Weekend Links: a Cure for Cancer, Grimms' Fairy Tales, Ugly Bridesmaids' Dresses, and more!

SOME GOOD READING FOR YOUR SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SET OUT IN MY USUAL CATEGORIES OF FAITH, AND FAMILY, AND FICTION...

 

Faith 

-"What It's Like to Be Gay at Wheaton College":  Great essay, and I especially appreciated this call-to-action:

For Christian communities to encourage gay people to remain celibate, they will have to model with integrity the implications of their teachings. Whether gay or straight, this means valuing celibacy to an equal if not greater degree than valuing marriage. On Facebook, through sermons, and in conversation, they must highly esteem Jesus’ celibacy. They will have to model in word and practice that all humans need love and connection—and not primarily in marriage and dating relationships. If this does not occur, LGBT Christians will not be convinced. No one likes a double standard. 

-"Voting for Donald Trump Is Not the Only Conservative Option"

-A couple of newsworthy articles regarding (sigh) my home state:
   -"Preserve Faith-Based Higher Education"
   -"'It's Going to Be an Issue': Biola, Conscience, and the Culture War"

-A good podcast listen: "The Gospel-Marinated Life: Mike Duran on Christian Horror"

-Another good podcast listen: "Momentum: Interview with Erin Straza"


On those last two: I met Mike Duran at a writing conference and really enjoyed my conversation with him, and Erin Straza provided excellent editing on my Christ and Pop Culture piece. You might assume that means I'm positively biased towards them*, but I prefer to think that my good fortune in meeting a couple of excellent writers and thinkers is your gain, because it means I get to introduce you to their work!

Family 

-Interesting: "10 Top Reasons You Should Have Kids Before Thirty"

-And literally life-giving good news: "A Scientist's Dream Fulfilled: Harnessing the Immune System to Fight Cancer"

-Yep: "A Cultural History of Ugly Bridesmaids' Dresses"

Fiction

-Ha-ha!  "Weird Things Writers Say (And What They Really Mean)"

- "The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove: The Religious Meaning of Grimms' Magic Fairy Tales"


Have a great Sunday!
-Jessica Snell



*You'd be right.

Book Notes: "Lizzy & Jane", by Katherine Reay

"Lizzy and Jane", by Katherine Reay, is the author's second novel. (You can read my review of her first book, "Dear Mr. Knightley", here.)

Her first novel was a delightful take on Jean Webster's Daddy Long Legs. (And not so much Austen, as you might suppose. But that was fine with me - there are so many Austen tributes, and rather fewer Webster tributes - and I love Webster.)

"Lizzy and Jane" was harder for me to get into than "Dear Mr. Knightley", but not because the writing was worse. Far from it: the writing was just as wonderful.

It's just that the subject was so very sad.

Cancer is a hard subject. On Saturday, I participated in a cancer fundraising walk, and watching all the survivors list their diagnoses was so moving. One of those survivors is my father. Another is my husband.

Who hasn't been touched by this horrible disease?

And Reay's writing is so good that it felt way too much like real life.

It was hard to make myself want to read about cancer.

And on top of that, I had trouble connecting with the main character.

But I'm glad I kept going, because each of those problems I had with the manuscript ended up being part of the point. Cancer is horrible, and a novel about it would be a bad novel if it didn't get some of that horror across.

And it turned out that the reason the main character was hard to connect with precisely because she was a person who'd cut herself off emotionally, due to her mother's death (from breast cancer) when she was so young.

It was realistic, and in the best of ways.

Properly, the book really came alive in the second half, as the main character herself came alive again: reconnecting with the family, rediscovering her love of making food, and (of course!) falling in love.

Speaking of the romance, one of the things I liked about it was that it wasn't the point of the book. It wasn't even in the book.

And then it was.

And then it was everything.

And I loved that! It's so real life: at one moment, you are just yourself. And the next? You are you-and-him, and then it is just so forevermore.

I liked that a lot.


And now I find I've written almost an entire book review without telling you much about plot or genre. But I hope I've said enough to let you know if you want to read this or not - and I'd lean towards read this.

Because I love reading Christian fiction that doesn't feel fake - even if it feels a little more beautiful than real life. Beauty is something we can all do with having a bit more of.

"Lizzy and Jane", by Katherine Reay? Recommended.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

This post contains Amazon affiliate links. (See full disclosure on sidebar of my blog.)

Weekly Links - Self-Discipline, Caring for Others, Mothering, and more!

My weekly round-up of good reading from around the Web:

"Discipline and Adventure":  (congratulations to Anne, for her new blog on Patheos!)

. . . by forcing yourself to do something every day, you can become more interesting than you were the day before. In the discipline, the push, the toil of writing every single solitary day I have discovered first that there are enough words, even for me to have some, and second that I totally love them. Waking up and writing before anything else means that I am set up for the whole day with energy enough for everything else. It’s so amazing. It’s such a pleasure, to have had my mental space transformed by discipline.

"Losing Control of the Vehicle": This sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but it's real:

Here’s a thought for your next road trip: In the Jeep Cherokee (and probably many other cars, too), when the online diagnostic service is activated, the brake pedal is automatically deactivated, so that the mechanic can test the brakes. If a hacker turns on the diagnostic function while you’re merrily speeding down the highway, the effect would be as if he slashed your brakes.

"How Not to Say the Wrong Thing": I've heard this theory before, but I was glad of the reminder, and I thought this was a really good exposition of the idea:

Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma ... 

Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, "Life is unfair" and "Why me?" That's the one payoff for being in the center ring. 

Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.

"The Everyday Question of Motherhood":

In motherhood, the Everyday Question is answered every time a child’s concern or need must come before my own. (And as every mother knows, this is most of the time.)

What have you been reading this week?  Share your links in the comments!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! Beth Vogt giveaway, cancer, guns, and more

Today's list of interesting links from around the web is a little more hodge-podge than usual, so forgive me the cognitive dissonance as you hop from one to another! It's all good stuff, though, so take a look:

-I really liked Beth Vogt's last book, "Wish You Were Here", so I was excited to see that she has a new one coming out, and that she's giving away four advanced copies of it! This is one giveaway I'm signing up for.

"A New Journey with the Lord":

Ever since I was diagnosed with breast cancer last December, amongst the wonderful wishes of encouragement and love I’ve received, I’ve noticed that some of my loved ones have struggled to come to grips with why God would allow such a thing to happen to me. I empathize with their question (and pray that God will lead them through it). But I don’t currently share in their struggle myself. I think it’s because I wrestled with God about a similar question just over a decade ago.

"On Ash Wednesday":

I didn’t grow up observing Ash Wednesday or Lent, but I have to say, at this age it helps to be reminded that I am dust and returning to dust. It’s not just a help, but a comfort. This world is forever demanding that we take it as seriously as it takes itself, and it tempts us to take ourselves too seriously too. Ash Wednesday says, “No, no, no, dear sinner. You’re just dust, living in a world that’s just dust, and you and the world both are returning to dust. And you are dear to God nevertheless.”

-And, in a total departure from the other links, here's "How Do You Win a Gunfight?"  Those of you who aren't in SoCal might not have been following the terrifying, fascinating, horribly sad Christopher Dorner case, but this article goes in depth on one aspect of the events of the last few days: how pitched gun battles actually go down in the real world.

Links - Annunciation, Scary Lights, and Praying for the President

I love this painting of the Annunciation. (Hat tip to Simcha Fisher.)

Study: Some Eco-Friendly Lightbulbs May Put Health At Risk:

Money saving, compact fluorescent light bulbs emit high levels of ultra violet radiation, according to a new study. Research at Long Island’s Stony Brook found that the bulbs emit rays so strong that they can actually burn skin and skin cells . . . “It can also cause skin cancer in the deadliest for, and that’s melanoma,” said Dr. Rebecca Tung.

"Praying for the President":

President Obama is right to take the Oath on the Bible, but he is wrong to reject its morality. He is divisive to reject the morality of many Americans and most of the globe in a fit of parochial, partisan exclusion.

If President Obama doesn’t want the prayers of good men like Lou Giglio, then he doesn’t want my prayers. And yet the Bible, the morality of the Bible, commands I pray for him anyway. I must love him, I must honor him, and I must ask God to give him wisdom. And so I will pray tonight as I have every night:

“God save our Republic and my President Barack Obama.”

If you've got any good links to add, please do leave them in the comm box!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! - Cancer, Criticism, and more!

This news - that scientists have tweaked a smallpox virus so it just attacks cancerous cells - is super-cool. Even if it does spookily remind me of the beginning of Feed.
Simcha Fisher on how criticism is not un-Christian.
Even though I knew some of the 18 Things You Didn't Know About Firefly, there was enough in there I didn't know to make this link interesting.
In the wake of the reality-TV-related suicide, the excellent Linda Holmes proposes an ethical code for the producers of unscripted television. It's pretty brilliant, especially as she admits that some types of reality shows could never sign on (hi, Jersey Shore!). Some however - basically the ones that involve any level of skill on the part of the contestants (from game-playing on Survivor to dress-designing on Project Runway) could benefit greatly from agreeing to a standard code of ethics, including things like psychological after-care for the contestants.
Reality TV is still pretty young, historically speaking, and the ethics of it are still under a lot of debate. I think it's a fascinating discussion (and I think the popularity of books like The Hunger Games bears me out one this).
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Book Notes: The Actor and the Housewife, by Shannon Hale

This book still makes me laugh harder than any other book except "A Civil Campaign". And it makes me weep every time too - this time I got to the sad part while I was sitting at the table with the kids, and I kept quiet about it, but had to keep wiping away tears so that they wouldn't notice Mom was crying.

When we reread books there's always a reason. Sometimes it's because of the characters or the plot, sometimes it's the dialogue or it's because the setting is exactly the place we wish we could be at the moment.

With this book, I reread it because I remember how funny it is. But then, once I'm a few pages in, I remember that the reason I really love it is because of how Hale writes about marriage and family. I've never read a household that sounded so real. And it's a good household too - so often fiction is about dysfunction, and the fact that Hale can write about normality and make it more interesting than dysfunction just shows her chops. That's hard. And I love her for it.

Then, towards the end, I remember that the whole book is a theodicy and I love her for that too. Being a Mormon, she answers the theodicy differently than I would, but I think any orthodox believer of any faith can appreciate a piece of fiction that grows so organically out of the author's theology.

This is a good book. Go read it.

Peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

great good news

We just got the path report for my husband back this morning, and found out that the melanoma didn't go any further than the first biopsy indicated, and that means that they've completely taken it all out. In other words: he's cancer-free!

Thanks be to God!

This lifts such a huge cloud from over our family. Our baby girls are still in danger, but now we know that Adam isn't. I'm so very, very grateful.

And the girls are kicking away in my belly as I type, so they're fine right now too. :)

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

not something I ever wanted to be able to say

So we found out yesterday that a mole my husband had biopsied had melanoma in it. "My husband had cancer" is not something I ever wanted to be able to say. Though "my husband had cancer" is better than "my husband HAS cancer", although at this point I don't know which statement is true. One of them is, but it's going to take a visit to a specialist to find out which one.

At first I thought "just skin cancer" because I've had friends who've had skin cancer "scares", and it hasn't been a big deal. But this is not a scare, it's the real thing, and it's melanoma, which is the worst kind, the kind that kills 1 out of 7 people who get it.

Hopefully, we caught it early. If we did, the survival rate is about 99%. And I think we caught it early. But we don't know yet, and I ask for your prayers that we caught it very early, and that Adam will be just fine.

But, again, "my husband has had cancer" is not what I ever wanted to be able to say.

Adam got his test results while he was at work, and he, knowing me, knew I'd have trouble not worrying, so he told me to make sure I listened to some good music before he got home.

I didn't want to, but I knew he was right, so I looked for my favorite cd of hymns. But I couldn't find it. So I put on a Christmas cd, one of those really good cds where the whole album holds together as one piece of art, rather than a collection of individual songs.

And that's where I found the words I did want to say, that I've always wanted to say, that I always will want to say, words like "Glory to God in the highest!" and "God has come to walk among us" and "Emmanuel, our God is with us now." Those words have been true since the incarnation of Christ, and they are true even though my husband has had (has?) cancer.

It's funny, because I tend to think of comfort as people being close and sweet and tender, but what was comforting yesterday was something majestic and huge and over-awing. What was comforting wasn't what wasn't any human-sized reassurance, but rather an assurance bigger than the universe, that God is great and good, always has been, and always will be.

And I learned that really good Christmas music is good any time of year, because really good Christmas music is about the incarnation and the glory of God, and that is true in October, in May, in March - whenever. Not just December. And it's true in the face of cancer.

God is bigger than this. And I am glad.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell