Go Steelers!

Just in case any of you didn't know, we are Steelers fans here at the homeplace.

We're having all sorts of fun food and Steelers paraphenalia on Sunday, including watching a History of the Steelers DVD and dressing in black and gold. (Not for church. At least not me. But even the baby has a Steelers jersey. I mean even the unborn baby.)

If you're not here with us Sunday, you really ought to be--- I don't know where there will be a house outside Pittsburgh that will follow the game with more angst and emotional involvement.

OK, Miss Boo needs to be put to bed something awful-- she just woke up in bed by herself and is offended about it.

See you after the game!

Breanna

The Church Year for Protestants

I have been reading a very interesting book over the last couple of days-- one of those books that, although I'm almost finished with it, I've already decided I'm going to start over again as soon as I read the last page. It's called Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life by Margaret Kim Peterson.

It's about what the author calls the "theology of housekeeping". She points out that a surprising amount of the Bible deals with what might be considered cosmic housework-- feeding the five thousand, the building and furnishing of heavenly houses, etc.--but the point I liked the best was that whatever Christ's command to feed the hungry and clothe the naked means, it also applies to the people living in our own houses. Therefore, every time we cook dinner or do the laundry, we are fulfilling part of the Gospel. Gives you a new inspiration to get the laundry folded, doesn't it?

She also compares the rhythm of household work to the rhythm of the Church Year, or the annual cycle of fasts and feasts that is observed by liturgical denominations and mostly not known/paid attention to by "evangelical" denominations. That is, we celebrate Christmas and Easter, but wouldn't know what Maundy Thursday was on a multiple choice quiz. Here is a Church Year chart, for those of you who don't have the nifty church history book I do:

"Season after Pentecost" is generally called "Ordinary Time" but this chart is different for some reason.

I have been thinking that there might be several advantages to following the Church Year, although of course it's not written anywhere in Scripture and so it's one of those optional things like whether or not to have an electric bass during the worship service. What I mean is that if you follow the Church Year at home, you have the experience of each day meaning something and reminding you of something about heaven-- you are feasting to celebrate one of Christ's victories or to anticipate the final one, or you are fasting to remember His sacrifice or because you miss Him in a way that won't be alleviated until you're in His physical presence at the end of time. You are constantly reminded that life has a spiritual dimension as well as a physical one.

Personally I think it might be kind of nice, not to do in any strict way, but to keep in mind generally... perhaps to change the colors of the centerpiece on the table to match the color of the part of the Church Year, or change the types of meals we fix to fit the fast/feast/ordinary season. To add onto your Bible study jubilant or mourning or steady psalms (there are some--how about the psalm where David compares himself to a weaned child?).

A lot of us do it anyway in a way; we cook special meals at Easter and Christmas and don't even remember that they are formally feasts; we know we're supposed to think a little somberly on Good Friday about the crucifixion; we sometimes put an Advent wreath on our tables.

What would constitute observance of the Church Year would be different (and optional) for everyone, just as observance of what a lot of evangelicals call "devotions" looks a lot different from the formal church practice of praying at certain pre-set hours. The point is to pray; the point of observing the Church Year would be to remember we're citizens of a different kingdom that runs on different time.

What say you? Is there a way that our homes can be distinctly Christian homes that doesn't just involve the hanging of certain plaques and the fact that we play Christian radio instead of the top 40 (if we do--I am a Christian radio heathen, I don't really like Christian music radio, but that's another post...)? Biblically a Christian home will look different because Christians look different. Our spiritual reality should be present in our physical reality, even if it's just praying before meals, but could it be more than just praying before meals?

I don't know if observing the Church Year is the best way to incorporate an awareness of the Kingdom into daily life, but it might be an interesting thing to try.

Happy Sunday,

Breanna

Coming Out of the Closet

No-- not that way. But I'm coming out about the reason I've been cheerfully trying to make sure everyone I know understands how to cook dried beans. First, because I'm garralous, a helpful anecdote.

So there was this nurse I worked with in a job which shall remain nameless in case anyone at that hospital reads this blog someday. She was...abrasive. She didn't mean to be, I think, but gosh. Paint came off the walls when she walked into the room, but not because she charmed it off. Anyhow, this nurse revealed her vulnerable side once when asking how to make a dish that called for cornmeal. Was that the same thing that came in the Jiffy corn muffin mix? Noooo, said the nurses's lounge, after taking this in. That was corn muffin mix. Cornmeal came by itself in a bag, in the baking aisle, and made many things besides corn muffins. This, along with the fact that a girl I was at university with asked the class in all seriousness if anyone had a recipe for tuna salad, because she wanted to make it, made me understand a shocking thing about America:

Nobody knows how to cook. (Present company excepted... if I know you. If you are a random stranger, you might want to keep reading.) In normal circumstances this would be deplorable, but not actually dangerous unless we're talking contaminated peanut butter or raw eggs. However, these are not normal circumstances. Even Oprah knows this.

This is my "coming out" moment: I think the economy's going to get worse before it gets better, regardless of Mr. Obama's best efforts. I don't think you can fix the kind of recession we're in, and in private I have even been bandying about the word "depression." As in "like the 1930s, only nobody knows how to cook."

Why is it a big deal if nobody knows how to cook? Well, to put it simply, if everyone is living tighter then nobody can afford to pay people to cook for them. I don't just mean McDonald's, but also Keebler. I know people who think that beans only come in cans, pre-cooked. What's dangerous about this is that if food budgets become straitened, people will have to fall back on inexpensive food like dry beans (1/4 the price of canned, at my supermarket), rice, and cornmeal--which are some of the things the government hands out to folks who get commodities, by the way-- and they will have no idea what to do with it. They'll maybe ruin a good bit of it. And then they'll either eat vile food or go hungry.

I hope I'm wrong and that everything will get better later this year. It would still be good to know how to cook, though, just to be able to keep more of your money. Wouldn't it be better to know how to make your own delectable pot roast from tasty Montana beef, instead of defrosting an icky one from Swanson that may have been slaughtered in Portugal for all you know?

So do this for me, to make me feel better about all of you in These Trying Times: just learn to make a good beans and rice dish from dry components. One you really like. The internet is full of recipies; check out my sidebar link to The Hillbilly Housewife and Frugal Abundance (under Frugal Food Storage) for a lot of bean recipies. I particularly like Frugal Abundance's "Family Favorite Pinto Beans" which cook overnight in the crockpot, no soaking. Leave out the spices and you have a whole bunch of beans you can flavor up in various ways-- do two portions of them as baked beans; then two portions as spicy Mexican beans; then refry some; then use some plain in a green salad with vinegrette...

(I really like beans. Sorry.)

Anyway. I also have these same feelings about mending but I won't make you learn to darn socks and set patches until after the bean project. Just start on something, please. Even if the stimulus works, you'll be glad you did.

Happy beaning,

Breanna

P.S.

If you throw out the water you soak the dry beans in, and then rinse them after they're cooked but before you season them, most of the flatulence-inducing stuff gets rinsed away. Also try eating pineapple with them. Also, the more you eat beans, the more favorable your gut bacteria gets to be to digest the bean enzymes. Maybe yogurt would help. Or just live with people who think gas is funny, like I do.

Milestones

We had a minor breakthrough today. Pretend if you will this is not the scene of toy carnage-- as in fact it is not; this is a milestone.
Can you guess what it is?
Note the socks placed with wild abandon.
That's right-- while I made 2 pizzas and 4 loaves of bread, Miss Boo played happily by herself. I remember when she thought I ceased to exist whenever I went around the corner and immediately (and loudly) mourned my destruction, and now she scarcely noticed I was in the kitchen for an hour and she was in the living room. I was starting to get all sniffly about it until I sat down to type this and both she and the dog immediately demanded to sit on my lap. So I guess she does still need me. (The dog can just live with the floor.)

In case you're wondering, my hand is fine. I iced it yesterday and the Husband kindly took over getting Miss Boo to sleep (and ACED the job, she slept all night) so I could play Warhammer Online and get my mind off it. It's only a minor annoyance today.

Well, time for Miss Boo's nap and she needs me to rock her, apparently, so we'll get to it.

Cheers,

Breanna

You Know You Have Mommy Brain When...

1. You try to put wood in the stove with one hand because the other arm is cradling a sleeping baby that you do not want to wake up by putting her in a crib.

2. Because you are pregnant, you burn your hand on the stove (of course) and have to shove the rest of the log in with one foot.

3. You go upstairs to ice your hand.

4. You realize what you are icing it with is the dealie that came with the formula samples, designed to keep bottles cold in the diaper bag.

(5. You catch yourself actually typing words like "dealie".)

But she didn't wake up!

Breanna

A Cute Post

Miss Boo is figuring out spoons and yogurt. She never had the fancy fruited yogurt until yesterday, when Mommy finally got pregnancy-tired enough to say, "nobody else makes their own yogurt, why don't I just buy some at Costco for Pete's sake?" So I did, and she ate half a cup. (What's wrong with homemade yogurt and jam, I ask you?) Anyway we're still working on the spoon thing. Sometimes fingers are easier.

Eventually we figure out how to dip the spoon in the yogurt and get it to the mouth with some yogurt still on it.

Very complicated, this. Daddy was quite proud. (I didn't post the whole sequence of pictures you took, Daddy, because Blogger only lets me put up a certain number at a time.)

As well, I had the Husband take a belly shot of me last night and I have come to the conclusion that maybe I actually AM nine feet wide and I just was in denial about it. But I will tell you that I don't really have a double chin-- the picture just makes me look like I do.

That's a bunch of Boychild, right there. You have to understand that Miss Boo was insisting on sitting on the person of one or the other parent when we were trying to take the picture, so it would have been a better picture otherwise.

It's been very cold here lately, -9 F right now (-11 when the Husband got up, and for some bizzare reason the temp will drop when the sun comes up), which has an unexpected effect on housekeeping. I mean sure, you'd expect to cook more soup and make sure the fluffy blankies are on the beds as a housekeeper, but what you wouldn't expect is how stuffy rooms get when you can't make any excuse to open a window for twenty minutes in the morning. I can only justify it if we have the woodstove roaring and the gas furnace turned nearly off; this morning the Husband didn't have enough thawed firewood to start a fire so unless I can get one going when the wood is thawed, the baby's room is going to continue to smell like the overnight diaper pail and our room is going to continue to smell like... breathing the same air all night. (Eeeeeeeeeew.) One can only hope that it's only pregancy-nosed ladies like myself who can smell these unique smells.

I went to the thrift store yesterday--because I am cheap, you should know this-- and went trolling through their baby section because there's a stupid law coming into effect in February which will take all the children's things out of thrift stores for a while. (It will be illegal to sell any children's product--including t-shirts-- that you can't prove is lead-free. This applies to used merchandise as well as new, therefore thrift stores have to landfill all their kids' stuff because they can't afford to test it. That's right, the gov'mint wants us all to have mercury in our CFL light bulbs, but an untested Elmo shirt is too risky.) Anyway, I got a whole bunch of newborn-sized onsies, outfits, and jammies for Boychild and three new books for Miss Boo for $7. So I felt pretty good about myself.

I get this way toward the end of pregnancy, where I sort of look at the house and go "nothing's ready! we're all going to be naked and starving!" Which isn't true, of course, but I feel better with some blue onesies in the drawer.

Well, I think Miss Boo needs a diaper. Either that or she's doing a really good impression of an outhouse. I'd better close for today. :)

Cheers,

Breanna

Advertising

First of all, I know I am overdue for a belly picture. At a week shy of 7 months, my belly is present in a room before I am, and I know you all want to see my impression of a watermellon (don't you?) so I will get a picture up tomorrow. Would have been today, but the picture the Husband took of me last night in my nightie made me shriek and delete it instantly. (I'm not REALLY nine feet wide.)

And now, onto the blog post. I've been thinking about writing this post for a while, but was at a loss how to do it without sounding... snotty. So I thought I would begin with an illustration, so at least I won't feel like I'm being snotty alone. The incident I shall describe is a conglomeration of things that have actually happened to me, albeit fictionalized slightly to protect the well-intentioned.

Imagine, if you will, that you are in a group of people, mostly Christians, who are touring a natural history museum of some sort. There is a young tour guide employee of the museum who is reading off prepared cards, and it is clearly this guide's third day because he forgets where the bathrooms are and runs into the vending machine while trying to guide you to the Siberian tiger exhibit. In the course of your tour, you eventually end up in a presentation room where the guide must continue reading off his cards during a slide presentation. The cards are sprinkled with phrases like "adaptations" and "hundreds of millions of years ago" and "Darwin discovered". Halfway through the presentation, the guide asks if there are any questions.

A Member of your Group (who I shall describe in a moment) raises his or her hand and says something along the lines of: "Well, we think God created the world. We don't think it took hundreds of millions of years."

In the awkward silence following, while the guide turns magenta, do you think:

1) "I'm so glad he/she said something, the hundreds of millions of years was really bugging me."
2) "What a wonderful witness for Christianity."
3) *Cringe* "That poor tour guide kid."

I admit I thought #3. Especially since the kid had to go back to reading his cards for the rest of the presentation, and every time they said "hundreds of millions of years" he stuttered and turned beet red again, while a Member of the Group sat with folded arms, the words "tsk tsk" written all over his/her face. If you suggest later it might not have been appropriate, they will say "Are you ashamed of the Gospel?"

No, I'm ashamed of you.

These are the folks who speak up in your university class with the professor who is a notorious atheist, because...well, he says things that might be construed as hostile to religion! (Gasp!) Not that they say anything sensical, they just contradict the professor, who proceeds to politely destroy everything they said. These are the folks who have convictions about wearing t-shirts with logos or animated characters on them, because The Simpsons contains some "worldly themes." These are the folks who send you earnest email forwards about abortion and what happens during a late-term abortion and asking you to sign an email petition. (Because everyone knows email petitions work wonders on Capitol Hill.) You can't SAY anything to them, because they're so sincere, but they're terrible advertising for Christianity.

I don't say this just because they're dorks, although they are; they generally have convictions about which hairstyles are worldly or not and sometimes feel that one shouldn't watch sports because of the advertising, which means they're really difficult to engage in a conversation that isn't about the Left Behind series. Mainly they're terrible advertising because they give Christians a name for being harmless, not very coherent, eccentrics.

Now in one sense we're supposed to be severely weird to the world around us-- Christ warned that we'd be persecuted and frequently murdered for the faith-- but we're supposed to be weird by doing things like loving our enemies, staying faithful to our spouses, and giving our money away. Our belief system is supposed to be so disturbing the the world precisely because it is logical, coherent, and reasonable to accept. I'd like to suggest that it's not really loving unbelievers when we allow them to hold the notion that Christianity is a funny thing that eccentrics get passionate about, like glider-building or composting sewage.

So since no one can say it to their face, I'm going to talk to the Member of the Group via cyberspace and also to myself, when I'm guilty of this: just stop for a minute before you say anything, and check and see if the Holy Spirit is really telling you to talk. If you're talking mainly because you feel insulted or offended about something, that's probably not a good enough reason. If you don't have a cogent argument in mind but just "feel that you should say something" that's probably not good enough either. If you can't express love to the people you're talking to ("well I just think you're wrong"), then don't say anything. Stop and think a minute. God can convict them without you. Don't get extrabibilical convictions mixed up in things that the Bible is clear on. If you are going to say something about Creation, or abortion, don't mix in the general notion that society is going to pot these days. Don't frame your debate on emotion. Comb your hair. Don't act so dang afraid of the unsaved.

All of which doesn't mean that you get to mumble something noncommital if they ask you what your opinion is. But let's face it: how often do they have to ask?

Now that was harsh, I know. And I'm sure I fall into Dorkification more than I know, being as I don't watch much TV, find a lot of clothing trends repellent, and love to talk too much. But I always found it encouraging when I was at university and my fellow students would engage me after lectures to ask me questions, because they knew I was "religious" but also "smart". And realizing that what most of them knew about the Bible and Christianity could be fit into an eyedropper, one had to be very basic, understanding, and non-reactionary in conversation.

Dorks of the world, take heart. I know that your intentions are in the right place, that you really want to serve the Lord. You may just have to consider whether serving the Lord means watching a ball game or two with Larry from work.

Phew, enough serious posting already. We'll have cute posts the rest of the week.

Until later,

Breanna