Poem for New Year's Eve

"Another lap around the sun" he said
as if there is a starting line somewhere out there in space.
As if time is really measurable by space.
As if time is measurable at all.

These numbers we apply,
these calculations we create,
they give us such satisfaction.

Are these trivial pleasures all part of the plan?
Do they amuse Someone?

If we didn't count, would we lose track of time?
If we lost track of time, would our memory start to go?
Perhaps our celebrations are indeed what keeps the cosmos in place.

Happy New Year, just in case.

Brain Space of One's Own

I have been thinking a lot lately about that thing that Virginia Woolf said about having a room of one's own. I know practically nothing about her and her work, but I'm pretty sure she was talking about what is necessary to write.

And she's right. This blog has been very quiet lately, and it's been because I haven't had enough room in my own brain to actually write anything. We've been visiting with family, and it seems that when that's happening, the extra space that I require for putting words into cyberspace doesn't exist.

It's not that there haven't been bloggable thoughts popping up, just that the psychic energy to write them down has been channelled into other things.

This makes it all the more amazing to me how people who have children ever get anything like writing done. At all. Ever.

Anyway, if I have an excuse for ending the year with a less than one-a-day average blog rate, that is it. No room in the brain inn.

Judgmental Much? Yep.

So a couple weeks ago I had occasion to be in a gated community. It was weird. I hadn't realized ahead of time that our destination was inside a gatehouse, with an actual person who wanted to know our names and destination. (She did not, however, seem to have a list to cross-check us with, so the whole thing seemed pretty bogus with regard to actual security.) I suppose I still would have gone, even if I had known.

It's not like we were driving around the neighborhood all night, so mostly, I wasn't thinking about it. But as we were leaving, I had a weird thought: "It is actually, I suppose, kind of pretty in here."

And then it occurred to me that most people probably noticed that right away. But I was so freaked out by the highly manicured, manipulated and privilege-indulgent aspect of the whole thing that the "beauty" of the place sort of repulsed me mostly. For that quick second, I set it aside and could see that the little lake and the wooded hills and bushes were attractive. And that, if you lived in this rather large city, it might be nice to have an oasis that was at least natural-seeming. But there is no way I could get around the gated community ickiness of it to actually want to spend time there myself.

I have many other thoughts about this experience, not the least of which are related to the fact that it was a clergy Christmas party I was attending, which means I am standing in judgment of some of my colleagues who live there.

It seems hard to me to reconcile being a Christian with living in a gated community. Is that harsh? Maybe. Does that mean it's not true? No. The thing is__where someone lives is such a huge aspect of their life, that it seems almost impossible to me to have that conversation in a productive way with someone I have such huge philosophical differences.

And it's not like there are ways in which I do not live a simple, economically-indulgent life, so clearly, I am wading in the waters of hypocrisy. Our lines are all in different places. But sometimes they need to be drawn clearly. Don't they?

Exit Sign Characters

Here in the Heart of Dixie, we have some towns with interesting names. Actually, that tends to be true most places. Some of my favorites are the combinations of towns that end up on the same exit sign off an interstate.

Here in HoD, there are some that sound like movie stars: Grace Garland

And some that sound like characters from some thick Southern novel: Georgiana Starlington and Heflin Hollis.

There is one from southern Illinois that always catches my eye too: Vienna Golconda. That doesn't sound like a person exactly, but something interesting.

I am reminded of this today because the directions for how to get where we're going instruct us to take the Georgiana Starlington exit. I am super excited about that, never having had the opportunity to do so before.

What characters emerge from the road signs where you live or have traveled?

It's Sad (dangerous?) When Common Sense Is What Seems Radical

Thomas Friedman discusses how Denmark has transformed itself and what we could have learned in Copenhagen.

Best line: "There are no good ideas... we can afford to shove off our table." And yet, as he points out, we do, consistently.

It's perspectives like this that make me feel like I live in late-empire Rome.

Merry Christmas, America!

We all know that you don't usually get everything you want for Christmas. As an uber-progressive, I'm not used to getting much at all of what I want from my governing bodies. But this will do.

Senate Passes Health Care Overhaul Bill

Astute and Sad

Maureen Dowd frequently annoys me. That makes me sad, because I like to be supportive of women in journalism and other male-dominated fields. But Maureen frequently lives up to those words that are somehow reserved only for women we don't like, words like catty and shrill.

Her recent column on John McCain, however, is spot on. And it's sad that it's true, because he could have taken such a different (and better) direction.

Perhaps Christmas Excess Isn't the Problem

People like to decry the crass materialism that has overtaken Christmas in our society. I like to decry it as much as the next person. It's crazy, it's excessive, and it's in direct opposition to the point and true meaning of the gospel.

But I had a thought the other day that made me realize that perhaps we're doing our decrying at the wrong time of year.

On Sunday, I took some plates of cookies and clementines to some of the church folks who were unable to attend our Christmas Open House on Saturday. Oranges (or orange-like fruits like clementines, which are a huge improvement on oranges, actually) at Christmas always make me think of the old-timey sorts of Christmases that people my grandparents' age used to have when they were young.

I remember my grandpa telling me about how he used to get just a couple things for Christmas, and one of those things was a big orange. And it was enough. Heck, it was great and amazing and lots.

Can you imagine if you tried to impress a kid today with an orange?

The difference isn't about Christmas though. The difference is how it compares with what happens the rest of the year. Christmas consumerism has gotten so ridiculous because part of its job is to top the consumerism of the rest of the year.

If you haven't had much fresh fruit all year, an orange makes a cool present. If, however, you have gotten sugary snacks all year and a surprise every time someone went anywhere and a new video game whenever you whined enough and clothes whenever someone was bored and went shopping, Christmas has to be over-the-top in order to make a dent at all.

It is disturbing to me that shopping has become a favorite hobby in this country. How is shopping a hobby? That's crazy. And it's because of things like that -- constant consumption -- that Christmas has gotten so bloated with stuff and crap and things. It's just trying to stand above the crowd. The urge to make it special isn't the problem. The problem is what it's having to be distinguished from.

We really do need more John the Baptizer injected into Christmas. But more importantly, we need more gospel injected into the rest of the year. The gospel that tells us that our worth has nothing to do with what we own or went into debt for. The gospel that offers us freedom from stuff. The gospel that commands us to share whatever we have with those who have none.

Christmas Recipe - Cranberry Sugar Cookies

Perhaps I will start a tradition of posting a recipe each December that my lovely readers can use for their Christmas parties. Since I posted one last year and I'm posting one now, I guess we can call that a tradition.

These cookies are quite possibly some of the easiest this side of buying pre-made dough. Which means some of you will think they are too easy, since they use a mix. Well, when you're making five or so different kinds of cookies at once, I say who cares? They are very tasty and look rather festive. I suppose the difficulty is when Pillsbury stops making the mix. Then this recipe will seem really dated. But for now, it's lovely.

If you don't have pretty cookie presses, it's worth the extra effort to find a glass with a design on the bottom. I got a great solitary punch cup with an awesome sunburst on the bottom at our Habitat Re-Store last week.

CRANBERRY SUGAR COOKIES

1 package of Pillsbury Cranberry Quick Bread and Muffin Mix
3/4 cup butter
Granulated sugar

Soften the butter and blend it into the bread mix.
Form the dough into 1 inch balls.
Roll in granulated sugar.
Place on sprayed cookie sheet and press with designed glass bottom.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Cool for a minute or two on the cookie sheet and remove to a wire rack.

Make three dozen cookies (so you might want to double it!).

ENJOY!

New Reality Show?

C-SPAN needs to get together with whoever it is that produces that super nanny show and get someone to come in and whip the Senate into shape. This most recent affront to human decency came from Tom Coburn (R-OK). On Sunday afternoon, he suggested from the Senate floor that the American people should pray that "someone" wouldn't be able to make the roll call vote on the health care bill. Apparently, it seemed way too clear that the obvious candidate for not being able to make it was Robert Byrd (D-WV) who is 92 and was in bed at home ailing (though he did make the 1:00 am vote). The article linked there exaggerates by saying Coburn wished for Byrd's death, but still.

Being in the Senate used to mean that you were more careful with what you said. If that doesn't do it, speaking about prayer certainly ought to. Shame on you, Tom Coburn! If the Senate had a time-out chair, he ought to be there all week.

What Ever Happened to the Concept of "Poor Character"?

There is an interesting article in Slate about the dangers and pseudo-science behind the recent phenomenon of labeling any remotely obsessive behavior an addiction. It discusses the physical differences between say, a drug addiction, that does, in fact, over time alter the brain's chemistry, and a "shopping addiction" or an "internet addiction" that merely involve dopamine.

It is my belief that this new way of talking about people's compulsions is a way of avoiding judgment. Now, let's be clear: I'm not saying the world should be a rigid, regulated hard-to-live-up-to-standards kind of place where everyone is a failure. But in the quest to make everyone feel good, I think we are weakening our collective character. Vaughan Bell appears to mostly agree with me.

Judgment is not always a bad thing. Good judgment, for instance, is an important thing to have. As are self-control, the ability to delay gratification, and balance. (The capacity to be appropriately gentle and indulgent with oneself is also healthy, I believe -- key word being "appropriate".)

It's weird to me that the Republican party is supposedly the party of "personal responsibility". What have they ever taken responsibility for? My sense is that no politician has the huevos to imply that the people who are actually their constituents (as opposed to the people their constituents fear or don't like) should buck up and act like grown-ups. It's not a message that polls well, shockingly.

How do we find an appropriate balance in our collective culture that truly helps people fulfill their potential, one that doesn't scold and yet doesn't enable? It's tricky. But I think avoiding inappropriate use of the "addiction" meme is a good place to start.

Exaggeration is One Thing, But...

At the grocery store tonight, I saw a bottle of vegetable oil for sale. On the front was a picture of a piece of chocolate layer cake.

Is that supposed to be a "serving suggestion"?

Because the effect it had on me was to make chocolate cake seem slightly ickier than it ever should.

It's Not $176 Billion but...

A few years ago, I became aware of a lawsuit being made against the American government on behalf of American Indians. They were suing for $176 billion that they had been cheated out of.

You have to admit that it takes some major huevos to sue the government for that much money.

The verdict is in. And they won. But they aren't getting $176 billion. I know you're shocked. They are supposed to get some good stuff though. The next question is whether what has been awarded will actually materialize.

In the meantime, add Native banker Elouise Cobell to your list of courageous activists. She is apparently the one who made it happen.

I Love It When "The Nation" Goes All Religious

As in this article by William Greider (quite possibly my favorite economist) about the faith-based movement to outlaw usury.

I am afraid, however, that he gives modern-day people of faith too much credit when he concludes: "Ordinary people already understand the meaning of usury. They know it is wrong." I wonder how many people in my congregation could explain what usury is and why it's wrong? If they couldn't, would it really be their fault? How many preachers have preached on the evils of usury lately? I haven't. Perhaps I should.

A Yard-Care Non-Conformist

Last week, when my parents were visiting, they helped me rake my entire yard. We did it with rakes. There were no leaf blowers involved.

My extreme hatred of leaf blowers ("Thy leaf blowers are an abomination unto mine ears, sayeth the Lord.") makes me realize continually how much of a yard-care non-comformist I am.

At one point, late in the afternoon when we were done raking and instead were walking around with the clippers chopping out things that didn't seem to belong in the "flowerbeds" I have almost completely ignored for the past 6 and a half years, my next-door neighbor called to me over the fence. He wanted to let me know that if I was spraying anything, I should feel free to spray all the way over into his yard, because there was nothing there he didn't mind having killed off.

"Oh. My. God." I thought. Like I would be spraying anything in my yard! I sort of wanted to say to him, "I don't think so, mister! And if you're ever spraying, you'd better make damn sure none of it comes anywhere near my yard."

I just don't get the dominant approach to keeping up yards in this country. First of all, grass. Grass is about the dumbest thing I can think of. It has to be mowed. Most people mow it so short that it's not even pretty anymore. It's prettiest when it's longest, which is when people start to whisper about your yard. Why on earth did it develop that the most likely thing to be covering your lawn is something that requires constant maintenance? That is crazy.

Second, as I have mentioned above, leaf blowers. And loud yard-keeping machines in general. If the point of a yard is to have a little bit of nature in your life (which it may or may not be), why would you want to ruin that by using something that destroys the serenity of nature and is bad for the environment? Raking, I find, is very zen. It's good exercise and very satisfying. Leaf blowers = bad. I pretty much feel the same way about any non-organic chemical substance.

Third, I find the whole history of yard-keeping to be a fascinating study in the history of humanity's need to control nature. Why do we do that? It's so strange. Think of traditional European gardens, with their square hedges and geometric shapes. So unnatural. Why do we love turning natural things into unnatural things? I find it very odd.

So if you ever come to my house, be prepared to appreciate what used to be conventional gone a little wild. Because that's the look we go for around here. Re-Wilded Late 20th Century Conventional Lawn. Otherwise known as benign neglect.

The Complications of Early Aging

Quite some time ago, when I was still young, possibly in high school or possibly in college, I read a column in the newspaper in which a woman was comparing herself to her tweenager daughter.

The woman mentioned how one morning the girl had come downstairs complaining about some random, minor ache. She then documented her reaction, which was to realize that she couldn't remember the last time her body hadn't been sore, or stiff, or achy, or in pain in some way. The contrast between her daughter's assumption that she shouldn't hurt and her own expectation of constant achiness was a stark commentary on the passage of time and its effects on the human body.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. I am getting to that point in life when I have relatively constant stiffness and frequent soreness. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have full-blown arthritis in my feet in just a few years. It seems very likely that I should probably be seeing a chiropractor, but I'm not because I'm cheap.

The thing is__I'm in that weird period of life (the middle, I guess you could call it) when it's hard to take aches and pains seriously. The first assumption is still that whatever pain is currently present is the result of something like sleeping "wrong" and will pass soon enough. Chest pains? Probably ate something too intense. Trouble sleeping? Probably too much stress.

So the question becomes__at what point do you start getting things checked out by the doctor? I completely understand all those young, healthy people that health care reformers complain about -- the ones who have no health insurance, by choice, because there are other things they'd rather do with their money. I'm not one of them, mind you, because my responsibility gene and need to buy into civilization are highly developed. But I get them.

I have insurance. But I haven't been to my general practice doctor in over 6 or so years. In that period of time, there have probably been 20 or times when some little symptom or something has come up that has made me fret for 2-3 days about whether I should go to the doctor. But I never have. And all of those random worrying issues, as far as I am aware, have gone away.

I'm not sure that I have a point here. I just think it's weird that we, as a society, don't talk about the strange and complicated transition from being a young person of vigor and health into being an old person of falling apart-ness. There is this weird, very long period in between when it's really not clear who you are or what to do about it.

A Silly Thing to Say (Warning: This Post Mentions Death)

In our lawsuit-prone society, many, many ridiculous things end up in print. I am thinking specifically today, of statements about how mis-using a product may increase the risk of death.

Here's the thing: The risk of death is 100%. You are going to die. I am going to die. We are all going to die, eventually, of something.

The point, of course, is trying to avoid dying of certain things, like hair dryers in your bathtub or heavy machinery used while under the influence of medication. But really, from the way we talk about the "risk" of death, it's like we haven't yet admitted that it is inevitable. Silly mortals.

Also, just yesterday I found myself thinking the sentence "Death is the ultimate irony." It had very little context, and I'm not even sure what I meant by it. Do you think it's true? Is it even possible to discern whether it's true before you've died?

Hypocrisy at Its Finest?

Before you believe any excuse a Republican gives for opposing health care reform, find out if they voted for the Medicate prescription drug bill in 2003.

This clear-cut article from Slate helps us understand just how craven the latest embodiments of hypocrisy really are.

Heartbreaks from Copenhagen

Bill McKibben is one of the major saints of our current era. He has this heart-breaking dispatch from a worship service in Copenhagen last week as the climate talks began. You really need to read it.

Grrr

1. The Democrats should stop pretending they have 60 votes. They should ruthlessly strip people of chairships they don't deserve.

2. Joe Lieberman should go away.

Fascinating Intersection of Art and Politics

There is an interesting article in the New York Times about a German tv star who is also a Ostrock musician, that is, he's doing a show about his experience of living in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). Fascinating to watch how Germany processes their complex history.

The Anachronism That Is the Bathrobe

I discovered something about bathrobes the other day.

I am a person who owns three bathrobes. Two are warm and fuzzy - one white, one burgundy, and one is an incredible, retro, red with white polkadots, short polyester job that I got at a thrift store in Berkeley from a clerk who didn't want to sell it to me because she wanted it for herself. I love them all.

But I hardly ever wear them. I take the red one on trips (It packs well.), especially if I'm going to have a roommate.

But really, when you are just at home, who wears a bathrobe?

You see ads for bathrobes, with people wearing them and doing things like watching movies. But who wears a bathrobe to watch movies? Nobody. There are countless things that are less annoying to wear while watching movies. (See: recent Snuggie craze.)

The truth is that bathrobes are good for really one thing: wearing from wherever you've taken a bath to wherever you're going to get dressed, when there are people in the house whose presence requires your modesty.

I discovered this recently because the shower in our master bathroom died. And, of course, the plumber can't come to fix it till after this weekend when we're hosting overnight guests.

Which means that we're all sharing the main (guest) bathroom. And that is what a bathrobe is for. And that is why people hardly ever wear them anymore. Modern houses are built so that practically no one has to share a bathroom. There is no need for a garment for traipsing up and down the hallway in after your bath.

It's a little sad. But I think we could make bathrobes more useful again if we could get Congress to set aside some stimulus money for installing hot tubs in every American home.

Friday Five -- Advent Stillness Edition

Over at the RevGalBlogPals, they are asking what you are NOT doing to prepare for Christmas.

Finally, a list I love!

Actually, I'm doing some things this year that I haven't done before (like seriously cleaning the house and more baking), because we are hosting a Christmas Open House here at home this year, for church folks and a few other friends. But there are still plenty of things I refuse to do.

Here are five things I'm not doing to prepare for Christmas:

1. I am not hanging lights on any part of the outside of my house.

2. I am not sending out a huge number of Christmas cards. If I get around to it, I might send 6 or so.

3. I am hoping not to spend any time at the mall.

4. I am not watching any holiday movies or tv specials on television.

5. And finally, most relievingly and the reason for the Christmas Open House, I am not hosting a reception immediately following the Christmas Eve service this year. For the past 6-7 years, my husband and I have done this, rather elaborately, despite the fact that we are usually traveling out of town the next day. It was kind of crazy. So this year, we decided that we can just all greet each other warmly after Christmas Eve, and we'll offer our hospitality earlier in the month. Hopefully no one will mind.

Jim Wallis on Obama's Afghanistan "Plan"

The leader of the Sojourners community (while sometimes being annoying for a variety of reasons) had a recent eloquent piece that summarizes a lot of my feelings about Obama's recent decisions about Afghanistan.

The only quibble I would have with this is that, in his quest to be taken seriously as a policy influence, Wallis justifies his preferred approach based on his assumptions about its higher likelihood of "success". As a rather radical Christian pacifist, I have to say that I don't really think Jesus was very much interested in "success". But then again, compromises are what keep us human.

More on the Swiss

J. Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee (i.e. cool Baptists, but not for the reason you might think the name implies!) has this to say about the recent Swiss vote to ban future construction of minarets.

He's a smart guy, and they do really good work over there.

Swiss Ban Minarets - Really?!?

There was a time in my life when I thought I wanted to live in Switzerland. I don't really know why; I clearly didn't know that much about it. I think I thought the topography was cool, and I know I thought the historic commitment to neutrality was cool. I've since learned that neutrality is not necessarily as principled a position as you might think. (See: storage of stolen art, untraceable bank accounts, etc.)

Now I'm utterly convinced I don't want to live in Switzerland. They recently took a vote and passed a ban on the future construction of minarets. Minarets are the bell-tower-like structures that accompany mosques. Normally, the Muslim call to prayer is broadcast from a minaret, but of the four already existing minarets in Switzerland, none of them do that. There is no reason for this ban other than unadulterated bigotry and uninformed nationalist xenophobia.

Really? You're going to ban a certain type of building? Do you not see how crazy that is? What's truly frightening is the margin by which this ban passed. Only 4 of the 26 Swiss cantons (like states, or perhaps more like counties) didn't pass it.

The international, ecumenical Christian community needs to make a statement about this. Especially since their headquarters are in Geneva.

Those People Annoy Me

Normally, I choose not to comment on the multitude of people out there in the social space of our society who do stupid things and get too much attention for it. I do not like to add to their notoriety. And it's clear that the recent White House crashers have spent a lifetime chasing notoriety.

But here's an interesting response from Henry Morgenthau III, illustrating the premise that there's nothing new under the sun. It's happened before, and Eleanor Roosevelt was just as disgusted as me. So there.

Ancient People's Art

When Donald Rumsfeld talked about "Old Europe" I'm guessing he was as unaware as I was that that phrase was already in usage to describe a particular ancient civilization that existed in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills before 5000 BC.

An exhibit of some of their stuff is currently up at NYU. The NYT has a slide show of some of it that you can see. It's kind of hard to realize how cool it is unless you can stay focused on how totally old it is. Enjoy!

Some Random Thoughts to Continue the Birthday Celebration

1. With December about to start, I am already getting sad that my 2009 "Roman Holiday" calendar, purchased a year ago summer IN ROME, is almost done. One would think that might mean I get to go back and get another one, but sadly, it doesn't.

2. I became convinced this morning (while waking up) that I was 32 for a year and a half and then turned 34. I just have no sense of connection to ever being 33, ever. This happened with supposedly being 19 too. I was definitely 18 for a year and a half and then turned 20.

3. I have made an executive decision that we will be switching back to the more expensive cat litter as soon as the current bucket is empty. The cheapo stuff is getting caught in the cat's feet and he tracks it ALL OVER the house and IT STINKS! It's making me crazy. And it's gotten to the point where it's worth the extra money.

4. I am afraid I am about to give up on buying my milk at the dairy. The problem? The milk doesn't stay good long enough. The last gallon I bought I actually saw go into the jug while I was there. But it went bad (sour) in about 9 days. I don't even think the sell-by date had arrived yet, and it tasted icky. This makes me very sad. Since I've gotten used to paying more, I think I will compromise by getting the grocery store kind that doesn't have hormones in it. But I hate not supporting the dairy. Unfortunately, I hate wasting milk (or drinking sour milk!) even more.

5. When people are driving annoyingly slow, there is probably a really good reason for it. They might be lost; they might be impaired. In any case, you probably don't want they driving fast. Even if it's just 'cause they're old, that is actually a good reason. Think about it -- the two times you've ever in your life driven annoyingly slow, you had an entirely legitimate excuse, yes? Let's all try to remember this next time we're behind Slowpoke. (Sometimes I blog to myself, mind you!)

6. There is NOT, however, any good reason for idiots to drive around in the rain without their headlights on. STOP IT! Turn your lights on. You may not need them to see (duh), but the rest of us need to see you, crazy person!

7. I have been around a lot of kids lately. It's amazing how often kids' fingers are up their noses. And it's incredible to me how uptight the rest of society is about that. The truth is that a finger is the perfect thing for removing boogers. Duh. It's like that's why they were invented. So why not just embrace it, and hand them a tissue for wiping their finger off?

8. Why do you suppose we don't ever have lights in cemeteries? I mean, I know we're not supposed to go in them after dark anyway, but they would look less scary if there were some nice lamp posts around. The dead people, obviously, don't care, and maybe it would just be a waste of electricity. But I wonder if there are deep, traditional reasons for that, like not disturbing the rest of the dead. Maybe it's just about discouraging evening visitors. But it seems like a little illumination would make grave vandals think twice. Plus, I think it would make cemeteries seem more welcoming and peaceful. I'm just saying.

9. I am starting a new crusade. I think it would make more sense for us to refer to the words we currently call "possessive pronouns" as "relational pronouns". Simply put, they do not always really mean possession. Possession is one category of relation, but not the only one for which we use these words. "My church" does not belong to me. "My aunt" does not belong to me. But I have a particular relation to each of these things. Obviously this is not a hugely important fight, but one could argue that by teaching children in grammar class that those words are about possession that we encourage distorted understandings of relationality that can lead to things like "you don't get to do that because you're MY girlfriend!" Calling them "relational pronouns" could move us in the direction of healthier relationships.

10. It is now my goal, for when I live in a larger metropolis and make more money, to indulge in private, Latin dance lessons as my regular exercise. It will be good for my body and my soul. Someone remind of this if those other two things ever become true, okay?

Some Interesting (?) Birthday Statistics

Of the 354 total posts in its first year, Crème Anglaise has included 112 links to articles, of which 46 had extended commentary beyond just explaining the link. That is a little less than 1/3 of all the posts.

There have been 15 posts that included original poetry. That's 4 percent. I am surprised that there has been any poetry at all, but I think I was also expecting the percentage to be higher.

One of the most important lessons I have learned is not to start grand projects that I can't finish in one sitting. Will I ever finish "Highly Personal Thoughts about Race"? I kind of doubt it. On the other hand, I'm supposed to be in the process of writing a chapter, more or less on that, for a book, so maybe you can read it there.

Another thing I will point out is that Crème Anglaise LOVES comments and the readers who leave them! I know there are some of you out there reading silently. Please say hello once in a while so I don't keep getting that awkward feeling you have when you say something and no one responds.

Happy Birthday, Crème Anglaise!

This blog is one year old today. To celebrate, I thought I would share with you the first lines from each month...

November 2008 (2 posts): Why name my blog Crème Anglaise"?

December 2008 (23 posts): Today is World AIDS Day.

January 2009 (40 posts): My husband and I returned from my in-laws' house in the northeast yesterday.

February 2009 (31 posts): Just in case you were not certain, the contraction that is used, supposedly mostly in the South, to shorten the words "you all" is not spelled "ya'll".

March 2009 (23 posts): I am a Yankee.

April 2009 (33 posts): Red bud budding red or not red, but magenta the vigor of spring

May 2009 (32 posts): What if the world's one remaining super power forgot how to make H-bombs?

June 2009 (34 posts): I am wondering tonight about the connection between sleep and water.

July 2009 (26 posts): I struggle with patriotism.

August 2009 (32 posts): Oh, you just knew I'd break the silence with another link, didn't you?

September 2009 (31 posts): 1. White Rabbit!

October 2009 (26 posts): I try not to be too whiny on here, but indulge me; it's raining again.

November 2009 (at least 21 posts, maybe more if we're lucky): Today is All Saints Day, and though we are supposedly a low church, non-liturgical tradition, at my church that means we have a memorial liturgy in which we remember church members who have died in the last year, other loved ones and some famous(/ish) people who have died in the last year, any loved one who's ever died that we miss, and any other loss that causes us grief.


So, November 2009 clearly wins the prize for longest first sentence. March 2009 is the beginning of a haiku about a snow day. April 2009 is also a haiku, but since there wasn't any punctuation, you got the whole thing.

More self-referential birthday stuff coming later, I hope. Now I'm off the aeroporto to collect the Honey.

Thomas Friedman's Grandma

Thomas Friedman has an important column in today's New York Times. For some reason, he says it's based on Grandma's advice. I guess he was afraid no one would listen if there wasn't something a little funny. (I don't know anyone's grandma who repeatedly gave advice that included the word "Google".)

Anyway, he points out that great countries need imagination and good governance, and that the U.S. still has a pretty good handle on the first, but that we've lost our capacity for the second. I would argue that the emphasis on standardized testing is threatening the first too, but it's definitely not as endangered since its source is the individual and not the collective.

Oh that people would pay attention to Friedman. Or his grandma, if she's really the one saying this stuff.

Random Advice from Someone Who Doesn't Really Know What She's Talking About

Because, who doesn't need some of that?

I have this tip, that might be really great or might be useless.

It occurred to me by accident. It's a yard sale shopping tip.

Back when I lived in Berkeley, I had no dishes. That wasn't a huge deal, since I didn't have my own kitchen either, but there was a building kitchen, so I wanted a few things to heat things up in the microwave on over the weekends when the dining hall was closed.

Around that time, a house nearby had a yard sale. I just sort of happened to walk by; it wasn't like I learned it was happening and planned to go or anything.

Because I had not planned to go, I only had a dollar in my pocket. That seems a little weird, and I can't remember why that would be true, but that was the case.

So there were these lovely blue spotted plates at the yard sale. I thought they were cute. I only had a dollar though. The lady was asking more for them, but it was well into the afternoon. So I told her, "I only have a dollar. Would you give me these four plates for that?"

She totally didn't want to do it, and I'm sure she wouldn't have if she hadn't wanted to close down her sale soon. But she did, because I only had a dollar. It wasn't like she was going to get more from me, or probably anyone else.

SO... This led to my theory of how to get deals at yard sales. Here is how it works. (Or would work, anyway, if you tried it, which I haven't really, which is why you probably should take my advice with a grain or two of salt.) (Oh, the other problem is that this strategy sort of involves lying. That's sort of a kink, I guess.)

When shopping at yard sales, put a $1 bill in one pocket, a $5 bill in another pocket, a $10 in another pocket, and $20 bill in another pocket. Then when you get there and see what you want, decide which amount is closest to the appropriate amount. Pull it out and say, "This is what I've got, will you give me thus-and-such for it?" Maybe it would work. Probably you should only try it later in the day, or at least not till after the serious shoppers have picked stuff over and they're trying to get rid of stuff.

Let me know if it works.

In Which the Pastor, Possibly Unwisely, Attempts to Use Revelation as a Starting Point (for the weekly devotional)

Revelation 1:4b-8 – Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen. ”I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty. (NRSV)


Despite all the gruesome imagery and vivid conflicts and lack of grace, the Book of Revelation is, at root, a message of hope. Some of the hints of that hope are found in this brief passage, with all its many descriptions and names for God. Who else could be described as the one “who is and who was and who is to come”?

Revelation, in all its eternal wildness, reminds us of the everlasting and always nature of God. As the nights get longer and the darkness deeper, many of us find it challenging to keep our hearts sunny. As we review the news of the world – seemingly endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, refugees fleeing for their lives in Sudan, women and girls suffering rape in Congo – and even the news in our own community where children and adults alike are taking their own lives and endangering others, it can be hard to stay focused on hope.

But the Book of Revelation reminds us that God is the first and the last, “the Alpha and the Omega,” as John of Patmos calls it, referring to the beginning and ending letters of his alphabet. The end is in God’s hands, and God’s hands are good. We use the omega as the symbol for our faith acting in the world, in our 1+1+1 system in our newsletters. Any time we pour our lives out in service to others, we are working toward God’s good end. Even the smallest actions can help restore our hope, by reminding us who is in charge and making us more aware of God’s grace and love acting in the world. In this season of darkness, we can keep our hope intact by sharing it with others.


Collect for the Week: Eternal, Loving God, who is and was and is to come, grant that we might sustain our communion with you, aligning our lives with your will for your world and pouring ourselves out in service, that the light of hope might burn brightly in these dark times. Through Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, and the Holy Spirit of Love, Amen.

Simply Not Okay

Yesterday, a woman came into the church office asking for help obtaining fire wood. Her house doesn't have central heat, evidently, so they use the fire place for heat. They had been out of fire wood for a couple weeks.

She had been to the service agencies in town, who sometimes have money to help people with heat. But they do that by paying utility bills, not by chopping down trees or hauling logs. They didn't quite know what to do with her, I think.

We called a church member, and he said he'd bring a load to her on Sunday when he comes back into town. In the meantime, I sent a tiny space heater home with her. At first, I said she could borrow it. But by the time I had fetched it from the other building, I decided just to let her keep it.

She has a 9-month-old baby and, I believe, a sick grampa she's caring for. It was 32 degrees this morning. I know it would be worse if we lived farther north and it had been colder longer. But this is so not okay.

Last night, long after she'd left, I realized we had a few logs left over from a cook-out a while ago. I thought about calling her and dropping them off. But I didn't. There weren't hardly enough of them to help much. Except that there probably were. Did I mention that it's 32 degrees out this morning?

I hate poverty. I hate inequality. I hate that people who need heat don't have it. It's simply not okay.

Irony Run Amuck?

There is a banner ad at the top of today's online New York Times that includes the line "Starbucks is a proud partner of (product)."

It has something to do with a CD that I think is called "Love" and is being sold to raise money to address AIDS in Africa. I'm pretty sure that "(product)" is a mistake, not an attempt to be ironic. I mean, why would they try to be like that about AIDS in Africa? In a different context, though, I could see someone thinking that is funny.

I wonder how long it will take them to fix it.

Contradiction is What Makes Humans Interesting

So last week, at the Senior Adult Retreat that I led, I met a new friend. What's weird is that under most other circumstances, I probably would have been repelled enough by other things about this man that I would have successfully resisted becoming his friend. But it happened anyway.

The man in question is a retired clergyman from Texas and a disabled veteran, a former Marine. He has a low, growly voice that is almost a stereotype in itself.

I actually followed him into the retreat center. He stopped to ask two pedestrians for directions, and then I just said to them, "Should I just follow him?" So I did.

He was new to the area, this was his first retreat, and my cruise-director instincts took over. I became intent on making sure he felt welcome, and in the process, I think we became quite fond of each other. I convinced him to come to the next clergy retreat, which he had been planning to skip, since partners are also welcome and he doesn't have one.

Honestly, I'm guessing we don't agree about much of anything, and that he probably believes a bunch of things that would drive me crazy. But he also took the time to very intentionally and respectfully thank me for my leadership of the retreat and to comment that when he got started in ministry, women weren't in leadership yet, but that now that they are, things are much better. Yay for new friends! Yay for the Spirit that arranges circumstances so we can avoid the fences that would normally restrict love.

The Secret Gay Agenda of the U.S. Postal Service

Ha! That was a provocative title, wasn't it? I'm almost afraid to bring this up, for fear of it being twisted and used for deleterious purposes by crazy people, but oh well.

Have you seen the newest Love Stamps put out by the Post Office? As I'm sure you know, they make a new Love Stamp every year, primarily for people who are sending wedding invitations. What you may not realize is that wedding invitations are frequently heavy enough that they require two stamps.

And what you may not realize upon first gazing upon the 2009 Love Stamp...

(seriously, go look at it now!)

is that this year's Love Stamps can be used for same-sex weddings just as easily as it can for opposite-sex weddings. Especially if you have one of those extra-heavy invitations that require two stamps.

The design is the King and Queen of Hearts. But the king and the queen (for those of you who refuse to click links) are on separate stamps. So if you wanted to, you could put two kings or two queens on the same envelope, thus celebrating your same-sex union.

(Of course, you'd probably want to find another same-sex couple of the opposite sex to share the other stamps with, but that's a minor inconvenience, compared to past years. You could just use them to send in your bills.)

Anyway, what is curious is whether the Post Office did this on purpose, or whether it just happened by chance. Who knows? What will the Love Stamp look like next year? We'll just have to wait and see!

A New Compliment

I will be leaving town tomorrow to go keynote a Senior Adult Retreat. I'm going to take the tack of me being a reporter and them being the panel of experts I'm interviewing. I've actually already got an editor interested in the final project.

So before I go, here's a little sample of what I'll be doing the next couple of days:

Can you imagine how marvelous it would be if "You're really showing your age" was a compliment? A way of appreciating someone's maturity?

I think that would be a great thing. Maybe if enough people started doing it, we could shift the meaning...

Lessons of Fall

In the sunshine a flaming torch,
my gingko glows in the drear of the autumn rain,
a reminder of the vibrancy of life.

As the wind turns a loft of yellow stars
into a carpet of golden debris,
the branches revealed only serve to display the carnival of the squirrels.

A season of transition -- as opposed
to a season of fullness --
commands us to notice each passing day,
for each brings a slightly different lesson.

More on Defining Identity

There is an interesting case before the British Supreme Court about how religious identity is defined and who gets to define it.

The question revolves around a child whose mother converted in a progressive, rather than an Orthodox, synagogue. The Jewish school they applied for the child to go to did not qualify the mother as Jewish and thus, using an ancient definition of who is Jewish, did not qualify the child as Jewish.

A British court has said that using a test that depends on one's parents' identity makes it an ethnic and therefore, illegal standard, as opposed to a religious and therefore allowed standard.

It made me wonder if Christianity is part of what brought such an influential focus on the individual as opposed to the collective to Western culture. Other faiths seem much more interested in the community as a whole than Christianity does, at least in some manifestations.

Personally, I can see the British court's side. But I think the larger issue is that by allowing the school to do what it wanted to do, they're allowing one branch of Judaism to define the whole religion. Which wouldn't be an issue, except that the school is publically financed. If it wants to be a private, independent, Orthodox Jewish school, that's one thing. But a public, Jewish school? You gotta let people define themselves, as Fran would say.

Sexuality is Way More Complicated Than We Can Imagine

Children are being sexualized way earlier than makes any sense these days. (A bad thing, in my opinion.) The reality of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and trans-gendered existence is becoming less hidden. (Not a bad thing, in my opinion.) So kids are claiming or at least exploring these identities earlier in life.

But I think what we miss is that such identities aren't just about sex. Or gender, whatever that word means these days. It's so much deeper and more complicated than that.

An interesting article in the NYT reports on how schools are handling kids' desire to express their identities through clothing. It will be fascinating to see where this goes.

Just for Comparison

Though it's probably completely irrelevant now, the House Republicans did come out with a health care reform bill of their own. Ezra Klein explains how the Congressional Budget Office determined it was much less effective and costs way more. A good article to have in your repetoire.

The Saga of the Gingko Tree Continues

I hope, by now, you've become a little invested in the progression of my gingko tree through the autumnal season. Because I'm going to tell you a little more about it.

When I got home from two days out of town, the green half had entered almost total yellowness. Remember, the green half was the part closer to the house.

What that means is that right now, the gingko tree is practically replacing my alarm lamp. As soon as the sun comes up, there is this incredibly bright thing right outside my bedroom windows. Seriously. It's almost bright enough to wake me up. It's amazing.

But I'm also aware that the ground is beginning to get covered with a yellow carpet, so soon it will be time to rake. I usually do that once my relations up north have had snow on the ground for weeks. We'll see.

I Guess the Chicken Came First...

Yesterday, in a prayer, someone was naming a bunch of situations of terribleness around the world, and then asked the Spirit to "brood" over them. It struck me as odd.

Normally, when we say a person is brooding, it is not seen as a good thing. "Brooding," for people, seems to connote anxious, moody, unproductive worrying -- exactly the kind of thing most of us do about the world's messy circumstances, like shootings and genocide and tsunamis.

So why would we want the Spirit to do that?

But then I got to thinking more about the word "brood." When the Spirit does it (did it?), it was over the waters of the deep, and it was the last thing from unproductive. It was the creative process. It was the brooding that led to life (and order?) (and beauty) emerging from the deep. Artists will tell a similar story, I believe.

Then, I got to thinking about chickens. Chickens are the other things (in English) that brood. And when chickens do it, it is also a productive, life-creating process. The formlessness that is inside an egg is brooded into a baby chicken. (So yes, using the biblical witness as a guide, the chicken must have come first?)

So perhaps it is exactly right to beseech the Spirit to brood over the chaotic messiness of our world, if brooding brings forth order and life from chaos.

It even seems possible that the reason "brooding" obtained negative connotations is merely because of our *surface culture's obsession with happiness. Brooding does not seem happy, so we assume it must be a bad thing. Perhaps it is merely a necessary, not necessarily unhappy just not happy, thing for the creation of life. It's work, brooding. It takes focus and concentration on the task at hand. A chicken can't brood if it's running around like its head's been cut off (happily or otherwise).

Perhaps this insight can help us in our quest to find good emerging from the messes our world is in.


* "Surface culture" is a term I just invented to refer to the unhealthy superficialities of our shared life. I believe that there are multiple layers of culture, and that the ones underneath represent our better impulses, whereas a lot of the stuff on top - with which we content ourselves far too often -- constitutes cheap short cuts. To happiness, for instance. Perhaps it's a useful idea and perhaps not. I invent; you decide.

Building the Household of God (My Weekly Devotional Message)

Ephesians 2:12-14, 19-20 – Remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. … So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. (NRSV)


For many of us who grew up in the church, it’s hard to imagine being outside it. We go to church; our parents went to church; our parents’ parents went to church. We are no “strangers” to Christianity! And yet, here is Paul promising us that we are no longer “strangers and aliens” kept out by a dividing wall. What should be a huge relief can be dismissed with a nonchalant sigh if we take our status as Christians for granted.

But for those who are still outside our communities of faith, getting inside can be very daunting. Walls that are invisible to us may seem insurmountable to those who haven’t ventured in before. They may have had experiences of rejection that convinced them that the church will always be hostile them, leaving them with “no hope and without God in the world.” Unless someone tells them different, they will assume they are as welcome as aliens!

We may feel comfortable in the church, but all of us have had an experience of being left out, even if you have to reach way back to sixth grade to find one. Being “different,” even if it’s only that the other kids decided you were the different one that day, can be very painful when it is an experience of exclusion.

What we know in Christ, what this passage reminds us of, is that all those dividing walls are broken down by the love of Jesus. There is no more in and out; there are no more strangers, only brothers and sisters we haven’t met yet. We are all part of the household of God. This is a revelation of joy for those who still feel trapped outside! God calls us to share the news with everyone we can find.


Collect for the Week: Loving God, whose embrace extends to all people, grant that we might recognize the great gift of your accepting love and be moved to share it with those who have not yet been reached. Through Jesus Christ our Lord and the Spirit of Love, Amen.

Rest in Peace, Monsieur, et Merci

Claude Levi-Strauss has died. He was 100 years old. If you'd asked me last week, I probably wouldn't have known he was still alive, but now I am moved by his passing. His seat for history was a long and fascinating one. The NYT has a good, informative obituary.

Haikus for November

Golden, green ginko,
Two halves of a leafy whole,
Your stages amaze.


Changes so minute.
Each day slightly different shades.
Then (what?!) they are gone.


Adjusting to dark,
Silky evenings last longer;
Hibernation calls.

This Is Really Depressing

Melissa Harris-Lacewell, who is brilliant, has a very depressing report on the deep racial divide within American political opinions, especially regarding the President. It's amazing how much can change in just a year. Maybe some retrospectives back to Election Day (as I'm sure are going to be happening on the news a lot) will make us feel better?

The saddest thing about this is what she notes near the end, that:
"President Obama and his administration may seek to distance themselves from the negative implications of racialized support by enacting social conservatives policies. This was a strategy used by President Clinton during the second half of his first term. It has the perverse effect of punishing African Americans for their political support and loyalty."

Let's pray we take a different path this time.

Another Reason to Listen to Women

An article about a would-be whistle-blower says her advice could have prevented the recent financial meltdown.

Best quote: "Saying the government should not regulate fraud is like saying it should not regulate murder." Yeah. Duh. Do your job, punks.

Life and Death

Today is All Saints Day, and though we are supposedly a low church, non-liturgical tradition, at my church that means we have a memorial liturgy in which we remember church members who have died in the last year, other loved ones and some famous(/ish) people who have died in the last year, any loved one who's ever died that we miss, and any other loss that causes us grief. It's quite nice I think.

It also means I preach about death, which is always a little sketchy, but I think I did okay today.

Then, this afternoon, after church, I went to the nursing home to check on a member and get her signature on a birthday card for a friend of hers who grew up in the church (a former pastor's daughter, in fact) who is turning 80 this week. While I was there, I went down the hall to meet another woman for the first time.

This other woman is someone I should have met a long time ago. She's not actually a member of my church, but she's been in our directory and on our prayer list (as being in a care facility) longer than I've been here. She was a member of a sister congregation in another nearby town that closed about 6 months after I came here.

I think I tried to go see her once, but it didn't work out. And we tried to Christmas carol to her once, but she was gone.

Anyway, in 8 years, I'd never met her, and I guess it was finally time.

She was quite nice, though pretty upfront about the fact that it took me a while to get there to see her. She wasn't nasty about it though, just appreciative. She told me a little about herself. In fact, she did most of the talking, as she is pretty hard of hearing.

And here's what struck me. She is 99 years old and perfectly lucid. She has a 79-year-old son who has Alzheimer's. Her husband died from it. The son lives a couple hours away in the metropolis where his daughter is. They have breakfast together over the phone every Saturday. But she seemed to realize that was not going to last much longer.

I'm not sure I've heard of anything that sad in a while. Can you imagine being old enough to experience your son getting Alzheimer's? Life and death are perhaps equally difficult.

Halloween Series -- Superstition and Religion -- Part Three

So again, I believe that the driving force behind religious practice and superstitious behavior or belief is our insatiable need for meaning. In the book group I lead, we have been reading "On the Mystery" by Catherine Keller. It's a book about process theology, and it's been a rich and interesting challenge for us that has provided much fruitful and thick conversation.

One of the things that she repeats over and over again is the idea of life as "open-ended interactivity." Early on in the book, she critiques the idea of God as omnipotent. She talks about all the things that are wrong with many historical interpretations of the idea of "God's will."

And it's true that people have some really bizarre, inconsistent yet fervently held beliefs about God's will.

I think part of that fervor comes from a deep fear of meaninglessness. We are terrified by the idea that life is random and largely a matter of chance.

One fascinating way this plays out in some churches is in how we deal with the idea of "luck."

Where I'm from, when people bring food to church for a shared meal, we called it a "potluck." Here in the Heart of Dixie, it's usually called a "covered dish meal". This struck me as odd (and inconvenient, since potluck is so much shorter).

It didn't seem to be a huge deal at my church, more just what they were used to. But I asked around a little and discovered fascinating things. One woman told me that someone else had told her that you shouldn't use the word "potluck" because it starts with the same letters as Lucifer!

I have a woman in my church who will correct herself if she starts to say that a certain happening was "lucky". What is amusing is that the word she inserts instead is "fortunate" which doesn't seem any better to me at all, if you think about it.

This issue has also arisen in my life recently in the debate about whether it is okay to have a raffle at a church-sponsored fund-raiser or not. I was all set to have this happen, at a fund-raiser for an organization whose board I'm on. But the agency director ixnayed it. He offered me all these ridiculous excuses about how the volunteers would be mad about the extra work and confusion, none of which I was buying since I'd already checked it out with those folks. His real reason was that he considers a raffle (the kind where you buy a ticket for, say, a buck and then one person wins half the take and the other half goes to the organization) gambling, a game of chance, and thus, clearly an immoral activity that should not be done in a church setting.

Let me say right here that I have very strong feelings about gambling. But they have nothing to do with a situation like this. I am opposed to gambling (real gambling) because it involves playing with money, when there are so many people in the world who don't have enough money. To me, entertaining yourself by playing with money, acting as though it doesn't matter if you win or lose it, trivializes the dire need of so many people around the world.

A raffle, on the other hand, held to support the work of a non-profit agency dedicated to helping people in need, is practically the opposite. The chance involved is merely an incentive to get people to give more money to the cause.

We clearly have different reasons for opposing gambling, reasons that cause us to define gambling or gambling's immorality to be precise, differently.

What is strange to me is the idea that anything that focuses on the reality of chance is considered immoral. It's like it's considered rude to point out, in God's house, that things are random.

I think this is related to some people's need to believe that nothing is chance because God is in complete control. To indulge in games of chance is considered offensive, partially because it's seen as testing God's will, but also, I suspect, because it forces people to question their comfortable presumption that God is controlling every last detail.

The truth is that lots of things are going to happen that we cannot adequately explain. Some will turn to the mystery of God's will. Many will describe it as "luck" without quite knowing what we mean by that. We crave meaning and cannot get enough of it, so we make it up where we wish it was.

Personally, I'm fine with continuing on as Lucky Fresh. The random chance of the world may seem to open a terrifying abyss, but I prefer to see it as beautiful and tasty.

Halloween Series -- Superstition and Religion -- Part Two

So in Part One, I shared a personal experience about the way we make meaning out of the events of our lives and even ascribe "divine guidance" abilties to them. You may think I'm crazy. But I'm not the only one.

Once I had that experience, I started noticing it everywhere.

I'm guessing everyone reading this has, at least once, been in a situation where someone (you or someone else) does that thing where, when looking into scripture for guidance, you open the book to "wherever" it opens and look for the message you're supposed to receive on that page.

My spiritual director has done this with me. I know it's a common practice. But I don't see how it qualifies as anything other than Bible-related superstition. There is no tenet of Christianity that suggests that the Holy Spirit controls our fingers and gravity and the paper and glue of the book's binding in such a way that the message we need to receive at any particular moment will be on the page that naturally is revealed. That's crazy. Yet people do it all the time.

Closely related to what we commonly call superstition is ancestor worship. Most Christians, in this country at least, would insist that they do not engage in ancestor worship. But if you look at what happens in countless congregations, you will see that this is not exactly true.

A colleague recently had a deacon leave the church because he thought the pastor had said the King James Bible wasn't true. What my friend in actuality said, in a sermon about women in leadership, was that the KJV had turned Junia into Junio. That was it. But you know how people are about the King James Bible.

What's funny about so much of the idolatry around the KJV is that it's Baptists (and other free church traditions) doing it, about an Anglican translation. But even that more recent history (as compared the more ancient texts that have been discovered since the KJV was completed) is not as recent as these people insist on elevating. They want to use the KJV because it is the book of their ancestors, their recent ancestors, the ones they remember.

This seems like a form of ancestor worship to me. The thing that is elevated, the thing that is held up as important and definitive, is the practice of the recent blood-line, the tribalism, rather than the universalism of the actual biblical witness. "This is how my daddy did it, and how my daddy's daddy did it, and dadgum, I'm going to do it that way too!"

One might also look at the practice of affixing little brass plaques as a symptom of ancestor worship too.

Halloween Series -- Superstition and Religion -- Part One

I have been contemplating the fine, fuzzy, often unclear line between superstition and religion a lot recently. Really, whether a particular belief or practice is an act of faith or a superstition is mostly a matter of perspective.

It seems to me that the driving force behind all of it is the human's fervent search for meaning. We desire meaning so badly that we create it even when it's nonsensical to do so. The question is where "legitimate" faith ends and nonsensical begins.

Take for instance, an experience I had a couple weeks ago. I have been dogged for many months by a broken relationship. I have gone back and forth and back and forth about whether it is appropriate for me to make another effort at reconciliation. Numerous people had told me it would be pointless. And I mostly suspected they were right. Still, there was part of me that wanted to be able to know I had tried. So at one point, I had made the decision to make a phone call and, assuming I would be talking to voice mail, leave a clear and conciliatory message, with no expectation of response.

I knew that doing this would require a tremendous amount of emotional energy, in preparing my message and then actually leaving it, not to mention dealing with the slight chance that the phone might actually get picked up. I had determined that there was a certain window of time within which this would need to be accomplished, due to various circumstances.

So the day came, and what happened? I had printer problems. Serious, crazy-making printer problems. The kind that consume an insane amount of time. We had a deadline for these things that had to be created, and my printer was the only one that could do them effectively, except that it wasn't cooperating. Four trips to the office supply store later, I realized my window of opportunity for making that hard phone call had passed.

And bizarrely, I interpreted that as a sign, a sign that I wasn't "supposed" to make the phone call. I know that is crazy, but I did it anyway, on multiple levels. On a rationalization level (not a rational level, mind you), it was nice to have an excuse not to do it. But on a completely irrational level, I feel like my psyche interpreted it as a sign too, because the pressure I had been feeling to reach out, despite my expectations of the futility of doing so, was relieved.

God, the universe, fate, something had used my printer and its reluctant cartridges to keep me from doing something. That was how it felt, at a very primal level. I had been struggling to know what to do about the situation, and finally, I had received guidance.

Now, mind you, it seems crazy to me to say all this. But my emotional self doesn't seem to care what's crazy and what's not. It just knows that it's been released from a major source of stress.

Superstition. It's such a weird thing. We denigrate it so much, and yet, we cannot escape it.

Humor as Confession

I noticed something the other day...

At our mid-week prayer service, the sharing of joys and concerns got a little out of control. It turned into something more like a conversation. At some point, someone asked me if I had gotten or would be getting a flu shot.

Oh my, no! I don't do shots. I try to avoid having to do anything at all involving needles.

And in the course of answering this question, I quipped that I "depend on sheer will power to keep me healthy."

I was joking. Sort of. Mostly. I think.

The thing is that it's sort of true. I am aware of myself as a person who is mostly healthy, who works hard and doesn't "have time to get sick." I don't think I'm a workaholic. I mostly take my day off on Mondays, and when I do have the sense that illness might be creeping up on me I take the first opportunity to get some rest, which usually nips it in the bud. Last night, for instance, I had been planning to go to a high school football game to hear a church kid play trombone. But I had the teeniest whisper of a sore throat, which usually means I should take it easy, inside surrounded by blankets, rather than sit outside in the cold and wet. So I didn't go.

But I do have some sense that I will myself to stay well. And yes, I am aware that that is pretty much an act of sinful hubris.

So when I made this "joke" in prayer service, I would submit that it was as much an act of confession as an act of humor. Perhaps it could be both.

What made me realize all this was one of the reactions to my comment. There was a man present (not a regular) who is not particularly skilled at picking up social clues. When I said that, he responded by saying that he relies on God's grace and God's healing and God's power to keep himself and his family healthy. He wasn't exactly calling me on the carpet, but it got pretty close. He clearly hadn't understood that I was joking.

Or maybe he understood that I wasn't joking. I don't know. It was an odd moment. Because of course he was right, if you add in the benefits of modern medicine that most of us avail ourselves of. And of course, to act as though I keep myself well by sheer force of will was a display of hubris.

But the whole point of saying such a thing, with the tone of voice I used, in that particular context was to point out how ridiculous it is that I pretend it's possible to keep myself well.

I'm not sure I've ever thought about humor as a context for confession before, but this experience leads me to believe we do it a lot. We know that things are funny because they're true. So when we exaggerate things, pretending that we're "putting on" it is also confession, because we know that there is truth there also and we're mocking ourselves.

Good thing laughter is good for your health!

Why I'm Not Watching "Mad Men"

I know that some of you are huge fans of the relatively new show "Mad Men." Please forgive me.

I will freely admit that I was prejudiced going in. We got the disks from Netflix, I suppose because Dear Husband put them on the list.

I agreed to watch an episode or two. But I did not have a particularly open mind. I had somehow gotten the impression that "Mad Men" glamorized the early 60s, including the gender roles that were prevalent at the time. It seemed like it must be a symptom of backlash to feminism. (Such things do abound, after all.)

But once we were actually watching, once I had let go of my pre-conceived notions, I realized that the problem was different and more complex than that.

One could argue that the set and costume design does contribute to a certain amount of glamorization. But the writing? The actual experience of the gender roles and the interaction between sexes? I didn't find it romanticized at all.

I found it to be what I can only assume is painfully accurate. I wasn't alive in 1960, and I wasn't working as a secretary in an advertising agency. And I thank God for that. I couldn't take it. I couldn't even take watching it.

So I have decided that I do not have a moral problem with the show, because I don't believe they are glamorizing screwed-up systems of inequality. In fact, you could perhaps argue that they are exposing them.

But I can't watch it. It feels suffocating to me, and I don't enjoy being suffocated. For those who can stand it, and I understand it may get better further into the show, go for it. But I am choosing not to watch.

The Source of Offense (and a recipe)

Recently, I have resurrected (with the help of my mother -- Thanks, Mom!) a recipe from my childhood. It is a recipe for chocolatey, oatmealy refrigerator cookies.

I was so excited about these cookies that I posted about them (including the recipe) on facebook. But that meant I had to use their name.

The cookies, in their original context -- which is my mother's 4-H cookbook, so, the 1950s -- were called "Eskimo Cookies."

I thought quite a bit about whether this is an offensive name or not. I decided, at first, to go ahead and use it. And I did get some push-back.

First of all, as most of you know, "Eskimo" is a name put upon a people who call themselves "Inuits". So you're already treading into the territory of denying self-determination. So should we call them "Inuit Cookies"?

Somehow that also seems wrong.

I had thought a lot about why these cookies had this name in the first place. Because they are chocolate in the middle, with a powdered sugar coating, I wanted to make damn sure that the name wasn't a reference to their color. (Something like the opposite of the racial slur "oreo".) As far as I could figure out, that probably wasn't what the name was about, since it didn't really make any sense.

So I decided it must just be a reference to the fact that they are refrigerator cookies, i.e. cold cookies. It might also have to do with the fact that they look like mini snow balls, since they're covered in powdered sugar.

So. Coldness, possibly snow. Temperature is not generally considered something that qualifies as a slur. Does that make it okay?

I decided it does not. Because calling a cold cookie, a cookie that lives in a cold place an "Eskimo cookie" has the effect of reducing the Eskimos, or shall we say, the Inuits, to people who live in the cold. It is offensive because it is reductionist, and therefore, de-humanizing. There are many realities about the Inuit people besides the fact that they live where it's cold. To imply that their essence is summed up by something you keep in the fridge is to diminish their unique complexity as a people.

I believe it is this reductionism that is at the root of most offensive uses of groups' names. But we usually don't talk about it that explicitly. We talk about generalizations or stereotypes; we talk about whether something is derogatory or not. But the truth is that it's diminishing to emphasize one characteristic above all others because it reduces people's humanity. That should be enough of a reason to avoid doing it.

Thus, I have re-named this dessert. I am now calling them Bon Bons.


Here is the recipe for Bon Bons:

Soften 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter (3/4 cup).
Mix in 3/4 cup sugar.
Add 1 tablespoon water, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and 3 tablespoons cocoa.
Stir in 2 cups of oats.
Chill in fridge for a good long while. (4-H says overnight. I think an hour does it just fine.)
Shape dough into balls and roll them in powdered sugar.
Keep in the cold, wintery refrigerator. (Humor is also important!)

Censorship

There has been a lot written lately about the "new social media" that have emerged in our society -- Facebook, Twitter and others. Much of the commentary has focused on the shifts in assumptions and expectations about privacy.

I'm just realizing that these new media may affect another aspect of our society: censorship.

I discovered this because I myself became the censor.

Yesterday, one of my status updates said: "Lucky Fresh just got an email from her congressman titled 'Public Option: No Choices, Just Government-run Health Care'. Do you think he assumes we don't know what the word 'option' means? Or is he being deliberately mis-leading?"

Yes, I was disgusted. Yes, it was a little snarky. But as it turns out, I may have been biting off more than I was in the mood to chew.

One friend immediately chimed in with the answer "Both."

But then another facebook friend, who happens to be a cousin I hardly know who happens to be a right-winger, chimed in with a comment that, from my perspective, was insulting to the president.

And at that point, I realized I was just not in the mood for another debate about all that. And I wasn't in the mood to see his obnoxious comment there on my profile page.

So I deleted it.

A few more people chimed in later, including him, though his second comment was less clear and less annoying. But it didn't turn into the debate I was trying to avoid. I was glad. (I had also quickly changed my status update to something quirky and cheerful, so as to distract attention from it.)

But it got me to thinking. I'm not sure I've ever deleted someone else's comment before. I've usually felt like people have the right to express themselves.

Earlier this week, a debate about paid sick leave raged below my status update for a day or so. One person wrote in to say that "Arguing on someone else's facebook page feels rude. I'm sure there are other formats that would facilitate a reasonable discussion of this important topic."

That seemed weird to me. I had started the discussion and actually didn't find it as heated as some people evidently did. So why was someone else (who didn't even have to read it if she didn't want to, as she hadn't commented previously or 'liked' my update) trying to stifle conversation? Perhaps she doesn't have as many mouthy friends and friends of friends as I do, but I've seen lots of people having debates on one person's facebook page. Seems that's one of the major things some people do on facebook.

Except the other day, I wasn't in the mood. And because it was on my page, I had the authority to delete whatever I wanted. And I did. Is that censorship?

What this reminds me of is another threat to public discourse. In recent decades, the whole reality of "the public square" has been diminished. Yes, we still have parks, and some towns still have commons with stores that people frequent. But in most places, the mall has replaced the town square. And there is one major difference between a town square and a mall when it comes to free expression: a mall is private property. There is no right to hold a protest at a mall.

Which is a problem, if you want to hold a protest in a place people will actually see you. Because the mall is where the people are. Yet, there is no right to present your opinions there.

Is my facebook page like a mall? Is it my private property? (Actually, it's not. It belongs to the facebook people, which is a whole other issue. For the sake of this debate, however, I exercise control over what's deleted or not, so it's "mine".) Do I have a right to censor what is written on my page? Facebook seems to think so, or it wouldn't give me the ability to do so.

What will this mean for the future of public debate? Will these social media affect our concepts of censorship the way they are supposedly affecting our understandings of privacy? I don't know.

I think most people, myself included, have some sense that one should be restrained in deleting other people's comments. It's obvious that just because someone posts something on your page that doesn't mean that you agree with them. And most people do not want the reputation of only listening to people who agree with them. So mostly, I think people will not delete comments without good reason.

Is not being in the mood for a debate a good reason? I'm not sure.

The Latest Work of Maira Kalman

My favorite opinion illustrator columnist, Maira Kalman, has another "column" out in the NYT. She's visited the capital and reports on what she learned.

Her pictures and drawings made me realize that even though I've been to DC numerous times, I've never actually been in a government building. She mentions that one of the people who worked on the capitol building had previously worked on the Vatican. It was weird how similar the styles of decor are. What does that mean?

Anyway, you should check it out. She has such an uplifting, appreciative, focus-on-the-best-in-us approach to life.

Grammar as Class Warfare

There is a pretty interesting review of what looks to be a very interesting new book about grammar in Salon.

The author of the book is apparently suggesting that most grammer rule enforcement (or attempted enforcement) is little more than class warfare. There are also some interesting historical tidbits, for example that the words "donate" and "inaugurate" were considered abominations when they first appeared. (By somebody)

The author suggests that the only sensible rules for grammar are those that exist for the interest of clarity. Clarity is a very important value to me when it comes to language. In fact, one of the reasons I am such a big fan of English is because it has so many words and thus, has high potential to offer clarity. I do not know a ton of other languages, but I've been around some of them enough to notice that they have many words that have to mean various different things. That seems confusing to me.

Another interesting point in the article is that some of our supposed grammar rules are there simply because they were rules in Latin. But they didn't really translate all that well, for instance, the rule about not splitting infinitives.

Anyway, you should read it.

Fall Oddity

So the leaves are finally starting to change around here. I know some of you have already had snow come and go, but I do live in the Heart of Dixie.

Many people find fall a beautiful time because of the vibrant colors of the dying leaves. For some reasons, I associate autumn landscape pictures with jigsaw puzzles from the 70s. The ones that are probably missing pieces because they were bought at a yard sale and have been in the back of the closet for a while. But I do like fall trees in person, especially maples that turn bright red or anything that turns bright yellow.

We are privileged, at our house, to have a gingko tree. (Not to be sexist, but it's a boy tree, and we're glad.) Gingkos do their fall thing a little bit different than most trees. I think they're actually way older than many varieties of tree, but I might have made that part up. So maybe they were the first draft of fall beauty. It got more complex after that.

Gingkos are unusual, because their leaves are a very uniform color of green. And when they change color, they change to an almost completely uniform color of yellow. And, normally, the whole tree does it all at once. Like all in a day or so, or so it seems if you're not paying close attention.

But the gingko tree in our backyard, for reasons unknown, is even more unusual than that. Because it doesn't change all at once. The back half changes first, and then the front half catches up a couple days later.

I don't know if it's because it's pretty close to the house, and the front half stays warmer from radiating heat; or because the back half gets more strong afternoon sunlight, whereas the front half is shaded by the house and the tall trees in the front yard most of the day; or for some other reason, but the line between the two halves is remarkably pronounced.

It's just started, so the back is almost yellow, and the front half's green is just beginning to fade. This is one of those times when I wish I were cool enough to post pictures to my blog, but I'm not, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Sometimes Nice Isn't the Only Thing You Need

So recently, I've been having to deal with this extraordinarily rude woman. For reasons unknown to me, she has evidently decided that I did something (or didn't do something) unforgivable to her. She's not a church member; she's a church member's family member.

Because of various other anxiety-producing circumstances, I know that I am not operating at 100% lately. So I've noticed that I've told more people about this women's rudeness than I might ordinarily tell, presumably because it feels good to have people affirm that she is being really rude. Mostly, the people I've told have cooperated with my neediness.

But then there's this other woman. She is one of the ones helping out with the sick church member. Actually, she's been the main liaison, since the rude family member won't communicate with me. And at some point in this saga, I noticed that she wasn't really as sympathetic to my plight as others. I believe her words were something like, "I suppose this is one of those things that pastors have to deal with," stated just as matter-of-factly as you please.

It was kind of a good reminder, if a bit abrupt. I had been pretty proud of myself for how I was handing this not-nice woman, and I'd very much been enjoying the accolades from the people I'd told about her who said they would have been much less polite. But here was this woman, reminding me that loving her with the love of Jesus, despite her behavior, is my job. So I should just do my job.

And she's right. At first, I was a little hurt that she wasn't more sympathetic. But you know, I got plenty of sympathy. Being told to buck up and deal was also pretty helpful, once I got over my surprise.

You Get What You Pay For, Or At Least, You Don't Get What You Don't Pay For

A little over a month ago, a friend on facebook noted that her "dawn simulator" was "up and running." "So far, so good," she added.

I was intrigued. I don't like getting out of bed. Especially in the dark. Now, I realize I don't have a lot of room to complain, since many, many people have to get up in much darker dark much more often than I.

But when I do, and especially after the impending shift back to "standard" time, I really, really don't like it and have lots of trouble dragging myself out of bed.

So I clicked on the link to see what sort of contraption my friend had gotten that was going to make this easier.

Here is what she got.

As you will notice, this machine, which you hook up to a lamp so that it can bring the lamp up to full brightness ever so gradually thus simulating dawn, costs $156.95. I quickly lost heart. We don't have that kind of money, at least not for something as optional as a "dawn simulator."

But I couldn't stop thinking about it. I wanted one. I coveted hers.

So last week, I went to the hardware store and bought a timer like the ones I have the living room and den lamps on. It cost about $5. It's so non-high tech I can't even show you a link.

I've hooked it up to my bedside lamp. The outlet, thankfully, is within reaching distance of the bed, since I have to use the manual switch on the timer to turn the lamp on and off at night. I can adjust rather easily what time it comes on in the morning and for how long.

The first night I set it up, I switched out the 100 watt bulb for a 60. The next morning, it was clear even that was too much so I went with a 40 watt bulb. That seems fine.

Now, obviously, this isn't really a "dawn simulator". It doesn't come on gradually; it comes on all of a sudden. (Unless it doesn't, like happened Sunday morning when I turned it off the wrong way the night before.) I am clearly going to have to train myself to sleep facing away from the lamp, as it's a bit much to have it come on right in your face even if you're asleep.

So I'm not getting all the physiological benefits of the gradual increase in light. That's what the big bucks are for. But it's still making it way easier to wake up. And it only cost $5. I'm satisfied. We'll see if it helps when the time changes.

The Appropriate Place for Soap Boxes

Today being Sunday, you can easily guess what I was going to be doing. That's right -- reading "Parade" magazine!

I am a bizarrely big fan of "Parade" magazine. Numerous people I know have made very disdainful comments about it, to which I respond that they cover certain topics succinctly that a part of their audience will never know anything about unless they read it in "Parade".

Plus, there are comics. And that creepy smart woman.

And celebrity gossip. Which brings me to my point. (Did you know I had one?)

Today, the last question in "Walter Scott's Personality Parade" concerned a supposed celebrity named Jonathan Taylor Thomas. I am merely taking their word that this is a famous person, because I'd never heard of him. (This is, however, frequently the case with the "celebrities" covered in this particular column.)

The inquiry included three questions. What was he up to? Does he still act? And... Is he gay?

The first two got answered. And then, in what I find a baffling, if well intentioned, lack of awareness of self-identity, the answer concluded, "As for his sexuality -- or, for that matter, that of any other actor or actress -- Walter Scott [I've never seen him name himself like that!] would like to ask, now and for the record: Whose business is it? And what does it matter?"

Hmmm... Clearly, Walter Scott is trying to make a point. And it's a point I agree with, but, um, did he forget that he writes a celebrity gossip column?!? He answers people's questions about celebrity relationships all the time! I'm almost positive that there have even been answers about whether so-and-so was in relationships with men or women before. Or whether a certain dead celebrity ever came out of the closet.

So if the writer had asked if JTT dated men, would WS have answered? What if the person who was writing in had a crush on JTT? That might make it "matter" to "Gallagher (no first name given)" of Madison, Wis., in the sense anything matters in a gossip column.

Whatever one's beliefs, if you're a gossip columnist, it is not in your best interest to ever ask "Whose business is it? And what does it matter?"

Grace

This fills my heart with warmth. Apparently, some of the trains in New York deliberately leave a minute later so that late people can get on board. They don't tell anyone.

Is it a lesson for life? A minute may not seem like enough time to make a difference, but it clearly does for lots of people. And it doesn't end up affecting when the train arrives. Maybe we could all afford to give that extra minute to those who need it, whatever that may mean in our individual contexts. And if we can do it without claiming credit, even better.

Maybe we could start a Secret Minute Society to spread grace around the world...

One Other Thing

It's been a week since President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and a lot has been said about it.

I will admit that my first reaction was that it was pre-mature. It seemed to me like it would put a lot of pressure on him and make his opponents even more crazy, etc., etc.

I have read some things that convinced me that there are plenty of legitimate reasons why he deserves it. Though I'm very disturbed by the possibility that he will not get us out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.

But about the prize, I've come to another conclusion. One of the bizarre themes of the commentary focused on the political ramifications. Would it help Obama or hurt him with the home crowd?

What was fun was to discover that the Nobel people, and in fact, a large portion of the world living vicariously through them, took the opportunity to express themselves without worrying how America might feel about it. Political fall-out be damned, they seemed to say, we like this guy and need to show how much safer we feel with him in the White House.

Once in a while, I think it's good for this country to realize that the rest of the world actually has their own understanding and position in the world, and they don't have to always take us into account if they don't feel like it.

We know that the "center" in this country has been sliding right since the late 70s. I wonder if the reality that the rest of the world is radically to the left of us could help us get the middle back where it belongs. In some ways, this Nobel Prize was a little reality check. Thanks for that.

Because You Asked

In a recent post, I mentioned Lynda Barry in the title without any explanation. It saddens me that she is not more of a household name, but I understand that we are each aware of our own personal set of obscure things.

So for those of you who were not previously aware of Lynda Barry, allow me to introduce you. She is a cartoonist, most famous for her weekly strip, "Ernie Pook Comeek". She has an incredible talent for channeling children in a tone that is honest, respectful and hilarious. She is one of my favorites.

You can read her bio at wikipedia here.

You can read the weekly "Ernie Pook Comeek" here at "Marlys' Magazine" (Marlys being one of the characters in it). If you read enough of them, I hope you will come to understand why I said I was channeling her when I wrote "How to Cook". It was not a comment on her cooking skills.

ENJOY!

Shopping Dilemma

Okay, so I'm definitely not a person who plans way ahead for Christmas, I promise. But I got a catalog in the mail today. (Don't get me wrong; I'm not really a big catalog person either, except for certain things.) It was from one of my favorite organizations, the Syracuse Cultural Workers.

I immediately started making plans to do all my Christmas shopping from their lovely catalog full of cool, lefty t-shirts and enlightening children's books and educational calendars. And then I heard the voice of our little mayor in my ear saying, "When you shop online, all that money goes out of our community."

I would like to shop locally, really I would. But I don't like to buy stuff just to buy stuff, and I would prefer to buy things that are sustainably and justly produced. The problem is that you can't find a lot of that sort of thing around here, that is, things with meaning that actually support the people who make them and don't destroy the earth.

So I'm caught. Do I buy things from a catalog out of New York that fit my values? Or do I shop local? Here's what will make the difference: I hate going shopping. If I can do it over the phone, that's probably what's going to happen. Sorry, Mr. Mayor. And yes, family, you can now probably figure out what you're getting for Christmas!

Sweet Spot

I love fall and spring precisely because of the moment we have now reached. As I was changing out of my work clothes just now, I realized that even though today I wore a sleeveless shirt and never needed the light cardigan I took in case I got cold, tomorrow I could probably wear long sleeves and be just as comfortable.

I love it when the weather is so perfect that you can be comfortable in whatever you're wearing. I think that's what heaven is like. You can be comfortable whatever you're wearing. And I'm planning to wear wings.