What Is Love?
Feb 13th, 2010 by Sonja

A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, ‘What does love mean?”    The answers they got were broader  and deeper than anyone could have imagined See what you think:
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‘When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn’t bend over and paint her  toenails anymore.  So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got  arthritis too. That’s love.’ – Rebecca- age 8
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‘When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.. You  just know that your name is safe in their mouth.’ – Billy – age 4
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‘Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne  and they go out and smell each other.’ – Karl – age 5
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‘Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French  fries without making them give you any of theirs.’ – Chrissy – age 6
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‘Love is what makes you smile when you’re tired.’ – Terri – age 4
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‘Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip  before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.’ – Danny – age 7
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‘Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of  kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more.     Mommy and  Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss’ – Emily – age 8
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‘Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.’ – Bobby – age 7
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‘If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,’ – Nikka – age 6
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‘Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.’ – Noelle – age 7
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‘Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still  friends even after they know each other so well.’ – Tommy – age 6
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‘During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked  at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.  He  was the only one doing that. I wasn’t scared anymore.’ – Cindy – age 8
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‘My mommy loves me more than anybody  You don’t see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.’ – Clare – age 6
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‘Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.’ – Elaine-age 5
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‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.’ – Chris – age 7
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‘Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.’ – Mary Ann – age 4
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‘I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.’ – Lauren – age 4
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‘When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.’  – Karen – age 7
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‘Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn’t think it’s gross.’ – Mark – age 6
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‘You really shouldn’t say ‘I love you’ unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.’ – Jessica – age 8
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The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.  Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman’s yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.  When his Mother asked what he had said to th e neighbor, the little boy said,                       ‘Nothing, I just helped him cry’

In the spirit of coming to Jesus as little children, take a shot at it in the comments – what is love to you?   Where do you see the concept we call love manifest in action in your life?  Or … which one of these was special to you and why?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

And I — I Took the One Less Traveled By …
Feb 10th, 2010 by Sonja

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost

It has become quite fashionable to write posts these days waving good-by to the emerging conversation, drawing a line in the sand and staking a claim to a new path into a new future.  I don’t quite know what to do with that.  I struggle with it.
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On one hand I see these posts as asking valid questions and see the people writing them as having legitimate concerns with the direction that the conversation is headed and how things are currently going.  I have to say … I am in agreement with Sarah at Emerging Mummy who is uncomfortable with how commodified the conversation is becoming; more and more blog posts and comments seem to be platforms for someone to hawk their books, conferences, magazines, etc., etc.  But thankfully, no bobblehead dolls … yet.   I am really looking forward to Jeremy Bouma’s series that he has introduced here – Goodbye Emergent – Why I’m Taking the Theology of the Emerging Church To Task.  He’s asking some key questions about stands that leaders in the conversation have taken on original sin, whether or not the Gospel is important, how we view the Cross and the heresy of Pelagius.  You’ll have to read Jeremy’s post to see how he’s framed the questions and what (exactly) has grabbed people’s goats along the way.  I see it as an introduction, a broad brush and we’ll see the details in the weeks to come.  I’m sure I’m not going to agree with everything that Jeremy writes … that’s alright.  I’ve become accustomed to not agreeing 100% with anyone, not even my dearly beloved husband.  The only one who agrees with me all the time is my dog and his brain is the size of an orange (with a miniscule frontal lobe) … think about that for a while.
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Mainly, I think we’ll disagree over Pelagius.  I tend to think that P-man got a lot right.  I think he’s often taken out of context and forced into the Greco-Roman context of Augustine where he makes very little sense.  We forget that, indeed, the fight between the two started over something quite small … the date that Easter would be celebrated.  And it escalated until Augustine finally won the battle to get Pelagius declared a heretic.  Augustine was a recovering alcoholic and Pelagius was a party boy, some even say a glutton.  They were diametrical opposites in every way.  That they came to (theological) blows is no surprise.  What if we return Pelagius to his homeland of 5th century Ireland and read him in that context?  I’ve never done this, but my guess is that his “heresy” might not be so glaring.  He was converting/pastoring Druids and Celts … not Romans, Egyptians and Greeks and that might be an entirely different thing.

So, on the other hand, I remember when I wandered all wobbly on to this road about 4 or 5 years ago.  I’d just started blogging.  I’d read a few books (Blue Like Jazz among them) and was asking a lot of questions.  A LOT!  I was going to a small church where some questions were encouraged and I started looking around the internet to see if there were more women like me.  I’d found some men bloggers, but I wanted to find women.  And in my search, I started to find more people who were asking some of the same questions I was asking.  I found women too.  Women like Julie Clawson, Makeesha Fisher, Linda (the blogger formerly known as Grace), Molly Aley and Christy Lambertson (both no longer blog).  The list of women grew and grew and so did the men.  Sometimes it kind of felt like the Old West in ways both good and bad out there.  But the wonderful thing was anyone could participate.  It was like my grampy’s old saying, “If you can read, you can do anything.”  If you could read and write, you could participate.  There were (and are) defined tiers of participation.  There are definite leaders who’s blogs get a bazillion hits a day (and some people can dismiss that, but … well … fine.  The rest of us know you’re being silly).  I’m about the 7th tier down … maybe further (in case you were wondering) and I like it that way.
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Over the last year or so things have begun to change.  For a variety of reasons, some personal and some not, I don’t feel so comfortable in the greater conversation anymore.  I don’t know quite what has changed.  In some ways, yes, the conversation has changed.  I felt (at the time and continue to feel) that creating an organization around Emergent Village was a terrible idea.  I know it created efficiencies and abilities that were not available without the umbrella of an institutional organization.  However, that’s just exactly the problem.  Once an institution is created, then somehow that institution needs to be fed and maintained.  Someone needs to guard the gate.  Others need to dust the furniture.  Still others need to buy food and prepare meals.  And don’t even talk about the laundry!  Gradually, when all those people are doing all that work together to feed and maintain that institution a couple of things happen.  One is that they get to know one another and usually become friends.  Another is that they start get a sense of ownership in that institution; pride in what they’re doing and how well they’re doing it.  All of these are really good things for the most part and I’m glad for the folks who are involved in Emergent Village that they have that place.  But (you knew that was coming) there is a flip side to all of that chummy joy.  Eventually, other people come along who want to come into that institution, but they have muddy shoes and dusty pants and they leave their drink glasses on the table without using a coaster.  In short, they do not have the same respect, love and care for the institution that those who feed and maintain it do and pretty much, these outsiders are not very thoughtful of the help either.  Even when the newcomers stumble in and are appreciative, there is no possible way for them to appreciate the help (oldtimers) nearly to the degree which they deserve.  This is mostly because those on the outside really have no possible way of knowing what is going on on the inside.  It’s just the way institutions roll.
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So, we’ve come to a place where there are a goodly number of people who are comfortable with the way things are (or are headed) in the emerging conversation.  But there are also a goodly number of people who (for a variety of reasons) are no longer comfortable with it.  Me, I feel like Robert Frost standing at the two roads diverging in the woods.  Do we really have to choose?

Because honestly, the response to the questions and concerns of the people who are no longer comfortable has not been entirely welcoming.  And I know (believe me, I know) how it feels to be under constant attack from the heresy hunters.  There have been one or two here that love to drop by and call names, engage in straw man silliness and all kinds of hurtful evil in the name of Truth.  I understand the frustration of hearing the questions all the time (I have two teenagers) … but.  But.  I’m just not sure that choosing camps, engaging in hyperbole, and generally dumping the frustration of a thousand other blogs onto friends and fellow conversants who are now choosing a road less traveled is the wisest, or indeed the most Jesus-y, choice we can make right now.
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So I’m wondering what will happen now.  Will emerging devolve into Augustians and Pelagians?  Will the institution that is Emergent Village become more important to protect and preserve than the individual people that are under it’s umbrella?   Will a “conversation” begun based on the tenet that it must be acceptable to question the faith of one’s elders, be able to survive the questioning of those who are now part of it?

My Family Is A Microcosm
Jan 27th, 2010 by Sonja

One of my most fun memories growing up was of watching my father line up with his siblings to have their photo taken.  They’d line up by age, which in their family meant that the group was bookended by women, turn to either the right or left and have a profile photo taken.  It was fondly known in my family as “The Naylor Nose photo.”  My father and his four siblings were all endowed with fairly regal, even aquiline, noses.  Some more resplendent than others.  They were proud of this bit of their heritage from their own dad.  Though I don’t remember that my grandfather’s nose was anything in particular.   It was simply a way that the next generation had of reminding themselves of who they were.

That generation is aging now.  The eldest among them turned 90 August 6, 2009.  And as of last August they will no longer all be together on this earthly plane anymore.  My oldest uncle passed away after a long battle with emphysema.  He was 87 and retired from a career as a pilot in the Air Force among other things.  He flew in WWII, the Korean War and Vietnam.  When he got out, he built seawalls in Florida.  He took my brothers on a two month long camping trip across country to Alaska one summer.   And he taught my children how to do “smooth five” so they could give a high five to the elderly without breaking an arm or spraining a wrist.

My aunts and uncles are members of the “Greatest Generation,” my parents are members of the Silent Generation, my cousins are Boomers, my brothers & I and my cousins children are all Gen X-ers.  My children are Millenials and I’m not sure what generation my cousins’ grandchildren belong to; maybe it doesn’t have a name yet.  We are a microcosm of trendy generations.

Why Worry?
Jan 8th, 2010 by Sonja

I signed up some time ago to receive the e-mail posting of the Washington Post’s opinion page.  So every weekday morning I get an e-mail with a tickler about that day’s opinion pieces.  I don’t always read them, but sometimes …

This morning I read through them and saw this:

I need (but have no desire) to read the piece.  Some years ago I could tolerate Krauthammer and sometimes even agreed with him.  I don’t know if it’s age or what, but he has gotten more and more regressive as time has gone on.  Maybe it’s the confluence of our culture and his age.  But he gets more and more shrill as time goes on.  But the question posed struck me.  The Krauthammer of years passed would have gone to the mat for our and others civil rights.  He would have been protective of the U.S. reputation abroad.  He might even have stood firm on the idea that the Geneva Convention has protections worth caring about.

So … here’s my answer to that question.  We are and should be more worried about the Miranda rights of any perpetrator, because … once the gloves are off, it is difficult to put them back on again.  Who is to say how the definition of “terrorist” might change over the years?  At this point, we seem to have a clear idea that a terrorist is someone “other” … a person who does not belong to our culture.  But what happens when the government decides that anyone speaking out against a sitting president is a “terrorist” or might have terrorist affiliations?  I know that sounds silly and well, we have the First Amendment.  Or do we?  If Miranda rights do not apply to everyone within our borders, including “terrorists” … then they can be suspended for us too.  It really is an all or nothing deal … if those rights do not apply to everyone, then they can at some point be suspended for anyone.

What happens when they come for you?  Don’t you want to have those protections?  I know I do.  The Miranda rights do force our justice system to work harder in order to successfully prosecute a case against an offender and we find people who are innocent sitting on death row.  It is not infallible so the ordinary citizen (including suspected terrorists) needs to have as many protections against the almost overwhelming power of the state as they possibly can.

On Anger and Gender
Oct 17th, 2009 by Sonja

I’m sitting in the rink on an early, early Saturday morning once again, having driven here with a quiet but not sullen pre-teen next to me.  He was eating a bagel.  The pouring rain and inky, black pre-dawn required most of my concentration, but in the quiet times I’ve had recently I’ve been thinking about anger.  More specifically, how we treat anger and gender.  I had a couple of instances recently that brought it to my attention, one is personal and the other happened to a friend.

First, the friend:  Makeesha writes about her anger here – “I have never felt this much anger – ever – and I don’t know what to do with it. I know anger is a secondary emotion and I can identify the primary emotions but I still feel angry and I still don’t know how to stop feeling angry.”  Go read her whole post so you know what’s driving her anger … I’ve only copied the part that’s pertinent to what I’m writing about here.

I had a recent incident with LightGirl’s hockey team in which I had an inappropriate outburst at her new (male) teammates for treating her poorly.  She has a couple of guys on the team who are making life miserable for a lot of kids, but they are using her gender to make life miserable for her and that is steaming me up.  I lost my temper after a recent practice and … well … let’s just leave the details out of it, but the boys in question just laughed.  And, to be fair, I bet I was pretty funny looking.  We talked it through with her coach and it’s being worked out.  But that’s not the point of all this.

I began to specifically think about women and anger.  I don’t think women are supposed to be angry in our culture.  We’re considered either funny or unacceptable in some way when we get angry.  When men get angry, they are frightening and taken seriously. Women are … something else.

The other thing that I’ve been tossing around both in my mind and in conversation (with LightGirl) is the idea that we should “stop feeling” anger (as Mak puts it).  That anger is an emotion to get rid of.  What if it’s an emotion that is to signal that something is wrong (which it is) and it is to give us energy to change that wrong or walk through the wrong (if we can’t change it)?  I wonder a lot about our culture’s desire to ameliorate negative emotions so that we don’t feel sadness or anger or pain for too long.

Which brings me to a quote I heard on a new drama on NBC called “Mercy.”  The main character is being convinced against her will to get marital and PTSD counseling by some friends.  They are giving her all the standard advice about why she should talk about her feelings and her response?  “I like my feelings all pushed down and compressed.  That way they pop out at random and inappropriate moments.”   This is not the way we should live, but it’s the way most of us do live despite all that we know about how to be emotionally healthy individuals or communities.  No one likes to see a sad face or someone with angry eyebrows, so we put on masks for the outside world.  Women in particular are very good at this … and we’re expected to be.  We’re expected to smooth the waters for the family, for any given mixed gender group we are a part of, and when we do not the labels that are attached to us are not complimentary.  To say the least.

So I have not come to any conclusions; I still have questions and wonderings about what role anger should play in our lives.  Should we embrace it?  Sit with it longer and see what it will tell us about ourselves and what we need to do?  Without allowing it to control us (that is).  Do you see things differently than I?  Are women treated the same as men in anger?  Or are they treated differently?  What are your thoughts about all of this?  I’d love to hear them …

Church Street
Jul 17th, 2009 by Sonja

One of our favorite places to go when we’re up here in Vermont is the Church Street Marketplace in Burlington.  It’s a fascinating place.  It’s always been a draw to me.  When I was young it was just a regular street with cars and shops.  But there was an eclectic mix of shops and they were tantalizing.  There was a Chinese restaurant at the bottom and around the corner on Main Street was a second hand clothing store that had the best stuff in it.

Now it’s all different.  And even more fun.

Church Street facing northChurch Street is a street of about 4 or 5 blocks in length in the middle of Burlington, Vermont.  It has end points on Main Street and Pearl Street.  On the Pearl Street end is a very large and imposing brick church which may be seen for the entire length of Church Street, which is most likely the source of the street name.   As I wrote earlier, when I was a teenager it was a regular street.  At some point in the ’80’s the city elders had the very wise idea to brick off the street and turn it into a “marketplace” for pedestrians; an outdoor mall, if you will.  Nowadays, you can drive through Church Street on the cross streets, but you have to stop for pedestrians who may wander out in front of you at will and without looking, but you can’t drive on Church Street itself.  There are shops, restaurants, carts, entertainers and political booths.  One might hear every form of music ever divined by man or God on Church Street in an afternoon.  LightHusband noted as we walked along that, “You could squeeze all of Washington, DC and still not get all the diversity in one place that you have on Church Street on a Saturday afternoon.”  It’s really an amazing place to be.

Yesterday, LightHusband and I had lunch outdoors at the Bangkok Bistro sitting on Church Street and watched the people go by.  I could’ve sat there all afternoon, what an endless source of creative inspiration.  There are people from all walks of life passing by our table, leaving snippets of conversation hanging in the air behind them.  In particular, I found myself noticing shoes yesterday and percieved that a preferred form of footwear has become the flipflop.  But the flipflop has come a long way from the humble drugstore purchase and beachwear of yesteryear.  I was fascinated to see all the different versions of flipflop there are.  I won’t wear them because I have a weird aversion to having things between my toes, but they fascinate me nonetheless.

We just love the place.  And go there to hang out, drink coffee, wander in and out of stores, talk to shop keepers, watch people, day dream, whatever, whenever we get the chance.  If you ever find yourself in Vermont I strongly suggest you do the same.  It’s a wonderful place to spend a day.

What Has Been Going On?
Jul 11th, 2009 by Sonja

Where on earth have I been?

Right where I usually am.  My digs in Virginia.  I could say I’ve been busy and that would be true.  I could also say I’ve been dry and that would be true.  I could also say I’ve been processing some stuff and that would be true too.  So a lot of stuff’s been going on and it’s made for not much writing.  Some of that means that I’m getting more and more frustrated with myself, so that’s coming to an end … maybe.  I’ve got some ideas that I’ve started on and I want to flesh out.  Hopefully I’ll be able to do that.  For now though, here’s what’s been happening in the LightHouse over the past couple of months … well, some of the highlights anyway.

LightGirl’s U16 Girls hockey team finished their season 2nd in their league.  They went to an end of season tournament and played up a step in terms of the level of teams they’d faced all season.  They lost every game, but played hard and learned a lot about where they want to go next year.   They played three games in one day; these were 16 hard playing tired hockey girls at the end of the day.

I think she had a weekend off and then Spring Season began.  She played on co-ed intramural team and had a ball.  There was another goalie on the team so she had someone to share goaltending duties with, and two other girls that were her friends.  I’ve never met a coach who put less stress on his players while still managing to teach them and lead them.  He was really good with those kids.  I have to say … he made a terrible club president, but an excellent coach.

In the middle of that she had tryouts for the 2009-2010 Travel Season.

From the moment LightGirl thought about playing hockey, she’s wanted to play on a boy’s team.  Last spring she tried out as a skater for the appropriately aged boy’s team and missed it because she was afraid to play defense (she’d never played it before).  This year she tried out as a goalie for the U16Midgets.  That is the Midget team that are Under 16 years old.  Boys.  One day I’ll do a post on the nonsensical names for age classifications in hockey.  There were five goalies vying for four positions.  Two of the five were girls.  Another (different) two were wicked good.  It was a high stress weekend that brought on a minor (very minor) replay of pancreatitis for me.

LightBoy also decided that he would try out for a travel team.  His age group is known as the Pee Wees.  Between the two of them … LightGirl trying out for the Girls and the Midgets and LightBoy trying out for the Pee Wees … I believe they had a total of 13 ice times that weekend.  Did I mention it was Mother’s Day weekend?  I spent Mother’s day at the rink and received a soggy rose for my efforts.

By the end of the day on Sunday I could feel the familiar twinge in my upper abdomen that signaled my pancreas was not happy with something.  Fortunately, I know how to handle this now and instead of four days in the hospital I changed my diet and took it easy for a few days.

LightGirl was invited to join the U16Midget Minor team that Sunday night.  And we were left to wonder what the heck that meant.  It wasn’t long before we found out.  The club had a large number of players in her birth year (who will be first year players in that age classification … in other words they can play for two years as a U16 team) and a slightly smaller number in the year ahead of her; enough that they could field two teams.  One is a mix of both years; the other is just her birth year.  She is on the latter.  The club has been waiting to field a team that is year specific.  So it will be interesting to see how they do.

This raised some issues in our house.  LightGirl has played with the same girls for three years now and made some great friends.  It’s a close team.  The parents know each other fairly well; we do spend quite a fair amount of time together, afterall.

It was a hard decision in some ways and others a no-brainer, but LightGirl decided to play with the boys for the coming season.  So this summer has been about that transition.  Discovering who her new teammates are.  Off ice conditioning so that she can keep up with the boys.  And the emotional fall out of leaving her friends behind.

In the meantime, LightBoy has discovered a certain talent for marksmanship and computer programming.  So even while he is working his hockey skills, he’s also learning archery, guns and is building computer games using a program called Scratch.   He’s also decided that he wants to take on Linux this year, so he’ll be figuring that out along the way.  Twelve is an awkward age for boys, in particular.

He’s also been very interested in paintball and airsoft.  He has a lot of equipment and goes out with his friends to both official fields and backyards on missions.  They spend alot of time plotting, planning and strategizing.  He has also engineered at least one new gun for airsoft out of pvc and other parts including duct tape.  Yes, it does work.

I have been working with two friends (one of which is BlazingEwe) to start a new business.  Quilting, of course.  We have a website and we’re taking it slow.  We’ve sold two quilts on commission thus far.  It’s probably not a great time, economically speaking to start a quilting business.  Oh well … Our business is called Needle In Peace and that link will take you to our website.  Once there you can get to our Flickr site and see many of our quilts.

I also discovered back in March that my thyroid is failing.  This seems to be a family trait as my father, his sister and my brother all have the problem as well.  My primary care physician was attempting to handle this, but I’d prefer to see an endocrinologist who knows all the signs and symptoms as well as all the blood tests to look at.  So I have that appointment scheduled when we return from Vermont as I’m still not feeling quite well.

So … there you have it, in a very large nutshell.  Where I’ve been and what’s been going on.  More to come soon.

The Blues
Jun 8th, 2009 by Sonja

I seem to be a little dry lately and don’t have a lot to say, either in real life or here in on my blog.  So I haven’t been saying much.  That’s why you haven’t seen me around here very often.  I have a feeling that might be changing soon (or not), I don’t know.

A little while ago, Mike Todd did a really good piece on atonement (it’s long) and it sparked some really great discussion.  I read through it all and tried to jump in the conversation here and there, but … as I said, I’m kinda dry right now.  So I just listened and absorbed it all.  If you weren’t privy to it, I’d recommend reading it now.   Or not.  I’m just telling you about to set the scene, so to speak.  So you know what I was percolating on.

In the meantime, I’ve been watching a lot of afternoon television the last couple of weeks.  It’s been keeping me company while I’ve done lots and lots of sewing.  I have two channels I prefer in the late afternoon and they run re-runs of “murder” television, as my family calls it; Law & Order, mostly, but also Bones and House.   One episode of either Bones or House ended with a song one day that I could not let go of.  It was a mostly a refrain that went, “none of us are free, none of us are free, one of us in chains, none of us are free.”

So I did some internet sleuthing and found the song and artist.  Bought the whole album from iTunes.  It’s a blues album.  I’m a sucker for the blues.  If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to absolutely choose a favorite genre of music, I likely choose the blues.  Of course, I like almost all genres equally, but there’s something about the blues that gets under my skin.

The song is “None Of Us Are Free” by Solomon Burke and you can enjoy it below … watch the video and listen hard to the words.  It’s a spiritual wrapped up in the blues.

This song reminds me that no matter what theory of atonement you subscribe to, in the end it doesn’t matter.  We are all bound up in this kingdom together until we enter God’s Kingdom …. all together.

None of us are free.  Maybe that’s why this gospel of my own personal Jesus always feels so empty and void.

None of us are free.  One of us are chained.  None of us are free.

Making Up For Lost Time
Apr 2nd, 2009 by Sonja

Well, that’s not entirely true … only because one can never really make up for lost time.  But I’m on a mission to get myself back on some kind of track and get some writing done.

I have some plans and ideas in my head for real, live honest to goodness posts.  Yes, written by me and posted here.  Believe it or not.  I may be coming back from my own dead head.

And I’m going to be regularly posting Ooze reviews once a week.  On Fridays.  That just seems like a good day to do them.  So be watching this space tomorrow where I’ll be reviewing two CD’s.  Books begin again next week.

Maybe I’ll even write about my whacky idea to turn our suburban manicured front yard (sloppy and ragged can be considered a manicure … it’s just not a good manicure 😉 ) into a Virginia meadow.

Virginia meadow
Photograph by Paula Sullivan

See, I think this will be a good idea on many fronts. We won’t have to mow except for twice a year, thus reducing our gas usage and carbon emissions. It will attract song birds, humming birds and honey bees, thus it would be a haven for small creatures that need space in urban environments. Plus, it would be pretty. Who can argue with pretty?

Aunt Jemima – International Women’s Day Synchroblog
Mar 7th, 2009 by Sonja

In celebration of International Women’s Day, Julie Clawson of One Hand Clapping challenged us to find some unsung heroines of the Bible and celebrate their stories today in a synchroblog.  So I pulled up BibleGateway and put “daughter” into their search engine.  I think it came back with about 110 hits … or something like that.

Some daughters just got honorable mention.  That is, they were simply mentioned as so and so’s daughter and that was the end of that.  Others had an actual story attached to their name.  Sometimes the story was fairly mysterious.  As in the case with Caleb’s daughter.  She was married to her cousin, by Caleb’s younger brother because Caleb had promised his daughter to whomever won a particular battle.  His nephew won the battle, so he married off his daughter.  This is not very acceptable by today’s standards, but in that culture we can understand it.  The next couple of verses recount an event that is odd.  Caleb’s daughter went to him and asked for some additional land.  When he gave it to her, she also asked for a couple of springs.  So he gave her those.  And there the story of Caleb’s daughter ends.  With the gift of springs.  It’s mysterious, really.  In there for a reason, but why?

So I moved on and found the story of Job’s daughters:  Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch.  This story can be found in Job, chapter 42 … the very end of the book.  Job has come through his trials with some version of success:

1 Then Job replied to the LORD :

 2 “I know that you can do all things;
no plan of yours can be thwarted.

 3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.

 4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’

 5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.

 6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”

7 After the LORD had said these things to Job, he said to Eliphaz the Temanite, “I am angry with you and your two friends, because you have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has. 8 So now take seven bulls and seven rams and go to my servant Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for yourselves. My servant Job will pray for you, and I will accept his prayer and not deal with you according to your folly. You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has.” 9 So Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite did what the LORD told them; and the LORD accepted Job’s prayer.

This is curious to me, because here we see the result of what happens to friends who might give you (however well-meaning) an incorrect perspective of God during your trials.  Those friends will have to sacrifice in your presence and have you pray over them.  This is an interesting perspective that I’ve not heard taken away from Job … but more on that another time.   I’m just thinking we need to be very careful with what we say to people about God when they are experiencing trials.

In any case, the account goes on tell us what happens to Job in the rest of his life:

 10 After Job had prayed for his friends, the LORD made him prosperous again and gave him twice as much as he had before. 11 All his brothers and sisters and everyone who had known him before came and ate with him in his house. They comforted and consoled him over all the trouble the LORD had brought upon him, and each one gave him a piece of silver and a gold ring.

 12 The LORD blessed the latter part of Job’s life more than the first. He had fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand yoke of oxen and a thousand donkeys. 13 And he also had seven sons and three daughters. 14 The first daughter he named Jemimah, the second Keziah and the third Keren-Happuch. 15 Nowhere in all the land were there found women as beautiful as Job’s daughters, and their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.

 16 After this, Job lived a hundred and forty years; he saw his children and their children to the fourth generation. 17 And so he died, old and full of years.

Wait?  What?  Three short sentences.  That is all we have of Job’s daughters.  They were part of a family of 10 siblings.  We don’t know where they fell in the sibling order.  We do know who among the girls was eldest, middle and youngest.  We know they were beautiful.  Most astonishing of all, we know that “… their father granted them an inheritance along with their brothers.”  That’s it.

It’s a genealogist’s worst nightmare.  We have names and nothing else.  We know only the most bare facts of their existence.  But we know one more thing.  Job gave them status.  He told the world that his daughters were equal to men.  His daughters were not chattel to belong to their husbands.  They owned something of their father in their own right.  I’m not certain I can fully convey how remarkable this was for that time.

It was miraculous.  Unheard of.  Women were not considered capable of owning or managing the things that men did.   But Job did it.

These are the just sorts of passages I do love.  Open-ended, without a tidy message.  We don’t know what happened to Job’s daughters.  We do know that Job lived to see “… his children and their children to the fourth generation.”  I believe that would be his great, great grandchildren if I’ve figured correctly.  My guess is that his daughters married and children of their own.  So how did they use their inheritance?  And … did they pass it on to their daughters?  What was their inheritance?  Was it land, animals, jewels?

I wonder about those things you see.  We have things (land, jewels and the like) that have been only passed to women in my family.  Our summer lake house is among them.  When my aunt left it to our family, she left it to my mom (her relative).  Her will stipulated that if my mother had pre-deceased her, it was to go to me and my brothers.  She was emphatic that it stay in her family.  In the 100 years prior to that, the house had always passed woman to woman.

They are so intriguing to me.  Those daughters.  Jemimah, Keziah and Keren-Happuch.  They are the opposing book-end to Job’s first three daughters.  As I thought about them and let their names rattle around I came to another realization.  I’d heard two of the names before.  Jemimah and Keziah were common names given to girls who were slaves in the American South.

I started looking for confirmation of that.  Of course, I quickly ran into a brick wall … because records of what slaves were named by each other were … um … slim.  Nobody thought it was important to keep track of what they called each other.  Sometimes just the gender and the slaveholders last name is recorded.  Certainly, no inheritance was given to these men and women.  It is intriguing to me that Jemima and Keziah were used as girls names though.

I wonder … could those names have been picked on purpose?  Are they names of hope?  We’ll never know for certain.  But we do know some few things.  We know that some slaves were given Christian training.  Some were even given Bible teaching.  We know that some of the stories resonated with their experience and certainly Job’s would have been among them.  It’s not a terrible stretch to imagine naming your daughter Jemima or Keziah out of hope … hope that one day you would have an inheritance to leave her, hope that she would be known as the daughter of a man who was blessed by God, hope that your trial would be ended in blessing rather than curses.

I think there might be something to that.  None of Job’s other children are named.  Not his first ten children (seven sons, three daughters) and not his second seven sons; just these three daughters.  So, it seems to me that these names spring to the top as names that are symbolic of the hope of a good outcome at the end of horrible trials … the kind of trials endured by slaves in the antebellum South.

Aunt JemimaThus I came to the Aunt Jemima pancake empire.  It was begun in the 1890’s by two men who, having created an instant pancake mix, needed an icon to name it and represent.  One of them ducked into a black-face minstrel show and there heard the following song:

The monkey dressed in soldier clothes,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Went out in the woods for to drill some crows,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
The jay bird hung on the swinging limb,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
I up with a stone and hit him on the shin,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Oh, Carline, oh, Carline,
Can’t you dance the bee line,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

The bullfrog married the tadpole’s sister,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
He smacked his lips and then he kissed her,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
She says if you love me as I love you,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
No knife can cut our love in two,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!
Oh, Carline, oh, Carline,
Can’t you dance the bee line,
Old Aunt Jemima, oh! oh! oh!

Shortly after hearing the name, Nancy Green was hired to represent Aunt Jemima.  She was currently working as a servant for a judge in Chicago, but had been born and raised a slave in antebellum Kentucky.  Aunt Jemima and her pancakes were introduced at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.  It was held from May to November and Nancy smiled, sang, told slave tales, flipped and served almost a million pancakes during that six month period.  In the hundred and ten years since then she has become perhaps the most well-known African American female face in history.

Yet, there is something vaguely disturbing about that.  This name, Jemimah, started out as a name of hope, blessing, inheritance and beauty had become a term interchangeable with disparagement, slavery and bondage and now … commerce.  You never hear Jemimah as a name anymore.  There are no young women with that name … no fathers or mothers hoping to pass on that message of hope, blessing and inheritance to their daughters with that name because it’s lost all of it’s power.

We still hear Keziah.  You might not recognize it.  You’ll hear Keshia or Aisha.  Both of those names have their roots in Keziah.  A name of hope and blessing and inheritance for girls.   That’s just what we need to give our daughters today … a sense of hope and blessing and inheritance.  What sort of inheritance will you give your daughters?

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This is my contribution to the International Women’s Day Synchroblog –

Here are links to some others –

Julie Clawson on the God who sees
Steve Hayes on St. Theodora the Iconodule
Sonja Andrews on Aunt Jemima
Sensuous Wife on a single mom in the Bible
Minnowspeaks on celebrating women
Michelle Van Loon on the persistant widow
Lyn Hallewell on the strength of biblical women
Shawna Atteberry on the Daughter of Mary Magdalene
Christine Sine on women who impacted her life
Susan Barnes on Tamar, Ruth, and Mary
Kathy Escobar on standing up for nameless and voiceless women
Ellen Haroutunian on out from under the veil
Liz Dyer on Mary and Martha
Bethany Stedman on Shiphrah and Puah
Dan Brennan on Mary Magdalene
Jessica Schafer on Bathsheba
Eugene Cho on Lydia
Laura sorts through what she knows about women in the Bible
Miz Melly preached on the woman at the well
AJ Schwanz on women’s workteenage girls changing the world
Teresa on the women Paul didn’t hate
Helen on Esther
Happy on Abigail
Mark Baker-Wright on telling stories
Robin M. on Eve
Patrick Oden on Rahab and the spies
Alan Knox is thankful for the women who served God
Lainie Petersen on the unnamed concubine
Mike Clawson on cultural norms in the early church
Krista on serving God
Bob Carlton on Barbie as Icon
Jan Edmiston preached on the unnamed concubine
Deb on her namesake – Deborah
Makeesha on empowering women

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