Weekly Links: Lent, Empathy, and more!

Some good reading for your Sunday afternoon....

"Vegetable Stock and Easing into Lent":

We haven't stopped running since before Christmas and it is already a scorching 90 degrees in the Rio Grande Valley. The fact that we are a week into Lent seems impossible, I'm not getting any cues from my life my world that say, "it is time to slow down," and making space for quiet meditation is the last thing I have time for. 

But I suppose this is part of why we have Liturgical seasons. I may never stop hurrying and the seasons in south Texas may always feel out of sync with the rest of the country. Maybe a few times a year I need to be told to how feel because otherwise I would continue to race tripping over my own numb legs.

"They Brought Cookies: For A New Widow, Empathy Eases Death's Pain":

The pain doesn't go away; but somehow or other, empathy gives the pain meaning, and pain-with-meaning is bearable. I don't actually know how to say what the effect of empathy is, I can only say what it's like. Like magic.

"Undiscovered J.R.R. Tolkien poems found in 1936 school magazine": ooh, look, look, look!  I especially love the Christmas one.


"Sex on the Silver Screen":

Let’s begin here: What we see on the screen is both fact and fiction. When it comes to nakedness and sex in movies, we sometimes lose the fact in the fiction. What we watch is a fictional story, but one that has been acted out in real ways by real people. This has important implications when it comes to a bedroom scene. To film that scene, real people had to remove real clothes, bare real bodies, touch each other in real places, and move together in a real bed.

"And We Created Luncheon, and It Was Good"- whenever Anne writes about cooking, my mouth starts watering. A sample:

Yesterday, because I knew I needed to be about my business in a timely way, I pulled a capacious pot from the soothing cool of my fridge, placed it lovingly on my stove, and turned on the heat. Inside was half a pork roast, cubed and succulent, and half a head of cabbage, chopped and mellowed with chickpeas. Soup, in other words, and golden brown rolls ready to be heated in the oven.  The soup came back up to the boil, the bread softened and warmed, and the aromas wafted aloft to the heavens, gathering us all together for Luncheon.

Hope the rest of your weekend is restful and good!
-Jessica Snell

Weekly Links: new blogs, saying "yes" to Lent, and more!

To start, this week I found two wonderful new blogs. The first, Liturgy of Life, is written by a fellow Anglican and lover of the church year. Check it out here.

The second, Pass the Salt Shaker, is a discussion of singleness and marriage in the church, written by a group of great folks, including at least one of the contributors to Mere Fidelity (one of my favorite podcasts). Check out the new blog here.


Now, on to our regular weekend collection of articles:

"Holy Week Meyers-Briggs": This is just hilarious and awesome.

"Giving Up 'Yes' for Lent":

I don’t want to second-guess my last few years nor frame these amazing opportunities in pessimistic terms. But I do want to consider whether it is always courageous to say "yes." 

"Where Demons Fear to Tread: Angels and the Atonement":

As it turns out, the theologians and artists of the church over the centuries have reflected on this question with surprising results, coming up with several ways that the work of Christ had a significant bearing on the unfallen angels.

"Learning From Bodies":

Ability is not what makes death significant. At birth this baby had capacities below that of a healthy fetus at ten weeks. Holding his body, living and then dead, proves to me that it doesn’t matter how early the human heart beats, how early it is possible to feel pain, or when the senses develop. No ability or strength confers human status—not being viable or sentient or undamaged or wanted. Being of human descent is enough; you cannot earn or forfeit your humanity. If this baby’s death does not matter, no death matters.

"Joseph: the faithful carpenter":

Mary is rightly credited as setting the ultimate example of how Christians should respond to God's calling. But likewise, I think that Joseph is exemplar in demonstrating how God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) loves us, his sinful people. As a husband, father, and erstwhile woodworker, I can find no greater earthly example to follow.

And finally, to listen to, The City's podcast this week on "Non-Christian Books" was full of good stuff.


Have a great weekend!

Weekend Links: Noah, Evangelicals, and more!

Here's some weekend reading, for your perusing pleasure. :)

"John Mason (Anglican Connection) on the Historicity of Noah and the Flood":

Jesus was saying that there will be a day would come when God’s King will come as judge. It is a day to be feared, for all of us will be brought before him. His words assume that we live in a moral universe. Significantly, Jesus cited Noah and the flood as an example of the way God calls us all to account. We learn from Genesis that Noah was not a virtuous man, but he did believe God’s warnings about the coming crisis and responded accordingly.

"The Fault Lines Before the Evangelical Earthquake":

The World Vision decision was a tremor that warns us of a coming earthquake in which churches and leaders historically identified with evangelicalism will divide along all-too-familiar fault lines.

"Doug TenNapel – On Death":

In fact, when atheists criticize my religion the first thing I do is hang on the edge of my seat asking for their best shot against my religion. Many think I’m joking about wanting so badly to find a better argument or explanation than what I’ve got, but I’m serious. I so long to hear a decent, philosophically coherent explanation for the world’s problems. I get nothing of the sort. The only thing more ridiculous than Christianity’s explanation for sin and death is any alternative I’ve heard so far. Still, I’m always open to a good shot at that explanation. It makes for better conversation around a drink than what most people talk about.

"148 – Spring Into Action: Simple Routines & Practical Tips From An Amazing Mom": I just really enjoyed this week's podcast from Clutter Interrupted, so I wanted to make sure to include it in the links. :)

ThredUP: This is a website I used recently to buy some much-needed clothes for summer. It's like an online consignment/thrift store. I loved it. I only searched brands that I already knew fit me well (in my case, mostly Ann Taylor and Banana Republic) and I was really happy with the quality of the stuff I got, and the prices.

Full disclosure: if you use my link, I'll get a referral credit. But I'm sharing it because I used it and liked it. :)

St. Francis de Sales, on Fear

Fear is a greater evil than the evil itself. O daughter of little faith, what do you fear? No, fear not; you walk on the sea, amid the winds and the waves, but it is with Jesus. What is there to fear? But if fear seizes you, cry loudly, "O Lord, save me." He will give you His hand: clasp it tight, and go joyously on. To sum up, do not philosophize about your trouble, do not turn in upon yourself; go straight on. No, God cannot lose you, so long as you live in your resolution not to lose Him. Let the world turn upside down, let everything be in darkness, in smoke, in uproar - God is with us. And if God dwelleth in darkness and on Mount Sinai, all smoking and covered with the thunders, with lightnings and noises, shall we not be well near Him?

Live, live my dear child, live all in God, and fear not death, the good Jesus is all ours; let us be entirely His.

-St. Francis de Sales, from Thy Will Be Done: Letters to Persons in the World

Amen.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

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St. Francis de Sales on Death

Maybe it's this dark time of year, but it seems like I am hearing so many of my friends talk about the recent death of friends - and even here, in our parish, we lost a dear sister in Christ just a few weeks ago.

So when I read this in St. Francis de Sales' Thy Will Be Done: Letters to Persons in the World, it really struck home:

The word dead is terrifying, as it is spoken to us; for some one comes to you and says, "Your dear father is dead," and "Your son is dead."

But this is not a fit way of speaking among us Christians, for we should say, "Your son or your father has gone into his and your country"; and because it was necessary, he has passed through death, not stopping in it.

Amen. Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Links: prayer, American Catholics, "The Casual Vacancy", and more!

"Praying With Children":

Its so important to pray with children, just like it is to do other hard things with them like Cook and Eat Dinner, Carry on a Conversation, Fold a Single Solitary Basket of Laundry, Pick Up the Blocks, Remember What It Was You Came Into This Room For Will You Stop Screaming So I Can Think For A Minute. And so on and so forth. Prayer, as many of us might remember, is a foundational part of the Christian Life and children should be included in it, even if it kills you.

"Where I'm Coming From":

But now the shadows of the past are looming large over Catholics in America again, and the battle to redefine marriage has become the weapon of choice for those who would really prefer it if Catholics went back to their little Catholic ghettos and didn't mix much with the "real" Americans, or expect to be able to hold certain public offices (anything pertaining to marriage, for instance) or jobs (anything where you have to sign a "diversity statement" that is actually a denial of your faith) or own businesses (anything where you have to maintain the fiction that two men or two women are a "marriage") or run adoption agencies or charities where they will be forced to repeat the lie that it is bigoted and hateful to claim that marriage is one man and one woman or that children need a mother and a father...

...and pointing any of this out at all is "uncivil," or so I'm told.

 "J. K. Rowling's 'The Casual Vacancy'":

The catalyst of the story is the death of a good man. He leaves a vacancy. His death is the casual vacancy, which is a phrase used to describe the opening created by the death of a local councilor. The book is about the void left by the death of a man who was his brother’s keeper, and the story shows that the main reason others can’t fill the void he leaves is because they don’t love like he did.

"10 Questions a Pro-Choice Candidate Is Never Asked by the Media":

4. If you do not believe that human life begins at conception, when do you believe it begins? At what stage of development should an unborn child have human rights?

5. Currently, when genetic testing reveals an unborn child has Down Syndrome, most women choose to abort. How do you answer the charge that this phenomenon resembles the “eugenics” movement a century ago – the slow, but deliberate “weeding out” of those our society would deem “unfit” to live?

"A Beautiful Testimony from a Christian About His Wife’s Death":

Was this a good life, NO. But this is what God had prepared for us to go through together. 

"How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day":

When I told people at ConCarolinas that I'd gone from writing 2k to 10k per day, I got a huge response. Everyone wanted to know how I'd done it, and I finally got so sick of telling the same story over and over again that I decided to write it down here.

So, once and for all, here's the story of how I went from writing 500 words an hour to over 1500, and (hopefully) how you can too

"Beer for beginners, part VII: Stouts and other British stuff":

I tried Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout and liked that very much. It seemed almost thick and viscous. "It's not, and you should know better," scolded Mark, "the viscosity of beer can't possibly be much different from water. It's not like it has a significant fraction of polymer suspended in it or something."

"Then what makes it that way?" I asked. "I can see when I pour it that it's not obviously viscous, but it feels that way in the mouth. Like cream." I took another pull and thought. "Could it be the bubbles?" I asked, beginning to ponder the Stokes-Einstein equation, but mostly I just wanted to drink the beer.

Links: How to Grieve, and plays that tell us how to live

"A Time to Mourn":

In light of the fact of the reality of death, how do we relate to other people? “Love ‘em while they are warm!” Ask: "Who can I love right now? Who can I forgive right now that is still alive?" Death is so final and dead bodies are so cold.

 BBC Shakespeare Dramas:  - including, in the cast of Twelfth Night, David Tennant of Doctor Who fame. Subscribe now, because these free podcasts have expiration dates.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links! Violence, Death, Pain, and More

Another links post, because we've all (well, 5 of the 6 of us) been sick here, and I'm down for the count for a second time, and so I've had way too much time to just poke around the internet, reading.  Here are some of the cool things I've stumbled across:

-I actually caught this interview when it aired on NPR, and it was so good. Interview with the author of "Don't Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America." I know that sounds dull and perhaps depressing, but it's actually one of the most riveting and hopeful things I've heard in a long time. Highly recommended.

-In "Steve Jobs and Death In Medias Res", John Mark Reynolds argues that the saints never die in the middle of their stories, but always at the end.

-Shannon Hale's giving away some ARCs of her new book "Midnight in Austenland" if you like her on Facebook. I do like her and her writing, so I'm passing this one on! :)

-Willa, over at Quotidian Moments, is going to be hosting a slow, thoughtful read-through and blog-through of Margaret Peterson's "Keeping House: the Litany of Everyday Life". I'm joining in and I'd encourage you to join in too; if you go look at Willa's post, you'll see that the schedule she's proposing is really leisurely and doable - and the book isn't very long to begin with. To encourage you further, here's a link to my review of the book from a year ago. As you can see from the quoted sections, it's very lovely, rich, and rewarding reading.

-Jeanne over at At A Hen's Pace has a beautiful and profound post on pain up on her blog.

-Fictional Places You Can Visit in Real Life. Anyone up for a visit to Hobbiton?

-When a motif starts showing up over and over in popular culture, it's smart to wonder why. With that principle in mind, here's another thoughtful analysis on the current popularity of zombies in today's entertainment offerings.  An excerpt:

David has grasped a breathtakingly essential point about zombie fiction: if human beings really were merely animated meat suits, then there would be no moral difference between killing zombies and killing human beings--and, as a corollary, we could kill human beings without remorse or pity simply because they were in the way. The history of the atheistic regimes of the twentieth century shows us what that looks like--what it looks like when a society arises to whom human beings are merely interchangeable animated future corpses, and which treats people as if they have no intrinsic human worth.

But if humans have intrinsic worth--if they are not mere walking bodies, if they are more than merely well-evolved animals--where does that worth come from? If the people we once loved who have died are not merely decomposing flesh, if they, the essential selves, still exist, then where and what are they, and why are they still alive? For Christians who believe in the soul, these questions can be pondered with placidity, gratitude, even joy. For anyone who does not believe in an immaterial and immortal human soul which makes us look like our Creator, though, these questions can only be rather grim to think about.

-And, the best news for last, Lois McMaster Bujold, my favorite living novelist, has finished a new book! Better yet? It's the one about Ivan. w00T!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Lazarus

There's a small section in Tennyson's great poem, In Memorium, about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. One part made my breath puff out in a half-laugh, half expression of astonishment, as Tennyson wondered how Lazarus might have answered his sister when she asked him where he had been those several days he was dead, and observes:

Behold a man raised up by Christ!
The rest remaineth unreveal'd;
He told it not; or something seal'd
The lips of that Evangelist.

Indeed. One wonders.

But then the next section of the poem caught me by surprise with its beauty:

Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And he that brought him back is there.

Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother's face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.

Can you even imagine?

And yet someday we will all sit around a table in that company: our beloved dead, who are no longer dead, and Life Himself.

God have mercy on us sinners.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

“These are your presents,” he said, “and they are tools not toys. The time to use them is perhaps near at hand. Bear them well.”

Reading Hopkins’ “Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice”, it strikes me that I’m in the middle verse now. Here it is:

Both thought and thew now bolder

And told my Nature: Tower;

Head, heart, hand, heel, and shoulder

That beat and breathe in power –

This pride of prime’s enjoyment

Take as for tool, not toy meant

And hold at Christ’s employment.

Now there are your marching orders for middle age!

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

Links - death, Thor, & more

Anne Kennedy on funerals. Very cross-cultural, very Christian. Right on.

Pro-life, pro-death? My husband explains how you can be both (sort of).

I can't help but like this one: apparently moms of twins are superwomen! (Biologically speaking.)

A review of Thor from an expert on all things Norse. His observations on how the film-makers were unable to truly imagine a pagan god are particularly interesting.

Need help remembering how to play "Rocks, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock"? This handy chart should help.

Where do writers get their ideas? As Patricia Wrede explains, it's not so much where they get them, but what they do with them once they have them.

links! - trusting God, playing the violin, and much, much more

These Little Pieces is posting regularly to her blog again, and she's started with a bang. Check out this post on how to celebrate the Annunciation with your children (I love the idea of supporting a crisis pregnancy center in honor of the occasion) and also check out her giveaway from her Etsy shop!

Conversion Diary's post Trust School is excellent, and, for me at least, came right when I needed to hear the message it offers.

And on the funny/awesome side, I love, love, love my friend Katie's post about her New Trick. :D

Bethany writes about what keeps us from being happy, and about her need (and many of ours, I think) for time alone. This line especially makes me think: "Just because we need something doesn't mean that we demand it from others." Go read the whole thing here.

Jen left me a comment today on my post about how hard it is to find sympathy cards that are neither sticky-sweet nor theologically bad, pointing me towards these beautiful, serene, appropriate cards from Conciliar Press. I don't think I've ever seen anything better.

I always have trouble summarizing Anne Kennedy's posts, but read this one and you'll understand why I read her blog. Let's just say that she has read, marked, and inwardly digested everything that P. G. Wodehouse had to teach her.

I have not read much of this blog yet. I just found it. But it's called "Shrinking Violets: Marketing Promotions for Introverts". That's enough for me to keep the tab open for quite awhile.

Rachelle Gardner has a thorough, helpful post on what fiction editors are looking for when it comes to a novel's characters.

Smithical does a great job of collecting quotations pertinent to the big creation/evolution/homeschool conference kerfluffle.

"A Neutral Education?" by Susan Wise Bauer helped me find a missing piece in my continual ponderings about homeschooling and the nature of education. She writes:

The church of Christ, not textbook writers, should be responsible for providing the central Christian story that must inform all true education. When I wrote in Chapter Twenty of The Well-Trained Mind, “When you’re instructing your own child, you have two tasks with regard to religion: to teach your own convictions with honesty and diligence, and to study the ways in which other faiths have changed the human landscape. Only you and your religious community can do the first,” I was not attempting to maintain neutrality. Rather, I was asserting that a Christian education can only be provided by a Christian community — parents, in obedience to and in faithful relationship with their local church.

Now I am trying to figure out how that fits in with what has bothered me so frequently about Christian homeschooling organizations, i.e. that they frequently put character above academics when they are ostensibly academic organizations. I thought it bothered me because they were trying to make ordinary Christian parenting the end-all and be-all of education. But maybe part of it is that they are trying to take the place of the church? (Still just thinking out loud here, folks - not coming to any conclusions yet. Feel free to join in conversation in the comment section!)

Finally, what's a link post without some music? Probably most of you have heard this, but whether you have or not, it's still a nice evening treat. Enjoy!

Links! many, many mostly-unrelated things

I recommend this post by Fred Sanders on Cyrus the Great, which, in addition to explaining why that ancient king is important and providing one more good apology for classical education, includes many interesting quotations from Dorothy Sayers. ("Sayers" = must-read, yes?)
If you, like me, have a secondhand bread machine sans manual, you might find this post from the Hillbilly Housewife as helpful as I did. She goes through - in great and welcome detail - exactly how to use and figure out the quirks of your new-to-you appliance.
If you know who Fitzwilliam Darcy and Mark Darcy are, and if you have seen the Harry Potter films, you just might find this imagined conversation as funny as I did (it had me laughing out loud). (Also, I want to see the movie they're promoting. The trailer looks great.)
Speaking of Harry Potter, I'm pretty sure I need a "Make Love, Not Horcruxes" t-shirt.
I wrote earlier about using coconut oil as a moisturizer. If you want to read more about something similar, check out Kelly's post about using jojoba oil. She adds a "steaming" step to her routine, which sounds interesting.
Here's a neat blog post passed onto me by my sister-in-law called "Liturgy of the Home", comparing the rhythm of the author's home to the liturgy of the church, and looking at a few of the connections between them.
I really like this hairstyle tutorial (I'm wearing my hair this way right now, in fact!). It's quick and easy, but it looks very elegant.
This post, by a mother who has recently lost her son, is amazing and terrible and sad and all about the love of God. I don't have better words to describe it, but go read it. And pray for her and her husband, please.
Emily has a post about making your own bouillon which is intriguing.

I hope this week's links didn't give you too much whiplash! Not many of them are very related, but hopefully they provide you some good reading.
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

7 Quick Takes

1. I spent last weekend learning to kill people with my bare hands. No, I'm not kidding. My dad took me to a weekend seminar put on by these guys. I'm going to write about it more later, but right now I'm still pondering what I learned. I do though, already, think it's training everyone ought to have. They're very sensible and very well-educated on their subject, and very good teachers. Useful stuff I hope I never have to use.  But I'm glad I know it.

2. My oldest two kids have developed an interest in all things Robin Hood, so I've started reading them Knight's Castle by Edward Eager. We aren't very far into the magic bit yet, or the yeomanly deeds of valor, but the set-up for the story is lovely in its own right. I liked this part:

And sometimes when Roger would start picking on Ann because she was a girl, and younger, their mother would get really cross, and say that there would be none of that in this house! Their mother said she knew just how Ann felt because she had been a girl once, too, and the youngest of four children, and what she had endured worms wouldn't believe!

But other times she talked about what fun she and her sisters and brother had had; so Roger decided she couldn't have suffered so very much. and when he asked his Uncle Mark about it, his Uncle Mark said their mother had been a terror to cats and ruled the household with a rod of iron. And when he asked his Aunt Katharine, his Aunt Katharine said their mother had been a dear little baby, but went through a difficult phase as she grew older. He couldn't ask his Aunt Jane, because she was hardly ever there, being usually occupied hunting big game in darkest Africa or touring the English countryside on a bicycle.

But he decided their mother's childhood had probably been very much like their own, partly good and partly bad, but mostly very good indeed.

That last paragraph is pretty much what I'm hoping for my kids' childhoods.

3. I had a conversation in Spanish this week - a real one! I was so geekily excited afterwards. I know it's not much to be able to have a short chat with the lady in front of me in line about our kids (she had twins too), but it was a real conversation, I followed most of what she said, and I was able to respond in my second language rather than my first! 

Okay, I'm still excited about it.

4. I figured out why listening to the "Ave Maria" helps when I'm slightly depressed. I think (for me), that sort of depression happens when I feel overwhelmed. I start hating myself because all I can see is A) what I'm failing to do and B) what I'm doing that I shouldn't. Just failure and sin, all over the place.

   The Ave Maria though, is a breathtaking account of one concrete time in human history when a woman got it exactly right. She responded to God's call with a simple "yes", and was right within His will. That that sort of obedience is even possible lifts my heart every single time. And it takes my eyes off of myself. It's good all around.

5. Did you know you can buy Nutella on Amazon? In bulk? Yes, I am an enabler.

6. I entered the Genesis contest again this year. I got great feedback on it last year ("great" meaning "it was helpful", not meaning "they thought I'd be a bestseller"), and I think my entry this year is stronger. I'll be glad to get some objective opinions on whether I've gotten better or not, and on what I need to work on some more. There's still time to enter, if you're interested. It's a great contest, well-run, with good judges.

7. Related to #2, I have the Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood on request at the library. Ostensibly, it's for the kids. But to be honest, I'm really looking forward to watching it again, in all its Technicolor glory. Anyone else like those old swashbuckling movies? 

For more Quick Takes, visit Jennifer at Conversion Diary.

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

Links!

Wow! there's a lot of good stuff in this links post. If I sound surprised, it's because I make these up a bit at a time, copying a link here and there throughout the week as I read things. So when I actually sit down to post it, I'm sometimes surprised at how long the post has gotten!  Anyway, here you go, stuff worth reading around the web this week:

Amy writes about "A Sabbath Sensibility".

Kerry writes a bit about family fasting, and includes yet more links to Lenten meal ideas and recipes.  While on the subject, Ranee also has a list of Lenten recipes with links.

People talk a lot about love being a verb, but Fred Sanders says we should look at the fact that love is also a noun. (It's worth reading this one for the short devotional exercise at the end alone.)

This article called "My Untranslatable Novel" makes me really want to read the author's book. I'm not sure my wee bit of French would carry me over though.

Emily's giving up her computer for Lent. And the reasoning behind her decision is worth reading.

This article about the biathlon is kind of awesome.  Here's an excerpt:

Furthermore, how great are penalty loops? If you've never seen biathlon, the way it works is that you stop periodically and shoot at a set of five targets, and if you miss one, you have to go over to a little track on the side and ski around in a circle. If you miss two targets, you have to go around twice. It's brutal and petty and wonderful. Imagine, if you will, that if you fell down in figure skating, you had to drop to the ice and do push-ups. We're talking about an Olympic sport where, in essence, when you mess up, you have to run laps. Obviously, the extra loops function as effectively a time penalty, but it's so much more colorful than anything most sports would ever even conceive of.

This animated poem is very cool. <-- Note the declarative sentence.  If you've noticed the plague of "y'know?"'s at the end of every other sentence you hear, you'll appreciate this.

A couple of good posts from Semicolon: on on "The End of the Alphabet, Wit and John Donne" and one called "Perelandra and Truth".

and we, we should have lost it

Tonight,  in the midst of grieving some losses, and realizing that there are more to come, I remembered vaguely that there was a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that talked about loss. And I went and reread it, and was so glad I did. It's ostensibly about the loss of physical beauty, but "age's evil", really, is death, and that's the deeper meaning, I think.  The poem, "The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo" starts with the question:
HOW to kéep—is there ány any, is there none such, nowhere known some, bow or brooch or braid or brace, láce, latch or catch or key to keep
Back beauty, keep it, beauty, beauty, beauty, … from vanishing away?
And the answer soon comes:

No there ’s none, there ’s none, O no there ’s none,
Nor can you long be, what you now are, called fair,
Do what you may do, what, do what you may, And wisdom is early to despair:
Be beginning; since, no, nothing can be done
To keep at bay
Age and age’s evils . . .
 (Emphasis mine, here and throughout.)
It's hard for me to excerpt this poem, to skip over any of it, but soon comes the even further answer:
  Spare!
There ís one, yes I have one (Hush there!);
Only not within seeing of the sun . . .
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Oné. Yes I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where whatever’s prized and passes of us . . .
Never fleets móre . . .
And later yet:
. . . beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
 Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver
See; not a hair is, not an eyelash, not the least lash lost . . .
O then, weary then why
When the thing we freely fórfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Fonder a care kept than we could have kept it, kept
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it) finer, fonder
A care kept . . . 
That is it: "and we, we should have lost it."
Thank you, Lord, for your servant Gerard Manley Hopkins.
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links:

Amy at A Joyful Journey writes about the living with the loss of her eldest daughter and the hope of Christ in Grief in the Shadows. This is the gospel. Thank you for sharing this, Amy.

For my fellow writers: This Is Your Job.

A post from Matt Kennedy: Why Read the Bible? I especially appreciate his reminder that we all worship something.

The customer's not always right . . . especially when it comes to those new-fangled computers. This is hilarious - thanks for the story, Josh!

And again, thanks to my brother: check out this ceiling covered in beetle carapaces. It's beautiful!

After reading up on growing out my hair, I couldn't help but find this trailer really interesting. I have no authority to speak to the issues this movie is about, but the way culture and personal appearance interact is eye-opening.


Hope you had a good weekend!
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Good Friday

Yesterday was Good Friday, and it was a memorable one for our family. Due to some sleep issues, our twins ended up napping in the middle of the day, which meant that we missed the Good Friday service at church. Instead, we read through the Passion Gospel (John 18-19) with our older two children. While my husband read it, I turned the corresponding pages in one their illustrated children's Bible, so they could better picture the story their dad was reading them.

And, in the middle of the day, we got news that my husband's grandfather had fallen asleep in the Lord. It came after a long battle with cancer, and there was something fitting in that this servant of the Lord, who spent his whole life bringing the gospel to people who hadn't heard it, and translating the words of Jesus into the heart-language of those who didn't have the Bible in their native tongue, would share the day of his death with his Savior.

Our older two children had been praying for their great-grandpa for months now, and when it began to look like this illness might be his last, we explained to them that he might die, so that they wouldn't be surprised or scared when and if that happened. Only a few days ago, Bess asked, "why are we praying for him if Jesus might not make him better?" And we explained about sickness and death and prayers that aren't always answered the way we wish they were answered. And about things we could pray for for him besides healing - though we would continue to pray for that.

And then that led to talk of Heaven - and I wish that Bess' great-grandpa could have seen her eyes light up as she realized that Heaven meant that someday we'd all be together and none of us would ever be sick anymore and that we'd all be with Jesus. We could tell, watching her, that she understood something she hadn't understood ever before in her short life. In that moment, she got it, and the light in her eyes was a reflection, I think, of the joy of the redeemed there in the presence of God.

I know that there was much more going on in Adam's grandfather's life and in his death than I will ever know, but that small moment was a treasure. Even as he fought his last battle, that battle was bringing one of his great-grandchildren into a better understanding and love of the Lord he served so long and so well. It is a small thing, and does not say anything to the loss, but is, I think, a testimony to the way he lived his life. Rest in peace, Pop-Pop.

O Almighty God, the God of the spirits of all flesh, who by a voice from heaven didst proclaim, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord: Multiply, we beseech thee, to those who rest in Jesus the manifold blessings of thy love, that the good work which thou didst begin in them may be made perfect unto the day of Jesus Christ. And of thy mercy, O heavenly Father, grant that we, who now serve thee on earth, may at last, together with them, be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light; for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Halloween: Remember That You Are Mortal

I will be glad to get to this weekend. I will be glad not to have to explain the skeletons in the grocery store to my four-year-old anymore.

Does Albertsons’ really think I want to have to explain corpses to preschoolers every week?

On the upside, I think I understand the urge to celebrate Halloween better than I have before, due to Bess’ persistent “why?”’s, as in: “why do they hang up pretend dead bodies next to the eggs and cheese?”

My answer, which surprised me, is, “Because they’re scared of death, and this makes them feel better about it.”

True, I think.

Surely the other great motive is our love of indulgence. Most people would tell you that Halloween is a day about candy. And, well, as an American myself, I understand the urge to stuff my face. (As a Christian, I am fighting it, but I do very much understand.)

But surely, if it were just about candy, we wouldn’t need all the ghastlies and ghoulies. Why do my neighbors, otherwise very nice people, feel the urge to hang horrors from their porches? Why are they happy to decorate with foulness that makes me avert my eyes in disgust?

I think it must be an attempt at inoculation. Maybe seeing all the fake gore can help comfort you into believing that real gore doesn’t exist. If you expose yourself over and over to corpses made of paper and plastic, maybe that becomes to you what a dead body is, and you can ignore the future dead body you’re currently inhabiting.

I think, as a Christian, my dislike of all this fake death is actually a sign of a healthy understanding of real death. In my experience, people who deal with real death are much healthier, happier and heartier than those who feel the need to boogeyman themselves to – hmm – death.

Two things: first, when I see a skeleton, all dressed up in a tattered cape, arms raised in a frightening gesture, I think, “what a sad thing to do to the remains of someone who used to be your friend, your family member, your neighbor.” That isn’t how we ought to treat dead bodies, you know? Dead bodies are the earthly remains of people. Costuming skeletons seems to me, firstly, disrespectful. I think all of these skeletons hanging around this time of year show a forgetfulness of what skeletons actually are. Not ghoulies, not ghosties, but just plain, honest, human remains. (And you too will be one one day. Perhaps soon.)

Secondly, the skeleton is just part of the person. The soul lives on, and, for the redeemed, will be reunited with a new body, one that never will decompose till all that remains is the bones. We respect human remains, because they are what used to be our neighbors. But we don’t regard them with fear, because they are not our neighbors anymore. They are not some odd, haunted object. The part of them that was human, well, what’s to fear about our brothers? The part of them that’s not human – because the animating spirit is gone – well, what’s to fear about an inanimate object? But, either way, they ought not to be hung out for the purposes of being nervously laughed at.

So, I find it distasteful, I think, because I view death differently than a lot of my neighbors. Sure, I’m scared of it, I think everybody is. I’ve never died before, and new experiences are always scary. I (sinfully) worry about those I will leave behind. I'm scared of how much it will hurt. But I know what’s waiting at the other side, I know Who is waiting, and though I fear Him in a way I fear no one else, I know Him in a way I know no one else, and trust Him in a way no one else deserves to be trusted.

And I know He beat death. Hanging out skeletons seems to me to be a weak option when I can contemplate the cross instead. Here is where death met its death. Here is where the horror of the grave was really confronted. Here is where Hell was harrowed. Here is my memento mori. Here is the vision of terror, and the One who was more Terrifying than the final terror, that I wish to hold before my eyes, now and always.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell