Just wondering

I overheard part of a history channel crime show that announced that twelve unsuspecting dinner guests were murdered and buried in the backyard. I was just wondering, is there such a thing as a suspecting dinner guest? Can anyone in good conscience go to a dinner party where s/he suspects s/he might be mudered and buried next to a family pet? If so, I strongly caution all of you to listen to your gut instincts when you are invited to a dinner party, and, if it comes to it, only accept invitations to dinner parties that are held in public places.

Whistle-ass merchandise

at cafepress

Friday 5

The 5 most profound moments of my life, so far, in no particular order. (Topic suggested by Colleen)

1. I could say getting married, but the real test came much later. I clearly remember sitting outdoors (I think on a rock) somewhere in Ireland after spending every moment of every minute of every day for the previous 50 some-odd days with my husband and remarking, "I don't have a single thing to say to you." When a marriage survives that, you know you have struck gold.

2. Looking at my 2-day-old daughter and thinking, "Everything I have done in my life, every good decision, every error, every triumph, every mistake and foolishness, was right and necessary to have brought me to this."

3. Gavin's birth. What a joy and relief it was to have him arrive healthy. He charmed all of the nurses, and one of them offered to take him home in her pocket. After the drama and excitement of Merlin, it was a surprise to have this easy-going, wide-eyed little boy.

4. Reading The Hobbit as well as listening to the record and watching the animated version even before I was able to read. When Bilbo climbs to the top of a tree to survey the land (in the movie), he says, "There are moments in life that can change a person forever." And I expect that discovering the writings of Tolkein was one of those moments for me.

5. My trip to India. My ideas about what "hot" was, what "a long time" meant, what "dirty" felt like were forever altered. I had some of the best and some of the worst food I had ever had in my life. I was followed by lepers on platforms with wheels underneath and shadowed by beggars until I crossed out of their "territory." I was hailed by children in Benares who hoped that I had chocolate for them. I swam in the Ganges River at the bathing ghats alongside cremation ghats. The left bank of the River is considered unholy and is mostly undeveloped, and sometimes dishonest people will take a body meant for cremation and simply dump it in the water near the left bank. I watched from the shore as a bird landed on one such body and began to pick at it. I have stood in the Taj Mahal and had my luch stolen by monkeys. I've seen Calcutta's "rat park" where people come on their lunch breaks to feed the rats that live in a praire-dog type community in the middle of the city. I smelled public latrines so overpowering that I thought I would retch and jasmine and tuberoses so strong that nothing in the United States has smelled as sweet to me, but the smell i remember best is the strangely sweet smell of burning cow dung, used to heat tea kettles in train stations so that the vendors can walk through the trains selling their hot tea made with tea leaves, sugar, and diluted milk. To me the taste of the tea is inextricably linked to the smell from the fires, and rarely do I manage to put milk in my tea.

A sad case in point

These people have expended great energy to express their faith in a way that I personally find reprehensible.

I think Chris and I need to start our own theology blog like Dave and Will's political one. We could call it Christianity Chris and Merideth the Martyr. Chris's response to my response to his response to posts made about the confirmation of Rev Gene and the place of homosexuality in religion are well-reasoned and based on sound scripture. Although I think we disagree fundamentally, Chris is right in that we probably are not in contention over the points regarding scriptural law. I am torn between not wanting to argue with anyone over their beliefs, which I believe are personal and sacred and, honestly, not likely to change dramatically as a result of conversation (I think people's beliefs are more often influenced by their experiences.) and a long-standing interest in what people of faith believe and what that means - for them and for society. I worry about dismissive attitudes even as I inadvertantly practice them.

I wasn't leveling a "bibliolatry" charge at anyone (not sure if it was interpreted that way). I was just surprised by the term as it introduced a level of meta-cognition for me personally that I had not attained before. While my beliefs were often founded on the notion of their seperability, I had never consciously thought of the Bible and God as divisible from each other. For example, I have always believed that Native Americans who lived in harmony with the land and spirit gods of their culture had just as good a shot (perhaps better) than I had of attaining "heaven", I had no scripture to back me up and plenty to defeat me. I don't know. The unmooring feeling is definitely there, but I rather welcome it.

My interest in matters theological is deep, if not well-researched. I have considered pursuing my MDiv and possibly ordination, but I am not ready. I do not know if I ever will be. In the meantime, I am fascinated with people and their arrangements with God (in its many forms). I think most people can agree that some terrible things have been done in the name of God. Why? Some good has been done as well. Why? What drives people to express their faith in the way that they do? To employ God to justify their actions? I suspect that the answers are as varied as the people who inspire the questions. How do we respect differences in belief without demonizing them? Or condescending to them? I think in some ways it is a hopeful sign that we seem to be able to hold so many contradictions within our own personal belief systems. If we are created in God's image, perhaps he can hold all the contradictions as well.

I want my BBC

And soon I might be able to get it whenever I want, along with anyone else with such sensibilities. BBC is planning to make its radio and TV archives available for free on the net.

Ha!

Thanks to Adam for the entertaining link to What Country are you?
My results:

You're
the United Nations!

Most people think you're ineffective, but you are trying to
completely save the world from itself, so there's always going to be a long
way to go.  You're always the one trying to get friends to talk to each
other, enemies to talk to each other, anyone who can to just talk instead of
beating each other about the head and torso.  Sometimes it works and sometimes
it doesn't, and you get very schizophrenic as a result.  But your heart
is in the right place, and sometimes also in New York.
face="Times New Roman">Take the Country
Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Welcome

Dave and Colleen have succumbed. Welcome to the blogosphere.

Can you tell?

I read Fast Food Nation last week. I highly recommend it for its insight into how a very few corporations spend millions to block legislation that guarantees a living wage and safe working conditions for its employees while taking advantage of government subsidies and tax credits to put independent farmers and ranchers out of business. All through legislation designed to "lower your taxes and protect small business."

If a solution doesn't work, just keep trying it

I was practically struck dumb by the similarities between the problems facing our nation's schools and electric grid. From AP News,
"A nearly half century-old patchwork laced with technology retrofits, the nation's electricity grid suffers from a corrosive mix of underinvestment, poor planning and a lack of standards."

For years the most ambitious education system in the world has been criticised for its poor turnout. solutions have mostly consisted of berating and micromanaging teachers into teaching the bare minimum vigorously so that "no child is left behind." In this classroom environment, few children are pushed forward either. Our legislators seem to have adopted a lowest common denominator outlook on education, an assembly-line vision of what schools should be turning out. I believe in standards for students and teachers and, especially, administrators. I also believe that the ideal school size is around 600 students (for high school). While debating whether phonics or whole language will produce the best statistics (educating students as individual people is given lip service while non-educators continue to search for a miraculous teaching method that will boost all student scores to the minimum acceptable level) district reactions to the ever-increasing number of students on urban campuses is to throw up another portable. Instead of building new schools to keep the student population low, the old schools convert closets into classrooms, have some teachers "float" from room to room with their supplies to classrooms where another teacher has no students for that 45 minute time period, and accept the fact that opportunities for students who are not the very best at what they are interested in will have to sit on the sidelines. In a small school, it may be possible for everyone who wants to to play football or compete as a debator. In a large school, only the best students get the opportunity, and some parents (Westlake High comes to mind) like it that way. They want a winning football team.

Schools are facing many challenges, and some of these are being met with great courage by teachers, students, parents, and-occasionally- even administrators. But sometimes the game seems rigged by the fact that in a school of 3000 students, there are many students a teacher will not know. Many students the principal may not know. Many students of average ability who have no stake in an extracurricular activity, who do not belong to any "superstar" group, who feel they do not belong anywhere. We ignore them at our peril - and theirs.

Everyone seems concerned these days with classroom size - and they should be, but I think we should be more concerned with school size. We should be improving the infrastructure of education along with the methods. It will not be cheap, but it will be worth it. Whether one agrees with it or not (and I have heard many, many conservatives disagree) our federal government has guaranteed a "Free Appropriate Public Education" to all children. It is a guarantee that dwarfs the systems in Asia and Europe that critics are so fond of comparing us to. As usual, our grand ideas need some improvement in the implementation, and we have to fight against powerful, monied, forces that would just as soon keep an uneducated, cheap labor force in place. We will not remain a great nation while ignoring our stated commitments to our citizens and preying on the ignorant and weak.

Friday Five (late)

5 80's songs, underappreciated, topic suggested by Gina.

OK, this is strange for me because I grew up in a town with one radio station that played both kinds of music - country AND western. We got one station from the nearest "big town" - which played only hits. I love 80's music, but I met most of it in the 90's, so I don't even have much of a feel for what was popular/not popular at the time of its release. I only knew of 90's alternative because I had a friend with an older brother at Texas Tech who used to send her mixed tapes, well, and the one year I went to church camp - I met a ton of alternative types with cd's - a format I had never seen before (1988), and then of course, the beloved MTV of my generation that played music. All the time. Just one music video after another.

So here goes

1. "Devil's Song" by Big Pig, actually, it has been so long since I listened, I might choose another one from their album "Bonk" if I were able to listen to it again.
2. "Nothing but Flowers" by Talking Heads - pure, unadulterated genius
3. "Don't Go" by Yaz
4. "Guyana Punch" - by the Judy's - that's right folks, a pop song about Jim Jones.
5. "Don't Answer Me" by Alan Parsons Project - the video was a comic, my MTV-educated 80's library had to include it

concession rescinded

Under the category of "the Bible will support any damn view one cares to take" I found a passage in Romans where Paul states that Christ came to end the law. (which was what I meant by "break" it) Also, Jesus says in Luke that we must judge for ourselves what is right and wrong.

I actually read a position paper by an Episcopalian theologion that delightfully referred to fundamentalists as the "buffet" Christians because they only enforce those parts of the scripture that they agree with. (browse through deuteronomy and leviticus for a sampling of all the things you can be stoned for - especially if you are a woman for an idea of what they do not attend to - their vegetables, as it were.) The argument that tolerant people are intolerant of intolerant people strikes me as circular, ridiculous, and lawyerly. The problem with intolerant people is that they are often going around trying to make laws to restrict people who are different - that is actually what makes them intolerant, not their ideas of what is right or wrong which we are all fully entitled to. Intolerant people are known to do crazy things like send anthrax spores through the mail. Tolerant people are more often known for being assassinated.

I also came across a new and possibly valuable vocabluary word: bibliolatry - the worship of the bible in place of God. In the beginning was the word - and the word was a being, not a book.

Poor kid

If you haven't already, join the 22 million plus who have checked out the Star Wars Kid video.

Second thoughts?

I don't feel misunderstood.

Ah, well

Apparently I have had permalinks for quite some time(through the time stamp) because my techie husband sometimes works like an elf in the night to make my life better by....improving my blog. I am undecided as to whther I should remove my own technological triumph (minor and redundant though it is.) For now, you may be comforted with the idea that you have options.

Welcome permalinks

I got up off my ass - or, rather, I sat down on my ass long enough - to put up permalinks. Hope they work.

Friday 5

Five things that people misunderstand about me.

1. Some folks presume that what I say/think/like one day has some relationship to what I will say/think/like on another day.

I don't know, does anyone have any questions? Anything I can clear up? Being misunderstood is not really something I worry about too much. Generally, I am short and to the point, unless I am rambling and have no point - in which case it hardly matters whether I am misunderstood or not.

Sorry for the short list, but I felt I'd better post something while I was at the computer because I am driving to Kansas City in the wee hours with the kiddoes, so I will be incommunicado for a week or so. I can't leave my kids alone with my dad, so I am unlikely even to get to Kinko's or some such to plug in. A week without internet - the horror.

Are you a Literary Abuser?

Found this blog for a bookstore and read the quite funny account of how Fox is filing suit against Al Franken. I didn't see permalinks, so you'll have to scroll down to the 8/4/2003 entry to take the Literary Abuse Syndrome test.

Busy times, busy times

I've been warning my family for a week or so now that I feel a "productive stage" coming on. Yesterday I changed both shower heads to those with flexible hoses and changed out both tub faucets so half the water doesn't come out of the faucet when it should be adding to the water pressure of the shower. I bought a toilet snake and unstopped the toilet in our bathroom which was clogged by a flushed Pente bag, and I bought a kit to completely redo the inner workings of the other toilet because I can hear the water running in it, so I know it is leaking somewhere. I did about 6 loads of laundry that have been hiding in the corners of the house. I rearranged and then put back the living room furniture. I bought some books, got the oil changed in the car, made an anniversary cake for Merlin to decorate (It was our 8th anniversary on the 12th.) And I read The Wolves in the Walls to the children - which they loved.

And really this is only the beginning because the weather hasn't even cooled down enough yet for me to get my real fall energy. Soon I'll have a painted bedroom, possibly a real bed if Will and I can get to Houston and agree on one, a finished family room floor, a new family room wall covered in bookcases, and maybe even the beginnings of a real floor in the rest of the house, a new dishwasher and maybe an over-the-oven microwave. I don't know what it is about those under-the-counter-mounted things that appeals to me so much.

I haven't begun my garden project planning yet.

I love fall.

Welcome!
Alexander Norman Lipscomb was born on Monday, august 11, 2003, at about 7:46 am. He weighed 9lbs 8oz. I was supposed to enter this info on Melissa's site, but had trouble logging in. My apologies to Melissa.

Well, I have now linked to a porn site and disqualified myself from ever becoming a bishop. Great interview with Neil Gaiman at Suicide Girls.

Friday 5

Life goals I haven't broadcast

1. Learn another language or three.
2. Live in another country.
3. Write a comic book or a novel (but I can't draw).
4. Learn to draw.
5. Make a positive contribution to humanity.

I concede

I owe Chris a concession, as Luke 16 (and comparable verses in other gospels) states that "the Law of Moses and the writing of the prophets were in effect up to the time of John the Baptist:since then the Good News about the kingdom of God is being told and everyone forces his way in. But it is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the smallest detail of the law to be done away with."

I drew my view from the "new covenant" Jesus mentions in the last supper and all that going on and on in the gospels about not judging lest you should be judged. I accept that the Christian right and people of good faith have the right to turn people away from the opportunity to worship because their beliefs will not permit them to accept sinners (who are unlikely to repent due to their genetics) seeking Christ. I expect this is where the Calvinists have it in spades since God already knows who is condemned and who isn't, and perhaps they can infer who those people are by identifying unrepenting sinners.

I also have to admit that I may not be a Christian. I struggle with my faith in God and in Christ, especially in my attempt to live in a world which, to my eyes, looks too much and also nothing like life as described in the Bible.

Whether I am a Christian or not, it is my hope to live my life without casting the first stone. This does not prevent me from being irritable, stubborn, disappointed, or even hopeful that a religious leader will come who will love us as we are and call on us to love each other without reserve, trusting that if we set an example of love, compassion and acceptance God can work in people's hearts to unite them.

I think that is more religion than this blog calls for and any other errors I have made will have to be forgiven without my acknowledgement. I will live the best life I know how, be at peace with my creator, and have faith that you will all walk along your paths in similar good faith and hope.

Religion right

Yesterday the Episcopal Church confirmed its first openly gay bishop. I am relieved. William and I attend an Episcopal church that is accepting of gay people, and it was a huge deciding factor for us. On our first visit, two women stood up to announce their commitment ceremony and the congregation appluaded. It was definitely the church for us.

The Episcopal reputation as "God's frozen people," as Adam puts it, is not without merit. Apart from the baffling calisthenics (sit, stand, kneel, sit, greet) Episcopal services tend to the cerebral rather than the visceral. Very few Praise Jesuses or dancing in the aisles here. Being more reserved in nature, it is a better fit for me, so here is why I am an Episcopalian:
*Infant baptism means that sermons deal with living as a Christian in the modern world or understanding the life of Christ and Christian faith instead of calling people to be saved.
*I like communion every week with real wine.
*I find the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer to be beautiful - it drew me in as a child and set the stage for my appreciation of Shakespeare and Tolkein. It is a book that would go with me to a desert isle.
*Perhaps most influential in my deciding, I have had the good fortune to have grown up with a very good priest and to have found another once I moved back to Austin. They are both people of intelligence and compassion - two qualities that are conspicuously lacking from much religious debate.

So, here are my hot-button beliefs in a nutshell. They are not necessarily those of the Episcopal denomination, though they are often tolerated (even if heretical.)

*Jesus came to break the law. If you are citing biblical laws, you are harkening to Judaism (probably Islam as well) and not Christianity. I think it is beautiful to serve God as a Jew, but it is not within the scope of my abilities.
*Jesus had two big things to say:
Love God
Love your Neighbor
He did not direct us to judge, re-educate, cast out, tolerate or otherwise villify our neighbors. This is the simplest and most difficult task of any aspiring Christian. We are called to love those we would despise, forgive those we would condemn, and have compassion for those we do not understand.
*Women are spiritual beings created by God and they can be spiritual leaders and teachers as well as men.
*Same-sex marriage does not weaken the sanctity of marriage. My covenant with William before God is unaffected by Adam and Melissa's. It will remain unaffected by the marriage of two men or two women.
*If you disagree with abortion, support the availability of birth control and birth control education. The act of completing a nine month pregnancy costs a woman in ways that society cannot adequately compensate her for. Period. Only she can justify the expense and only she can pay it. If it were otherwise, it would be a different issue.
*Religious people who require that everyone believe the same things and practice devotion to God in the same ways reveal an underlying lack of faith in a creative God who appreciates the talents and devotion of all his creations.

That's where I am right now.

Manga Me

Well, I've been surfing and surfing, but not posting because I never feel like I will get the uninterrupted 15 minutes to post without interference. Yet, I managed to read almost all of Jen Wang's beautiful webcomic which took me about an hour and a half. Go figure. I am developing a serious relationship with manga art and can honestly say I don't know where it is going. My house may be redecorated with anime prints before I can stem the passion. Oh, to be young (relatively) and in love (sort of).

On the daily grind front, My daughter lost her first baby tooth without even noticing, at which I breathed a deep sigh of relief. We knew from the dentist that she would likely lose the bottom two before school and the top two before the end of the year, and I have been in a concealed, restrained, nervous mode of anxiety ever since. Would it hurt when she bit into something? Would we have to pull one that was dangling? Aarggh! I shiver just thinking about it. Please, I can handle natural childbirth with 3rd degree, rectal muscle tearing, but not the shedding of teeth, one by one, month after month, when you least expect it, and potentially with or without drama and pain.

Naturally, we didn't have a tooth to leave for the fairy, so we had to write a note. Merlin stayed up so late trying to meet the tooth fairy that she outlasted me and Will, so the tooth fairy *forgot* to pick up the note before she sprang out of bed (before either of us, which is highly unusual) to check. Luckily, she had spent part of the night in our bed, and when we checked under Daddy's pillow, we found her gold dollar.

Gosh, In my day the tooth fairy left quarters.