Weekly Links: a Day Late

Good reading from around the Web for your . . . Monday.

I hope you still like reading when it's a Monday.

"Flat Book Cover Design: Why Do So Many of This Year's Book Covers Have the Same Design Style?": a look at trends in literary art.


"Small Surprises in Growing Up":

I blinked at the email, in a sort of shocked pause. My boy is too young to have to register for the draft. Except he isn’t. Not anymore. 

"20 Years Ago This Week: A Look Back at 1995":  a photo essay.


"Fasting for Beginners":

When Jesus returns, fasting will be done. It’s a temporary measure, for this life and age, to enrich our joy in Jesus and prepare our hearts for the next — for seeing him face to face. When he returns, he will not call a fast, but throw a feast; then all holy abstinence will have served its glorious purpose and be seen by all for the stunning gift it was. 

Until then, we will fast.

"Lists of Things that Women Cannot Do: The Problem with John Piper (and Me)":

Whatever happened before, and in, and after the garden of Eden affected relationships between men, women, and God – and we have hard theological work to do to figure out where in that journey we are.

"Not All Conservatives": this is an answer to the article above - I love the conversation they're having on this blog! Well-worth subscribing to.

Complementarianism might be better understood as one expression of gender conservativism. As a response to evangelical feminism, complementarianism developed and flourishes in a specific cultural context, namely a western, white, middle-upper class context; because of this, it will reflect western, white, middle-upper class assumptions about work, economics, and home. The fact that Pastor Piper is even concerned with answering the question “what jobs can a woman do” reflects this.

"How to Weave on a Cardboard Loom": why does this fascinate me? I really don't need another hobby . . .


"Mysteries of Consciousness":

Whatever the case, though, such experiences should chiefly remind us how many and how deep the mysteries of consciousness really are. And the profoundest mystery of consciousness is consciousness itself, because we really have little or no clear idea what it is, or how it could either arise from or ally itself to the material mechanisms of the brain.

"How the Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive": I love cursive. And now I want a fountain pen.



Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Advent: the Magnificat

 In a Sunday school class I've been teaching this month, we've been focusing on Mary's Magnificat. And I love John Allen Banks' observation on that famous song of triumph:

Advent presents us with a Christ who is the great reverser of fortunes, the one who (in the words of the Song of Mary) brings down the mighty from their thrones and instead exalts the humble, who fills the hungry with good things while sending the rich away empty (see Luke 1:52-53). Advent is anything but a consumerist season. It’s about a God who cares for the poor, who sent Christ to proclaim good news to the poor, and who calls us through the prophets to show concern for the poor.” 

 (From John Allen  Banks' book Rekindling Advent.)

Advent is a fasting season, and in Christian tradition, fasting is always tied to two things: prayer and charity.  I like how Banks ties together Advent & the Magnificat & charity all in one neat bundle.


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

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

New Year's Resolution #1: Love God

My first resolution is the same one as last year and the year before: Love God.

It’s okay to make the same resolution every year, I think. It’s even good. The new year is a time to take stock, to remember where we are and where we’re going, and if you find every year that your first thing is still your first thing . . . well, that’s good. It means you were probably right about your priorities. It means you just might be fitting into that wonderful description of the Christian life: “A long obedience in the same direction.”

Anyway, where it gets fun and very New-Year’s-y is in the details. What are you going to try to do, specifically, that will help you (specifically!) to love God better? What are your disciplines, your practices?

Specific Goals

Here are mine, for this year:

1) Keep using the St. James devotional to read (listen) through the Bible. Currently I’m listening through the assigned passages 3-4 times a week.

2) Keep listening through Proverbs every month. Ideally, this is one chapter a day, but often I listen to them about 4 or 5 at a time, to catch up.

3) Scripture memorization. I have no good plan for this. I need to think about this. (Revisit in Feb? Tie it to fast times in the church calendar?) (ETA: my husband is interested in working on this together. Yay!)

4) Observe the traditional Christian fasts. Not in a heroic way, but just in a basic eat-less-eat-boring way (sort of like the Orthodox do). This would be Wednesdays, Fridays, Lent, and Advent, basically (I think). I don’t want to do this, but I feel like I should. Just because, well, it’s what Christians have always done, and all the saints say it’s helpful in killing the passions, and it’s conducive to prayer.

5) Pray regularly. I want to be more deliberate about this this year. Unless and until I come up with a better plan, I’m just going to plan on saying an (Anglican) rosary morning and evening.

6) Pray for others. I also want to get better at praying for others, especially those in my family and church. Not sure how to do this either, but maybe I can (ha!) pray about it during January, and revisit it in February. (Update: my husband is interested in doing this with me, using the BCP’s Prayers of the People.)

What about you?

Talk about your devotional goals in the comments, or link to your post about your goals. I’ll add any links to the body of this post, so they’re easier for others to see and visit.

It's okay to just fast

I was reading Elizabeth Foss' blog today, and came across this:

"Ahh, the Lents when we give up chocolate are always so much easier than the ones when we don't choose what to sacrifice."

Oh. Yeah.

And the thing is, you don't necessarily know if it's going to be one of those Lents going into it, though sometimes you do. Cancer, difficult pregnancy, difficult relationships . . . those can make for a pretty sacrificial Lent, and there's nothing you can do about it.

But, as far as I know (the Lord knows), that's not my Lent this year. And so what if it's just an ordinary Lent? Besides thanking God fasting, what do you do?

Well . . . I don't know. I'm going to spend the next week praying about it, I think. But here's a thought I started thinking last year, and that I'm still kind of pondering: I think it's okay sometimes to just fast.

Like, actually give up eating, fast.

If there's no reason not to (pregnancy, illness, hard physical labor, etc.), why not? That's the tradition of the church. 


There are different ways to do it. Some of the simplest are just giving up a meal per day, or fasting one or two days a week (Wednesdays, for Judas' betrayal, and Fridays, for Christ's death, are traditional). Some people actually fast for forty full days, though I think that's an Olympic-level event that needs the supervision of a doctor and a priest, at least.

There's going to bread and water for certain days, going vegan, going vegetarian. That starts to get complicated, though.

But, for Protestants, who don't have the strict rules some of our fellow Christians do, I think the simplicity of just fasting - from a meal, for a day - might not be such a bad idea.

I'm not saying you should. I'm not even saying I should - not yet, anyway. These things take prayer. But I think it is something to pray about, as Lent approaches. Sometimes we make very complicated fasts for ourselves, making up rules about different kinds of media or desserts, or whatever.

But maybe sometimes we should just fast.

What do you think?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

More than midway through Lent

We must be, because they've started the baptismal classes at our church, in preparation for Easter morning.

Already? It feels like I've barely gotten into the rhythm of this, the barest of seasons. Even at forty days long, it doesn't feel like there's enough time to truly sink into the spare, ascetic aesthetic of Lent.

But I begin to. It's funny, but for all that Lent is so simple, it's hard to write about. Or at least, it's hard to blog about. I imagine there isn't a Christian blogger out there who doesn't hear Jesus' words about hiding the fact that you're fasting whenever he or she sits down to tell the internet how Lent's going. Eep.

Lent: easy to journal about, hard to blog about.

It should be a bumper sticker, right?

But still, I think I can say this: Lent's got my attention this year. It's got my attention and is focusing that attention on how easy I am on myself most of the year. Oh, I'm hard on myself in that firstborn, Type-A I-am-never-good-enough-no-one-can-love-me way, but that way is silly and a lie, and what's more, I know it's silly and a lie, and frankly, most of the times when I do it these days, it's an indulgence and it's not truly scary, not the way it was back when I was a teenager.

This Lent, it feels like fasting is letting me hear a call to - well, what? a call to maturity. I think.

(I'm figuring this out as I type, and what I just typed is making me stop and ponder a moment.)

But, yes, maturity. I think so. I think I need to be stricter with myself, but not in the bad old adolescent ways. I shouldn't condemn myself. (Because who is He who condemns? who has the right? not me. Not me.). Neither should I force myself through whatever my fool head has convinced me is what must be done, blindly pushing through fear and pain and the clanging warning bells of my intuition. I learned that lesson back when I broke both my arms, not at once, but one after the other, because I had decided I was going to get something done and didn't stop to think. Idiot.

No, now I will think. And now I will accept God's grace (with God's help). But I want to work, and I am seeing this Lent that I have been too easy on myself.

Not too kind to myself. That's different. I was thinking yesterday that exercising, though it feels self-indulgent, isn't. Would I own a dog and not exercise it? Of course not. Should I be less kind to my own body than I'd be to the body of an animal I was responsible for? Of course not. That sort of thing, that's kindness, not indulgence. At least at this stage of my life.

But . . . but fasting has a way of pointing out all the small things I do to ease my own way through my days. That I'm not so much virtuous as indulged. (Oh gosh, I don't even want to write that, because now I'm scared all my indulgences will disappear. Can I say I'm not sure? Ay-yi-yi.) I think I'm learning from it. I think. Golly, now I want to go and rewrite this whole post. Oh well: let's just be clear that this is all thinking, and not concluding, okay?

And all this is subject to whatever I learn in Easter. Because we don't fast forever, and often what's really important lasts through the feasting times too - you need to wait and see which lessons stick. I wonder if this one will?

How are you all doing, mid-Lent?

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links: Fasting, Prayer, and Steven Curtis Chapman

St. John Chrysostom on Fasting - "Do not let only your mouth fast, but also the eye, the ear, and the feet, and the hands, and all members of our bodies . . ."

Work and Prayer and Rest - "Don’t be mistaken. There is a difference between idleness and rest. There’s a difference between blind striving and hard work. How do we know where one stops and the other begins? We know who we are in Christ. We believe in grace and in God’s deep love for us. We work out of a healthy knowledge of our own value because we know it is not a result of our accomplishments. We work knowing that our hope is in the one who offers rest at the end of the day, at the end of the week."

What I Learned From SCC - "But if we preach our deep brokenness and Christ’s deeper healing, if we preach our inability to take a single breath but for God’s grace, then our weakness exalts him and we’re functioning as we were meant to since the foundation of the world. Steven isn’t super-human. He’s just human. But what a glorious thing to be! An attempt on our part to be super-human will result only in our in-humanness–like a teacup trying to be a fork: useless. But if the teacup will just be a teacup, it will be filled."


Enjoy the good reading!
Jessica Snell

A Definition of "Lent", from the St. James Devotional Guide

As Lent approaches, it's good to know what exactly it is we're observing. In my reading this week, I ran across this definition of Lent in the excellent St. James Devotional Guide:

Originally the word Lent, now associated exclusively with the observance of the liturgical year, was simply the Anglo-Saxon for "spring" and had no directly religious significance . . .

. . . . In most other languages of Western Christianity the word for Lent is some variant of "forty," derived from the Latin quadragesimale. Traditionally, this was a period of 40 days of fasting in imitation of the Lord himself, who observed exactly that length of time in fasting prior to the beginning of his earthly ministry. It was also associated with the 40-day fast of Moses on Mount Sinai and of Elijah on the same mountain . . .

. . . . As early as the second century we already find Easter being the preferred time for the baptism of new Christians. The reasons are rather obvious . . . For the early believers, it was important that some period of prayer and fasting, by way of preparation, should precede the ritual of baptism. Even the Apostle Paul prayed and fasted for three days prior to being baptized . . . 

. . . . the Council of Nicaea . . . also determined that the forty days preceding Easter should be a special time of prayer and fasting in preparation for the baptisms to be done on that day. that determination has remained to the present time.

The Devotional also points out that it was traditional for the other members of the church to fast along with the people preparing for baptism, the point being that the fasting was "a community effort".

I'm sure I've said so before, but it's worth repeating: when I wanted to establish a regular habit of reading through the Bible, and was looking for some guidance in doing so, I found no better aid than the St. James Devotional. It walks you through the New Testament every year, the Old every two years, and the Psalms lots.  And it also pays attention to having the Scripture selections match the season of the church year, as much as possible, and provides excellent commentary, and a short form for daily prayer. (I'm not paid by them or anything for this endorsement; I'm simply a very happy subscriber.) So, if you're looking for something like that: be of good cheer! it exists! :)

And may you have a good and fruitful Lent.

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

beginning to think about Lent

and in my searching 'round the web, I found a blogger (and, sadly, I closed the tab and can't remember where I read it, so I can't give proper credit) who commented that Lent is marked by prayer, which is justice towards God, and by fasting, which is justice towards self, and by almsgiving, which is justice towards others.
I'm just chewing on that right now, and thought I'd pass it on in case you wanted to add it to the thoughts you're mulling also.
Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Links!

Hmm, haven't done a links post for awhile. Here you go!

My husband has a post about Lenten fasting and what we do with the time our fasting frees up.

Amy has a free e-book on homeschooling with Down Syndrome.

The Murrays share about artificial surfectant, and how it means breath and life for babies born prematurely. This invention saved the lives of two of my own children, and I appreciated knowing that it was money from the March of Dimes that allowed for the research that discovered it. Artificial surfectant is the reasons early babies routinely survive now - babies who would have died in years past.

Tienne's post about her Lenten internet fast is well-worth reading.

I thought this New York Times article about exercise was worth reading too. It summarizes the findings of a bunch of different studies. The conclusion is that exercise is important to health, and even to weight loss, but in the latter case, it might be important in different ways than we previously thought. It's a nice rejoinder for all those recent articles that claim that exercise doesn't help you get in shape at all.

more of Frederica on fasting

I found this short (about 2 min.) video of Frederica Mathewes-Green talking about fasting. There's a lot of good stuff in those short two minutes, and it's a good one to listen to before Ash Wednesday tomorrow.
Particularly good, I thought, was her observation that we join in the traditions of the church (such as fasting) as children: we might not understand why it's all good for us, but we can still participate.  My mom and I were talking this morning about how there are a lot of things that you don't really understand until you do them. Obedience leads to understanding.
And as the blessed George Herbert pointed out, "the Scriptures bid us fast; the Church says now".
God's blessings on you as you keep a holy Lent. And pray for me.
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Children, Lent and Fasting

Two Square Meals left a comment on my post about vegetarian recipes for Lent that I thought was worth addressing in a post. It boiled down to: what about the kids? How do you make sure they get enough protein if you do a vegetarian fast for Lent?
I don't know what everyone does, but here's why it works for us:
1) My kids all willingly eat eggs, cheese, milk and beans. If they didn't, I'd probably make sure they had meat during our Lenten meals. They're growing, and I'd make sure they had what they needed.
2) At least a night or two a week, we eat dinner at my folks' place or with my mother-in-law. They almost always fix meat, and we follow the rule that if someone offers it, you eat it, because you don't impose your fast on other people. So the kids get meat during Lent when they visit their grandparents.  :)
3) We don't fast at all on Sundays, because that's the day we celebrate the resurrection, even during Lent. So the kids eat meat then.
4) This should maybe be a sub-category of #1, but I think that a well-balanced vegetarian diet has plenty of protein for a growing child. Again, if you have kids who will eat the big veg. protein sources (eggs, dairy, legumes).
As you can see, with our exceptions (Sundays, other people's homes), the fast from meat isn't really that strenuous. So, it seems to me like it's a good way to introduce the idea of fasting to children, without worrying that it'll do them any harm. Kids (or "those who are attaining their growth" as they used to say) shouldn't do any true fasting. They shouldn't go hungry or be undernourished. If they're hungry for it, they probably need it. (Unless "it" is five bowls of ice cream a day.) But, at least the way we do it, I don't think going vegetarian for Lent is anything that will do them any harm. Frankly, I'm not even sure they'd notice unless we pointed it out. :)
peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

a bit on fasting and gluttony

I think I mentioned on this blog that I'm looking forward to Lent this year because it's the first Lenten season in a long time that finds me neither pregnant nor nursing, so I can participate in the fasting.

I think I also mentioned that I couldn't figure out how to blog about fasting, given that we're not supposed to trumpet our fasting about. But then I thought: well, why am I excited? Honestly, just because I get to be part of this part of the life of the church again. So, I think that it makes sense for Christians to blog some about fasting. Not to toot their own horns, but just to remember, "hey, this is what we do", emphasis on the we. I wouldn't know anything about fasting if other people hadn't taught me what it is and means, or reminded me that there are times to do it and times not to. One of the biggest things I've learned (and this is so simple, but so important), is that we do it because Christ did it. (And we don't expect ourselves to do it as well as he did it.) In other words, writing about fasting isn't boasting if you write about it in the context of the life of the church. Because it's not "hey, look what I am doing", but it's "I'm reflecting on this thing that we are doing." So, I hope it's okay that I'm blogging about it. (And curious: what do you think? Is fasting a bloggable topic, or am I way off here?)

Anyway, I seemed to recall that it's traditional to fast more strictly on Wednesdays and Fridays. I could figure out the Fridays (in memory of the crucifixion), but couldn't figure out the Wednesdays. But, looking around a bit, I found this article by Frederica Mathewes-Green, and learned that it's because that was the day when Judas betrayed Jesus.

Then I got to reading the rest of the article. Wow, it's good. Good to think about not just going into Lent, but anytime.  And one of the things it talks about is how fasting is just something we're supposed to do pretty regularly, not as earning salvation, and not as earning special favor but just, basically, because it's good for us, like exercising or taking a bath is good for us. 

The other thing that article talks about is gluttony (the fasting part actually comes in as a discipline that can help to curb that vice). Here's a bit from the end:

The law of the jungle is "Eat or be eaten." Indulging in gluttony seems like a private vice, a "cute sin," a matter between only the tempted diner and the eclair. But undisciplined indulgence in the pleasure of food costs us more than we dream: coarsens and darkens our minds, ruins our powers of attention and self-control, of sobriety and vigilance. It hobbles and confuses us. It makes us prey for another Eater.

The one who bids us to His marriage supper will not devour us, in fact he promises to feed us. But there is more; he does not feed us only with the good things he has made, or even the goodness of supernatural food like manna. He feeds us his very self. It is this other bread we must learn to eat, not "bread alone" but the Word of God himself. At the Communion table this becomes, not just theory, but a true encounter—a feast that binds hungry sinners together, and links us to the One who alone can feed our souls.

Isn't that good? Mathewes-Green always is. (Read her!) Anyway, I'm a little intimidated, but over all, I'm looking forward to Lent.

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

fasting that sticks

Here's the other fasting thought that's been going through my head recently: sometimes fasting sticks.

Not fasting-fasting. Not the serious fasting the Eastern Orthodox do, for instance, where they basically go completely vegan, with one full meal a day and two other smaller meals that together don't add up to a second complete meal. (This is what I've read, if I'm wrong, I hope any EO readers will feel free to correct me.) Or the sort of fasting that means really truly going without any food at all. That sort of fasting could kill you if you continued it year-round. (Especially the second!)

No, what I'm talking about is the kind of fasting popular with my crowd. The "I'm fasting from TV", "I'm fasting from chocolate", "I'm fasting from video-games" kind. I've noticed that from time to time, these fasts stick. These fasts are the "I'm giving up something superfluous" fasts. And, from time to time, maybe even more often than not, in giving up something superfluous, something that you are allowed to have, but that is perhaps not the best of things in which to indulge, you realize that it really is, well, superfluous.

Take the video games example. If you give them up for forty days, however much you like them, you may begin to see that they were replacing other, better things in your life. Time for prayer, say, or friendships. (I'm using video games just 'cause it's something I've never given up, so it feels very "for example" to me - not 'cause I think they're particularly awful or anything.)


I don't know. Again, I have nowhere profound to go with my fasting musing. Just noting that you should be careful what vanity you give up. Because in forty days, you might very well learn how very well you can live without it.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica


p.s. I haven't mentioned before, but perhaps I should, given the audience a homemaking blog is likely to attract: if you're pregnant, nursing, under eighteen, have an eating disorder, or anything similar, food fasts are probably not for you. I'm not expert, and am not claiming to be, and would suggest you check with priest, doctor and/or parent, as is appropriate. Actually, that might apply to non-pregnant, non-lactating types too. :D

you're kidding, right?

That's what my brain told me right after Lent started, as I caught a glimpse of something from which I was fasting. I wanted it, it wasn't bad in and of itself, and when I reminded myself that I couldn't have any, to my shock, my response to myself was, "You're kidding, right?"

Myself than told myself that myself is rather entitled, and shut the fridge.

But seriously, does anyone else have this sort of response when you start a fast? That sort of weird feeling of disbelief that you're actually being denied (by yourself!) this thing that you want? And then the shocked realization that you're not used to being denied things that you want, and that you might (perhaps!) be a bit of a brat?

In my own, brief, defense, it's not that I'm totally unaccustomed to self-denial. But usually my self-denial is the reasonable kind. It's not as hard as it could be to deny myself that dream roadtrip across country when I look at my kids and realize that my indulgence would be their hurt. Toddlers need their mommies nearby, not five states away. Not to mention that my dream roadtrip would kill the family budget!

In other words, I think we get used to denying ourselves the things that we can't have anyway. At least most mature people do. I think those who don't are probably perpetually unhappy. (Which is to say, while this is a good skill to have, it's not exactly the rocket science of the spiritual realm. I'm used to self-denial in that I've reached adulthood, not in that I've reached sainthood.)

I get in trouble when I have to deny myself the things that I can have and may have, especially the things that come easily. Like candy. It's a small thing, but it's not until I tried going without, once upon a Lent, that I realized how often you run across candy in this country, how easy it is to get, and how often I did. And how much I wanted it. David Mills posted recently about his experience of giving up coffee for Lent and finding himself accidently taking on a Coca-Cola habit instead.

He points out (and I think that this is the point I'm trying to get to) that part of the point of Lenten fasting is to discover just how much of a hold the world has on you. How hard it is to give up the little pleasures. (He continues on to say that the second benefit is learning, when you get to breaking your fast, how good those pleasures really are - you learn a new appreciation for God's bounty after you've separated yourself from it for awhile.) This seems an apt place to recall C.S. Lewis' scary observation (via Screwtape) that our feeling as we get older that we're finally "finding our place in the world" is really because the world is finding it's place in us. Shiver.


Anyway, I feel weird blogging about fasting at all, given Jesus' instruction about going about life as if you weren't fasting while you fast, but I'm not sure I can spend all Lent avoiding the topic, given the nature of this blog. I'm hoping that a few "what I'm learning" posts aren't disobeying that command. Please forgive me if I do it badly. Mostly this is to say: wow, fasting makes me really aware of how childish I still am inside. That, and: go read David Mills' post. It's really good.


peace of Christ to you,
Jessica