Monthly Archives: November 2011

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Please Support Ronald McDonald House

Nothing like achieving two milestones in the same week…

Friday (Lord willing) I turn in my manuscript.

Saturday I run my first race. The chocolate is a gimmick, but hey, it worked on me!

I was excited to see that the race’s official charity is the Ronald McDonald House. We have a dear family in our church in Minneapolis right now, staying at Ronald McDonald House while their son receives a bone-marrow transplant. (He’s at Day +8 and has a ever-so-slightly-positive white blood cell count! Woohoo!)

The RMH has been a fantastic home away from home for this family. I had no idea what an incredible resource they provide for families.

I know it’s short notice, but I’d love to be able to report some good fundraising to our Tiny Church family who have benefitted so much from RMH’s hospitality. Some folks have been giving me checks, but if you’d like to support RMH online, click here.

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Link Love: Thanksgiving Edition

Just a couple of items before the weekend:

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Doesn't she look tired? Hey, she writes, fights for abolition, AND raises six kids---you'd be exhausted too.

Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” — Slate

The iconic Civil War anthem was written 150 years ago. Interesting piece, but I especially related to this:

Frequently, she experienced these visions [i.e. writings] while in bed, perhaps the only place where—as the mother of six children—she could snatch a moment of quiet reflection. She had grown used to scribbling notes in barely sufficient light, so as not to wake the baby invariably sleeping beside her.

As my deadline looms, Robert and I have a short getaway planned together this weekend, Sunday we put up Christmas decorations, and Monday is Jamesy’s 4th birthday. So Julia—YOU GO GIRL. I can relate.

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Happy Evacuation Day! — The Daily Show

The holiday we should be celebrating this weekend, according to a cutely nervous but still hilarious Sarah Vowell. (Sorry I’m having trouble embedding the video—follow the link above.)

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The Boots Are Still Intact

He's so ugly he's cute. May I never see his real-life brethren infesting the crowns of my children. Especially on deadline.

I will be offering burnt sacrifices to the writing gods in thanksgiving for the fact that my child did NOT get head lice from the three children she was with last week who have it.

To carry last week’s mountain-climbing metaphor forward, having a kid with lice the week before a 70,000 word project is due would be something like having one’s boots fall apart on the climb.

Which happened to me.

Onward…

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Where I’m At, and Fitness Update

Book Update:

So, I feel good about where 2/3 of the book is. Which is not to say it’s done, but it just needs tweaking rather than major overhauls.

Of the remaining four chapters, two are in rough draft form, and two are in rough-rough draft form. Steady as she goes.

Concluding a book is hard. It’s not like a sermon, in which you can deliver a zinger, stare at the congregation for a beat, and say “Thanks be to God.”

Fitness Update:

But I also wanted to say that I’ve lost about 19 pounds in the last 3-4 months, and am on track to hit 20 right in time for Thanksgiving. Goody! I am wearing a size that I have not worn since my 20s, also known as Before What’s-Her-Name Came Along.

The weight loss and book-writing are not related.

Here are my favorite fitness hacks; I’d love to hear yours.

  • MyFitnessPal, or something similar that tracks food and exercise. Write everything down. The bar code scanner is just fun.
  • Kitchen scale and measuring cups are the best tools you have. Portion size is the name of the game. I count my Tostitos, weigh my cereal, and measure out peanut butter for sandwiches.
  • I don’t do Healthy Options / Smart Choices / Mega Low-Cal Hi-Fiber Super Diet Food. I just eat food. I tend to agree with Michael Pollan’s suspicion of food that touts its health benefits—it’s often highly processed.
  • I basically count calories. It’s not the most precise way to go, but it’s easy and good enough.
  • That said, I had to tell Robert to hide the kids’ Halloween candy because I was overindulging—and even though I was within my caloric range each day, I lost no weight that week. Go figure!
  • I don’t do Atkins/South Beach but I sure understand where they’re coming from. I don’t like sandwiches that much, but now even more so. 200-250 calories before you even put anything on the bread? Yikes.
  • That said, whole grains are good for you.
  • I let myself do whatever I want once a week; I don’t track what I eat and just enjoy. I figure this is for the long haul. The day off is usually on a weekend. The other day of the weekend, I will keep track, but I don’t stress if I go over my allotment.
  • When I do indulge in a dessert thing, I serve myself one at a time instead of a handful. That means one Oreo, one Dove chocolate, or whatever. Eventually I get tired of getting up from the couch or desk and walking into the kitchen for seconds, or thirds, or…
  • Dessert, alcoholic beverage, or a day off from exercise. Pick two. You’ll likely stay in range each day, but you can still enjoy life.
  • Exercise: I exercise to feel good, but really it’s so I can eat more. I’m not that virtuous. However, I am running my first race on December 3. Hopefully it will be a celebration of having turned in the manuscript too.

What are your fitness tips?

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Moneyball

Robert and I went to see Moneyball last night. Excellent flick—I can see why it’s 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.

I was bowled over by how the story resonates with issues of leadership and church transformation.

Anyone? Anyone?

Please tell me someone has already written this post so I don’t have to.

 

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Friday Link Love

A few fun/interesting things from the last few weeks:

Social Networking in Its Oldest Form — BBC (video)

A man in Canada has released several thousand bottles into the ocean, and received thousand of responses from all over the world.

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Women Own 1% of the World’s Property: Occupy That — Huffington

Maybe it’s because girls and women:

  • Don’t get to go to school when their brothers do
  • Get married off (don’t worry, at a good price)
  • Are deprived of food when it’s scarce
  • Aren’t allowed to own anything themselves
  • Don’t inherit
  • Aren’t paid for their labor
  • Are property. Duh.

I’m reading Ashley Judd’s biography right now (really, it’s good) and through her advocacy work she has met women all over the world who are subjected to sexual slavery and engaged in prostitution because there are not other viable options. The stories will make your skin crawl, yet she somehow manages to see hope.

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Generation Gap: How Age Shapes Political Outlook — NPR/Pew

Interesting stats; I’ll let them speak for themselves.

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The Way We Teach Math and Language is All Wrong — Freakonomics Blog

If we learned our first language like we usually learn second languages, it might look like this. A young child says, “I am hungry.” The parent replies, “Wait! Before saying am, you first must learn to conjugate to be in all persons and number, in the indicative, imperative, and subjunctive moods, and in the past, perfect, and future tenses.” After a few months, or maybe weeks, of this teaching, the child would conclude that it has no aptitude for languages and become mute. And human culture would perish in a generation.

If we taught math or science like we normally teach languages…oh, wait, we do! (And I believe, although with less direct knowledge, that we teach most subjects this way.)

Caroline has had a harder time with math this year, not because she doesn’t understand the concepts, but because of the wording of some of the questions, and perhaps, the way it’s being taught. We’ve been playing with the Kahn Academy videos.

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What is God? — Andrew Sullivan

My heresy - and I concede it - is in rejecting the traditional view of the atonement issue. For me, Jesus’s death was not the downpayment on our salvation. He was the way, the truth and the life. His horrifying crucifixion was not some unique necessary sacrifice. It was a commonplace punishment in his time. What singled him out was the manner of his death, his refusal to stop it, his calm in embracing it, his forgiveness even of those who nailed him there, with that astonishing sentence, “Father, forgive them. For they know not what they do.”

I don’t read that as an affronted “they don’t know they are executing the Godhead himself”. I read it as “they are so consumed with fear and the world and violence and power that they require forgiveness and mercy, not condemnation”. It is this very composure, this sadness born of indescribable empathy, this inner calm and stillness, that convinces me of Jesus’ saturation with the Godhead. He was not the human equivalent of an animal sacrifice; he was the light of the world, showing us by his example how we can be happy and at peace and in love with one another and God itself.

That.

Lots more there.

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How It’s Going

Just a quick note to say I’m still alive, still writing the manuscript.

People keep asking how it’s going, and offering encouragement, and I’m so thankful for the the support and interest. It’s hard to say how it’s going, because I don’t know how much detail people really want, but also because I’m not sure myself how it’s going, in the sense of it going “well” or “poorly.” It’s going. It’s a slog. I’m ready to be done but in some ways the most important work is happening now and in the next few weeks, when I’m refining and shaping and hopefully wrapping this puppy up.

Here’s the best I can do:

Steeper, actually.

I keep thinking of climbing Mt. Washington (New Hampshire) back in July, which was a bucket list thing. My mother-in-law, who climbed it with me, told me about a place called Heartbreak Hill. That’s the place where you think you’re almost done because you can’t see anything but blue sky above you. But you come up over the ridge and discover to your horror that there’s a whole ‘nother section of mountain. You look up and see a huge pile of boulders, and people scurrying on them, tiny like ants, if ants wore bright red fleece and cargo pants.

And you look down at how far you’ve come, and instead of being psyched by the many miles you’ve traveled, you think, “This should be the end. For all the work I’ve done, I should be at the top.” But it isn’t the top. And you feel very sad and desperate for a while, because there’s no way short of catastrophic injury to get carried off this godforsaken mountain. And then there’s this bargaining thing with the universe—Could I please, please trade places with somebody else on this planet? Preferably someone at sea level, but I’ll take my chances with pure randomness.

And you think about the phrase, “The end is in sight.” It’s what you say when you’re almost done with something, but the problem is, the end is sitting atop a pile of rocks that aren’t so much walked as scrabbled. So the end in sight isn’t all that much of a comfort.

And once you accept that the rescue helicopter’s not coming, you eat some banana chips, and you do that thing you’ve been doing this whole time. The only thing you know to do, one scrambling step after another, which seems like a very inefficient way to go, but nobody’s come up with anything better.

How’s it going?

The end is in sight.

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This is Now

Heads down time for me: This is my last blog entry for a while—see you when the book is done. Until then, I leave you with one of my favorite quotes about the passage of time.

When the fiddle had stopped singing Laura called out softly, “What are days of auld lang syne, Pa?”

“They are the days of a long time ago, Laura,” Pa said. “Go to sleep, now.”

But Laura lay awake a little while, listening to Pa’s fiddle softly playing and to the lonely sound of the wind in the Big Woods. She looked at Pa sitting on the bench by the hearth, the fire-light gleaming on his brown hair and beard and glistening on the honey-brown fiddle. She looked at Ma, gently rocking and knitting.

She thought to herself, “This is now.”

She was glad that the cosy house, and Pa and Ma and the fire-light and the music, were now. They could not be forgotten, she thought, because now is now. It can never be a long time ago.

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Today’s Sabbath-ish Thought

Actually, since I’m working on the book, I am having more than one Sabbath-ish thought per day. Why, some days I have as many as 3.5 Sabbath-ish thoughts!

My friend Marci posted a link on FB to an NPR story about Joan Didion’s latest book, Blue Nights, in which she writes about the death of her daughter. (I reviewed The Year of Magical Thinking some time back.)

Marci was startled into awareness by this quote in the story:

Didion writes that in theory, these mementos should bring back the moment, but in fact, they only make clear how inadequately she appreciated the moment back when it happened.

I am certain that, had I heard the story, it would have been the money quote for me as well.

Part of my impulse to explore Sabbath is to try and cheat time, in a sense—to slow it down to the speed of savoring, just one day a week, by not having to be anywhere, do anything, prove myself, develop skills, inculcate kids, bring order to chaos. Sabbath has been an exercise in mindfulness and awareness—the kind of mindfulness Didion grieves the lack of as she beholds touchstone objects from the past. My Memory Project, too, has been a way of capturing on paper the essence of these days.

I was thinking about all this today, as James played on a church playground with Margaret while Caroline rehearsed with her children’s choir inside. The world was washed with gold as the sun receded, and I knew that in a week, this hour of the day would be blue-black and cold.

I found myself watching them with love, recording the scene as fully as I could, just as an exercise. One of the things that drives me, in parenthood and life, is not wanting to have the experience Didion describes, a wistful, heartbreaking “I missed it.”

But I realized today, I will have that experience; indeed, there is no way not to. Every day is full of golden moments. You simply cannot hold on to them all. You can’t even hold on to a fraction of them. They are too numerous, growing in number constantly. And they are simultaneously too precious to record in our memory banks adequately, and too quotidian to register as something to remember.

When loss comes to us, we will never feel we have appreciated the moment enough. That’s what grief is.

Didion’s experience is not a call to intentionality for the rest of us, although I am a big believer in intentionality. Rather, what she describes is an inevitable by-product of love and death. There is no remedy for what she describes in her book, no amount of intentionality or mindfulness that will keep us from the same fate.

I found this amazingly freeing.