Yep, My Genes

Guess what we did today?

I bet "digging through the hope chest because Mama started cleaning the closet and got on a re-folding, opening-up-drawers-and-chests tear" didn't cross your mind first.  But anyway digging through the hope chest (cedar chest, I suppose I should call it now, since I'm not "hoping" to get married anymore) I found this cup, which I got I think for high school graduation and which I had forgotten I possessed.  I was charmed.  Miss Boo was charmed.  We simply HAD to have a tea party.

The guest was extremely well behaved, even if she did tend to keep switching hats with me.  Yes, that's a real china cup she has there.  Thanks Nomi!

We took careful sips with both hands.

And the cup HAD to be Miss Boos because it had roses on it.  So, there you go.  It's like, fate or something.  Or a great-grandma who knows a thing or two about tea parties.

What was The Destroyer of Worlds, aka Brother, doing while we were having a tea party, you may ask?

Growling and moving furniture.  It's the American Pastime.

Sometimes he just chills out, trying to decide if he's ever going to take an unassisted step.  So far he finds walking by himself underrated, and much slower than crawling.

Other times, he likes to play "Baby Wombat popping up out of nowhere to scare the spit out of Mama Wombat".  Guess who plays Mama Wombat.

In Holy Week prep, we have completed the housecleaning (bet you wondered why I was digging through closets...) and have been duly trying to meditate, while sorting through old shoes, on the way Christ has to clean out our hearts.  I really hope there aren't the spiritual equivalent of seven pairs of black flipflops in my soul...

Grandma brought an Easter Tree over today, so we decorated that (sorry, no pictures) and also a nice little devotional that we'll be doing.

The Husband and I are trying the experiment of wearing the cross necklaces we gave each other during Holy Week, as reminders to pray more.  Also, they are very nice necklaces, and I have to teach Brother not to strangle me by my jewelry sometime.

So much for Holy Tuesday and the prep work.  Tomorrow used to be known as Spy Wednesday for the logical, if not particularly poetic, reason that it represented the day that Judas betrayed the Lord to the religious mafia of the day.  Perhaps it will help if, instead of getting incensed at a guy who hanged himself so many years ago, I repeat my meditation on Judas from last year.

Talk to you on Spy Wednesday.

Cheers,

Breanna

The Girl Who Doesn't Need A Nap

Ever.  Never ever, Mama.

Those "begats".  They'll getcha every time.

The question for Mama is: it's 3pm.  She's supposed to go to bed for the night in 4 hours.  Do I wake her?

How can I?

Sigh.

Breanna

Holy Week Commences

Yes, yes, yes, I'll post pictures of the kids in their Easter clothes.  Just not today.  I need to write about things today.

First of all, in pursuance of my recent obsession with "church time", or the liturgical year, we're going to celebrate Eastertide this year.

You may not know that Easter has traditionally been a season, like Advent, or that there's a whole set of meditations that lead up to it.  Because of certain yucky things that have been happening in our local church lately, it's nice to be joining the communion of saints--i.e., all Christians everywhere--that is untroubled by such things.

And so we have three days this week to shop and plan and work, before we reach Maundy Thursday.  Sabbath observers don't by or sell on Sunday; they don't do work; and they don't pursue secular activities.  I like football and I haven't been convicted that I need to use this particular spiritual discipline, but it's something to consider as we come to the most important Sunday in the church year.  Originally Christians celebrated the death and ressurection of Christ every Sunday, after all.  I am going to concientiously try (try! I have babies) to plan my week so that all my buying and selling is done, and all my housework is done, before sunset on Thursday.  (Not cooking.  Cooking I will be doing, but after all, someone had too cook the Last Supper, right?)

Sunset on the Thursday before Easter, the Tridium (or "Great Three Days") begins.  On Maundy Thursday we remember the Last Supper, and Jesus washing the disciples' feet.  Apparently some churches actually engage in a footwashing service on this night.  Then, traditionally, the altar of the church, which is generally a decorated place, is stripped and shoved against the wall.  This symbolizes when Jesus was stripped--of His clothes, His dignity, and His freedom.

We have no altar in our house, per se, and I'm pretty sure our little SBC church has never heard of the Tridium, but it might be a healthy exercise in perspective for me to get a warm washcloth and wash the two pairs of little tootises that I'm responsible for every day.

Come to think of it, I wonder why we don't have an altar in our house, or at least a corner devoted to prayer.  Hm.

Good Friday is, of course, the Friday before Easter.  We'll be celebrating a Seder on Good Friday evening, which the Husband leads in superb fashion.  We're under the new covenent, so while we try to keep kosher for the meal, we alter the Haggadah a little.  Instead of the whimsical rabbincal tale that our Haggadah ends with, my husband smoothly transitions to Corinthians, and serves us all Communion.  It's incredibly meaningful every year.

Often in Protestant circles we don't celebrate Maundy Thursday or Holy Saturday, which is what comes next, but it might behoove us to do so.  Holy Saturday is the day that Christians have traditionally kept vigil, remembering the time Christ spent in the tomb.  I can't fast this year, because I'm nursing a baby and there's all kinds of things that go wrong if nursing mothers fast, but typically the observance on Holy Saturday is a fast.  We're doing the next best thing and having a day of simple food, a rest between the "festive meal" of Passover, remembering the first time the Lord freed His people, and the Feast of Easter, remembering when the Lord freed the universe.

Then, of course, comes Easter.  It's actually a little more difficult to make Easter meaningful than it is to make the days leading up to it meaningful.  For one thing, nobody who isn't a Christian is going to be worrying what Maundy Thursday is, but everybody can get behind dying eggs and chocolate bunnies.

Like many Christian holidays, Easter took over from a pagan holiday--the festival of the goddess Ishtar, actually.  This isn't a bad thing, or any kind of indictment against the holiday.  We won, see.  Nobody wakes up on Easter saying "Go Ishtar!"  In fact, people who never otherwise attend church come on Easter.  But there are remnants of the pagan holiday running around, just like the secular landslide of "The Holidays" between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Namely, the bunnies and the eggs, potent symbols.

--PG-13 REFERENCE COMING UP, HIDE THE EYES OF KIDS--

As the comedian Eddie Izzard says, "Eggs are for fertility and the rabbits are for shagging."  (Sorry.  But this is a grownup blog, not for kids.)  In a C.S. Lewisan kind of way, this actually makes sense.  Lewis had this theory that there were germs of truth hidden inside most of the old legends and pagan beliefs, like bits of information smuggled across enemy lines.  The Lord could use these germs of truth to prepare people for the Gospel.

So, two symbols associated with the making of new life--eggs and rabbits--go very well with a holiday that is deeply about life, about the conquering of death, about resurrection.  Granted the eggs and the rabbits were originally accessories of a tawdry pagan goddess, who had a story about like what you'd expect from a tawdry pagan goddess.  But so potent is His death and resurrection that even the dang eggs and rabbits have been redeemed.  Get it?

I orignally mulled putting together an Easter basket for the kids without eggs or bunnies in it.  They do sell chocolate crosses, after all, but standing in the aisle at Wal-Mart holding one made me feel vaguely sacreligious.  (Chocolate?  This is an instrument of torture and death.  Why not make chocolate electric chairs and nooses while we're at it.  On second thought, don't mention that to the candy makers, or I'm sure they could sell a lot of them on Halloween.)  And hopefully, by the time we get to the eggs and the bunnies, the kids will understand on some level that this is all about Him, that our lives are all about Him, that the entire universe, in the end, is all about Him, and the central event that shook the heavens:

He is risen.

Cheers,

Breanna

They Did What Now?

Yep.

They made it law.  If you happened to be hiding under a rock yesterday, I'm talking about "health care", the bill that PBO just signed to insure every American.  Or something like that.

From what I can glean, reading an equal amount of glowy, rainbow-y tributes and angry, steamy ranting, what the bill actually comes down to is: buy health insurance or pay extra on your taxes.  There is no low-cost option for insurance, so pretty much people are stuck with the same cost for healthcare they've always had.

Just as an example, let's pretend that if the Husband's employer didn't offer us health insurance as a benefit, that we could get our insurance from Blue Cross Blue Sheild at the same rate that we get it now.  (This is just for an example.  We couldn't get it this cheap--the company gets a deal.)

We pay right around $260 per month for insurance for our family.  If money was tight (as it presumably is for uninsured people), it would make more sense for us financially to pay $400-$700 in our taxes each year than it would to pay over $2400 in insurance.  And that's just if we could get the insurance for our current rate--we almost certainly could not.  It would be much more likely to be $2400 a month, to insure the whole family, with vision and teeth.

You can argue that it will ultimately cost more to be uninsured.  Maybe--but that doesn't change the fact that we don't have an extra $2400 per month laying around.  We simply don't have the ability to buy insurance if our employer doesn't help.

So ultimately what this legislation would mean to us, were we uninsured, is that we would remain uninsured, but we would have to pay (minimum) $400 more on our taxes every year.

I think universal healthcare is predicated on the idea that no one is uninsured willingly, they are uninsured because they lack the money to be insured.

So this legislation makes sense how, again?

Breanna

Now That's Not Episcopalian!

Sorry, the title of this piece is another movie line only my immediate family will get... the line is from The Shakiest Gun in the West, with Don Knots.

Anyway, I bought a Book of Common Prayer.  Why, when I'm neither Anglican nor Episcopalian?  Well, I decided it was something we should have in the house, simply from a historical perspective.  After all I have Karl Marx and Charles Darwin in the house for historical teaching purposes, and the prayerbook is much more useful than those two. 

Secondly, I've been thinking about praying the psalter, and I wanted someone else to divide the psalms up helpfully for me so I could just move a marker instead of having to go through my Bible and parse out how many psalms to read a day.  Yep, I'm that lazy.

Thirdly, I wanted a reliable calendar of the church year, that was meant for Protestants.  Not a lot of those floating around that aren't derivative from the prayerbook

Fourthly, it was cheap.

But get this!  I found this gem in there, under "Prayers for the sick, in the morning":

This is another day, O Lord.  I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be.  If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely.  If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly.  If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently.  And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly.  Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus.  Amen.

How about them apples?  There's something to think about each morning.

The book also contains all the parts for marryin', buryin', baptizin' and holiday services.  So.  You know.  I'm covered in case there is some kind of Terminator-esque disaster and I'm the lone person left who has any knowledge of religion and I'm called upon to do a postapocalypic wedding... you know, if there are no men left in the community except the dude getting married. 

Ok, so it won't happen.  It's still nice to have the book.

Okeydokey, me and Jonah are off to pray the psalms together...

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.  Well, Eugene Peterson tells me that Jonah's prayer in the belly of the fish is a crazy quilt of phrases he stole from the Psalms.  Apparently he would have prayed them through routinely.  Peterson points out this was common practice for all sorts of Christians for thousands of years, until lately when we all became obsessed with things like the Prayer of Jabez.  Not sure I really know how to pray the psalms, but at the very least I can stop at the selahs and say "me too".  I'll let you know how it goes.

St. Patty's Day and God is Good

A girl who spent so many years in Butte can't let St. Patrick's Day go by without noticing.  Since I don't particularly like the Butte method of celebration (get sloshed before 10am, before 9am if possible), we had corned beef, colcannon, and soda bread.  It was very nice.

Even if Miss Boo and Brother weren't too sure what they thought about Feinian cuisine.  You'll notice they are both wearing green shirts.  It was Brother's second green shirt of the day.

Today, Brother raises one finger to interject during his sister's exegesis of a particular text, then realizes he can't dispute:

"Mama, God is good!"

(She asked for her Bible to read during breakfast, since that's when I read mine, because, well, if I don't read it then, with both kids conveneintly strapped down, I don't get it read half the time.)

Cheers,

Breanna

A Thought

Dad gave me Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness by Eugene Peterson to read whilst I was in exile at their house and the Husband was in exile in Arkensas.  Returned from our Diaspora, I am very slowly working my way through the book.  And while I agree with Dad, who says "You can see why they call him a liberal theologian", I think the man has a fistful of points that hit home.

The book is about pastoring, but I think it really applies to any vocation.  For instance, Peterson talks about the application of products to congregations, in an attempt to make them bigger, or happier, or healthier or whatever, and how that is really idolatry and a snare of the devil.  How often, I thought, do we apply products (like self-help books, lists off of TV shows, or tips from magazine articles) to our families or marriages?  And isn't it the same thing?

Here is a passage that struck me, one that Peterson says was originally about monasticism and which he substituted "pastoring" for; I have substituted "family" or "marriage" or "mothering" for his substitutions.  (Clear as mud? Buy the book and read the original passage.  It's worth it.)  Here it is with my substitutions of his substiutions:

What is useless and destructive is to imagine that enlightenment or virtue can be found by seeking for fresh stimulation.  The mother's life is a refusal of any view that will make human maturity before God dependent on external stimulus, "good thoughts", good impressions, edifying influences and ideas.  Instead, the mother must learn to live with her own darkness, with the interior horror or temptation and fantasy.  Salvation affects the whole of the psyche; to try to escape boredom, sexual frustration, restlessness, unsatisfied desire by searching for fresh tasks and fresh ideas is to attempt to seal off these areas from grace.  Without the humiliating and wholly "unspiritual" experiences of family life-- the limited routine of trivial tasks, the sheer tedium and loneliness--there would be no way of confronting much of human nature.  It is a discipline to destroy illusions.  The mother has come to the family to escape the illusory Christian identiy proposed by the world; she now has to see the roots of illusion within, in the longing to be dramatically and satisfyingly in control of life, the old familiar imperialism of the self bolstered by the intellect.  (Emphasis and substitutions mine.)

Wow, huh?  And the thing of it is, it applies to everything.  That's probably at least one reason why the book of Jonah is in the Bible; everyone, in every situation (not just mine! not just yours!) is regularly tempted to just quit, to chuck it, to drive off into the sunset with the music turned up, and to find the better life.  Recognizing that it is really a temptation and not a legitimate need or longing is half the battle. 

"Grow where you are planted" is a trite way of saying what I'm getting at (and I hate that saying, actually, mostly because it's usually accompanied by bad art of a flower in a tin can or something).  In a more profound way, we can recognize that our vocations (whether they are mother, engineer, nurse, pastor, farmer, or whatever) are the conditions we have been given for sanctification.  Saying that we'll become sanctified as soon as we get a new job (or as soon as our husband starts doing his fair share, or as soon as the kids are sleeping through the night, or as soon as we lose the weight) is the same as saying we'll be sanctified when there's nothing else on our list--or, never.

As C.S. Lewis puts it in the Screwtape Letters, Satan's strategy would be to never let us suspect that the hypothetical object of our fear ("what if I lose my job?") isn't the cross we're being asked to bear.  The fear (or the boredom, or the loneliness, or the routine) is, and the grace we are provided with will help us with that current temptation.  But attempting to submit to a dozen hypothetical futures at once ("He'll never help me with the kids, I'll get fat and wrinkled, and my house will always be a mess!") is rather silly, and we shouldn't expect much help with it.

Just food for thought today...

Breanna

Stupid Farmers

Marge: Remember, Homer, you have to get up an hour earlier because of Daylight Savings Time.

Homer: I hate Daylight Savings Time.  Stupid farmers.

--The Simpsons

I hate daylight savings time too, and this year I finally looked up why it came about.  Apparently it is an idea which took a world war to gain traction.  How many other things implemented in World War One have proven to advance human happiness?

What I found hilarious is that the two main ideas behind it were that the government could 1) force people to get up earlier and enjoy more of the sunshine and fresh air and 2) force people to turn off their lights and save energy.  How's that working out for everyone?

Let those who think the government should force people to stop drinking soda, exercise, or use green products weigh their decision with great care, preferably on the Sunday that they switch over to DST.  I resent DST, not only because I hate to get up an hour earlier and because it plays royal hobb with my kids' schedules, but because I resent being forced toward someone else's idea of virtue.  I am an adult.  I vote in presidential elections.  I am permitted to decide all manner of things for myself, some of them very impactful to public health (i.e., vaccinations).  So why in the name of Jefferson am I not allowed to decide to get up or sleep in?

I find it revealing that one of the early, passionate proponents of DST got the idea while riding early one London morning and feeling sad that so many other people were sleeping through the glorious sunshine.  In other words, the system was invented by a natural lark who already liked getting up early.  I suspect he was also one of those people who can't imagine that, if you really tried it, you would dislike anything they liked.  If you continue to dislike it, you haven't tried it properly.

Very seldom do I ask people to engage in social action.  They want to take the Ten Commandments out of the courthouses?  Very sad, but not worth a lot of heartburning, energy, and distraction.  Nobody says "Merry Christmas" these days?  Wear a protest button at your own risk.  Women underrepresented in the engineering professions?  Prove it's intentional before I'll do anything about it.

But my beans have been steamed for the last year by DST.  I say the people should rise up, write to congresspeople and demand that we stop it.   Let's just lead the world and refuse the twice-yearly dance.  Let's take back the freedom to decide when to get up, when to go to bed, and other basic human rights like that.

Who knows?  It might work.

Power to the people!

Breanna

Perhaps You Can Tell...

...the walking has continued.  Or at least, the standing, leaning forward, and then sitting down--POW!

Also this week Miss Boo decided she likes sitting on the potty chair.

And she HATES Brother coming anywhere near the potty chair.

So yeah, it's been a POW!-filled, potty-filled week.  More pictures soon.  As soon as I get my house back to being a potty-free zone.

Cheers,

Breanna

Guess Who's Walking?

He took his first step last night whilst I was in the kitchen, taking care of a chicken carcass I want to turn into broth.

He was chasing the dog.  I think I'm going to need some extra grace here soon.

(Miss Boo loves buckwheat pancakes.  I discovered a recipie at the same time I discovered my healthfood store sells buckwheat in bulk, for cheap.  I've always wanted to make buckwheat pancakes ever since reading certain Grace Livingston Hill books, where her grannies/aunties/smart housekeepers are always making buckwheat cakes for breakfast.)

He took his second step to me, actually his second two steps.  Then he laughed, decided walking was too slow, and took off crawling.  You'll notice his pictures are all in the high chair.  It's hard to get him to hold still.

Not sure what she was looking up in my "One Year Bible".  Maybe an admonition for her brother (or Mama, more likely.)

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.  Oh!  And I sold another short story.  It's a variation on Beauty and the Beast called "Finding Beauty", and it'll be up at The Enchanted Conversation on April 2.  They paid me $50!  Woohoo!

In My Father's House

In my Father's house are many mansions

Many mansions in my Father's house

In my Father's house are many mansions

Many mansions in my Father's house

I go to prepare a place for you, for you

I go to prepare a place for you, for you

In my Father's house are many mansions

Many mansions in my Father's house.

--Steve Green "Hide 'Em in Your Heart" Scripture Songs

A couple of things have happened this week.  First, a great uncle that I only met a few times has gone home to Heaven--a loss that was expected, attended by his family, and gentle, but still a loss.  So I've been thinking about Heaven a little more this week, though, no doubt, not as much as I should

The other is that on Monday night, Brother pulled over the torchiere lamp and shattered the shade on an end table, quite impressively.  He sobbed and watched while the Husband cleaned up the glass, and while I held two squirmy fascinated kids.  On Tuesday we went out to Home Depot to look for replacement shades, which they apparently only sell in some expensive online store in Connecticut.  Since a replacement glass shade cost as much as a new lamp, I bought a new lamp.  We installed it, decided we liked it, and went to bed.

On Wednesday morning Brother, scooting innocently around the couch, knocked the lamp over again with his butt.  I am still not sure how he managed this: I can barely lift the new lamp, it's so heavy, and we haven't been able to replicate it falling.  The shade wouldn't have broken if it had fallen to the carpet; as it was, the updown happened to be sitting in an unusual place on the floor, just where the lampshade hit--and shattered.

So Brother yelled in the playpen, Miss Boo yelled on the couch, and Mama tried gingerly to pick up the second shattered glass shade in two days.  It took two rounds of vacuuming to get it all.

Then it was time to get everybody dressed and breakfasted, and at the table Miss Boo began singing the little Scripture song above, and once again I was surprised at how the Word can penetrate, even when sung by little kids.  (I'm not sure why I'm surprised.  The Word is the Word, after all, whether it's read or sung.)

In my Father's house are many mansions?  That's right.  So what's a lamp or two?  What, in fact, are entire houses?  Here I'm a sharecropper, of sorts, but there I'm a son.

It made for interesting meditation fodder as I ran around town (again) looking for lampshades.

Incidentally, I found two fabric shades at Target that fit the bases of the lamps, and that look just fine.  So now I have two lamps instead of one, and the Lord taught me a valuable lesson: why waste fretting on things that won't follow me to my Father's house?

Which is not to say I won't make the same mistake again, but at least I'm making a start.

Cheers,

Breanna