Lying Liars
Sep 30th, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

So, as I’ve been telling you, I’m still reading Searching For God Knows What, by Donald Miller. I just finished the chapter called “Morality: Why I’m Better Than You.” I really liked that title and thought it was pretty funny, because Don Miller doesn’t really think he’s better than really anybody. He spent a lot of the chapter comparing the message of Jesus that we read in the Bible, which is to love all people, with the message of a lot of his current followers, which is to hate people who are different from them. Now that may sound fairly harsh. And I admit that I said that to get your attention. Miller was mostly talking about what the “church” in the United States has spent a lot of time and resources on in the last 10 years or so. They call it: the “Culture War.” And use a lot of war analogy to whip their people into a frenzy to make sure they “live right,” behave “morally,” etc. And he finishes the chapter admirably. And I finished it last night.

So I found it both funny-weird, and funny-ha ha, that when I checked my head-lines this morning I found this article on liars and their brains. It seems that pathological liars have more white matter (which transmits information) in their pre-frontal cortexes than the rest of us normal folks do. We have more grey matter (which processes information). Which led me to wonder, does the excess white matter cause the lying? Or does the lying cause the excess white matter? Which comes first? That has yet to be determined. I find all of this study of brains fascinating and wonder where it will lead.

Poetry Thursday – Flurie
Sep 29th, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

Absence
by Bryce Alan Flurie

After heaving a tractor out of the
grandest woodchuck hole in Central Pennsylvania,
the cast iron hung back on the wall
after dinner without you,
all that’s left is to drink our
pot of Darjeeling without your
old yellowed mug beside mine,
and wish you back across oceans.

But now, children cry and
clothes need folded,
and the damned sugar bowl
needs filled again.
Ah, but then
a bluebird lands
on the rusty clothesline pole.

More on Shopping
Sep 28th, 2005 by Sonja

So I looked up this week and LightGirl has grown again. She needs new clothes … AGAIN! I think there must be laws against growing this fast or this much. And I think it must be painful, although she doesn’t complain. So off we went this evening to get some bottoms; some shorts (because it’s still warm enough, especially in North Carolina) and some long pants. We went to a large department store here in town. I also needed to replace my purse. I hate that chore. Once I get a purse, I like to keep it for a long time. This latest one did not last long enough. I just got used to it when the strap broke.

There we were in the department store. The selection was dizzying. I cannot really handle all those choices. It literally makes my head spin. I’m un-American in this … I do not enjoy shopping. In fact, I cringe when I think of it and I try to avoid it. We did manage to find two pairs of shorts and two pairs of long pants, and a pair of flip flops for LightGirl and a new purse for me which promises to completely organize my whole life for $20.80 … well $32.00, but it was 35% off.

What really bothers me is how many items are “Made in China” or “Made in Sri Lanka” or some other Asian country. It’s not that I don’t want to buy from Asian countries because I have something against Asians. I don’t. Or that I think the products are cheap. It’s that the products **are** cheap. They are too cheap. You see, I’ve come to realize that everything, every single thing that is for sale in this country and indeed, every where, costs a certain amount of money to make. If I (as the final customer) do not pay that price for that product, then someone else must absorb the cost of production, transportation, etc. Usually that someone else is the lowest man on the totem pole … a woman or child in the factory that produced the item in China or Sri Lanka. The next someone would be the person or people who are working the modes of transportation to get the stuff to me here (boats, and trucks). The last someones would be the people working the floor of the store where I buy it. Those people are all absorbing my “low prices.” When I don’t pay the actual price that something costs, someone else absorbs the difference and pays with their hunger, and their health and their well-being. And somehow that just doesn’t seem right.

Why I Don’t Shop At Wal-Mart
Sep 28th, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

So a lot of you know that I don’t shop at Wal-Mart. Some of you may not know this. I make noises about Chinese labor laws and children suffering and the poor here and there. But I realized today the real reason why I don’t shop there. It’s personal for me. They union bust. The corporate heads at Wal-Mart hates unions. And for me, that’s personal. You see, my grandfather was a Teamster. Not only was he a Teamster, but he was framed for his union building activities in the 1930’s (when my father was just a small boy) and put in jail for a year. My father spent that year in an orphanage. Eventually the fact that he was framed became public knowledge, my grandfather was pardoned by the governor of Massachusetts, and my father’s family was reunited. People who bust unions do all sorts of evil things and I will not support them in any way. It’s that personal.

P.S. For some reason I feel compelled to add this … that because I’m against union busting, does not (in a weird way) make me pro union. I’m in favor of people organizing themselves to protect their interests, but I think that the time when unions were able to be effective at the national level has passed.

Grammy O.
Sep 26th, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

I think my largest regret is that shortly before my Grammy O. died of leukemia in 1989 I sent her a letter in which I poured out to her my anger with God for causing her to die this hateful cancer-ridden death. I was just about turn 28 years old and she was just about to die days before her 80th birthday (which was 3 days before my birthday). She was one of my very best friends. And I was M. A. D. that she was dying. I knew that everyone has to die. But that was in the theoretical sense. She was my Grammy. She wasn’t supposed to die yet and she certainly wasn’t supposed to die of this wasting awful disease that stole her in bits and pieces. She was supposed to be here to meet my children and see that LightBoy has her nose and eyes, and my Grampy O’s sense of humor. She was supposed to be here to see the quilts that I make on her sewing machine (except that I really couldn’t do that on her sewing machine if she were alive and using it). She certainly wasn’t supposed to have been diagnosed with leukemia the week after I got married and die less than 2 years later. That was never part of my plan.

I talked to her often. At least two or three times a week, and always in the early mornings. She and I were/are both early birds. I could always count on her being awake to talk early in the morning before I went to work. Early May birds we two. With our birthdays three days, but 50 some-odd years apart. Most of the time now I only miss her a little, but some days something will happen … and I’m never sure what it is … but something will happen and I will have this flood of memories or just of missing hurt. Because here’s the thing. I have a wonderful mom, but like with all moms, she and I have holes. Places where we just don’t fit. And my Grammy O filled in a lot of those places. I’ve bumped along without her, with her memory holding me togther. But today is one of those days that I just miss her like crazy. And it’s just going to be too pea-pickin’ long til I see her again.

My Hero
Sep 25th, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

So yesterday my trusty chair broke. You wouldn’t think it would be a big deal. Except that it was my sewing chair. My sewing chair is a big deal. I spend a significant amount of time in it, I need to be able to sit properly in it. And most of all, I need to be able to adjust the height according to the activity I’m engaging in … actually sewing, or cutting fabric.

But my chair broke. In the middle of a project. I could still use it, but it was annoying me.

So, my hero leapt to his feet. Bounded aboard his trusty white charger (other days it looks like our gold minivan) and rode away to the nearest Staples. While there he faithfully and stoically sat in …

every …

single …

chair …

Before choosing the perfect chair for me.

At least that what he says. We do not yet have the chair, because the minions at Staples could not put it together last night. So we await their summons by telephone this morning.

I am patiently dealing with my old chair. It will do for now. It lasted far longer than we ever expected it to.

My Hero … did not sit on the sofa last night playing his video games. He went to Staples. Chivalry is not dead. The knights of old still ride … they just have different horses.

What’s Missing?
Sep 24th, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

So I’m **still** reading Searching For God Knows What, by Donald Miller. It’s my bed time reading, which means that sometimes I re-read the same several paragraphs several days in a row before I feel like I really know what I’ve read and can go on. Not that the writing is all that deep, it’s that’s how tired I am when I go to bed and read at night.

In the latest chapter Don related how he was once teaching a class at a local Christian college. It was a Bible class. One period he decided to present **the Gospel**. He told the students, (who were all bright, intelligent, Christian young people) that he was going to leave something crucial out. He told them this ahead of time so that they could be listening to hear what was missing. Then he presented **the Gospel** … the whole thing, the beauty of creation, the Fall, death, morality, etc., etc. God loves us, salvation … everything but he left Jesus out of it (I’m still not sure how he managed it, but remember I’m reading this at night). And those bright young things never missed it. At first I was shocked, and this was one of the sections I had to read again.

And then the LightHusband began to relay a drama that he has been in the midst of. A certain friend who is a very strong “Christian” (we’ll call him Jim) had become very angry with another friend (we’ll call him Brian) and behaved in a very angry manner. Brian had responded by saying (essentially — and in an e-mail), “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you supposed to be religious? The things you say are not lining up with the way you are behaving right now.” Jim responded with, “Hey I’m forgiven, I’m not perfect and anyway, I’ve got Jesus, so I don’t have to be perfect. It’s not about how I act, it’s about what I believe.” And continued on and on in a vein that completely absolved himself of any wrong-doing. And tho he mentioned Jesus by name several times, the Jesus who loved people and was merciful and gracious and loving was not part of the “conversation.” Don’t get me wrong, on his better days, Jim totally believes that he has a burden to “share Jesus” with others. But he’s somehow managed to compartmentalize his life in such a way that he doesn’t need to change his behavior at all in response to his relationship with his Savior.

I’ve been thinking about these kinds of things a lot lately. Sometimes they make me angry. Other times sad. I’ve been trying to sort myself out. I spent a long time in a church that had some very stern definitions of what it meant to be a Christian. It made life very easy. But it couldn’t answer a lot of questions I had. Questions like the one Brian posed to Jim. I don’t believe Jim answered it very well … at least not within the context of what he says he believes.

I think, tho, I’m finally coming to a place where I can put some of those questions to rest. I think that many so-called organized religions are organized around the idea that they can somehow manipulate God to manipulate their fellow human beings. It turns out that Karl Marx may have been right when he declared religion to be an opiate for the masses. Marx wasn’t necessarily denouncing God, so much as he was denouncing those who would use God in order to keep His created beings under their thumbs.

On one hand this knowledge makes me angry. On the other hand this makes me sad and then guilty. Sad, because we should all be free to make our own choices. Guilty, because I know for sure that I’ve done and said things that are so terribly manipulative in the name of God that I’d like to just hide for several hundred years in shame.

This love standard that Jesus gave us … to love people enough to let them go, let them make their own decisions, even when we know they’re bad, wrong, whatever, and continue to love them … it’s brutally hard. But that’s where true freedom can also be found and so … I think that’s where I want to go. That’s the path I want to follow.

First Level of Hell-oween
Sep 22nd, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

So … you know you’re a mom when you start making Halloween costumes in September … and planning them in August.

LightGirl came to me at the end of August with this request. “I want to be a witch this year, Mom. But I want to be a Harry Potter witch. Like Hermione … but not actually **be** Hermione. And here’s a picture of the robes I want you to make.” And were they like your typical wizard’s robes like you think of (think tent, with a hood)? No. They looked more like this:

And it must be “straight” (i.e. plain) black velvet, with a green yoke, and green lining in the sleeves. But I’ve been let off the hook here, I’m told by LightGirl, because with a long dress (she assures me), she can wear regular shoes. She will not need any special shoes. Ohhhhhh … k.

This is good because I just spent an afternoon at the fabric store choosing fabric … ELEVEN YARDS of fabric for this dress (I mean, costume). Eleven yards of fabric. Eleven. She is not going to be able to walk. And the pattern has about ninety-hundred pieces. I am not going to spend a lot of money on shoes. Regular shoes will be good.

Thankfully (almost), LightBoy wants to be some Bionicle or other. This cannot be duplicated in fabric. At least not by me. It will have to be purchased. He has already found his costume on e-Bay. What a good boy. What a kind son. He has figured out how to wear a bicycle helmet on his face for a mask. I don’t think it’s comfortable, but it doesn’t appear to be unsafe. If you think it’s unsafe, please let me know.

There was much less pressure when we didn’t “do” Halloween. But also much less fun.

Poetry Thursday – Angelou
Sep 22nd, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

Touched by An Angel
by Maya Angelou

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love’s light
we dare to be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

Room Assignments
Sep 21st, 2005 by aBhantiarna Solas

So I handed out the room assignments today.

In 10 days we head for Nags Head and a week of communal living.

This is our third year of this. We rent a house for a week in October with several other families. We can do this because we homeschool. Trust me when I tell you that the Outer Banks of North Carolina are delightful in October. There is almost no one there. The weather is still warm and so is the ocean. The beaches are almost empty. So are the stores. So are the dolphin watching tours and the kayaking rentals and the state parks and the national parks. We go ghost crab hunting at night and dune climbing during the day.

Every evening is someone else’s turn to make dinner. So we each only have to make dinner one time. This works out well for everyone. Then there is one night which is a communal dinner that we all make. That is a crazy night. And fun too. The kids all eat at the breakfast bar, dangling their feet and demanding to eat sooner … hungry from so much activity all day. Eyes all sparkly, mouths all grinny, bodies all wiggly … they can’t sit still, they have too much to say to the cooks and to anyone who will listen.

In the mornings, the early risers take coffee across the street to watch the sunrise over the ocean. That is when you catch God at His finest hour. It snatches my breath away to see the sun come up over the ocean and reminds me once again of how small I am. Of my true place in the grand scheme of things. Of my amoeba-likeness on the chessboard of the universe.

Only 10 days left before we leave … but who’s counting?

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