Weekend Links - Memorial Day Edition

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

But first, on this Memorial Day, here is a prayer from the BCP, in remembrance of those who have given their lives for our country:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead: We give thee thanks for all thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence; and give us such a lively sense of thy righteous will, that the work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.

 

Faith 

-"Gandalf, Job, and the Indignant Love of God":

So what of God’s opening lines? Is he not dealing forcefully with Job? Is he not angry? Even indignant and sarcastic? Yes, but none of this means he’s acting with anything less than merciful lovingkindness.

-"How to Glorify God By Being a Generalist" 

-"A (Very) Brief, Gospel-Centered Defense Against the Problem of Evil"

-"The Phil Vischer Podcast: Religious Liberty with Russell Moore"

-"A Call for Plodding Bloggers"

-"Is Your Pastor Happy to See You?":

To be a Christian is to be a churchman or churchwoman. The New Testament knows of no vibrant discipleship apart from life in the local church, no authentic Christianity divorced from the covenant of life together according to the biblical structure of the local church. And if this is true, it behooves us to be the best churchmen and churchwomen we can be. And good churchfolk love, respect, and submit to their pastors.

Family

-"Keeping the Calendar to One Day" - an inspirational idea from Ann.

-"Don't Dismiss Housework":

This is where, I would argue, the moral imagination comes in. The task of cleaning itself may not require a lot of intellectual prowess—but it does require a great deal of imaginative skill and understanding. The work of maintaining a home is tied up inexplicably in the question of what it means to be human, and the person who cares for the home must adhere to a set of underlying ideas and mores that make his or her work meaningful. After all, why is it that we do not wish to live in squalor? Why do we see cleanliness and order as essential tenets for human flourishing? It must be because these constitute basic understandings of what human life should constitute—ideas that have a moral and spiritual tradition.

-"What I've Learned in Twenty Years of Marriage": I love the difference he articulates between a "merger marriage" and a "start-up marriage".

-"Blue-Collar Contentment"

-"Talking to My Boys After the Transgender Talk at Their Public School" - a helpful article.

Now, onto the links...

Fiction

- "Save the Allegory!"  - allegories: both different and cooler than you might have thought they were.

-"'Gossamer', by Stephen Baxter" - this beautiful short story pictures life (a very different sort of life) way out on the cold plains of Pluto.

-"A Letter to Friends Looking to Break into a Part-Time Writing Career" - not strictly regarding fiction, but good writing advice all the same.

Finally, if you haven't yet, please come and enter the giveaway for a copy of "Not Alone"!  The stories in it of faith during suffering are truly inspiring.

Have a good and meaningful Memorial Day, folks!

Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

Ways I make myself write (when I don't feel like writing)

Writers love writing. That's why we become writers. But even people who love writing sometimes find it hard to sit down and write. Why is that?

Sometimes the question is carving out the actual time to write. In that case, time management is the answer. (Here's one resource on the subject I really like.) 

But sometimes you have the time, and just don’t want to do it. Here’s how I make myself start typing anyway.

1) I look to the future. I’ll get up at six, say, and sit myself down in front of the computer. There’s my Word document, but there’s the Internet, looking all tempting. So I’ll look at the clock and I’ll say, “Jess, in an hour, everyone else is going to be awake. So, then, at seven, when the kids start drifting down, what do you want to have done? At seven’o’clock, are you going to wish you had an hour of writing to look back on?” The answer is always yes. I always wish I could look back and see time well-spent. Thinking about

what I want to look back on, rather than what I want to do right now, always helps me see the big picture.

2) I look at it as work. Writing is weird in that, until you get established, you’re not getting paid. You put in the time, but there’s no paycheck. Of course, if you get published, you get your money. Retroactively, it all becomes paid time. But until then, it can feel a lot more like a hobby than a job. So, feeling like it’s a hobby, you feel like it ought to be fun. But often, it’s not.

            You know what it actually feels like? Work. And you know what? Good. It is work. So I give myself permission to think of it as work. Then, weirdly, I’m okay if it feels like work. It takes the pressure off. I don’t have to like it; I just have to do it. It’s work. And I know how to work. So all of the sudden I’m not in a foreign country. I work all day, why should this be any different?

            Reframing it as work makes me really productive.

And then, weirdly, once I've given myself permission to not have fun . . . I start having fun again. Weird, right?    (No, I know, it's not weird at all. Isn't that the way this kind of thing always works?)


Peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell

synesthesia and the perception of time

You probably know that there are some people who see colors when they see specific letters or numbers. Or hear certain sounds. This is a condition known as synesthesia, and I read an article about it a couple of months ago in an old issue of the Smithsonian. (I think this was the article I read, but I'm not sure, because the link is just to an abstract.)

It was a fascinating article, but it became personal when they noted, off-handedly, that some synesthetes perceived time in a concrete fashion. They had a picture for the way years looked, or weeks or days. An idiosyncratic chart of time.

That pulled me up short. I thought, Well, I have that. And I thought it was strange that they should mention it. So I asked my husband if he had a specific picture when he thought about time. And he said no. And after that, I asked around some more.

Turns out most people don't see time when they think about time. But I do. I always have. As far back as I can remember knowing about years and months and days and weeks, I can remember seeing them. From what I've read, that's part of what makes it true synesthesia: you've always seen it that way. Apparently it's really common to spend years not knowing you have synesthesia for the simple reason that it never occurs to you that other people don't see the same thing you see. Now, I never thought people saw the same chart I saw, but I assumed they saw something. It's still very weird to me that that's not true.

What do I see? Well, years hang like an ovoid loop, suspended from December 31 and January 1. Sort of a teardrop shape. Right now we're going down the loop of the year. By about September, we'll start going up. Years string together in a sort-of L-shape scroll, from as far back as history goes, extending out towards the future. Out and up. At a specific angle.  Weeks look like telephone lines, suspended by Sundays and dipping lowest around Wednesdays. I can view it from the side, or I can sit on top of it and swoop up and down the curve of it. Days themselves are a loop, very similar to the loop of the year. And I can zoom in or out along this picture, down to the minute and out to the century. It all strings together.

Apparently this isn't normal.

But, I'm curious, do any of you reading see time when you think of time? I guess it's called number-form synesthesia or spacial-sequence synesthesia. I get now that not most people see things when they think of time, but I always have, and I can't imagine how you would think about it if you couldn't see it. I see numbers along a specifically-shaped line too, come to think of it. They head straight up to 100, and then veer off sharply to the left. Negative numbers are down. I do better thinking of them if I look at them from the left instead of from the right. Like tilting your paper a bit so your handwriting slants the right way; it just makes things easier.

Again, I now get that this isn't normal. Most people don't shift their position in regard to the numbers they're studying in their head so that they can see and understand them better. But I do. Always have. (Okay, now that I think of it, I have to shift to look at them from the left, because then I can read them forwards instead of backwards, because after zero, the numbers start to go from left to right instead of up and down. Well, they go down, but they are next to each other rather than on top of each other like the positive numbers are. Huh. Never realized that's why I did that.)

If you don't see a picture when you think of time, how do you conceptualize it? Do you conceptualize it? Or is it just something that exists, without needing to exist in any tangible form?

Truly, the brain is an odd organ. But if I have to have an odd twist to my brain, I think I'm glad I have this one. It's not a hindrance to me, I don't think - though it may explain some of the trouble I had when I hit the higher maths. I couldn't ever fold my number line in a way that made calculus make sense. But there you are. I'm not sorry for it. Like I said: I can't imagine seeing time and numbers any other way.

But I'm still curious how others see it, if they see it at all.   

peace of Christ to you,

Jessica Snell

the domestic monastery

I am so very grateful to Jen for posting the link to http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/ron/ron_14domesticmonastery.htmltoday.

The reason I have not been blogging recently are just as this author states,

For example, the mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is definitely monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centres of power and social importance.

Sometimes it even removes you from the edges of power and social importance - sometimes it even removes you from so small a social connection as the blogging world. I have missed blogging. But the (eight!) small hands tugging at my sleeves have been insistant during the past two weeks, moreso even than usual. I have wondered and wondered what it is the Lord was doing with me. I knew he was doing something, because he always is working for our good, and I trust him.

This article explains what it is. I am very grateful to have the words now to describe my daily experience: he is teaching me that my time is his time. I am glad to know - not just in my head, but in my hands - that that is so.

Again, Jen, much thanks.

peace of Christ to you,
Jessica Snell