Farm to Table

Check out Cartermere Farms here in North Texas, owned and operated by a creative, enterprising family who also attend my son's university model school.

"You can go online and order from the farm and pick up at the farm between 3:30-5:30 on Friday. Www.cartermerefarms.com. We have eggs, honey, freshly milled grains, jalapeno jellies, prickly pears and basil. More to come from our fall crops soon."

Nothing Like a Fish without a Bicycle

My retrospective on Elisabeth Elliot at The Gospel Coalition blog.

Elisabeth Elliot has died. I didn’t know her, but this feels personal. Her books were influential to me as a young single woman in the early 1990s, particularly Passion and Purity and Let Me Be a Woman. At a time in my life when I had become weary of worldly pursuits, aside from the example and words of my own mom, Elliot’s words most shaped for me a vision of what biblical womanhood could look like.

Vigorous, Gentle Womanhood 

I met her once as a single working girl about 20 years ago at a mission home where she was visiting and giving a talk. She was older even then, sitting in a chair, neatly dressed, hair carefully in place, wrinkly and rather still, with bright, intelligent eyes that betrayed an active sense of humor. 

 

The way she lived her life and spoke about her adventures and marriages displayed a type of womanhood that caught my imagination. She seemed to own a womanhood that was both vigorous—physically and intellectually—and gentle. 

 

The lives of female missionaries are a sort of bas relief against Western wranglings over things like gender quotas and free contraception. Elliot seemed to have a seasoned, sensible knowledge that came from rugged, basic pursuits—a sharp intellect and a sense of context and keen perspective born out of her edgy life experience as a missionary to unreached tribes. (The unentitled at work seeking the unreached.)

A Third Way Woman

Both the anti-feminist and the anti-delicate flower, she taught what I came to think of as a “third way” of womanhood that seemed like Ruth and that Proverbs 31 woman with her strong arms, shrewdness, and nurturing ways. 

 

I recall her description of life in the jungle. Most of the day was consumed with merely trying to live rather than translating Scripture. I recall her description of the focus, effort, and energy required to make sure water was found, hauled, kept, and boiled each day while keeping a toddler from falling into the fire or water. I also recall her frank humility about her failings and missteps. I learned from her books the profound value of the ministry of the mundane, and the efficiency of biblically training indigenous peoples where possible.

 

In her writing she was direct but not harsh, open but not coarse. In her vigorous femininity, and in her teamwork with and delight in the masculinity of her husbands, she seemed more like some sort of American pioneer woman and nothing like a fish without a bicycle. More like Phoebe or Dorcas and nothing like a Diva. 

A Nurtured Faith for the Next Generation

Elliot nurtured her faith with a disciplined mind fixed on selfless service to the world. She approached her marriages with a mind fixed on pursuing engaging, active partnership, and, yes, submission to a husband. And in her books she reached out to countless people with a simple, clear, direct style of writing.

 

I am thankful for her example, and as a 44-year-old mother of three, I want to commend her writings to the next generation of “third way women.”

Fine China, Fat Televisions, and Ordinary Coffee

My sister-in-law sent me this poem, and I love it.

My Grandparents’ Generation

by Faith Shearin

They are taking so many things with them:
their sewing machines and fine china,

their ability to fold a newspaper
with one hand and swat a fly.

They are taking their rotary telephones,
and fat televisions, and knitting needles,

their cast iron frying pans, and Tupperware.
They are packing away the picnics

and perambulators, the wagons
and church socials. They are wrapped in

lipstick and big band music, dressed
in recipes. Buried with them: bathtubs

with feet, front porches, dogs without leashes.
These are the people who raised me

and now I am left behind in
a world without paper letters,

a place where the phone
has grown as eager as a weed.

I am going to miss their attics,
their ordinary coffee, their chicken

fried in lard. I would give anything
to be ten again, up late with them

in that cottage by the river, buying
Marvin Gardens and passing go,

collecting two hundred dollars.

“My Grandparents’ Generation” by Faith Shearin from Telling the Bees. © Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2015. Reprinted with permission.  (buy now)

The Royal Me

Cultural Emblems

Certain book and movie events, such as the recent movie about an abusive relationship portrayed as a romance, are worth considering as believers not because they are unique, but because of the reverse.

I haven't seen 50 Shades of Grey, but my understanding from reports (which emanate and titillate from every possible news source) is that this movie affirms, even valorizes, sadomasochism. If so, this movie, rather than being the cutting-edge phenomenon heralding a new sexuality, is actually emblematic of the long-time sexual identity of our western culture, in which the only boundary or guideline is consent.

The book series sounds like a charter for The Divine Right of the Consenting. The movie sounds like a sermon preaching the one moral value for sexual behavior in western culture today: The First Commandment of Consent. The celebrants snicker and gather to worship with a resounding "Amen-ything Goes -- as long as you have signed here, and initialed here, and here, and here..." (Be sure to read the fine print!)

Believers need to identify pagan and secular creeds in order to answer them. So it's important we at least note these cultural markers and icons as they come along. (And if you've ever read the Old Testament you should not be surprised when they do. A thorough reading of Scripture precludes naivete.)

Emblems both define and differentiate.

When pagan creeds are widely broadcast and affirmed, we are given clarity about the world we live in and our neighbors suffer daily in; they help pinpoint its dark places. They help clear away confusion and foggy thinking and give us an urgency for the gospel.

And as a sort of bas relief or photo-negative, they also help us identify the ideas, practices, and people who are nurturing spiritual, mental, and physical health and wholeness.

The spirit of the anti-Christ has to do with whoring Babylon and an "I did it my way" religion. In other words, if I consent and you consent (though even that latter part's a bit wobbly -- maybe you "consent" under the influence of alcohol or manipulations), who is to say we are wrong? Certainly no god but myself. The Royal Me.

And what is the most natural place for this rejection of the first human relationship -- the one between the real God and man -- to nestle? In the heart of the very second human relationship -- woman and man.

The Garden and the Ghetto

That nascent and beautiful marriage of a man and a woman was founded in a Garden as a bond created for love, intimacy, fellowship, fertility, communication, comfort, co-regency, and, as my friend Bill Mattox points out, as a locus of diversity (man and woman are decidedly not the same).

In a reverse world, this male-female union becomes instead a weapon warped and wedded to fear, domination, aggression, anxiety, and subtler, arm-twisting power-grabs like withholding, silent-treatments, blaming, and punishment, all enacted on the hardscrabble grey pavements of The Land of Looking Out for Number 1. The Garden exchanged for a Ghetto. As C.S. Lewis describes, we are indeed children playing at mud-pies, though offered a vacation at the seashore.

A Better Romance

But I must add that this is also no time to be discouraged. These moments of clarity not only point out what is wrong, but point out what has always been true.

We dwell on the One who gave it all to love us, who suffered that we might live, and who offers a real and true relationship. Christians enjoy the true romance of a Groom who suffered for a Bride.

He walked in our world. There is no new evil here; He came and saw it and conquered it with real, living, divine love -- the kind of love that casts out all fear.

And then we love like he does, because he first loved us. Not left to love on our own, his Spirit makes us lights in the darkness of the world and, yes, even the bedroom. This radiant and wholesome love arcs out into our families and neighborhoods. We are called to share and show all kinds of true love to people really hungry for it. We have good news to share daily not just in how we talk and how we live with our husbands, but in how we love our children, family, friends, and the whole world.

This good news -- the kind spoken in both words and deeds and beginning in our marriages -- is not only true, but healing and wholesome, infectious and irrepressible. Across the ages, even death has not been able to stop it.

Who can resist him?

***

The article below is by a clinical psychologist, and it discusses what happens to a person psychologically when sexual intimacy, fear, and aggression experiences are fused together in the human mind. (A salient but long quote from the article also below.)

Here's is the article: Hooked Up and Tied Down

And here is a quote from it, emphasis mine:

"Sexual Arousal, Aggression, and Fear

Human beings have neural networks related to sexual behavior, and these are shaped in subtle ways by our sexual experiences. We have separate neural networks related to anger and aggression, and these are shaped and strengthened when people engage in violent or domineering behaviors. We have still more separate brain maps for fear and anxiety, which are shaped and reinforced by frightening or anxiety-provoking experiences.

If you think about these three emotional experiences—sexual arousal, aggression, and fear—they are typically quite distinct emotional experiences. There is some overlap between them in terms of physical or bodily response: all three, for example, involve increases in heart rate, respiratory rate, and blood pressure, because all three involve activation of the sympathetic nervous system. And yet, for most healthy individuals, sexual arousal, aggression, and fear remain distinct emotional, cognitive, and physical experiences. This is, I will suggest, a good and healthy thing.

So these neural networks and these experiences normally remain distinct—unless our experiences begin to fuse them together. When this fusion happens, the brain gets confused. And this is exactly what happens when people experiment with sadomasochistic sexual practices. These distinct neural networks and brain maps become fused according to Hebb’s principle: neurons that fire together wire together. Once this happens, aggression automatically triggers sexual arousal. Or fear and anxiety automatically trigger sexual interest. When this fusion of neural networks becomes pronounced, people often will present to the psychiatrist with clinical problems. Patients complain, for example, that they cannot get aroused unless they get aggressive or violent. Or they complain that they become involuntarily aroused whenever they experience fear. Once these distinct neural networks are fused, the person is—at the level of the brain—literally tied down.

....Before making decisions about our sexual behaviors, we need to ask ourselves some questions about what we want to be doing to our brain and our body—what kind of neural tracks and networks do we want to be reinforcing through these behaviors? Do we want to be fusing sex and love? Sex and security? Sex and attachment or commitment? Sex and fidelity? Sex and trust? Sex and unselfishness? Or do we want to be fusing in our brain and in our experiences sex and violence? Sex and dominance? Sex and submission? Sex and control? We shape our brain by our choices. And we develop increasingly automatic and ingrained habits by our repeated choices. But the initial choice of which path we embark upon is up to us."

He Came for the Sick

A short reflection on the nativity from sunergoi blog.

http://sunergoi.blogspot.com/2014/12/why-christmas-is-for-losers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+Sunergoi+(sunergoi)&m=1

Generous

"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity" (Simone Weil).

Fully, completely, unhurriedly, until it's all been said, not antsy to make my own point, without agenda, without multitasking, without iPhone on, without TV on, without computer on, without music blaring, without thought for the time, without worry for the traffic, or the future...paying attention.

Mindful Volunteering at Children's Events

I appreciated this short article in the New York Times about how elite parents' notions dominate in school events run by volunteers. (I would add sports and clubs to the mix.) Don't need a new rule or regulation -- just a little mindfulness and common sense.

Link to Elite Parents and School Parties

The Art of Saying Thank You

The New York Times' Guy Trebay discusses Jimmy Fallon, emoticons, and thank-you notes.

It's hip to write on a little paper square.

"'What they want...is to draw a distinction between the tossed-off, compressed nature of electronic messages and a form of ritualized communication that gives material evidence 'that the person really did appreciate something.'”

Thoughts

Discipline is having the strength to do a good work in spite of a negative emotion.

Perfectionism is idolatry of a plan (even a good one). Its seed produces impatience, frustration, a burdened heart, and discontentment, not only in the perfectionist but in the family and friends around them. It makes one's faith odious.

Like St Paul, we are set free to be profoundly, peacefully, joyfully content in all circumstances. Not with all circumstances, to be sure, but in all circumstances. Perfectionism is making our righteousness the god and the goal, instead of enjoying Christ's goodness as our mainstay and dear delight.

Babies and Pregnancy, Of All Things...

It seems to me that babies are sprouting forth in other families all around me, so here I sit thinking about babies and pregnancy of all things. 

I am thinking, pregnancy is masculine. This is only right, for after all, a man is closely involved. The womb is New York City, it is a large, rumbling construction site of vessels and muscles and belly, swollen with doings and slow traffic and shut down for days, months, longer than predicted. All kinds of activities and such re-routed, things grind to a standstill, then a rush of activity.

Mom at Work! There should be orange Detour signs, No Traffic Today, Not This Month, Not This Summer, Expect Delays! Go the other way! Ok, Stand and Watch, but Stay Back behind the tape. We should all be wearing hard hats and giving cat calls and surveying the scene with our thumbs in our pockets. The baby finally emerges and looks like he has been in a brawl, red and blue and puffy and gasping and clenched.

But of course, pregnancy is also feminine. It is, as the Psalmist says, like knitting. There is fine needlework being done deep down in the womb, a genteel drawing room, private and hushed. There are delicate, tiny, original stitches... the infinitesimal, infinite, industrious click-clicking of molecule upon molecule weaving and fitting, a little friendly gossip between the soul and body, the DNA taking tea.

Did you know, the face forms itself from the outside in? It meets in the middle and leaves it's little calling card, which is the dimple and bow of your upper lip. In a child with a cleft lip, like my boy, Ben, you can see where the face did not meet, the introduction wasn't properly made, and there was a scandal. And always the placenta pours the precise mix of blood and vitamins in, the little toes and hands grasp and push away the cup. There is the clink of saucers, a polite chuckle, a murmur. Then -- shhh -- the baby is sleeping!