For What It's Worth

If you thought the first advent was good. . .

secondinaseriesofsix — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:40:45 +0000

⁶ The LORD of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain;
A banquet of aged wine, choice pieces with marrow,
And refined, aged wine.
⁷ And on this mountain He will swallow up the covering which is over all peoples,
Even the veil which is stretched over all nations.
⁸ He will swallow up death for all time,
And the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces,
And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth;
For the LORD has spoken.
⁹ And it will be said in that day,
“Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us.
This is the LORD for whom we have waited;
Let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”(Isaiah 25:6-9)

Flexibility goes to the movies

secondinaseriesofsix — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 22:48:58 +0000

Isn’t this a great idea? This company has adapted the movie theater experience to be more accessible to people with special sensory needs. I came across this while looking up show times, and immediately thought of several families I know through books, blogs, or real life who would welcome it. Social expectations and sensory contrasts are lowered to help everyone relax. It won’t cure or treat anyone, and it doesn’t provide a necessity, but it’s still a nice way to care and welcome.

I can’t make a toned-down theater experience, but I can make sure that my Sunday school class is inclusive. I can invite that clingy mom to sit with her child in my class and listen long enough for her to tell me that she’s grieving another child. I can look acceptance at the parent of the violent child. Maybe later I’ll find out (as I did in one case) that she’s only recently came to a healthy family, or maybe I’ll find out that there was brain damage done at birth. Maybe I’ll never know. I shouldn’t have to hear the back story or the list of diagnoses to extend the tolerance and love I would if I knew.

Some of us are in a position to structure inclusion into an organization, but all of us can extend a welcome. While I’m glad companies are adapting to fit special needs, and I hope we see more inclusive events, anyone can make any movie, church service, outing, party more inclusive. We can’t always lower the sensory contrasts (although sometime we can and should), but we can broaden our expectations. If you expect that some children will have sensory issues, or behavior problems, or trauma triggers, you will often have your expectations met. I want to be the smile, not the stare, at that mom who is wearing her five-year-old, or the person who’s not fazed when a dad hands his seven-year-old a pacifier, or lets his son wear earphones in the grocery store. I want to pretend I don’t notice the antics of the too-old child behind me in church instead of glaring. It’s possible what I’m seeing is a parent doing the absolute best thing for his child. It’s even more probable that I’m seeing a parent do the best he can.

Five Fresh Songs

secondinaseriesofsix — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:27:37 +0000

Christmas songs and carols start in my household as soon as Thanksgiving dinner dishes are done. A frequent Thanksgiving guest arbitrated a family disagreement this year by assuring us that in past years, we have been allowed carols during Thanksgiving dessert. Yours truly thought we should wait for pie dishes to be finished. No matter; I love the seasonal anthems. But after hearing the same songs in stores, at coffee shops, over the radio, and sung around the piano, I can grow a little sated. If you find yourself growing grinchy from lack of variety in your Christmas playlist, here are a few of my favorite not-so-common carols (all of which are easier to sing along with than O Holy Night):

For theology:
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day (It’s worth getting a version with all the verses to complete the story.)
Thou Who Wast Rich Beyond All Splendor (There’s an updated version with altered words that is still pretty good.)

For nostalgia:
Peace on Earth (Yes, this is the carol in Lady and the Tramp, recorded by the timeless Dean Martin.)

Just because they sound different:
In the Bleak Midwinter (James Taylor does a lovely version)
Sweet Little Jesus Boy (Though I’m not normally into country music, Trisha Yearwood’s cover of this makes me happy.)

Thankful

secondinaseriesofsix — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:48:21 +0000

Maybe it’s because I’m on my knees already, or maybe it’s because they’re really long and give me time to think in the midst of them, but during the bouts of yuck over the past day, my thoughts are mostly prayers, and really just two kinds: profound gratitude and longing for relief. In between desperate “Please let it stop!” prayers, I’m giving thanks for:

1) Hair elastics.

2) A clean bathroom, including a just-cleaned toilet and pristine bathroom floor.

3) What feels like an amazing ab workout and a much-needed day of low calorie intake in the middle of the holiday season.

4) My middle brother who offered to drive me to the hospital in the middle of the night, even knowing that he had to start work at 4.

5) That this flu struck after work (I couldn’t have made it home between bouts) and before small group.

6) That Jesus chose to take on flesh, living a life that probably included its fair share of vomit, participating in this world of illness, to rescue us.

“Fine” is fine.

secondinaseriesofsix — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:16:10 +0000

I’m fine. And I’m fine with saying that, even if I’m sick, or the day has left me feeling like a punching bag, or if I’m missing my grandmother (which I always am). But there is (especially among women) a certain disdain for fine-sayers, the attitude that to declare one’s self fine is shallow and fake. So I appreciated this wisdom from Wendell Berry’s Hannah Coulter who is anything but shallow (emphasis mine):

We know that every night, war or no war, there are people lying awake grieving, and that every morning, people wake to absences that will never be filled. But we shut our mouths and go ahead. How we are is “Fine.” There are always a few who will recite their complaints, but the proper answer to “How are you?” is “Fine.”

The thing you have most dreaded has happened at last. The worst thing you might have expected has happened, and you didn’t expect it. You have grown old and ill, and most of those you love are dead or gone away. Even so:

“How are you?”

“Fine. How’re you?”

“Fine.”

There is always some shame or fear in this, I think, shame for the selfishness and loneliness of grief, the fear of the difference between your grief and anybody else’s. But this is a kind of courtesy too and a kind of honesty, this unwillingness to act as if loss and grief and suffering are extraordinary. And there is something else: an honoring of the kind of solitude in which the grief you bear will have to be borne. Should you fall and your neighbor’s shoulder and weep in the midst of work? Should you go to the store with tears on your face? No. You are fine.

And yet the comfort somehow get passed around: a few words that are never forgotten, a note in the mail, a look, a touch, a pat, a hug, a kind of waiting with, a kind of standing by, to the end. Once in a while we hear it sung out in a hymn, when every throat seems suddenly widened with love and a common longing.

Quote of the Day, October 6

secondinaseriesofsix — Sat, 08 Oct 2011 02:08:36 +0000

Miss M., are you going to go on Captain America’s Got Talent?

Prediction

secondinaseriesofsix — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 02:31:28 +0000

Time magazine will name Steve Jobs “Person of the Year” for 2011.

To whet your appetite for Supper of the Lamb*. . .

secondinaseriesofsix — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 00:21:33 +0000

. . . which you really ought to buy and read:

Only miracles are simple, nature is a mystery.

The processes involved in sauce making are hardly as dramatic as the driving of great engines, but they testify no less to the brooding of the Spirit upon the face of creation, to the endless speaking of the Word Who mightily and sweetly orders all things.

Yeast, without God to give it as a gift, ceases to be good company.

To be sure, food keeps us alive, but that is only its smallest and most temporary work. Its eternal purpose it to furnish our sensibilities against the day when we shall sit down at the heavenly banquet and see how gracious the Lord is.

*(note “Supper of the Lamb,” the book, not the supper of the Lamb, although the first will increase your longing for the second)

Least said, soonest mended

secondinaseriesofsix — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:39:13 +0000

This describes one of the many things I love about men.

Time to forge some steel

secondinaseriesofsix — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 15:51:54 +0000

Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried/ Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel.

-Shakespeare