There's Beauty in the Bellow

My son is set to turn 2 before the end of the year. He's developed rapidly over the last few months after several slower-paced months of growth since he started walking in February. It really is marvelous that one's body can knit together another human being totally apart from one's own willpower. But amidst the awe, I've only seen one person acknowledge that bearing a child subtly changes a mother. (I don't remember whom, unfortunately.) Not just the physical changes or that a child "made me a mother" (a sentiment I don't embrace). Childbearing is a surrendering. Perhaps that's why so many fight against motherhood and why Shulamith Firestone believed that only surrogacy -- to a machine -- could make the sexes equal. Childbearing is a superpower too, but it is more of a surrendering. Sleep and sleeping positions, range of motion, energy, appetites, activities, perceptions of this or that body part, and time have all been circumscribed by a bein

I won a Persian rug off eBay. It arrived a week before Hurricane Michael hit the Florida coast -- only 50 miles east of us. As I cleaned up our little house, two truths lay before me in tension. The first is simply this: do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust and mold destroy, where thieves break in and steal, and where hurricanes ravage. The second is that the good man lays up an inheritance for his children's children. My momma has a Persian rug that her grandparents bought through the Sears and Roebuck catalogue when they married. She remembers dancing on that rug as a child, and I danced on that rug ... picking out step patterns by choosing which geometric element to step on next. So I bought a rug from the same region in hopes that my children and grandchildren will dance on it too. The rug by itself might not be that valuable. But more significantly, I hope that it becomes a tangible reminder of love. My paternal grandmother, although not a

We visited family recently and one member had a borrowed copy of "Tranny" by Laura Jane Grace. Grace was formerly a male and frontman of a band I had never heard of (in an angsty genre I never listen to). So I had no preconceptions when I picked up the memoir, other than the title was intriguing. Plus, the title and front matter gave no indication as to whether the epithet was owned or disowned. (There was no dust jacket.) It opens with the writer as a very young child, idolizing and aping Madonna. It's not immediately clear whether it's not a girl pretending to be said Madonna. I mention this only because I have a problem with anyone wanting to be like Madonna at all. She's not worthy of emulating, although she is talented at least as a performer. (I've only heard a few of her songs and she's mostly posturing, so I have no idea of her vocal talents.) I read the first section about her childhood and the last bit where she transitions. Apparently most o

We recently watched a TEDx presentation on the stigma attributed to stay-at-home moms. The presenter pointed out the absurdity of defining someone almost exclusively by their place of work. (We don't refer to the stay-at-desk accountant, for example.) I have had a myriad of doctors appointments, what with all the usual yearly or half-yearly visits to the dentist, eye doctor, neurologist, and hormone specialist, finding a new neurologist with the retirement of my previous one, accompanying my husband to his appointments as an extra pair of ears, and with expecting another baby. (YAY!) To all of these (except the dentist --just doesn't work), I've brought my busy and curious toddler son. What better way to let the world know that you are a SAHM (as the acronym goes) and judge how you use that time, than to bring your child to a doctor's appointment. A "good" child would sit quietly in a corner with the toys selected for or by him. I'm pretty sure our boy

My second job was a formative experience. I cashiered at a grocery store. I went in expecting daily toddler meltdowns in every aisle. But I saw very few meltdowns. The  parents  surprised me. Some little kid grabs a box of crackers or cereal off the shelf and walks up to the parent with questioning eyes. The parent snaps at the child and then either gives it  back  to him or puts it in the cart.  What!?  The little one did nothing manipulative.  Have you ever been in the store when Mom's harsh, angry  shhhhh  was more disruptive than the tired baby she tries to quiet?  Christ had said, "which one of you, if your son asks for a bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Matthew 7:9-11.) But watching the little dramas in my lane it seemed that many people don't

What does a Christian gravestone look like? Our church sits next door to a funeral home and cemetery. I wandered through the cemetery one day and was impressed by the blankness of most of the headstones. Most have merely the name and lifespan inscribed. There might be an inscription noting the branch of the military or the war that a veteran served in. Maybe a "beloved wife and mother." There was one stone for a young serviceman with the logos of his favorite pastimes/hobbies: NASCAR, a football team, the Marines, a baseball team -- a strange combination of altar and shrine, but ultimately meaningless and empty. We know that our culture fears death. We belittle the old who look and act old, who "turn in their sexy card." We hide them away in special homes. We market "anti-aging" and "life-extension". It's strange to look at the empty headstones over the remains of (let's assume) a full life. Our expectations for the after life are eq

Let's talk about virginity. #eyeroll I don't like our language of "losing" one's virginity. Rarely does one unintentionally misplace one's virginity. Just saying. If one truly cannot remember the circumstances of "losing" their virginity, then very probably those circumstances were lamentable, if not horrific. Usually, virginity is given . Maybe unwillingly, maybe carelessly in haste, perhaps without regard to deservingness of the recipient. In hookup culture, virginity is a liability to be dropped off in the nearest gutter. In this case, it's thrown away, but it wasn't misplaced. Optimally, one's virginity is given to someone who values it -- but cherishes the giver far more than the virginity itself. It is supposed to be given away , not kept in the original packaging with the tags still attached. This is what chastity is. Appropriate celibacy and appropriate hedonism. The gift of virginity isn't an heirloom vase to be kept

Strong paedobaptist covenantalists frequently talk about the corporate nature of God's covenant(s) and the Bible's style. Unless the speaker/writer is directly addressing an individual (Ahab, Mary, Hezekiah, Philemon, or Yahweh for example), most of the "you's" in Scripture are plural. Paedobaptists argue that credobaptists overlook this corporate nature and read the Bible too individualistically: Credos just can't help it: it's wired into their theological DNA. If credobaptism only originated with the anabaptists, or the First and Second Great Awakenings (I know, that's a really broad swath of history) -- then maybe individualism is intertwined into the credo baptist position. That doesn't mean that it has to be. After all, we are learning that we can improve upon our physical genetic material -- say, diet and exercise can diminish a strong genetic tendency towards heart disease. I've been memorizing Psalm 139 and have just started verse 1

Why work for diversity in the Church? I've seen this question posed a couple times. Partly out of concern for tokenism, partly out of concern for creating a new legalism. As I see it, there are three major reasons for seeking diversity and racial reconciliation: coming to terms with our own history, a vision for maturity in the American church, and the Eschatological Church. Reckoning with our own history (especially the SBC) I don't remember where I got this observation (I think it was Tim Mackie), but here it is: In chapter nine of the book of Daniel, Daniel offers a prayer of repentance for Israel's past sins -- the corporate sins that culminate in the Babylonian exile that contextualizes the book. Daniel has acted uprightly in every dilemma presented him, so why should he have to repent for others? It's a strange idea for our autonomous age. The Southern Baptist Convention broke off from the American Baptist over the preservation of slavery. Chattel slavery as

Stop trying . You really should. What freedom can your own forgiveness really grant you? What meaning does it have anyway? Are you God? You make up your own moral code, you violate it, and now you find your own remission inadequate. Funny, isn't it? That you are enough to determine your own truth but not enough to keep it or clean up your failures? Psychopaths, for the record, are chillingly good at forgiving themselves My college pastor had this to say: when you confess your sins to God and you still carry guilt -- confess your unbelief. You might not like the sound of that, but I'll tell you: it sure gets you off that merry-go-round of confession and guilt. When you pray the words of that desperate father: I believe; help my unbelief! You remember how gracious Jesus was to that poor man and how He went and healed the child. Confessing your sins, even in private to all-knowing infinite God, is frightening. It's frightening to see yourself. Maybe your sins are small, bu

We just came back from a week in California, where we visited the peerless Monterey Bay Aquarium. Conservation is a frequent theme of the aquarium: every exhibit makes some plea to consider how one's personal choices affect the health of the oceans. It's a persuasive appeal in the presence of so many beauties. Why not give up a reliance on ugly plastic bags and bottles if they are hazards to majestic sea turtles and sunfish? The Aquarium's stance isn't merely political. It participates in rehabilitation and care for injured wildlife as well as research. Part of its facilities inhabit an old canning factory and is situated on Cannery Row: a reminder that once upon a time, fishing defined its existence. Conservation became a necessity when overfishing took down an industry. The aquarium doesn't demonize seafood lovers: it passes out fliers listing the seafood choices of Good, Better, Best, and Avoid. (Many of which overlap with the recommendations for pregnant and

I recently came across an article warning that The Bible Project has an insufficiently robust explanation of the Atonement. ( The Bible Project: Brilliant but Flawed ) I love  the Bible Project. The visuals are nice but I really love the depth and clarity of their content. Really, I prefer the podcasts. I appreciated the criticism because heretofore I've not seen any. And for all its perfections, it must  have some flaws. The author of the article ended by saying that he would not recommend TBP at all. I wouldn't go so far as that. But this instance was a good reminder as the Church deals with a new series of scandals: do not follow any one leader or thinker slavishly. Tim Keller believes in Old Earth Creationism. C.S. Lewis was an open theist. Greg Bausen had rather too large an ego. Martin Luther had some unsavory sentiments (antiSemitic if I remember correctly). Charles Spurgeon had some exegetical problems. Wayne Grudem might have some problems explaining the Trinity. B

The royal wedding (or sort-of sub-royal) is old news but I want to add my little 2 cents to the non-gushing side of things. Bishop Michael Curry made quite a stir with his sermon. The Americans have been raving about it. I noticed a line featured on the cover the People special wedding edition. It seems that most of the "love" is simply patriotic fervor because Curry is American. There are plenty of churches in America where similar sermons are given -- perhaps with less flair -- with little publicity. Hillsong, for example. I'm pretty sure that exact sermon gets trotted out every so often. Maybe Bieber finds it inspiring. It should be noted that Bishop Curry smooshed together all the various kinds of love into one amorphous mass. He spun the Song of Songs as puppy love; it had as much depth as a Beatles song but four times as long.  It had little in common with the mighty unquenchable love that Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of. He did happen to mention Jesus. There

So now I'm here: married to a credo-baptist who is crowned with the fruits of the Spirit and who possesses a warm and generous heart. We attend an SBC Reformed Baptist church. I had to receive believer's baptism before I could join. And from my solid upbringing, church membership is a vital ingredient for spiritual maturity. As I started spending more time with Baptists, I started wondering why Presbyterians (of a certain sort at least) seem to continually harp on baptism -- even to the point of implying that Baptists can't fully grasp the Gospel because they don't subscribe to infant baptism. My Baptist husband and friends seem somewhat bewildered by the vehemence over paedobaptism. Michael Bull over at Bully's Blog has been invaluable at pointing out something so simple, I can't believe I overlooked it: Baptism is not the new covenant equivalent of circumcision, because the "circumcised," transformed   heart  is the sign of the new covenant. It a

A little over three years ago, I joined a Reformed Baptist church. The Baptist part was some time in the happening. I worked for a baptist and my work took me to a couple Southern Baptist Convention annual meetings. He mostly brought me to pique his vanity and as an attempt to bring me to the "dark side." I had grown up in various Presbyterian and Reformed churches, culminating with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). Other than early childhood outside of big cities in California (plus a babyhood stint in Minneapolis of which I have no recollection), I've spent the last 20 years in a small town in the "lower Alabama" part of Florida. (i.e. the Panhandle) I've been in small churches all my life (other than the fountainhead of the CREC in Idaho) and small towns. In all the churches I had ever been in, almost everyone was white. In 27 years, there was a total of three  black members and they were all single and never at the same church at

The media outlets featured an early foray into activism by the Duchess of Sussex, then a ten-ish year old Meghan Markle. She called out a company for advertising dish soap to women. The company in question acquiesced and changed its campaign language to "millions of people ." Fair point: women aren't the only ones who wash dishes. In fact, humans aren't the only ones who use dish soap either. One brand advertises that its users include needy marine life. I have an uneasy relationship with "Activism". It seems too close to "lobbyist." Moreover, it seems synonymous with "busybody." I do fervently believe in being active  and actively useful . Maybe some might deem "useful" as demeaning but I would retort: not nearly as demeaning as use- less . But I should hope that one's activity would result in the noise of industry and not the noise of scolding. At any rate, that's an aside and I know that the Duchess intends, wit

Update: rereading the title page . . . I read an abridged version! Should have followed Mortimer Adler's advice and read the informative bits more closely. Trying to spend less time lost in the swamp of social media, I've been trying to read more. Specifically books. Specifically in codex form . . . book books. Our library has few titles that I recognize these days. I rarely go to the library and more rarely still to the fiction because it seems so difficult and tiresome to wade through all of the best sellers from 2007. The "biography" section is similarly afflicted: if it's not about JFK, FDR, MLK, or Marilyn Monroe, it's a memoir by a celebrity. How the memoir of an actor or performer could be more interesting than their wikipedia page, I really can't imagine. For instance: Tina Fey does not strike me as a pleasant person. Therefore I avoid her company, even on the written page. Same for any Clinton. Or Barbra Streisand. Or Elizabeth Taylor. And thus

It's not a new debate, but one that I keep an on-going dialogue with: can Christians practice/participate in yoga? I recently listened to John Piper's "Ask Pastor John" segment from last year on this topic. His response is a measured "No." Some of the comments retorted that yoga is "just exercise" in the U.S., if not the West. The thought on yoga ranges from dangerous idolatrous practice to cheery secularization, to adapting it to Christian meditation. Whatever it is, it is not inert. If we are going to plunder the Egyptians, we must take and repurpose carefully. I have the most problem with the last approach, of attempting to baptize yogic discipline with superimposed Christian prayer and Bible reading. Christian mediation is not like Buddhist or Hindu meditation. It has a different purpose: the focused contemplation on Yahweh and His glory. And it has a different method, which we have pretty well mapped out for us: devoted reading of the Scri

Aimee Byrd noted (somewhere on her blog in the archives) that the Complementarian movement needs to address men using its tenets to hide domestic abuse. I came of age when the Biblical Patriarchy movement was in vogue. We did not hold with many of its dictums (especially the one about girls staying home all the freakin' time and avoiding college) but it still affected us. My dad was just fine with me and my mom wearing pants, but I often felt self-conscious about it. (Really, a stupid thing to obsess over.) I often felt that my hair was not long enough nor our family big enough. (The patriarchy movement seemed to believe that fertility was next to godliness.) When I learned about Complementarianism, it felt like fresh air. Patriarchy stressed hierarchy to the point of totally overlooking "in the image of God He created them, male and female." Reading Genesis it appears that my womanhood has something to tell us about what God is like. I felt strangely relieved when the

We've just marked Easter -- or rather, we've just entered Easter season which culminates in Ascension Day on May 10th. Apologetics on the necessity of Christ's gruesome death and the certainty and reasonableness of His Resurrection are a regular this time of year. And so I would like to remark on the elegance and vigor of Christian apologetics. Randy Newman spoke about evangelism and apologetics to our church a little while ago and my husband speedily bought his book, "Questioning Evangelism." Newman makes the case for a more Socratic approach to evangelism rather than the traditional Grab Them by the Collar and Give Them Hell, Buy Now! sales pitch. I'm very adverse to the latter. For one thing, it's generally too wrote. For another, it would require a personality change and I think those are harder to come by than sex changes, even in this age of redefinition. One hears over and over of atheists growing up in religious households where asking Why?

We watched the BBC's Tudor Monastery Farm with the unstoppable Ruth Goodman several months ago. We've watched the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube but something about Tudor Monastery Farm -- maybe because of William T. Cavanaugh's lectures -- has stuck. Maybe because Ruth, Peter, and Tom explain the techniques of our forebears in more detail than the gentleman on Primitive Technology. Tudor Monastery Farm (such a mouthful!) challenges what we mean by Primitive. "Primitive" encompasses a vast range for us on this side of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Cave men living in caves to Roman aqueducts and Gothic Cathedrals. If you mean simple tools, well maybe yes, all those things are primitive. If you mean ignorant, most certainly not. The Medievals may not have understood the human body as seen under a microscope. But they most certainly knew what boiling water, salt, and sunlight could do. They wasted nothing. If their tools were simple, the

In a rather odd episode of Falling Down the Rabbit Hole, I discovered this quote of quote quoted by Rod Dreher : In a recent piece for  n+1 , the feminist and trans theorist Andrea Long Chu argued that the trans experience, contrary to how we have become accustomed to think of it, ‘expresses not the truth of an identity but the force of a desire’. Being trans, she says, is ‘a matter not of who one  is , but of what one  wants ’. She goes on: I transitioned for gossip and compliments, lipstick and mascara, for crying at the movies, for being someone’s girlfriend, for letting her pay the check or carry my bags, for the benevolent chauvinism of bank tellers and cable guys, for the telephonic intimacy of long-distance female friendship, for fixing my make-up in the bathroom flanked like Christ by a sinner on each side, for sex toys, for feeling hot, for getting hit on by butches, for that secret knowledge of which dykes to watch out for, for Daisy Dukes, bikini tops, and all the dres

First off, I liked The Riot & The Dance, a nature documentary. It had a sense of humor, which most documentaries don't. I don't mean that you don't find humor in the films themselves, else why would we see so many shots of baby animals? They're funny, that's why. But usually the creators themselves don't have much humor about them. Reverence, yes. Awe, yes. Beauty, yes. An urgent message, yes. Sometimes Sir Richard Attenborough starts to sound tired telling the same story again and again, with different factoids, dragged down with the weight of saving the universe in its entirety. Dr. Gordon Wilson is quite taking with his gentle humor and enthusiasm for some of the more homely and despised members of the animal kingdom. I took his biology course plus some electives in college and all the things I liked best about him are present in the film. He's persistent, patient, careful of speech, and slyly provocative. I don't know where Dr. Wilson's w

In Princess Mononoke, we see humans and gods at war. The forests and rivers and mountains are the domain of the gods and when humans farm or build factories, they cannot help but trespass upon sacred ground. How can war be anything but inevitable? Lady Iboshi employs prostitutes and lepers turning them into skilled laborers and giving them stable room and board. She defends them and cares for them and they give her unshakeable loyalty. But this utopia depends on the iron ore found under the mountain inhabited by gods and Lady Iboshi is willing to wage that costly war. We see not only men and gods in conflict but war between one human tribe and another. While Iron Town functions for the good of its people just as the gods seek the good of the trees and rivers, human greed willingly destroys both for short-sighted achievement. Prince Ashitaka comes from a tribe that has apparently lived peacefully amongst nature but his tribe is dwindling. He suggests at the end that there is a bette

I'm reading Richard B Sewall's biography of Emily Dickinson and I have particularly enjoyed the attention that he gives to her education. Dickinson may not have had a multitude surrounding her telling her that she could be anything she wanted but she was far better educated than most people today. Regardless of whether her father, Edward Dickinson (Sewell disputes this), cut a foreboding figure, he believed that his daughters ought to receive an education. He doesn't appear to be particularly unique in this matter. Emily attended Holyoke with her cousin. Sewall offers no hints that the young women at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke were a controversial presence. Emily had several textbooks written by women -- and not on embroidery either. On botany . Science . Emily and the headmistress of Holyoke College, Mary Lyon, probably received a more rigorous education in a shorter period of time than we, for all our 16+ years of schooling. When Mary Lyon died (only a few mo

Our descent into moral incoherence is well documented and frequently mourned. But it's still astonishing. I was reading an article about extricating oneself from Amazon's clutches because I would prefer to give Mr. Bezos a little less money. The article in question did not suggest that maybe Mr. Bezos has his fingers in too many pies and ought to have his influence curtailed before he overestimated his importance. No, the article made shooting people and offering NRATV as morally equivalent. This bothers me. Guns are  dangerous. And there are people aplenty who are much too excited about owning them. Others who own them and don't give thought to whether they ought to own them. Or whether their firearms might be accessible to the irresponsible and malicious. If I remember correctly, the Colorado movie theater shooter took his grandma's firearm. My father jettisoned his firearms when my brother became a passionate adolescent with minimal self control. (And he kept all o