Weekly Links!

~ LINKS TO SOME INTERESTING READING & WATCHING, FOR WHAT'S LEFT OF YOUR WEEKEND ~

Faith

-"What Is Gospel Fluency?"


-"Embracing Valentine's Day Disappointment"


-"A Just Silence": This was helpful to me, especially as I've been thinking recently about how I do (vs. how I should) use social media.


-"Submit to the New Sexual Orthodoxy or Risk Losing Everything"

Family

-"A Simple Way to Speed Delivery": Somehow, this just reminds me of HOW HUNGRY I WAS after I delivered my first child.

Fiction

-"Painting a Story"


-"Why Don't We Talk About 'Stranger Than Fiction' Nearly Enough?": I love this movie.


-"Sunny Day": not fiction, but a good poem, worth reading.


-2016 Novelist Income Survey Results, Part One, and Part Two




I hope you have a lovely Sunday, full of worship and rest!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! Time, Light, and Space

Lars Walker writes about Talented People. His take on the parable of the talents is one of those brilliant things that makes you say, "well, of course! that's blindingly obvious! but I never saw it that way till now - thank you for pointing it out!"

For those of you in Southern California - my friend, Emily Moothart, is a doula who has a passion for helping women have great births. If you're in the market for a doula or know someone who is, check her out!

John Scalzi looks forward to the year 2012 in science fiction movies. I took three things away from this article:
   1. I didn't know "Old Man's War" had been optioned for a movie. Cool!
   2. Scalzi has much higher hopes than I do for "John Carter" (of Mars). I saw the preview in theater and snickered through the whole thing. Taylor Kitsch, get back into your football jersey!
   3. There are a fair amount of sci-fi movies coming out next year. Yay!

It's almost Epiphany, and the way to celebrate it is with light and space. This is just so beautiful. And appealing.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

weaker vessels

I remember, in college, struggling with the ideas set forth in 1 Peter 3, the famous "weaker vessel" passage. I struggled because I didn't like the idea of women being weak, but I also was determined to submit myself to the truth of God's word. If I'd either liked the idea or if I hadn't cared about the veracity of the Bible, well, I wouldn't've had a problem. It ended up being one of those "Okay, I'm sure this is true somehow, but I really don't get it." You know, one of those "I'll take it on faith" passages. Because, as Peter said, "Lord, to whom else should we go?" I was willing to stick with the hard passages because I knew I had no other recourse but Jesus.

Well, I think the past few years, full as they have been of child-bearing and rearing, have helped me understand Peter's words a little better. I'm not sure I completely understand the passage, but I feel like I have more insight into it now.

First, it's talking not to women in general, but to wives. That is, to those who are likely to bear children. Even the word "vessel" implies someone who holds or contains something. And the truth is, when it comes to child-bearing years, I am weaker than my husband. Some writer in Touchstone (Anthony Escolen, maybe?) pointed out awhile ago, when talking about the sacrificial nature of parenting, that every child born into the world necessitated at the very least the sacrifice of its mother's body being broken.

And that's true. Pregnancy and childbirth, and even the whole menstrual cycle, weaken women's bodies amazingly. Even if you aren't bearing children, your body is either suffering from an excess or a dearth of hormones, from puberty through menopause.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I used to try to find some airy-fairy, abstract meaning behind St. Peter's words, and now I'm tending to take them more at face value, more literally. Literally, physically, I am weaker than my husband. I am more at the mercy of my body than he is, especially when my body is serving as the staging ground for a new life, when someone else is taking up residence inside of me and literally sucking its lifeblood from my own and pushing and shaping my very bones and sinews to its own purposes. St. Peter urges husbands to dwell with their wives "according to knowledge" or "with understanding". According to the knowledge, I think, that wives need care that husbands don't, as well as the knowledge that they are "fellow heirs of salvation".

So, for me, what that verse means (I know, I know, evangelical subjective Bible application, forgive me) is: Adam takes care of me so I can take care of our children. And that makes sense. Even to my slightly feminist-leaning self.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

"as in the pains of childbirth"

I'm taking a week's break from reading Morning Prayer daily in order to read through the book of Romans (and to just take a break. I figure a vacation from MP will be the sort of vacation that makes me realize, once it's over, how happy I am to be back home). It's the moody time of month, which is annoying (I hate being mad or weepy at every little thing), but today I discovered that though the downside of PMS is that it makes me more sensitive, the upside of PMS is that it makes me more sensitive. Reading Romans 8 this morning, I was tearing up reading over how I'm allowed to call God "Abba, Father" because of Christ's great act of love for us.

Anyway, the other thing I noticed, and not for the first time, is how commonly "the pains of childbirth" or "like the pains of a woman in labor" is used as a metaphor in the scriptures. When I was pregnant, I'd read these words with forboding. Instead of making me think that the tribulation must be pretty horrible if you could compare it to childbirth, I'd sit there thinking that childbirth must be pretty horrible if you could compare it to the tribulation. (And I was right. Ha!)

But, on reading Romans 8 today, and not being pregnant (as far as I know), the idea of creation "groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time" struck me differently. It struck me less as terror-inducing metaphor, and more as kindly explanation. The "pains of childbirth" are - know ye all - really, truly awful. Terrible, horrible, entire body-wrenching pain. And I see how you can compare life in this present world to that and be completely right. I mean, have you read the news recently? Heard about Sudan? the persecution of Christians in North Korea? Closer yet, heard recently of murders, suicide, abuse? Homelessness, cancer? Yes, terrible, horrible, entire-life-consuming pain.

So here's why I find Romans 8:22 a kindly explanation. Because it lets you know that the pain will have a purpose. Yes, it's fallen and messed up that there has to be pain to produce a child. But since we live in a fall and messed up world, it's nice to know - when you're in labor - that the pain is going to have a good result. Given that you're in the middle of it, and that's just so and you don't have any choice at this point but to be in the middle of it, isn't it nice to know the ending? Isn't it hope that lets us endure? It is kind, I think, of Paul, to let us know that it's not going to be pain, pain, pain, death. Or even just pain, pain, pain, pain ad infinitum. (Anyone here every give birth and not, at some point, a) think you were going to die and/or b) think it was never going to end?) No, it is to be pain, pain, pain, life.

And, as we learned in The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."

Paul's not selling something. He's not lying about the pain. He's saying that this world is constantly in pain as bad as a woman in labor, and boy-howdy, that's pain. But he is giving us the hope that the pain is going to be as productive as that of a woman in labor. And, boy-howdy, that's hope. Thanks be to God.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell