is such a place as fairyland - but only children can find the way to it. And they do not know that it is fairyland until they have grown so old that they forget the way. One bitter day, when they seek it and cannot find it, they realize what they have lost; and that is the tragedy of life. On that day the gates of Eden are shut behind them and the age of gold is over. Henceforth they must dwell in the common light of common day. Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again and blessed are they among mortals. They, and only they, can bring us tidings from that country where we once sojourned and from which we must evermore be exiles. The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and story-tellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland.

Lucy Maud Montgomery - The Story Girl

I think, in Prince Edward Island, the door to fairyland is much easier to find. Especially for those of us who have grown old and have considerably dimmed eyesight. But there is a door here in the city, behind the smog, under the sirens, beneath the asphalt, below the poverty line, and far far away from anything resembling glamor, it is there. It's knob needs a good polishing and cobwebs have overtaken the frame. One might almost be afraid to open it. But if you can find it, bring us the tidings and the tales.

And we will thank you.

If the Only Thing We have to Fear, is Fear, What do We do with Crane Death?

2008-08-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

Every morning I face my fear. It looms above me, literally and figuratively, as I walk to work. It is a thing called a crane. It makes me scared because of a thing called “crane death” which happens when somebody doesn’t put the crane on quite right and the crane comes crashing hundreds of feet down to the sidewalk and anybody walking on it. If somebody is walking on that sidewalk, that is how “crane death” occurs.

I am walking and I am usually reading a book because that’s called killing three birds, no make that four birds, with one stone (exercise, getting to work, reading, and showing the Iraqis or Saudi Arabians or Cheney's that I don’t need their oil) which also today is called multi-tasking because dead birds are politically incorrect. When I get to the cranes, my pace picks up a little. I try to keep reading but the words go blurry. I look up because maybe if I see the crane begin to fall, I can run and avoid “crane death”. I look down because maybe if I don’t know “crane death” is about to happen, I’ll never know and just die instantly in peace. At all times I picture my body three feet in front of me. Though I am standing it has been squished down to about two inches. Flesh, bones and intestines squeeze out and wrap around the gigantic pieces of metal which have just acted as my soul’s train to heaven. That’s what “crane death” looks like in my mind.

I am probably more afraid of drowning than I am of “crane death” but I don’t have many opportunities to drown. I don’t swim to work, I walk. “Crane death”, seems much more imminent.

I am also afraid of roaches. Though lately, I have become more angry at them than afraid of them. When I see one in my apartment, I scream like a burglar has just entered. If my husband is home, I run to wherever he is and keep screaming and shivering until he has found the roach, killed it, flushed it, and given me a nasty look for hurting his ears. If he is not home, I turn into a raging banshee. I grab the can of Raid and a shoe and both drown and beat it to death. While I flush it down the toilet I yell, “this is where I put my own human waste! This is your end! You don’t mess with me. You come into my house, this is how you leave!” This death is probably much worse than “crane death”. To be drowned, poisoned, squished and flushed is not a nice way to go.

I do not normally affirm the killing of bugs if they are outside. If bugs could read, this would be my message for them:

Dear Bugs,

Outside is your home, inside is my home. If I am outside in your home, I will not bother you. If you are inside in my home, I will kill you. I will poison, drown and beat you to death. You have ALL of outside. That’s really a lot when you think about it, if you can think. I come to your home sometimes because it’s the only way I have to get places. But when you have so much home, it doesn’t seem like too much to ask. Me? I have a little two bedroom apartment. Please do not come in. You’re not welcome and you might die.

Love, Bethany

So my fears of late have been “crane death” and roaches, because I face both of them nearly every day. They are both things that I really cannot control. They are both things I cannot reason with. They are merely things of which I have irrational fear.

Last week when I was walking to work, I realized I could take a different route. There are lots of ways to the Woodruff Arts Center from 4^th St. and I could use a different one. But then I didn’t want to, because this way every day I face my fear. I say, “crush me if you want to. I can’t poison you, drown you, or beat you.” So, I’ll just look my fear in the anthropomorphic eye that I’ve given it (it’s a green eye) and keep walking right under.

What are you afraid of?

Blue Like Jazz

2008-07-17T13:45:00.000-07:00

The infamous book somewhere between "Evangelical" and "Emergent" written by Donald Miller which swept my generation with its ideas and sincerity. I finally read it.

Hi Bethany, welcome to 2003. So glad you could make it.

Nearly everyone who asked me if I had read it (which is nearly everyone I have ever known) gave me mixed reviews. "I don't agree with everything it says" or "read it with a grain of salt." So I finally sat down last weekend, pen in one hand, salt shaker in the other ready to pummel this beast of Christian literature* to the ground. And I have to say, I loved it. Here is why:

1.) It was a book where words became art. He told stories in a way that you saw them, you felt them, and then you thought about them. Many authors are happy to accomplish one of these aspects, let alone all three.

2.) The style was "memoir" not "systematic theology". I love memoirs. I've never read one by a Christian before. It was a new experience. I also love systematic theology when the mood is right (candles, roses, a glass of wine) but the expectation of the book is completely different. Now I know that all Christians are and should be theologians. If not, they usually seem a little flaky. Like Miss Teen South Carolina or those really good Pillsbury biscuits. But when I started reading this book for what it was, a memoir by someone who desires to have and live good theology (a term which of course is a bit subjective), I began to enjoy it as a tale of another person's life. What he learned from it. What it makes me think about and around and over. Not a book about what one should think.

3.) It was written with love and humility. Looking at where "Don" is coming from, it seems like he could have written a very sarcastic and angry book. Like the book I would've written. Instead, he is careful to write with a loving and non-judgemental attitude which proves very effective considering his final premise is "hey, loving (and liking) people is really stinkin' important."

4.) He's friends with someone named Penny. And that's a cool name. Though now it makes me think of LOST. Still.

5.) It made me think about a lot of things but it also made me feel something. It's hard for a book to get to my heart these days. Especially one qualifying as Christian literature*. I don't know what it is about me. Somebody told my husband they thought I was a "hard-ass". I guess I don't really know what that means except that maybe it's hard for a book to reach all the way through my head to my heart. So maybe I am one. But I wasn't when I read Blue Like Jazz and that's gotta mean something.

Maybe I didn't "agree" with every word he wrote or every conclusion he drew. I can't think of a book where I have. I can also assume that Donald Miller's purpose in writing the book wasn't to have a bunch of people agreeing with him. I imagine, rather, he had a lot of things that he needed to write. He really needed to write them. So he did. Then he hoped people would read the things he wrote and maybe think about some of them and maybe relate to some of them and maybe just enjoy some of them.

Or maybe that's just what I did. Me and my pen and my salt shaker.

*by "Christian literature" I mean a book written by an author who is a Christian, not that the literature itself is saved and going to heaven when it dies. Just to clarify.

Consume or Be Consumed 2.0

2008-07-13T16:44:00.000-07:00

It turns out that ample research would be a good thing before posting a blog. Primary sources are probably better than secondary. As I looked into this Willow Creek deal a little more today I decided to watch the videos featuring Bill Hybels and Greg Hawkins. Their thoughts were not nearly as "180" as I had been lead to believe.

Greg Hawkins is still using charts and marketing techniques to try to understand the kingdom of God. He mentioned the word "Scripture" (the same mention I put in the quote yesterday) but didn't actually cite any Scripture in the 13 minutes I watched him try to explain how they would take their church to the "next level".

Bill Hybels had a very revealing interview about his thoughts on the buzz around what Willow Creek was actually saying with their research. If you don't want to watch the whole thing I think I can sum it up in one question and answer:

Interviewer: Controversy and misinformation has been swirling all around this Reveal thing since last October, in fact there was a blog, from the Out of Ur blog (the blog I cited yesterday) that was titled "Willow Repents". How'd you react to that? Repent of what?

Hybels: Well, that's how I reacted to it. (He laughs.) I wondered, what horrible, immoral thing have I done? (He laughs some more.) I think it was a poor choice of words, actually, because we have made strategic adjustments on an annual (or) every other year to try to be more effective in building an Acts 2 church. I don't think when you make a strategic adjustment it qualifies under the word "repent". I think every evangelical knows that's kind of a loaded up term and I think someone wanted to get some action on a blog and I think it was very unfortunate and quite disingenuous to title the article that way. But such as it is, I will be the first to say, we learn and grow at Willow. We make no apologies for wanting to get better...

I don't think anyone is asking them to apologize for getting "better", do you? And yeah, repentance is a huge term loaded with lots of connotations like admission and need and sin. And yeah, you better believe I have a hell of a hard time doing it. But if finding out that you, as a church, have not truly helped believers out of the milk drinking stage of their faith (and have held out your model as one that all churches should follow), is not reason for some serious repentance, then what is?

That would be my question for Pastor Hybels: of what should one repent?

"Building an Acts 2 church," he says. It's interesting in Acts 2 that the first thing Peter tells the church to practically, relevantly, immediately do (because that's all that matters right?) is to "repent." Repent and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins...

"Do"ing church. That's the buzz word. The phrase we use for building the kingdom. "How we do church," you hear it all the time. The disciples of Christ in Acts 2 don't really "do" church. They live church. They devote themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. They sold all their crap and shared everything they had left. They met in each others' homes. Maybe the point is to stop "doing" church and start building the kingdom.

Living the kingdom.

But first we, I, must repent.

Consume or Be Consumed

2008-07-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

I'd been hearing about this apology from Willow Creek Church concerning the way they've not only been evolving the way they do ministry in their own church but also have been heavily influencing almost every evangelical church in America for the past thirty years. Ravi Zacharias noted it when I heard him speak and my pastor, Spencer Haygood also mentioned it recently. This prompted me to look up exactly what Willow Creek was apologizing for.

I can't say how much I respect an honestly humble apology, especially from those with enough power to manipulate their way around one. This confession seems to point to hearts seeking the Lord combined with brains which had only been seeking to market. And marketing, Ladies and Gents, is exactly what this church model has been hinged on. According to this blog the words "What is our business? Who is our customer? What does the customer consider value?" hung on a poster outside the door of senior Pastor, Bill Hybels.

Questions about why American Evangelicals are such consumers?

Anyone?

What they found in this extensive study was that they had made a lot of "Christians" but very few disciples. According to the same website above, Hybels said

"...We should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

I have to wonder then, what were they doing? How does a church, for thirty years, neglect this aspect of ministry without question? How do thousands of churches decide it's a great idea to follow this model? How do millions of Christians not realize that the sand we're sinking in is incredibly shallow, yet somehow we are neck deep and it's all we can do to catch a few more short breaths?

The culture, at every turn, appeals to our most base consumerist instinct. Likewise, the church asks no more of us but to Take, to Buy Into, to Drink the Kool-Aid. "Come on and take a free ride," as one church sings. What a sad, sad state it has left us in.

For a year I worked for a church based on this model. Huge. Three campuses around the city. Giant NASA technology screens. Light shows. Parking Decks. Give-aways at church. Nice give-aways. Like i-pods and airplane tickets. Lots of people with lots of brand name clothing. Lots of children that needed spanking. Lots of genuinely nice people. People with "good hearts". Still, those I was able to talk to one on one would tell me point blank "there's no where I can go to really study the Bible". All their programs. All their technology. All their terms for the way to really "do" church. "There are small groups," one woman told me, "but the leaders have had nowhere to learn the Bible themselves, so how can they teach it to us?"

Hopefully the trickle of the results to this study will not take long to be heard by those influenced severely by the former Willow Creek the-way-to-do-church-model. Here's what Willow Creek executive pastor Greg Hawkins has to say about the future:

"Our dream is that we fundamentally change the way we do church. That we take out a clean sheet of paper and we rethink all of our old assumptions. Replace it with new insights. Insights that are informed by research and rooted in Scripture. Our dream is really to discover what God is doing and how he's asking us to transform this planet."

Let's just hope that this time around, the research is based more on Scripture and influenced by great theologians rather than the marketing techniques of Coca-Cola.

Why Bad People Do Good Things

2008-05-07T06:01:00.000-07:00

I saw a book today entitled "Why Good People Do Bad Things."

I thought I would write a book called "Why Bad People Do Good Things."

Then I realized that no one would read it.

Most people, including many who would call themselves Christians, think that they are good in themselves. Oh, "bad people" exist in the world but rarely will someone claim to be a part of that grouping.

The bar for a "bad person" lies in a funny little grey area. Ask someone who considers themselves "good" where it is and they'll probably tell you it's a few steps below whatever happens to be the worst thing he or she has done. "Bad" lives in "I've never..." land.

"I've never stolen anything."

"I've never had an affair."

"I've never killed anybody."

"I've never done drugs."

But I've never heard these offerings:

"I've never yelled at anyone."

"I've never looked at another mans wife and imagined her in my bed."

"I've never said anything mean to anyone."

"I've never taken one look at someone and assumed I knew their character."

"I've never eaten too much."

Because we've all done those things, or something like them. And if everyone's done it, it can't be bad. Because then... that would make everyone bad. Which would mean the world is doomed. Or at least - in need of a Savior.

For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.*

So the question really is, why do bad people do good things? If we're all guilty of the bad, where does the good come from? God must allow everyone to experience a certain amount of grace. There must be a God who gives good gifts to all of humanity. Not evenly. Not fairly. Not because of good humans. Because God in God's goodness saw fit to do so.

Unless, and forgive me for digressing here, there aren't actually "good people" or "bad people" but only "good actions" and "bad actions". There are only people, all people, who in each of us have the capacity for bad actions. And with one bad action, one law broken, we break every law -like one rotten egg mixed with two dozen good ones. Only through God's pure goodness and common grace do we produce good actions. Because the world is not doomed. Because there is a Savior.

Good people? Bad people? I don't know.

Maybe my book title will be Why People are People and God is God.

*James 2:10

"I Have So Many Doubts"

2008-04-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

These words finish the play Doubt written by John Patrick Shanley which I saw performed at the Alliance Theatre this evening. Though the entire piece takes place within a catholic school and three out of the four characters are either nuns or a priest, these "doubts" have less to do with what they believe about God than with what they believe about others. What we believe about others and the actions -whether sinful or righteous- we may take to uncover the truths behind those beliefs inevitably will "take us away from God." Though one nun seems to think it is worth that step away if truth is revealed in the end.

No matter what religious background one comes from this play strikes intrigue. Upon leaving a theatre I love listening to the conversations around me. Generally I'll hear one or two that are actually about the play while most are about the weather or where we should go to get a drink. Sitting in the lobby this evening I did not hear a single topic of conversation that didn't begin with some aspect of the play.

Doubt. Doubting whom was guilty or innocent, truthful or full of lies.

I don't want to say too much about the play itself. You should read it. It's a quick and interesting read. You should also see it. Which shouldn't be too hard since the rights were recently released and it's shown up in just about everybody's season this year. It's a play that hits you somewhere you forgot about. Like that ridiculously sore muscle you didn't know existed after an intense workout. Or the way a daffodil smells after a long winter. It makes you remember that doubt is a part of our life here, whether it creeps in slowly and unwanted or attacks you with full force, it comes and it goes. What if we could be sure of everything? What if the only thing we had to doubt was doubt itself? Then again, doubting the doubt may be one way of gaining certainty. Certainty we never would have had were it not for the initial doubt.

I may write more on this later. But I doubt it.

I'm bad

2008-03-20T15:12:00.001-07:00

I forgot to write yesterday. Maybe I shouldn't make commitments.

?

.

Goonie Bird Lane

2008-03-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

I just closed Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business with Synchronicity Performance Group. We got a couple of "reviews" one here and, the one which brought up an interesting question to me, here.

If you don't feel like reading the whole review, the question that it brought up in my mind was near the end. Mr. Holman stated that "correcting Junie’s mistake provides a thin message..." If you are unfamiliar with the Junie B. Jones series, you should know that this hilarious and hyperactive little girl does not always receive consequences for her actions. The books aren't perfectly wrapped up at the end with a clear moral, they're a little more realistic than that. What I found interesting about this comment is that in "adult" theatre, having a moral or some sort of didactic message is generally considered a bad thing. No one wants to be preached at. If it brings up questions or leaves you with something to consider, it's praised. My question is, at what age are you allowed to appreciate an art form and think about it for yourself? At what age may one start being offended for being taught a lesson? And then, of course, what frightens parents so much about having conversations with their children?

I close with my favorite letter that we received from a child who came to see the show:

Dear 7 Stages Playhouse,

Thank you for letting us see Junie B. Jones does some monkey buisness. That was actually the best play I ever saw. The part I liked was when the lights were flashing on and off. If you didn't know, the baby was fake. I like Jim because he was playing karate and I play karate also. When I looked up, I saw a disco ball. And as you know, I love disco balls. Sometimes during the play I kept looking at the disco ball. I remember that I looked at the disco ball about nine-teen or twenty times.

From,
Austin

Now tell me, who wouldn't want to have a conversation with that kid?

Commitment and Going Green

2008-03-17T12:47:00.000-07:00

I am writing Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of this week no matter what. Then I'm going on a visit to N.C. Then, I may make a commitment to write next week too, we'll see. It may be three sentences or three paragraphs, with three readers or no readers but I will write.

I find it interesting, being St. Patricks Day, how many news programs and events have made this the day for "going green". As if the green of St. Patricks Day celebration and the green poster child color for environmental awareness had anything to do with each other. Though they don't, I think I am glad for the stretches people will take in encouraging the public to indeed "go green."

Congratulations Al, environmentalism is finally in vogue. Today The View gave us a show of "Eco-friendly fashions." Jeans made without pesticides, organic cotton tops, blood-free diamonds, and even handbags made from recycled candy wrappers (just don't take that purse out in the rain). Advertising is flooded with words like "organic" and "earth-friendly" and "green" because it sells. This months Readers Digest gave me a myriad of ways to lower my personal carbon emissions while easing my conscience of a few things that "don't make that much of a difference." There's one thing, strangely, that I haven't had anyone tell me yet. One little idea that seems to have evaded the public thought process.

Buy less stuff.

Huh.

Don't drive your car, even if it is a hybrid, to the mall every weekend. Don't buy another pair of jeans that were made in a large factory by an underpaid employee in another country and shipped to you in a big truck or plane. You don't need another pair anyway. Don't buy a mass copied piece of pre-framed printed "art" to hang in your living room. Save up and support a local artist. Don't eat out just because it's convenient. Eat something green in your own dining room. Just, buy less. It seems like a good idea to me.

Chains of the Living

2007-11-06T13:08:00.000-08:00

Much to the surprise of, well everyone who caught me lurking in the corners and soaking up its pages, I recently decided to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. People asked if I was reading it for school or if I was a teacher, no one ever assumed it was for my own enjoyment. My mother had read this tragically triumphant tale to me as a child but I didn’t remember much except a sad yearning that often lead me to pray for the gripping characters as I would a friend, when they came to mind.

“The little lady who started the big war,” a quote rumored to have been spoken by President Lincoln which, if he didn’t say it, he should have. Harriet Beecher Stowe makes no qualms about the realities of slavery both in its most ideal and most heinous circumstances. Charles Dickens only criticism of the book (which he wrote to her personally) is that she might “go too far and seek to prove too much.” She often ends chapters with a pleading toward the reader to feel what her characters must be going through, although we already are. Her clearly thought out logic combined with wrenching emotions makes a story that needs no justification.

Most intriguing to me now are the “conservative” ideals which she held to while pushing radically righteous action among those who shared her convictions. Being a woman, her domain was in the home and interestingly enough, she chose not to overtly rebel against this system which wished to confine her to private and domestic duties. Instead, she used the book to redefine what should be public and private. This is especially fascinating to me now, not as a woman necessarily but as a Christian. Current philosophy automatically delegates religious sentiment to the private sphere. Francis Schaeffer explained this division in two parts. The “Upper Story” relegates all personal preferences (especially in religion and “values”) to this nonrational, noncognitive group. The “Lower Story” holds scientific knowledge which is rational and verifiable. And never the two shall meet. This is how, like women of that day, Christianity stays “in its place” today. If it holds no bearing in the public realm it has no voice except among its own. The Church also has grasped this philosophy by categorizing everything into that which is sacred and that which is secular.

We have something vitally important to learn from Stowe, besides the horrible sins our country pervaded or the same sins that were defended by those who claimed belief in the Word of God, we must learn to change the conversation. Jesus doesn’t just live in our hearts, He is alive and infinitely involved in a public and rational world in which horrible things occur, sometimes even in His name. Stowe demanded respect from all types of audiences. Without argument she placed herself in the conversation that would have traditionally excluded her entirely.

The truth is in that day, women weren’t much freer than slaves, only generally treated better. Harriet Beecher Stowe, quietly carrying every chain that had been given her, entered the free man’s conversation and not only turned it upside down but turned it into action. Christians are letting ideas of today keep Truth shackled in the “private” sphere. Yet we know the world doesn’t have that power over us. In the chilling words of dear Uncle Tom before he is brutally beaten: No! no! no! my soul an’t yours!.. You haven’t bought it, - ye can’t buy it! It’s been bought and paid for, by one that is able to keep it.

Change the conversation. Ask questions that need to be asked. Don’t let postmodern ideology keep what we know to be Truth shackled to the private sphere only.

Fall is at the Corner of 8th and Argonne

2007-11-04T12:00:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's Global Warming or the Big City but since moving down to Georgia I've had very few of those delightful days when you not only see Autumn moving through the trees and feel it in the weather but you smell it. The smell of Fall that brings out the childhood desire to rake a pile of leaves and play in them until you're itchy and smell like a boy and have swallowed several bugs by default. The smell that reminds you of the infinite ache you thought you'd understand when you "grew up". The scent that makes you stop and inhale deeply as though it were your last breath. And that was fine. I don't get that in Atlanta.

Eric and I took a walk a few nights ago. Because of the dangerous drought we find ourselves in, the trees are sadly dull in their yellows, reds, and oranges. I have seen maybe three trees in our neighborhood that, despite the odds, are brilliantly expressing gaping reds and shining yellows and almost neon oranges. Staring at them reminds me of the God of color and creation and creating. We were walking up Argonne kicking acorns and pulling For Sale pamphlets out of their tubes and laughing at the numbers when we reached 8th St.

There it was. Fall.

I stopped at the corner, closed my eyes and raised my nose breathing in, In, IN. Eric had already crossed the street when he realized I hadn't followed. I motioned for him to come back, as though talking would scare it away.

"It's fall" I whispered.

He laughed. "Right here on the corner of 8th and Argonne?"

"Right here on the corner of 8th and Argonne."

"I don't smell it." He inhaled deeply a few times. Then lowered himself a few inches and breathed in again. "You're right," he said, "It's here. Only at your nose level for some reason."

We kept breathing for a few moments and then, as quickly as it had come it was gone. I'm glad we went for a walk that night and I'm glad I happen to be 5'4". Missing Fall in a year, as short as it might have been, would be like missing out on a day to sleep in, or the end of a delicious book, or Renee Zellweger in "Cold Mountain", or the figure's face in a Renoir, or toilet paper in a bathroom.

I hope you found it too.

Quiet Nights of Grace

2007-10-16T06:12:00.000-07:00

A true story told...

by Abigail Grace Lind

Envision a soldier looking across a rice field and beholding a young girl, who immediately captures his heart. He doesn’t know her name. He doesn’t know what her voice sounds like. But he knows that he has to find out. The girl is thirteen years old, a fact unknown to this twenty three-year-old until he speaks to her, but he promises to wait until she is seventeen so they can be married. This “love at first sight” story belongs to the parents of Keo Chan, who was born in 1973 in the communist country of Laos. “In order to understand my story,” Keo begins, “you must know about my Father.”

Her father, Phone Rasavong, was a martial arts instructor and freedom fighter in the Vietnam War. In 1975, he and the eleven soldiers he was in command over were captured and put into a concentration camp. “In a place like this, they brainwash you and basically work you to death,” Keo explains. “My father knew if they don’t escape they die.” So, the soldier decided to take his eleven men and flee. Late one night they escaped the camp, but outside the walls, a bigger obstacle lay ahead of them. The men realized their only route to freedom involved swimming across the Mekong, a river about a mile wide.

Meanwhile at Keo’s home in Laos, her mother began to worry about her father. “Our family knew something was wrong in the 70s when we heard nothing,” Keo says. Everyone in the community told her mother, “If you don’t hear from your husband for a week, consider him dead. Do not speak of him, do not think of him. Just forget him.” Following this tradition, Keo and her younger sister Kack carried on without a father figure, knowing nothing of him, and not attempting to ask questions for fear of what might happen. Keo’s mother Seng was strong and supportive of her family, and found ways to provide for them. “I was a dancer from the day I was born.” Keo says. “My mother was a dancer; she taught me how. That’s one way we made a living in the village.”

Growing up in a little village in Laos in the 1970s was quite different from life in the United States. There was no electricity or running water. Keo’s family owned a rice field and they prepared, sowed, and harvested their crops to be sold. The girls married young, usually between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. “If you were sixteen or seventeen and not married, you were an old maid in my time,” Keo remarks. Chickens and water buffalo were in the place of cats and dogs for pets, and Keo smiles as she remembers laughing while riding across a rice field on the back of a water buffalo. “That’s just the life of a little girl there!” She says. The little boys in her village were “like the ones you see in National Geographic: running around butt-naked!” Yes, life during the war was tough, yet it was all they knew.

But what happened to Keo’s father and his men? It was a strenuous journey that night in the darkness (you see, they lack lights like the ones in America that line the banks of rivers), but they actually did swim across the Mekong River, and all but one soldier made it out alive. When they reached Thailand, they were placed into a refugee camp for people escaping from Laos. The camp was to help people start a new life. “A refugee camp is all wired.” Keo explains. “You can go in, but you can’t come out. You fill out paperwork, and wait for a sponsor in another country to allow you in. You do not know how long you will have to wait, or what country you will get into. So that’s what my father did. He worked in the camp, and waited.” Phone Rasavong was fortunate enough to get admission into America, and began to work for his citizenship there, alone and missing his family, with no way to contact them. For all they knew, he was dead and it was their duty to forget him.

In 1981, Seng heard a rumor that her husband was in the United States. “It was just a rumor,” Keo says, “and we had no proof of knowing if it was true, but the next day, my mother pack her bags and took her two daughters – my sister and me – at age six and eight, to escape the country to find her husband. My mother just expect to go to the United States and search for my father. Like it’s a small place! She had no idea what she was doing, and my grandparents beg her not to go, but she would not change her mind.” Leaving a communist country is no small affair, especially when a young woman and two small children venture out on an unplanned whim. The government kills anyone trying to escape into Thailand, but Seng was determined. The little family disappeared from the village that night and crept in the shadows, striving for freedom and a forgotten father. Keo didn’t exactly know what was going on, because from 1975 through 1981, there was no mention whatsoever of her father. But she knew that what was happening was serious. “I distinctly remember,” she says, “at eight years old, my mother said to me, ‘Don’t say a word. Don’t ask questions or our family could be killed.’ We snuck in the bushes and there were soldiers everywhere – lined up all along the border – but somehow, they didn’t see us.”

When they got near the border of Laos, Seng gave the “little bit of money” she had to a fisherman so that he would sneak them across the river in his boat. They managed to get into the boat, and the man covered them up with cloth so that they would not be seen. While crossing the river, a huge storm came up, and the cry “We’re going to die” continually came from the mouth of Keo’s mother. “Now, at this time,” Keo interjects, “we were Buddhists, and we didn’t know anything about the real God, but for some reason, my mother didn’t cry out to Buddha during that storm. She said, ‘Trajao, help me!’ And Trajao means Jesus.” After that phrase left the mouth of the frightened woman, the storm began to calm, and they made it safely across the river into Thailand. Then they were put into a mound of hay on a wagon and brought into the same refugee camp that their father had entered just a few years prior to them.

“Life wasn’t much better at the refugee camp,” Keo remembers, “but we could see the light at the end of the tunnel.” They had come this far; what good would it do to give up hope now? The living facilities were harsh; Keo and her family lived in a tiny one-room hut consisting of a space just large enough for all of them to lie crowded in the floor to sleep at night. Everyone in the camp shared a community outhouse, “which is more like going to the bathroom out in a bush somewhere, it’s just gross,” Keo said. While living there, Keo and her sister were required to get their first full-time jobs at the young ages of eight and six. They worked for a man lugging water all day – to and from certain places in the camp – from morning until nightfall. They had no idea how long they would have to be there, but they worked with the hope of one day finding Phone in America. As the man who owned the water pump was getting to know these two little girls, he decided he wanted to meet their mother. “It wasn’t anything weird,” Keo says, “he was a nice man and wanted to know about our family.” So, the meeting took place, and as they talked, they discovered a surprising correlation between their lives. Once again, “coincidence” struck the lives of this young Laotian family.

Overwhelming emotion falls upon Seng as she finds out that the man her daughters had been working for knows her husband. This man is not only an acquaintance of Phone, according to Keo, “he is his best friend – one of the soldiers he had crossed the Mekong River with – and he knows how to contact my father!” He informs the family that their beloved husband and father is in America and working toward gaining citizenship there. “He decided to write my father a letter telling him the way he met us, and that we are waiting to get a sponsor and get paperwork to come into the United States and find him so that we can see him again,” Keo says. When Phone sent a return letter, he explained that he was to become a citizen of America soon, and he could be the person to sponsor his own family to come into the United States! The Rasavongs were soon to enter America, after being in the refugee camp for only a year. “Most people are there for twelve or fifteen years,” Keo explains. “We were so blessed to be working for this man and to be able to find our father! We did not know it at the time, but it was God working the whole way through.” Escape was accomplished not by coincidence, but by grace.

Good Stuff

2007-10-05T18:40:00.000-07:00

Really good stuff.

A manly God?

2007-09-23T13:59:00.000-07:00

This blog made me ask... if the adjective for a good God is manly and the adjective for a good man is godly, does that make them the same thing?

In Light of What Happened Yesterday

2007-09-12T07:30:00.000-07:00

I found this written on a sheet of notebook paper in a book of Renoir paintings from my sophomore year of college:

"In light of what happened yesterday..." was the first phrase I heard out of nearly every professor and student's mouth on this day, September 12, 2001. I woke up this morning thinking everything that had happened yesterday was a dream. Unfortunately, it was one that everyone else had dreamed as well. Everyone's first question inevitably is "what's going to happen to me?" Our selfish nature automatically makes sure we're okay before thinking of anyone else. Only after getting over that is it, "what can I do?" "What can we do?" "What could I do?"

Love is a word that has been used and abused for as long as I remember and I assume long before that as well. It's also an action that is hard to produce, especially the way Jesus asked us to. We, who are professing Christians, have all said to God and others that we love God. Many of us daily ask God for opportunities to "serve Him." Most of us, myself included, would prefer that God allow us to serve Him in a more glamorous position. Being on stage has always been my preference to "serve God." I very much enjoy allowing others to see "the way God uses me." However, it seems when God truly puts opportunities to love and serve Him by loving and serving the "least of these" my heart rarely complies with the same vigor that I verbally confess my love for God.

She's much different from the other students at Campbell University. I'll call her "Susan." Exactly how Susan is different I just couldn't tell you. I can't quite put my finger on it, she just is. Susan's differences can, at times, be quite annoying to me. She doesn't like to knock before intruding upon my dorm room at any time. No matter what I happen to be doing, she never acknowledges that she might be interrupting me. She takes the phrase "overstaying your welcome" to a whole new level. The inappropriateness of talking while chewing one's food has never crossed her mind. It's a mountain of things like these but for some reason she has attached herself to Laura Kate and I.

On this day, the day after a horrible tragedy strikes America, Susan somehow or another hurts herself and is on crutches. She lives two floors above me (in a building without an elevator) so it's not exactly convenient to help her. After expecting all day to receive a call from a "special friend" the phone rings in my dorm room. I jumped up to answer it, "Hello?" "Hi" a small voice squeaked from the other end. Definitely not my special friend. I actually considered hanging up.

"Bethany?" she asked in her strange voice.

"Hey Susan, how ya doin'?" I asked.

"Oh not so good. I'm up here trying to study for psychology but I can't even get up and walk around. I don't do well just sitting here but what else can I do? And I'm getting kind of hungry." She paused waiting for me to offer something. I didn't. "Have you gone to lunch yet?"

"No but I was kind of waiting on..."

"Oh great! Will you come up here and help me down and we can go?"

I didn't officially have any other plans except studying but I knew if I took her it would cost me at least an extra hour of time. Time that would not be spent enjoyably to me.

"Look Susan..." I started

"What are you too busy? I'm really really bored up here."

I was picturing her room. Stark white walls with none of the usual college posters and pictures covering them. The only decor was an old bedspread she'd probably been using since kindergarten and a grimy shag rug on which I was afraid to step. The room also smelled horribly like something was decaying in every crack and corner. Here I was sitting on my fun snake skin chair under my loft bed clothed with a leopard print bedspread and matching pillow sham in a room that smelled like swiped chocolate chip cookies, if anything. I was thinking, the only reason I wouldn't go help her and take her to lunch is that I think I'm too good for her. Am I? Did God make me better than her? More valuable? I immediately knew it was a lie.

"No, sorry, I'll be right up... Do you need anything else?"

"Just a hug when you get here." she replied. She loves hugs.

Maybe love is doing something for someone who can't pay you back. Maybe it's real love when you just help someone even when you know they probably won't help you in return. When you do something and know that no one's going to like you more or think better of you because you do it. Then remembering in humility that it's what has already been done for you Once but a thousand times over. The grace extended to me in the humblest of ways should compel me so much more quickly than it does! If only I could remember that One, who truly was "better than me" in every way, put Himself below me, served me, gave His all that I might have Life.

In light of what happened yesterday... let us learn to love.

"OF"

2007-07-07T07:17:00.000-07:00

-a journal Of sorts Of my life Of late-

We made the big move from Marietta into the heart of midtown Atlanta. From a commercial apartment built sometime in the 80s with 3 windows and neighbors who like to smoke in the breezeways and smoke that likes to seep under your door and into your head, to the second floor of a house built in 1920 with plenty of natural light and color and two neighbors underneath us one of whom has lots of tattoos and plays the piano beautifully and one who works in a tea shop. We've been here about two weeks now and are tremendously happy with it and almost done with the unpacking.

Last month I was temping in an office. Alphabetizing endless amounts of files while finishing up Metamorphoses with Georgia Shakespeare which was completely lovely and reminded me why I do what I do and why I'm willing to file papers sometimes to do it. This month I'm teaching acting and improv at a drama camp with Synchronicity Performance Group while playing Tiny Tim in Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge with Essential Theatre. A Christmas in July fiesta, if you will, and I'm positive you will. Eric has been cast in a show at Jewish Theatre of the South, to mount this fall (that gorgeous nose is our bread and butter) and is currently rehearsing Summerhouse in April in which he dons the most charming Australian accent.

I've been riding my bike to work every day. How midtown. (And how midtown to say "how midtown".) It's about a 30 minute ride... I don't know what the mileage ends up being exactly. Mostly, I didn't want to buy the $50 parking pass so I thought I'd "burn fat, not oil" for a while. When I ride on the bridge over 75/85 I look down at the traffic which looks to be almost dead it is so still and sing "don't you wish you were a hippie like me" to the tune of "don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me" only the syllables don't match the tune quite as well but I don't care because I'm riding a bike and no one can hear me.

I read the play Eurydice by Sarah Ruhl. It's wonderful. Some of the stage directions go like this: they see each other, the whole world falls away or peaches, plums and raspberries fall into the river. Some of my favorite lines go: what happiness it would be to cry and (paraphrased, I don't have the script at hand) weddings are for fathers and daughters, the mothers dress up and try to look young but a wedding is for a father and his daughter. That's the day you stop being married to each other. You should read it if you get the chance. I also read Doubt by John Patrick Shanley which is very interesting as well. It's very open ended... I think. Like life... some think.

My mom and brother James are in Honduras this week. That's pretty neat. Abigail's been calling me from her job at a camp in the mountains. I'm pretty proud of her for embracing that outdoorsy girl she always had inside of her and being used by the Lord there.

In the beginning God created. I love that.

The Grown Up

2007-06-09T17:26:00.000-07:00

by Rainer Maria Wilke

All this stood upon her and was the world
and stood upon her with all its fear and grace
as trees stand, growing straight up, imageless
yet wholly image, like the Ark of God,
and solemn, as if imposed upon a race.

And she endured it all: bore up under
the swift-of-flight, the fleeting, the far-gone,
the inconceivably vast, the still-to-learn,
serenely as a woman carrying water
moves with a full jug. Till in the midst of play,
transfiguring and preparing for the future,
the first white veil descended, gliding softly

over her opened face, almost opaque there,
never to be lifted off again, and somehow
giving to all her questions just one answer:
In you, who were a child once – in you.

A Found Note

2007-05-28T16:03:00.000-07:00

A: Do you like Breanna?

B: NO she's ugly!

A: I thiNk She likes you!

B: whe'll I know I don't like her for sure!

A: You are really bad, but I know she's ugly. In P.E. she tried to tell me what to do, but I told her she's not my mom, because she can't make nothing like me. She would make an ogre.

Bethany: I don't miss middle school. Ccan I get a what what?

Weekend Pick in Atlanta!

I must know these people

Journal Excerpts - Week 4.2

2007-05-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

I have been attempting to write about my final week with Blake for over a week now but my rehearsal schedule has kept me quite busy and/or exhausted. This is the best kind of exhaustion though, when you come out of rehearsal feeling like you’ve had an incredible work out. You’re finding abundant delight in the creative work that God began at the start of It all and boy, It Is Good. But that’s not what you’re here for. You’re here for week 4.2. so I’m allowing my fingers to finally type out the last of my time with Blake.

Monday, I woke up with the feeling that my throat might be caving in on my spine and I could barely talk, so I called in and whispered that I may come in at 11:30… or not. After sleeping in another two hours and enjoying a bowl of oatmeal and a mug of green tea with honey, I decided to go on in. When I walked in the room Blake looked at me like “Oh there you are, I thought I had gotten rid of you.” I smiled and told him to put his shoes away.

We had P.E. on both Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and have been learning to play kickball. Blake is pretty good in the outfield. By good, of course I mean stands there watching the ball roll right by his feet and yells high pitched unintelligible phrases into the echoing chaos that is an elementary school gymnasium. Wednesday, I decided, was the day Blake would become the best deaf/autistic/kick-ball-playing/child in the whole school… if not the county. We waited in line on the boy’s bench for our turn. I rubbed his arm when he got antsy. He calmed down and would smell my elbow (something about that scent he enjoyed… I can’t get my elbow up to my nose to figure it out… ha ha, I see you, you’re trying to smell your elbow too. You can’t do it can you?). Finally, the moment arrived. Mrs. Coach told the pitcher to roll it slowly for him.

Rolling, rolling, rooooooolling. Kick. rrrrrrroooooooolllllllliiiiiiiinnnnng.

He missed.

We tried again. Slower.

Rolllllling, rooooolllllliiing, rrrrrrooooolllllliiiiiinnnnng. Kiccck. Rooolllliiiiiing ssttiillll roooolllliinggggggg

Finally I said to the overly anxious and dramatic catcher girl “why don’t we just put it in front of him and let him kick?” She looked at me, shrugged her shoulders, and put the green ball in front of the ever-pendulating foot and backed away.

WHAM.

There it goes. And there goes Blake, chasing the ball. I grab his arm and make the sign for run (which is difficult because it requires two hands but I need to keep him with me with one of them). I point to first base. “Please Blake” I’m thinking, “just run to that one.” We make it to first base where I have to hold him still until the next kicker punts the ball. The kids are nice to him. They don’t tag him out and he makes it back to home. Even though I know the kids are being nice, I am still very proud. And excited. And extactic. And jumping up and down and throwing high fives. And much much much more smiley than Blake is. He touches home base and then looks around like “what uselessness will she indulge me in next?” On his way back to the bench, Blake unintentionally gets hit in the head with the ball and starts’ making the most pitiful crying sounds. I hold his head to me and he hugs me the best he knows how. We put his shoes on and walk back to room 7 with our arms around each other while he makes crying sounds or smells my elbow. It was a good day. I was proud.

Pride comes before the fall. Blake was very restless on Thursday. By 10:00 he was ready to go swing. The other teachers said to go ahead and take him, so we went outside for about half an hour. Now, generally we go outside at 11:30ish, come back in at 12 and that’s his lunch time. So when we were back inside at 10:30 he was ready to head to the cafeteria. I knew exactly where he was going when he started for the door but I signed “where are you going?” to make him practice telling me what he wants or where he wants to go. He signs “Lunch” with a right handed “L” to his chin.

Oh boy.

I suppose Blake doesn’t have much of a concept of time, so explaining to him why it’s not time for lunch yet doesn’t do much good. After having him clean up what he has thrown on the floor I get him mostly contained in a chair in the middle of the room away from any object besides himself and myself. I tell him I’m going to get his pack of crackers and he needs to stay right where he is. My eye is on him the whole time. I’m walking to the refrigerator, watching him, reaching on top to get the crackers, watching him, walking back to the chair, watching him, almost to the chair, watching him leap up and throw a huge file of papers and markers and glue all over the floor. I watched myself grab his arm and S T A R E him in the eye. Ten minutes later after he had put it all back by himself I sat him back in the chair and gave him his crackers one at a time.

My favorite part of Friday and this week and maybe this whole experience was P.E. The second graders with whom he usually goes to P.E. had gone on a field trip of which we were unaware. We walked into the empty gym and I racked my brain of how to keep him from throwing a tantrum over the fact that there was no one in the gym when I had told him there would be. We sat out on the bench in the hall. I think he was waiting for the other kids to show up. He sat there and took his shoes off. Then he lay down on the floor for about 10 minutes. I tried to keep him close to the bench so he wouldn’t get stepped on. I finally had an idea. I lugged him up and through the gymnasium doors to the back corner where the big green ball was. By big, I mean one of those huge exercise balls for giants. He bounced on it for a while as I watched. Then, in between bounces, I snatched the ball out from under him and started rolling it towards the other side of the gym. He started chasing me. Anytime he got near it I would kick it in another direction.

I have never heard him laugh like that.

Back and forth we ran, giggling and panting and making funny faces. Sometimes I would let him take it from me and he would bounce his back on it. I would sign “MY BALL!!!!” and make BIG eyes at him. He giggles. I snatch the ball and shoot it to the other side of the gym. This went on for probably half an hour before we were exhausted and sitting on the mats on the floor. I don’t think he threw anything the rest of the day. He didn’t have the energy left to do it.

The next Monday was my very last day with Blake. There was no way to make him understand that. We walked down to the water and jumped on the benches and threw prickly things down the current. They bobbed and floated down the stream and were gone. We stood there left only briefly with an image in our minds of them and soon that too was gone. I tried to tell him “I am leaving today. Tomorrow I will not be here.” He either didn’t understand or had no emotional connection to it. I tried to give him my angry eyes on the playground when he took his shoes off but what would be the use of that today? He knows he’s supposed to leave his shoes on. He knows it makes me sad when he does that. He knows he’ll have to walk miserably barefooted to get his shoes. He just does it anyway and I’ll never understand why.

Blake was more clingy than usual today. He held onto my arm almost constantly in the hallways.

In art we made collages on white paper with National Geographic. Rather than flipping through all the pages and finding the pictures he liked best, Blake tore out the 2^nd page and cut it into strips and triangles and rectangles then glued (with a LOT of glue) each piece to his paper. They overlapped and some pieces hung over the edge and a couple went on the back. I tried to get him to look at some other pages but he just cut the one page up. When he was finished, he was finished. He tried to throw his collage away on his way out but I made him keep it and we walked back, him pulling on my arm.

That afternoon we walked to the bus and I stepped up the stairs behind him and made sure he was sitting in his seat. I waved goodbye and he waved goodbye and I waved goodbye and he waved goodbye and I waved goodbye and he started playing with his beads. He slapped them on his shoulder over and over and over again and I watched as the bus took a right out of the parking lot. Beads slapping.

And then...

The End

Journal Excerpts - Week 3

2007-05-05T16:03:00.000-07:00

Monday started out pretty well. Blake was happy. On the playground that afternoon he tried to take his pants and underwear off three times and succeeded once. He thinks it’s very funny when I scold him now. I’m not sure what to make of that. I made him go inside early again but I don’t even know if he understands why.

During PE he was fine for the first half. He watched the other kids play T-Ball or bounced on his big green ball giggling. Then he must’ve gotten really bored so he picked up a bat which I promptly took away from him so that no one would lose any teeth. Without a sound or a second thought he ran to a table against the wall and threw over a large box of whiffle balls which proceeded to cover the gym floor. After he picked up two and the rest of the kids picked up the others I marched him out of the gym and sat him on the bench and told him why we had to leave early and how sad that made me and how we couldn’t have fun if he did things like that. He started hitting the wall. I actually like that better than laughing at me. I’ve never seen any remorse from him. The only emotions he displays are happy (which can range from the beautiful watching a bird fly with the biggest smile and wide eyes to the infuriating laugh of “I’m gonna do this even though I know you don’t want me to”) and mad. If sorrow over what he’s done occurs in his head, it certainly never registers on his face or through his actions. Then he started hitting me and wwinging his arms almost uncontrollably. I only got whacked once before I was able to grab both arms. My elbow hit the bench pretty hard but it only hurts cause I’m a wimp.

Tuesday was boring. Uneventful. Except that I wouldn’t let Blake go onto the big playground at all today. He thought it was a game. Or he thought my stern face was funny. He didn’t get on it though. He also tried to climb over the gate to the water we like to look at so we had to leave the water as well.

Wednesday – today was a good day. Ahhh… it’s so nice to say that. The last two minutes were very bad and things went on the floor and I got my head bonked but I’m choosing to forget those two minutes and remember the good day we had! Blake was pretty good on the playground and didn’t even once try to remove his clothing. Unless you count shoes as clothing which he got in trouble for several times. The last time I decided to teach him a lesson after his shoes came tumbling down the slide before his body intended to. I picked them up in my right hand, waved “g’bye!” with my left hand and started walking away. He stopped giggling and laughing like he had every time I had told him to keep his shoes on. Some may have seen the way he was pitifully limping after me barefooted on the mulch and considered it cruel and unusual punishment. I’ll let them keep his shoes on him tomorrow.

We went back to the stage and he did some kind of strange circling Indian dance for me. It lasted until his speed could not keep up with his girth and he landed on his knee and elbow. He didn't cry, though it looked like a pretty good fall, he picked himself up and sat next to me on the bench rubbing his red knee and making the same noise he does when he’s playing computer games. I patted his back and signed “okay?” Apparently.

My most proud moments were in P.E. today. He ran with the kids laughing and squealing and looking around. Blake goes with the 2^nd graders to P.E. though he’s bigger and the age of 4^th or 5^th graders. The kids started playing this game called “Clean Your Room” or something that sounded altogether unappealing to me as a “game.” It consisted of trying to keep as many of the foamy balls on the other side of the cones by rolling or kicking them. As soon as they started playing Blake, who had been sitting contently next to me, jumped up and went squealing into the tornado of ponytails and tennis shoes. I almost ran after him but he immediately caught on to the gist of the game and even stayed on one side of the cones the whole time. When it was time for them to sit on the line so we could count the balls in each section and see who won, he sat very quietly and patiently and better than a lot of the “regular” kids.

This made me very smiley.

Highlight of Wednesday: Once –and only once- he put his shoes away without me asking.

And the angels rejoiced.

Thursday I got to work with Alex in the morning which he immediately decided was a bad idea because as he put it to the head teacher “she bosses me too much.” Her reaction was the same as mine: a jaw drop, a laugh of ridiculousness, and a head making circles wondering how he could hear that come out of his own mouth and not laugh at his own illogic. “Alex, she is your TEACHER. It is her JOB to tell you what to DO.” Eventually the assistant principle came down and had a conversation with him which involved him telling her that I had hit him which she fortunately did not entertain. Coming back into the room following this confrontation, he gave me one last nasty look and was fine for the rest of the day. I am constantly amazed at how much I truly do have this desire to help him and how often he returns that with disgusted disinterest. I’m not a trained teacher, I don’t know how kids with A.D.D. and hearing impairments and family problems and behavioral disorders learn best. I don’t know why some part of his brain can look at a clock and at the age of ten, have no idea what the hands and numbers mean and have no interest in why that might be important to him. Then I think of what he’ll probably “turn out to be…” and I hate my brain for thinking those thoughts and my heart for turning so cold. I’m reminded of the times the Savior has pursued me and the ways I have demonstrated disgusted disinterest or worse, apathetic indifference.

The upside of today is that Blake behaved wonderfully. He must have gotten up on the right side of the bed. Of course he’s autistic so there were things here and there that had to be corrected and picked up and chased. Overall, we had fun together, Blake and I.

I’ve been walking to and from school the past few days. It’s nice to have a walk before and after to think and step and breathe. The way there is cold, the way home is hot and I think and step and breathe.

Friday is the quietest most laid back day of the week. Somehow it worked out that Blake has three teachers all to himself on Friday mornings so I usually organize something or cut something out or read my book (which is now back to “Anne’s House of Dreams” because I finished “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” on Wednesday and I l-o-v-e-d it, mostly).

This morning in the cafeteria they served pancakes and syrup for breakfast. Blake loves syrup. The previous sentence sends my body into shivers and twitches which I am now trying to control. [I cannot imagine who decided it was a good idea to serve 5 – 11 year olds syrup in a shallow plastic dish which they must carry to their table by themselves (unless they are autistic). If that was your idea and you’re reading this (I believe in long shots) I would like for you to buy me a new pair of brown flip flops, mine are very squeaky now and it takes three times the energy to pull them off of the floor with each step.] Blake dips each mini pancake in the syrup with his fingers, pushing it down until it has sopped up as much syrup as a mini pancake is physically able. He then transfers the pancake from dish to mouth tracking a distinctly sticky trail over side of dish, down table, up shirt on tummy, up collar, up chin and into mouth. Next he makes this horrid sucking noise which you might hear from a nursing home lunch room on National No Dentures Day. When I am watching him and pointing to my throat he will swallow and repeat this process. When I am not watching because I’m cleaning up syrup, he will spit the chewed up pancake devoid of syrup into his hand and put it on the table. It’s now one of those things I’m happy to look back and laugh at; though at the time I’m afraid I was terribly disgusted. Needless to say I was very happy to leave the cafeteria Friday morning and retreat to being third on the list of “people responsible for Blake.”

Today was my favorite outside time we have had. We played on the “balance beam” of wood that borders the playground. We did silent plays for each other on the little stage (I attempted to recite Shakespeare for him and got through about line 3 of the “I left no ring with her, what means this lady?” speech before he was back on stage for his turn and pushing me towards the bench). We did some swinging. We went to the water and threw those round stickly things in and watched them float down the current. I leaped from bench to bench in the water observation area and then he held on to me while he did the same. He’s a big boy and almost smashed me. We went to the unfenced overhang and looked down into the water and I held on to him so he wouldn’t fall. We walked back up the trail with our arms around each other like we were buddies and had a fun day.

I’d like to finish it there. I just don’t even want to write the next part because outside was so nice today and I wish I could’ve just gone home after that. I’ve never taken Blake to lunch before but today it was my job. Nachos and cheese were served. We sat down and the way he acted with his pancakes and syrup this morning was pretty much the way he behaved towards his nachos and melted, processed cheese only sometimes he would just fork the cheese into his mouth forgoing the chips altogether. He was given plenty of cheese, two little cupfuls which he finished quickly and wanted more. Now here’s where I want to rewind my life. I want to relinquish my ideals of Annie Sullivanness. I want to remember that I only have a total of 21 school days with him. I want to ask the cafeteria ladies if he’s allowed to have just a little more cheese. Instead I’m thinking how horrible this child’s eating habits are, how he hasn’t touched the lettuce or the beans, how I don’t want to watch him do that to the cheese again. I sign “no more cheese.” He signs very clearly (unBELIEVable how precise he is when he really wants to be) “I want cheese”. “No more cheese.” He hits the table. Oh boy. My quick hands are ready to save a flying plate of unfinished chips and beans and lettuce. “NO” I sign with my v-e-r-y-d-e-l-i-b-e-r-a-t-e-h-a-n-d-s. I’m not sure if I looked away or sneezed or took a short nap but next thing I know he has bolted to the other side of the room where the exit to the cafeteria food line is, plate and fork in hand. I run in through the entrance and stop him mid way. He is laughing the excited, mad, I’m gonna get my way so you leave me alone laugh. I grab his plate, he throws his fork and runs back to the exit. I grab his arm half way out. He throws his shoe. I say “NO” again. He starts hitting the stacks of chairs against the wall and I know if I don’t hold his arms with both hands those chairs are going to make a Blake and Bethany sandwich. I don’t know where I put the food but I somehow managed to get him fairly locked down and he’s looking at me like he is mad, mad, mad. I pull him over to a table with nothing he can grab anywhere near it and make him put his shoes on. He is signing “cheese, cheese, cheese.” At this point what can I do? If he was most other children of course he couldn’t have any cheese after that behavior. But does he understand that? Does he know how to say please? I tell him it’s time to go clean up. We go back to the table and he is making whiny noises and picks up a napkin and throws it away. I start putting his plate and milk in the trash can because I’m afraid for him to do it.

At this moment I hear Mr. Eric, the supervisor of the cafeteria who Blake will usually listen to saying “No Blake! NO!” He’s running towards Blake who has gone for the two huge buckets at the back of the cafeteria. Blake knocks one off the table with all his might. It is empty and goes bouncing towards Mr. Eric which slows him down in getting to Blake. Before I take three steps towards him bucket number two has come crashing down to the floor launching soapy water everywhere… including all down the front of Mr. Eric’s shorts. My hands go over my mortified face. Just then (as if this were some kind of coincidental plot point in a film) the principle of the school appears out of nowhere giving me a raised eyebrow look and saying “Blake are you okay sweetie?” I marched over and took his hand “he’s fine,” came out of my lips which came out of my beet red face, “he’s just mad about the cheese.” By this point the cafeteria ladies are out of the kitchen looking at me like “mmm… we are going to cook you for lunch tomorrow.” Mr. Eric is looking at Blake like “there won’t be enough left of you to eat for lunch when I’m finished with you” and all the children in the cafeteria are laughing and laughing and laughing.

I saw a new emotion in Blake today, it was fear. He knew this wasn’t funny. We marched back to the room with my hand on his arm and he did not look at a single picture or piece of artwork on the wall like he usually does. He looked straight ahead and whimpered like a lost puppy. I too was looking straight ahead and holding my eyes very wide so he would know this was not a happy time. It was also to keep the tears from spilling out. When we got back to the room I told the teacher what happened as Blake sat himself in the middle of the room and rocked back and forth. I had never seen him affected by something for so long. She marched him down to apologize to Mr. Eric. Then she marched him back and he had to make a card for him about how sorry he was. I wanted to make one too but I didn’t. I wanted to receive one too but I didn’t.

Blake was back to his old self within twenty minutes and we didn’t have any more mishaps that quiet afternoon. I tickled him in the hallway on the way down to the bus. He was walking backwards and giggled. I couldn’t even look in the cafeteria when we passed by and I’m hoping I can talk Blake out of going to breakfast next week.

Run Run-a-run-run-run, Freedom Ru-unn Away

2007-05-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

You'd better run to this blog before I chase you with a stick.

Sorry if week 2 was whiny. Week 3 is better so far. More to come.

Journal Excerpts - Week 2

2007-04-28T16:22:00.000-07:00

Monday – Blake was having a bad day. He started out by throwing things on the floor. A lot of things. The other teacher was working with him during this time, so she did make him clean up after himself.

Alex and I went to the library. I picked out a book about Helen Keller for him to read to me. Is that lame? He said he wanted to read it. I worked with Alex all morning on his reading and writing. It’s really basically like I’m homeschooling him. Everything is one on one and he’s saying “You’re KILLING me!!!!” I’m very thankful that he’s not disrespectful, at least not too disrespectful. We seem to have developed some sort of respect for each other and it just takes a little bit of encouraging and “mean eyes” to get him to keep working. I had him write a paragraph on the kind of music he liked and why. He told me he and his friends liked “raping.” I insisted that they liked “rapping” and found an immediate lesson in doubling the consonant before adding the “ing” without going into too much detail as to why “raping” would be a bad idea.

I did not catch Blake in time today. When I turned around from basking in the gorgeous sunlight his pants and underwear were around his ankles. On top of the most toppish top of the playground he was peeing down onto the dirt and mulch where children are usually happily frolicking. Fortunately he and I were the only ones out there at the time. He giggled and laughed like he had just won the Georgia lottery. I tried to be very stern with him in explaining why that was very bad and we couldn’t play outside anymore today and we were losing playground time and how he made me very sad when he did that. I hope he didn’t see my shoulders shaking when I turned around.

Tuesday was a bad day. The morning started with Alex reading the Helen Keller book to me. It wasn’t a difficult book but it had a lot of words on each page and no pictures. He got very frustrated and put his head down refusing to look at me. Here’s the thing – If I’m not looking at Alex, he can talk to me and I will know what he’s saying. I, however, can not speak to him unless his eyes are on my hands. So him not looking at me is the same as if he just left the room entirely. After I put my hand on his arm asking him to look at me, he claimed that I had hit him. Nobody else was in the room. I told him I was sorry if I had hurt him, my intention was only to get his attention so I could help him. I started to get very frustrated that I was the one apologizing. When the other teacher came back she was able to smooth things over with him. No lawsuits yet. But that respectful connection we had… it’s gone. And my eyes have a watery glaze over them that I don’t let him or the teacher see.

Most of the rest of this week has been a blur.

Blake takes 2 seconds to throw things on the ground.

I point to the things and do not let him move until he has put them away. That takes about 5 minutes.

Blake throws more things.

I point.

Blake picks the things up.

Blake knocks over my pencil jar.

I point.

Blake picks it up.

Blake drops his breakfast in the cafeteria and the cafeteria ladies look at me like I’m in big trouble mister and I look at Blake like why did you do this to me and Blake looks at his breakfast like you still look yummy to me but I think I’d rather jump on you since you’re on the floor.

I take Blake to the playground and do not let him go on the toppest top part and hope that he understands the punishment I am giving him for doing the bad thing from the toppest top.

Blake hits the playground sign. He wants to go to the toppest top.

I hold his arm until he stops.

Blake tries to hit me. This is the first time he has tried that.

I hold his arm until he stops. I look very sad into his eyes. He has no feeling in his eyes for me.

All the romanticism I held for this position is suddenly gone and I am tired. Blake bangs on the desk because his computer game doesn’t work and he doesn’t know how to tell it how to work and he doesn’t know how to fix it and he doesn’t know how to tell me what’s wrong and I don’t know how to fix it because I don’t know about computers or computer games and I hold his hand down and put on a different game and Blake smells my elbow and I wonder if he notices that I didn’t take a shower that morning.

Friday afternoon the school librarian was gone and I got to sit in the library all afternoon and read my book (which is now “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer because I just finished “Liars Club” by Mary Karr who is a lovely and imaginative writer but writes very depressing books) and check out kids books and tell the girls that I love Junie B. Jones too and Nancy Drew books are under “K” for Keene because I love her too and tell the boys that I don’t really know much about extreme biking but it looks neat and can they show me sometime. They look at me. Go back to their class. I don’t care and this is a good way to end the week.

Eric Mendenhall and Bill O'Reilly

2007-04-27T16:34:00.000-07:00

First Off: He's back with a new post. So for those of you who have given up on checking out the Sour Milkage, you should persevere. It's good stuff.

Secondly: I don't usually get into stuff like this but I had to. I have to. I must. It is a sad day to think that this guy is the one who many Christian's turn to to defend their faith in our postmodern culture. It starts off with O'Reilly's hillarious attempt at pronouncing the words "atheism" and "agnosticism." I can see past that. I too make stupid mistakes pretty much every day (which I will humbly admit for, as O'Reilly so wisely points out, Humbleness is one of our Christian virtues). I just thought it was funny. But the arguments he presents to this gentleman, the way he presents his "case," the way he won't even let Dawkins finish a complete thought, and his own postmodern utter denial of Truth in the end is ridiculous. Check it out. And B.Y.O.B.B. (Bring Your Own Barf Bag).

Thirdly: Week two will be out shortly.

P.S. If anyone would like to explain to me in dumb-person terms how to actually post a video on my blog, that'd be greeeeeeeeeat. Otherwise, I'll just post links.

Journal Excerpts, Week 1

2007-04-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

Apparently they chose a strange week for me to start being the permanent sub in the hearing impaired class. It’s testing week, so one of the teachers was out testing a child most of the time and I still am unsure of how many kids are actually in the class.

On the first day Blake (name changed to protect identity) scared me mostly senseless. He is 11. He is deaf and severely autistic. I didn’t know what he could handle or understand so I mostly just watched him. I put his shoes away when he immediately threw them on the floor. I smiled at him when we were alone in the room at the very beginning of the day as tears of confusion began to well up in his eyes. I picked up and threw away his cheese wrapper and yogurt container and fruit snack packaging that he threw on the floor when he was done.

Over the next few days I started enjoying building my relationship with Blake a little more. I decided (while the other teachers weren’t looking) that I would see if I could get Blake to put his own shoes away. Maybe even throw away his own trash. As he sat down to read a book and tear his shoes off, I sat next to him. As soon as his shoes were sprawled on the floor I picked them up and put them on his book. Immediately they were on the floor again. I put them back on the page he was looking at. He made a noise and moved them to the opposite side of the table from me. Again, I put them on his book making the sign for him to please put them away. For a couple of minutes we repeated these actions. He didn’t get angry; he just got them out of his way. Finally and without a shred of emotion Blake stood up and took first his left shoe to the wall and then his right. I almost jumped out of my skin. Surely, even Annie Sullivan herself would have been proud. Picking up his trash was a little bit more difficult but I had read that consistency was very important. I wouldn’t let him sit down or get on the computer until he cleaned up after himself. I would squeeze his elbow, point to the wrapper, and make the sign for “throw away.” He got a little more frustrated with this. He was ready to start playing on the computer. I guess he eventually realized that he wasn’t getting on until he had cleaned up after himself and, just like the shoes, instead of gathering all the trash up in one trip he took it one piece at a time to the trash can. I don’t believe it was to intentionally show me attitude by doing it slowly, I think he just likes to do things one at a time.

Blake and I go outside together for about 45 minutes a day. He loves the nature trail which is alright by me. There’s a little outdoor stage and one time I had him sit on the bench while I did a little silent show for him. I’m sure I would’ve looked highly insane to any passersby. Then I sat on the bench and pointed to the stage. He got up and did his own silent show. I received great amusement from this. Blake seemed wholly unphased by the entire experience and we continued on the trail. He loves to look at the river and we make the sign for water, three middle fingers up in the shape of a W tapping the pointer on your chin.

Wednesday, he tried to take his pants and underwear off on the slide. I caught him just in time. I imagined a picture of myself running after a large and naked eleven year old boy on the playground of a public school flailing his red shorts and whitey tighties behind him.

Thursday, he played football with a big group of boys. He smiled his adorable big smile and just ran wherever the group ran. He had no concept of the ball or any sort of structure. The boys all but ignored him but he had no concept of that either.

Friday, we joined a group of girls doing gymnastics. I showed him my handstand (I’m still such a show-off about that thing) and we of course immediately made a group of friends gaping over a “teacher” being upside down. Blake put his hands on the ground next to his feet and started kicking his feet up a little. The girls all wanted lessons in handstands.

Blake's grandmother -who is his caregiver- seems to have an odd sense of humor about the whole thing. She sends him to school in shirts that say "Out of my mind - back in 5 minutes" and "Not the brightest crayon in the box."

Alex (name also changed) is deaf but he has an implant that makes him able to hear. Unfortunately, it was broken on Monday. So I worked a lot with Alex this week too. He can speak well but with his implant being broken he can’t hear a thing so everything I say to him has to be signed. “Immersed in the culture” as it were, I learned a lot of sign language this week.

Friday afternoon I was alone with Blake and Alex as the other teachers were out. We took a field trip to the library since Alex has a lot of trouble reading and wasn’t interested in the book I was forcing him to read to me. Keeping Blake silent in the library was like asking a fat guy to fast inside of a Golden Corral. Alex picked out a book that he was interested in (it was about Indians) and we made our way back to the classroom. Alex and I spent about three hours working on reading and sounding out words. Interspersed were questions like “why does Blake always like to take his shirt off?” and “why do you really think I need to know how to read in order to get into college?” and “what’s a ghetto? Is it Chicago? That’s where I was born. Is it Jamaican’s that shoot each other? Is it here? Because I get the mail and it says ‘have you seen me?’ with a picture of a kid like me. Is this the ghetto? Do I need to move?”

Sign the answers to those questions for me.

I was able to string together some words I knew for the best answer I could come up with:

“Where you live doesn’t make you the person you are. It’s what you know, what you believe, what you understand, what you think.”

Blake waved to me from the bus for the first time on Friday. And that’s how my week ended.

Do Something

2007-04-19T04:04:00.001-07:00

Urge President Bush to DO SOMETHING about Darfur. I honestly don't know how effective these mass e-mailings to the president are. All I know is that it's one of the few things that I can do right here and now to raise awareness and show support behind the organization that is pushing and begging for America to intervene on behalf of those being brutally murdered. It's very simple to do and this savedarfur.org is a solid and legitimate organization. Click on the LINK and have your say.

So I Have Some Insecurities

2007-04-13T15:38:00.000-07:00

I am very insecure about the Church's view of women. I don't have any problems with God's view of us but I wonder, often, why God made it so easy for women to be viewed as inferior to men, as less valuable to the Kingdom.

Recently I spent the better part of a delightful week with two dear college friends, one of whom just had her first child (a milestone I have yet to arrive at). From the scent of her curled hands with the long brown fingers, to the turn-your-tummy sweetest kind of sickness I felt every time she broke my trance of amazement with a sound from her tiny voice box, it was love at first sight for that baby girl. I couldn't hold or kiss or cuddle her enough.

I am a baby hog of the worst sorts. Holding a baby is like drinking a chocolate shake for me. A chocolate shake that I never get full or fat from. So when somebody else wants a turn I sit there with my knee fidgeting nervously waiting for my next fix. I did notice some things this time, however, that I had never watched closely enough to articulate before. Watching a mommy with her baby is almost as good as holding one myself. A mother, in those first few months after the first nine months, is the child's life. Traditionally, though there are other options now, she is the one person who can give the baby nourishment and life. It was breathtaking to watch.

In ancient Israel it was the hope and honor of all to have boys, for a boy child could possibly be the Messiah. A male could, due to cultural privilege, receive the father's inheritance, carry on the family name, and maybe even prove to be the Savior of the world. I wonder how it never occurred to them to whom God would first entrust this Messiah.

At the inception of the world God could have chosen any method of furthering humanity. We could have grown on trees. Perhaps we could have started as a growth on the father's elbow requiring daily watering and special male maternity jackets to keep the fetus warm. God could have caused the female to die immediately after the birth of her offspring or simply had her whither into a loaf of bread to be eaten by the child until he could find his own food. My imagination, which is minuscule next to that of our Creator, could go to endless places when it comes to the way it could have all worked out. There are two things I do know when it comes to women and Creation: we were made, male and female, in the image of God and God, fully knowing that one day the Messiah would be sent this way, created females with the capacity to be the sole life givers to all humans after their conception. Women's pain and suffering in this would be a result of sin but the privilege to fulfill this part of Creation was the choice of God. With every male child born there was a hope of the Messiah. Why, I must ask, with every female child born was there not a hope that she could be the only human in history that God would choose to carry and hold and give life to the physical manifestation of God? Though Jesus certainly was the One who had been prophesied to them, the One who would bring deliverance, He still would be an offspring of God. The blood that would run through Him would come from Mary. And then what a beautiful picture we have. The One, who by the choosing of God, would receive life from Mary would then turn around and give her Life in return.

I am afraid that a good deal of these Israelite views have carried over into how we view women inside the Body now. We are certainly valued much more highly now than those times allowed almost across the board. I believe that in many ways we are much closer to how we were intended at the Creation to be seen. Still, I am deeply wounded when I see a woman refusing to use her gifts outside of her own home or hear a man say it was sinful for that woman to be "leading worship" as though that were a biblical term and worship was limited to singing at a microphone with a guitar wedged underarm style.

All I would ask is for another look. A mind that is set on seeing through fallen but Redeemed eyes what God intended. I don't know what that would produce, what ancient and skewed paradigms it might turn upside down. I don't know how it might humble many men and maybe even more women. All I know is the restless unsatisfaction of my mind in a world that views women and men through fallen lenses and the hope that redemption can bring us closer to God's intention at Creation.

As I sit and enjoy the silent thrill of an infant asleep on my chest or watch her mother faithfully and sacrificially give her life, I experience momentary amnesia over the questions and hurt I too often associate with women and Christianity. I only remember on whom God chose to bestow such a privilege and hope that with each privilege born a step towards Redemption is taken. A step leading us back to Creation.

Eww Gross, This is Delicious!

2007-03-31T15:16:00.000-07:00

This post probably won't have quite the controversy and feedback as the last one. However, I have a delicious and healthy recipe that I must share with the world. Or you, at least. It has some ingredients that I did not like (mushrooms and black beans) beforehand but I loved them in this recipe. I was afraid to try it at first because I'm usually afraid to try things that include ingredients that I don't normally keep stocked in my pantry but my brilliant streak of courageousness really paid off this time, "toot toot!" (that's the sound of me tooting my own horn. Cute huh?). I got this recipe out of Cooking Light magazine. If the veggies are already cut up it takes around 30 minutes from start to finish.

Southwestern Roasted Vegetable Couscous

1 cup uncooked couscous
1/4 cup water
1 (16 oz. can) fat-free, less sodium chicken broth
1 cup diced red bell pepper (I used green because the red will cost you your first born child this time of year and I don't have any kids yet)
1 cup presliced mushrooms
1/2 cup diced carrots
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1 (11 oz.) can no-salt-added whole-kernel corn, drained
1 teaspoon bottled minced garlic
1/3 cup chopped green onion
1 (15 oz) can black beans, rinsed and drained

Preheat oven to 425 degrees
Place the couscous on a jelly-roll pan, and bake at 425 for 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Bring water and broth to a boil in a saucepan, and gradually stir in couscous. Remove from heat; cover and let stand 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork, and set aside.
While couscous stands, combine bell pepper and next 9 ingredients (bell pepper through garlic) in a large bowl, and stir well. Arrange vegetable mixture on jelly-roll pan; bake at 425 for 12 minutes. Combine couscous, roasted vegetables, onions, and beans in a large bowl, and stir well. Yield 4 servings.

It's as easy as that. I also put in some broccoli and red-onion one time, so it's good with different variations of veggies. It's pretty spicy but in a delicious kind of way. Yum, enjoy!

Departing

2007-03-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

So I finally saw The Departed (since it's now at the 75 cents theater) and was pretty disappointed. Maybe if I had gone in knowing that it was just a good suspense film I would have been happier. Up until a few years ago I hadn't really kept up with awards shows like the Oscars, so when I see that something wins the title "best motion picture of the year" I assume that means something besides "we should finally give this poor over-nominated-but-never-wins-director something to put in his trophy case." I guess I was incorrect. Now I can join the crowd that thinks the Oscars are just some political silliness. All because I saw The Departed the other night for seventy-five cents.

I guess I was holding it in comparison to Babel which was the other film I had seen that was nominated and it was pretty amazing. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Even after I saw The Departed I was riding home thinking about Babel again and what it meant. The Departed was full of suspense, it was a fairly good story that kept you wanting to see what would happen next, it was well acted but that just wasn't enough. I want a story that I don't forget about by the time I've hung my keys up at home. I want a question or two to be lingering in my mind over the next week. I want to see a woman who represents more than just somebody who looks nice in her panties. With this film, that was asking too much. It was just good entertainment for a couple of hours and that's all.

Departing from that subject. Eric just closed The Last Night of Ballyhoo with Georgia Ensemble Theatre. He pretty much rocked the hiz-ouse with his role. It's closed now, so you missed it. Here's his review from the AJC so you can feel like you were kind of there (Please note that Eric's character was only on during the second act but he gets more newspaper time than a lot of the characters that were on the whole time... I'm a little proud). Next he'll be doing Horton Foote's The Chase with Theatrical Outfit which you should make a trip to Atlanta to see. Come on. Just do it.

Hazel Evelyn Cross is now in the outside of the womb world and is two weeks old today. I just love her. I'll be seeing her in less than two weeks and am counting, counting, counting.

If you've never listened to "This American Life" on public radio, you should. It's just wonderful and lovely. Stories are told around a certain theme that you wouldn't normally put together but they fit into three distinct but unified acts somehow. They've recently made a new TV show out of it. I was pretty skeptical about that idea but the first episode which you can watch on their website is pretty stinkin' nifty. It's even worth watching on the little screen if you asked me. Check that out too.

Daffodils are in bloom. I have taken some from this pathway near our apartment that nobody walks on to put on our table and by the window (I left a lot there, just in case somebody else does walk there). Yellow daffodils make the world taste good.

Shameless Plug

2007-02-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

My first "published" article, inspired by none other than "A Healthy Dose of..."

Grandma and Grandpa's Basement.

2007-02-22T12:15:00.000-08:00

It’s amazing how comforting repetition can be when you’re a child. Christopher and I could ride circles around the basement on our scooters for hours stopping only to take turns on who got the “good scooter.” When that got old we would make up routines on the mini-tramps that had survived many days of beating. The one warm patch of carpet became as incredible or simple as we imagined it: a schoolroom with perfect order or a chaotic battle zone, a stage for our favorite books or fantasies to come alive, an artist’s studio, a place to take a nap.

Everything we did there was safe because I knew that Grandpa was upstairs watching the news or throwing Gilly’s ball and Grandma was intently reading a mystery novel through her glasses with the long silver chain.

It was a happy and comfortable place because that morning seated on the soft, overstuffed couch I watched Grandpa, in his chair, read the newspaper and drink his orange juice. It was an exciting place because that afternoon Grandma had let us eat lunch at the mall and given me the intoxicating pleasure of picking out one new book (always Nancy Drew – following in my Grandmother’s mystery infatuation) off of the clean, white shelves smelling of new pages and mysteries revealed.

It was a wonderful place because I knew that night I would kiss Grandpa goodnight on his dry pink lips and feel the silver scruffles of his chin on my smooth one. Upstairs, Grandma would let me pick out one favorite stuffed animal and read me a short book by lamplight. I would then be tucked in like no one has ever been tucked before or will ever be tucked again and have my back patted like a pampered princess until I don’t even know that she’s gone and am dreaming of the delicious time I will have tomorrow.

But I awaken now and it is Tomorrow and I am twenty four years old and tears are streaming down my face because of a basement. It is tomorrow and my Nancy Drew books are in a box in the attic. Here in Tomorrow I wake up and listen to the news and drink my orange juice and I crave the aroma of new pages by lamplight. I am intoxicated and overwhelmed by the image of silver chains and silver scruffles and the mystery of love still revealed here, in Tomorrow.

I'm Not a Quitter...

2007-02-14T18:55:00.000-08:00

...but sometimes I put things off too much. As I have this blog. I found myself wanting to write about a lot of other things and restraining myself because I felt I should be true to what this blog's intention was... a physically healthy lifestyle. Instead, I just wrote nothing (in the blog world at least) while my fingers were itching. I thought of making other blogs with other topics but then I thought I would really never write because I would put too much pressure on myself to cover as many topics as possible.

That said, here I am.

Hoping to write more.

I'm not saying I won't ever write about bodily health because sometimes my mind is racing on that topic. I just need a site to write on. About whatever needs to come out through the written word. Feel free to keep reading as it might come more regularly now. Then again, maybe not.

The title may change too. I'm working on that.

Home again Home again jiggly jig.

2007-01-13T10:07:00.000-08:00

Well, I am back in the good ol' ATL.

I tell you what. It's pretty difficult to eat healthy all the time with Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years all in a row and in between being near your families that are happy to give you free food whenever you want. Eric and I came back to Atlanta (after a great run with the Shakespeare Festival, funny-fun times with our families over the holidays, a super time with Shaun, Melissa, and Jaime over New Years with a short but oh so sweet stop in on the cousins: Zetti and Jason on the way home) on January 1st feeling pretty grossly not healthy and determined to change that. Our budget is a little tighter right now so here's what we've done:

We went to the grocery store and bought lettuce and a few other fresh veggies that were on sale that week. A bag of chicken and some turkey-hot dogs. I immediately went home and washed the lettuce, tore it into salad size pieces and put it in a big bowl with a lid in the fridge. I cut up the other veggies and put them into smaller containers next to the lettuce. There's easy-to-put-together salad which we've been eating usually at least one meal out of the day. The chicken I've used for different meals here and there. Hot dogs are always an easy meal though probably not quite so healthy. There just cheap, which is good right now.

One thing we had waaaaaaay too much of over Christmas was sweets! We have cut way back on those but it's nice to have a little something every now and then. So here's a recipe for some cookies which are very tastey but a little better for you than most cookies. It's a recipe my mom found on the internet, she modified it a little and I modified it a little more and here you have it:

Mmm, Mmm, OatMmmeal Cookies

1 cup butter softened
1 cup white sugar (usually I will use about 3/4 cup white sugar and about 1/8 cup Splenda)
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon (and a dash of nutmeg if you're feeling adventurous)
3 cups oats
Cinnamon-sugar (optional)

In medium bowl, cream together butter and sugars. Beat in eggs one at a time, stir in vanilla.
Combine flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Stir into creamed mixture.
Mix in oats. Cover and chill for one hour (this step is optional).
Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Form dough into small round balls and place on pan.
Bake 7 minutes.
At this time take out of oven and squish the cookies down slightly with a spoon then sprinkle cinnamon-sugar on top.
Put back in oven for another 1 minute and 22 seconds.
Take out of oven and allow to cool for 3 minutes and 49 seconds.
Eat while warm, gooey, and squishy! Or you can eat them later too.

You can always use more Splenda and less white sugar but sometimes that leaves a funny aftertaste. I like substituting some Splenda while keeping that real cookie taste. The original recipe calls for white flour but the whole wheat actually tastes great in this cookie and gives you some extra fiber, even while eating desert!

PS - I make cinnamon sugar: 1 part cinnamon, 1 part white sugar, 1 part splenda.

PPS - Cinnamon has been shown in some studies to help fight early stages of diabetes (so if you're eating it in cookies... maybe they just cancel each other out -- don't you love my brilliant mind?)

I'm sorry...

2006-11-17T07:59:00.000-08:00

...that I have not been faithful to my "every Tuesday posting promise." For those of you who don't know, Eric and I have moved up to High Point, NC for a couple of months to do Christmas Carol with NC Shakespeare. The postings will probably be a bit scarce until we get back to Marietta. The condo they've put us up in is pretty nice but it doesn't have any internet, so that's a bit of a problem as far as blogs go.

Hope everyone is healthy and has a wonderful Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year!

The Day I Saved the Environment and What That Taught Me about Food

2006-10-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

caution: this post is rated PG for language and content

This post may be teetering somewhere closer to the theological world than the one of health and nutrition. At least that was my first thought. Then I began to wonder if perhaps the reason so many of us are such poor examples of what it means to eat and drink to the glory of God is because the latter world has yet to collide and fuse with the former. What we believe about God doesn't affect the way we think about food. An unbeliever can certainly lead a healthy lifestyle just as well as a Christian can. However, his motives will be clearly for his own happiness and wellbeing. How sad when a Christian has no higher motive than these. For the sake of being perfectly clear, when I say “a Christian” I, by all means, am referring to myself.

One of the best things about living in Atlanta is that people come here. Whether it’s a layover in the airport, a night on our couch on the way through or an all out visit, many dear friends are able to drop in on us for convenience, pleasure, or both. Saturday it was a three hour layover in the airport with one of my dearest friends. I had been inspired the evening before to use public transportation to save a little money and a little environment. I set off armed with several books, magazines, a notebook and a lunchbox turned brunchbox to share with my friend on her layover. I’ll be honest; I was looking for a story. The first bus held little excitement and as hard as I searched the sleepy eyes and souls of my fellow environment-savers, I could find little to spark my fingers afire. I acknowledged the racial ratio but found nothing write-worthy other than the over alliterative phrase. It was 7:30 a.m. and no one looked interested in conversing. I read Anne of the Island content to enjoy my morning in silence.

I was almost to the airport on the crowded train when I heard the unmistakable rasp of an older African-American male missing a few teeth. Behind me the voice said, “Anyone know who feed the homeless in Atlanta?” No response from anyone. I realized what a stupid thing it was for me not to know at least where to tell people to get help. I racked my brain but had no idea what to tell the man. After several minutes of unbroken silence he said “Good answer, thank you. I’m a 58 year old homeless man. I need to know where to get some food.” Silence continued until we reached the airport. I remembered my package of food and turned around to look for the man. I could at least offer him a little something to hold him over ‘til he found some help. When I turned I saw an elderly white couple facing the other direction and several younger men. A face that matched the voice I had heard was nowhere to be seen. I continued to throw several glances over my shoulder in different directions and saw no one befitting of my “charity.” Just as I was beginning to think I was crazy or being put through some sort of test by the Lord, my stop came and I began to exit. I looked back for him one last time as I followed the flow of traffic. He had been lying on the seat directly behind me and I had overlooked him. I never saw his face. I often wonder, in these situations, if I will be a goat on the day that Christ separates them from the sheep. I wonder if I had heard Christ’s own toothless voice if I would have stood up immediately and searched the train until I found its origin. One does have to wonder…

The visit with my friend was, as usual, too short and I was back on Marta before I knew it. It was crowded again but this time with a plethora of life, color, language and culture. I tried to keep my eyes on my book but they would occasionally be caught probing the characters in the dialogue surrounding me. I finally had been swept back into the world of “Anne” when a voice from maybe two rows behind me rose from the center isle above the chatter, “Y’all got any spare change?” It was a woman this time, “Anybody got any change so I can get me some food?” I smiled. There was still a can of pineapple, a cup of applesauce and some granola left in my bag. I leaned toward the woman a little bit hoping I could catch her attention without the rest of the trains. Her eyes stared straight ahead. She wasn’t looking at anyone. “Anybody got any spare change? I really need to get some food.” The sudden silence stared at her but no one else did. “Ma’am,” I said in my very timid non-theatrical voice which she did not hear. “Ma’am,” slightly more forceful this time, she heard my approach as I reached for the yellow lunchbox made brunchbox at my feet, “I have some food here you can...” I had it about halfway up when she screeched “Don’t answer me like that bitch!” I could feel my little white face turning to match the red of my shirt. I knew that as a little red person, I would be in the definite minority on the train. “You said you needed some food ma’am, I just thou…” “Man, you eat it. You eat it bitch.” Her voice became louder and angrier with every phrase. “Don’t talk to me like that. Don’t talk to me like that!” After smiling and muttering a quick “okay” I had my head buried back with Anne before she finished her statements and hauled it off to the next train. The commotion that followed made me wish I had a tape recorder. Little pockets of people all over the car exploded in “She didn’t want food, she just wanted money to buy her boos,” and “Ignorant woman. That lady was nice enough to offer her some food, she didn’t want no food,” I heard in a thick urban tongue, “she just wanted her drug money.”

So anyone reading this or riding the train with me can assess the woman’s side of the story. She wanted my “change” not my food. The man on the first train may have been very different. I will never know. However, that’s not the reason I write this story. I will never see someone and know their thoughts. I can not look in a person’s eyes and see their heart. I can only give them mine with my hands and my mouth. My responsibility with food does not rest in whether poor people will take it or not, it rests in me giving it to them with a whole and happy heart. It does not lie in thinking only about food, it lies in understanding to the best of my ability what I put in my body. It should not abide with legalistic restriction but with liberated and wise moderation.

My responsibility to fellow human beings is not to be angered for being embarrassed on a train but to be sad for a soul who thinks “change” will fill her Hunger.

Answers....

2006-10-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

Just want to comment on/answer a few things that have been said here in the past few weeks.

1.) A few favorite fiberlicious sources that I have discovered in my label searching are: raisin bran, whole wheat mini bagels, and prunes. Yum! (Even the prunes, after you get used to them.)

2.) My good nurse friend informed me of a few things I think I should make a bit more clear about sodium. There is such a thing as not having enough sodium in your diet. Our bodies do need it. She suggested that buying a substitute may not always be the best choice as you'll basically just be replacing one electrolyte with another. The best thing is to primarily eat fresh vegetables over canned ones, cook your own food so you control the salt going in, and continue to experiment with other herbs and spices. Like most things having to do with our diets... moderation is the key.

3.) I think the main thing about water in the morning (and you nerdy-types can expound upon this or shoot me down as I am only going by hearsay and experience) is that your body basically becomes dehydrated over night. So filling it up with water imediately after you wake up gets "things" flowing again. Would orange juice do the same thing? I don't know. Anyone?... All I know is I usually have mornings (and those of you who have known me or had to live with me in the morning know that I'm not really human before at least 10:00) where I would think "I have to drink some coffee or I will not make it to my job today." Now that I've been filling up with water first thing, I'm able to enjoy coffee occassionally for pleasure but not because I need it. As far as becoming a water bottle nerd? Eric did get me one for my birthday that's the perfect size and everything... I have been carrying it around pretty frequently. I also have one at work that I just keep filled up in the fridge all the time. I know that doesn't make me a nerd but making me look like one is spiffy.

Thanks for all of your continued help! I'm looking forward to more of it. I have a story coming in the next few days. It's funny and strange and I think I may be able to tie it into the overarching theme of this blog. If not, it's a good story anyways.

I'll have that with two hydrogen ions and one oxygens ion please

2006-10-10T16:14:00.000-07:00

Drink 8 ounces of water the moment you get up.

Do it and tell me how you feel that morning.

Try it instead of coffee.

I'm amazed.

Sodium... the Other White Meat

2006-10-02T20:20:00.000-07:00

First, I would like thank everyone for their input. Special thanks to those of you who know a little something about this... since I am not one of you. You teaching me will definitely be one of my favorite parts about this whole thing. I'm looking forward to it! Carry on...

As much as my mouth waters for chocolate (and boy does it), even my husband will tell you that I'm a salty girl. We rarely keep chips or highly salted snack foods around the house but pinches of salt find their way into sautéed vegetable dishes, chicken marinade, and anything else that my highly advanced cooking skill is unable to make flavorful.

In my sodium research I was reminded that high sodium content isn't found in just those greasy bags of chips or the "S" shaker clasped in your palm even before your first bite. Salt has been used for ages in processing and preserving food for later usage. So when I decide to buy canned green beans because the fresh ones have gotten too expensive, I'm consequently increasing my sodium intake. Canned soup, cured meats, packaged mixes and frozen dinners all contain very high sodium levels. These can all assist in your journey to a little thing called "high blood pressure."

What to look for:
"No salt added" and "low sodium" canned and other foods that are generally high in sodium are fairly accessible. When shopping look for this on the label. There are different levels in the lowness of sodium, so here's what it means when you read these labels:
Sodium Free: is 5 mg or less per serving.
Very Low Sodium: 35 mg or less per serving.
Low Sodium: 140 mg or less per serving.
Reduced Sodium: means the product has about 25% less sodium than the item would normally have.
Unsalted, or No Added Salt: means what it says. However, you should still check the sodium content as it just means there was no salt added during the processing.

New Ideas!
The American Dietetic Association (ADA) has a salt free seasoning guide that I thought looked pretty good. Here are a few of their ideas...

Asparagus: lemon-pepper, onion and herb salt-free seasoning
Broccoli: Italian, or multi purpose salt-free seasoning
Carrots: garlic and multi purpose salt-free seasoning
Potatoes: garlic and herb, onion and herb, tomato, basil, garlic salt-free seasoning

So here's to sodium-reduced living. Because that means I can still eat brownies. Right?

Fiberlicious

2006-09-26T07:55:00.000-07:00

Fiber isn't something I had given much thought to lately... as in, the last 24 years of my life. Mostly because it was another one of those words on the side of the cereal box that I knew I had heard before and probably answered a multiple choice question on it but really never knew what it did for me and why. I found several interesting things out about fiber in my research. Some you may already know about (because you probably remember the things you learned for that multiple choice test), you may even know everything that I'm about to share but I good healthy reminder on the intake of fiber and it's effects never hurt anybody... that I know of.

Here's your quick fiber brush up (there will be a mutiple choice exam on this later in the year, so you might want to take notes). Fiber can be found in high quantities in fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and whole grains. Things like meat, dairy products, and oils have no fiberbolic (that's a bethantific term) value. According to the McKinley Health Center, a healthy adult should have between 20 and 35 grams of fiber every day. Most only consume between 10 and 20. There are several reasons why fiber should be an important part of your diet... here they are in bullet format:

Fiber can reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases, colon cancer, obesity, and diabetes.
The health experts will tell you it will "increase fecal bulk, soften stools, and stimulate the healthy movement of 'foodstuffs' through the digestive tract."
In other words, it'll keep you regular.
Intensifying your fiber intake throughout the day gives you a refueling of energy (so stop refilling the coffee mug and eat an apple or better yet, a pear).
It's fiberlicious.

The experts also warn about upping your fiber intake too much too fast. Here are some fun side effects if you get too fiber-happy (again, in bullet format):

Bloating.
Gas.
Diarrhea.

So, unless you've got some bathroom reading you've really been hoping to catch up on, add it in gradually. I'm going to try monitoring how much I intake on an average day. Experts suggest you increase slowly and let your body have time to adjust. Deliberately add a few extra grams one day and allow a few days for your body to adjust on the new level, then repeat this exercise until you are around 25 to 30 grams of fiber per day. Also on this note, don't forget to drink lots of non-caffenated fluids along with it. Fiber helps draw water into your intestines (thus, the availability of some good poop jokes while discussing fiber) and without the water to pull in... well, I'll be honest, I don't know what happens but I'm gonna say that your intestines will start pulling in other things, like your blood and your bones and small children skipping in front of you on the sidewalk.

Because things like this are helpful to me (I may even use one of my precious Hello Kitty magnets to post this to my 'fridge while taking a closer look at my own fiberlicious -or lack thereof- lifestyle), I thought I'd pass this chart along to you. It's taken from this site.

Dietary Fiber Content of Common Foods

Grain Products	Amount	Dietary Fiber (g)	Calories
Bagels (Cinnamon Raisin, Plain, Blueberry, Egg)	1 whole bagel	2.0	280
Bran Muffins	1 muffin	0.0 - 4.0	~104
Bread, French	1 slice	0.6	81
Bread, Oatmeal	1 slice	0.6	71
Bread, Pita	1 pocket	0.3	106
Bread, Whole Wheat	1 slice	1.6	61
Cornbread	2 x 2 piece	.95	141
English Muffin, Whole Wheat	1 whole	4.4	134
Popcorn, air-popped, no butter	3 cups	4.5	115
Rice, Brown (cooked)	1 cup	3.3	216
Roll, Whole Wheat	1 roll	1.6	101
Spaghetti (cooked)	1 cup	2.2	197
Spaghetti, Whole Wheat	1 cup	4.5	174
Tortilla (Corn)	1	1.0	67

Breakfast Cereals	Amount (cup)	Dietary Fiber (g)	Calories
All-Bran™	1/3	10.0	70
All-Bran Extra Fiber™	1/2	13.0	50
Bran Buds™	1/3	8.0	70
Bran Chex™	2/3	6.1	90
Bran Flakes	3/4	5	100
Corn Bran™	2/3	5.4	109
Corn Flakes	1	1.0	100
Cracklin Oat Bran™	3/4	6	190
Fiber One™	1/2	14	60
Frosted Mini-Wheats™	1/2	3.0	100
Grape Nuts™	1/2	5	200
Granola-type	1/4	2.0	120
Granola-type (low fat)	1/4	1.0 - 3.2	120
Kashi Medley™	1/2	2	100
Nutri-Grain™	2/3	3.0	140
Oatmeal	3/4	1.6	108
Smart Start™	1	2	180
Raisin Bran	3/4	5.0	120
Wheaties™	1	3.0	110

Legumes (Beans)	Amount (cup)	Dietary Fiber (g)	Calories
Baked (cooked), canned	1	6.0 - 10.0	250
Black Beans (cooked)	1	7.2	227
Kidney (cooked)	1	6.4	225
Lentils (cooked)	1	7.9	231
Lima (cooked)	1	13.5	217
Navy (cooked)	1	6.6	259
Pinto Beans (cooked)	1	6.8	235

Crackers	Amount	Dietary Fiber (g)	Calories
Saltines	8 crackers	.74	100
Triscuit™	7 crackers	4	140
Wheatables™	16 crackers	1	150
Wheat Thins™	16 crackers	2	140
Whole Wheat Crackers	7 crackers	2.9	134

Nuts and Seeds	Amount	Dietary Fiber (g)	Calories
Almonds	22 nuts/1 oz.	3.1	176
Cashews	18 nuts/1 oz.	1.7	163
Filberts (hazelnuts)	1 oz.	1.8	187
Peanuts	1 oz.	2.2	184
Peanut butter	2 tbsp.	1.9	190
Pecans	15 halves/1 oz.	1.8	190
Popcorn, popped with oil	2 1/2 cups	2.8	142
Sunflower seeds	1 oz.	1.9	75
Walnuts	14 halves/1 oz.	1.3	182

Vegetables	Amount	Dietary Fiber (g)	Calories
Asparagus	1/2 cup	1.9	23
Broccoli (raw)	1/2 cup	1.2	12
Carrot (raw)	1 medium	2.3	31
Cauliflower	1/2 cup	1.3	13
Celery (raw)	1 stalk	0.6	6
Corn	1/2 cup	1.7	67
Cucumber (sliced)	1/2 cup	0.5	7
Green Beans	1/2 cup	1.9	23
Greens, Collard	1/2 cup	2.0	30
Lettuce (shredded)	1 cup	0.4	6
Potato (with skin)	1 large	8.52	310
Mushrooms	1/2 cup	.34	13
Spinach (boiled)	1/2 cup	2.0	21
Tomato (raw)	1 medium	1.6	26
Zucchini (raw)	1/2 cup	0.3	9

Fruit	Amount	Dietary Fiber (g)	Calories
Apple (with skin)	1 medium	3.0	81
Banana	1 medium	1.8	105
Cantaloupe	1 cup	1.3	57
Grapefruit	1/2 medium	0.7	37
Grapes	1 cup	1.6	114
Honeydew melon	3/4 cup	.8	46
Peach (with skin)	1 medium	1.4	37
Pear (with skin)	1 medium	4.3	98
Pineapple	1 cup	1.8	76
Strawberries	1 cup	3.9	45

One more quick and helpful hint came from "Label Savvy" expert Sarah Lowrey who says to shop for foods containing a minimum of 2-3 grams of fiber per serving and always look for the word "whole" before the word "grain." Don't worry so much about the number of calories, she says to consider the nutritional quality before thinking about that.

There you have it! A fiberlicious lifestyle free of constipation and full of natural energy is yours for the swallowing. Got great ideas about fiber? Did I leave pertinent information out? Let me know here and I'll be sure to give you extra credit on your first quiz.

Welcome!

2006-09-16T06:32:00.000-07:00

...to a new blog with a new idea.

"We feed ourselves, not to please our senses, but to show our Lord that we want to work for Him and with Him."

~Mother Teresa

I don't need to explain the importance of healthy eating. It's something we all acknowledge with the nod of our head whether or not we acknowledge it with the fork in our mouth. Eating is a problem on so many ends of the spectrum that it is impossible to address all the ways that people disrespect thier bodies and so much more when it comes to food. This is not going to be a blog about "body image" or dieting or calories or even restriction. This will be my journey of unearthing what it means to literally eat to the glory of God. You don't have to be a Christian to benefit from what I will be discovering but I hope that as I continue to learn what it means to surrender every part of my life to "true spirituality" that Christians, in particular, will have extra incentive to learn along with me.

Every Tuesday I will be adding some sort of healthy eating tip, recipe, or idea to the site. I will try to keep practicality as well as financial and timing constraints in mind as I post. I myself have a fairly small food budget and don't have time to cook all day. With those constraints it is especially easy to sell out to food that does little for your body besides stop the noise in your belly.

This will be good to hold me accountable as I learn what it means to help in providing what my family (as small as it may be at the moment) needs. It will also keep me writing on a deadline, something which I would like to practice. I hope it will be beneficial to you as we discover what "a healthy dose of..." really is.