This Classical Life

“Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain.

But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, takes all our sins away;
A sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.

My faith would lay its hand on that dear head of Thine,
While, like a penitent, I stand, and there confess my sin.

My soul looks back to see the burdens thou didst bear
When hanging on the cursed tree; and know my guilt was there.

Believing, we rejoice to see the curse remove;
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice and sing his bleeding love.”
–Isaac Watts

This is the first Lenten hymn I am going to work on with the girls. I used to sing this to them as a lullaby. The tune I am familiar with (Leonard Payton’s) is very sweet and soothing, and remembering those sentimental moments makes me smile. We’ll start another, one we actually sing in church, in a few weeks.

Ash Wednesday ranks in my top three favorite liturgies in the Christian year. It’s the closest we come to Yom Kippur, a day of repentance. In protestantism, we feast often and fast little, which is good and right for a community defined by forgiveness and grace. But without an understanding of why we need forgiveness, grace is cheapened. Ash Wednesday reminds us of our sinfulness and frailty, of our need for Christ.

Historically, the ashes were for those who were especially sinful, a shaming tool for those who needed to be extra-penitent. To me, receiving the ashes is to say, “I have grieved God with my sin, I have a need for repentance” standing among sinners with humility and equality, knowing that our belonging to Christ has nothing to do with our merit. And when we do, we make those ashes a sign not of shame, but of community. Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. When you do, I hope that you see beauty in the ashes, and a place for you beneath the cross of Jesus.

+ Made cranberry orange muffins with the girls, hopefully that will put me in a really productive and positive mood. 12:50 PM Feb 16th from web
+ “I would but cannot rest / in God’s most holy will / I know what he appoints is best / and murmur at it still.” 12:10 AM Feb 17th from web
+ Listening to my kids sing “The Christian’s Hope Can Never Fail.” 1:23 PM Feb 18th from web
+ Laughed until I cried telling a story of my own ridiculousness in parenting at CG tonight. Wish I could blog that one. 11:29 PM Feb 18th from web
+ Thinking about the books that got me hooked on reading as a kid. (The Great Brain, The Mixed Up Files…) What are some of yours? 12:18 PM Feb 19th from web
+ Ping-Ponged around the city geographically and culturally this afternoon, K & L rocked some princess dresses all over the place. 7:47 PM Feb 19th from web
+ My iPhone got in rock education mode and played beatles, stones, romantics and U2 in a row. The preschool set appreciated them all in turn. 2:41 PM Feb 21st from TwitterFon
+ Just cut hair for the first time in my life. Fixing Kate’s self cut from Tues. Luckily, nail scissors were the only thing she could reach. 7:37 PM Feb 21st from web
+ [cont] Never tried cutting hair b4 b/c I am a lefty & got a needs improvement in scissors in Kgarten. Should have just went to @lizrwells! 7:39 PM Feb 21st from web
+ Took the girls to see Bolt at the dollar theatre. Kate was so freaked out she sobbed all the way home. Parenting fail. 3:17 PM yesterday from TwitterFon

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman is simply an excellent read. Fadiman skillfully describes the collision of two worlds, western medicine and traditional Hmong culture, by using the case of one little girl as a springboard to explain the historical, cultural and spiritual background of this collision. As these two cultures had to coexist for optimal treatment, the reader is shown honestly and sympathetically how difficult that coexistence can be to develop and maintain.

For me, the book’s greatest merit is how Fadiman weaves the historical, sociological and anthropological background into Lia’s story so well that it reads almost like a novel. It’s informative, but also powerful, personal and thought-provoking. As a westerner, Fadiman is sympathetic to the doctors, their training and their perspective, but at the same time, she isn’t afraid to criticize them or the Western medical system. This book was highly recommended to me (thanks Charlene!) and I would pass it along with the same high recommendation. Even if learning about the Hmong isn’t high on your list of intellectual pursuits, I found a lot of the same observations and lessons about medical care were applicable to families who prefer alternative and natural treatments, a growing population. It’s truly a must read if you are in any medical field, and a good read no matter who you are. (10/10.)

We have long since run out of shelf space in our house, even though we have some books boxed up and others tucked behind in the shelves, so I decided to move some of our children’s books out of the main bookshelves and into the girls’ room. Doing so brought out all these visceral reactions from when I read them for the first time, and I started pondering again about what makes a child a reader.

I believe in good books. Good books teach children about the power the written word can yield. I remember reading about Sadako and her paper cranes and weeping, just weeping, and wondering how God could have let that happen. From the Mixed Up Files made me feel like loving museums was a very good and normal thing to do. There were other books as well, that made me feel accomplished or informed or what-not. And they were important to my literary development.

And yet, I loved The Babysitters Club, and probably read every single one of them and all sorts of crazy books like Bunnicula and those books, books many people I respect would refer to as twaddle, were my bread and butter in elementary school. Reading everything I could get my hands on hasn’t seemed to dull my senses for the good and the beautiful in literature as an adult.

Maybe we all need a little of both to give us balance and perspective. Everyday books mixed with really good ones, the fine wine and the steaks of the bookshelf right along with the ramen and sweet tea. What say you?

In reading Cornelius Plantinga, Jr.’s Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be : A Breviary of Sin I came across this passage that I keep going back, reading and meditating on again. You can read it more in context here, but I’m posting to share, and to make sure I can easily access it in the future.

“A spiritually whole person longs in certain classic ways. She longs for God and the beauty of God, for Christ and Christlikeness, for the dynamite of the Holy Spirit and spiritual maturity. She longs for spiritual hygiene itself—and not just as a consolation prize when she cannot be rich and envied. She longs for other human beings; she wants to love them and to be loved by them. She hungers for social justice. She longs for nature, for its beauties and graces, for the sheer particularity of the way of a squirrel with a nut. As we might expect, her longings dim from season to season. When they do, she longs to long again.

She is a person of character consistency, a person who rings true wherever you tap her. She keeps promises. She weeps with those who weep and, perhaps more impressively, rejoices with those who rejoice. She does all these things in ways that express her own personality and culture but also a general ‘mind of Christ’ that is cross-culturally unmistakable.

Her motives include faith — a quiet confidence in God and in the mercies of God that radiate from the self-giving work of Jesus Christ. She knows God is good; she also feels assured that God is good to her. Her faith secures her against that ceaseless oscillations of pride and despair familiar to every human being who has taken refuge in the cave of her own being and tried there to bury all her insecurities under a mound of achievements. When her faith slips, she retains faith enough to believe that the Spriti of God, whose presence is her renewable resource, will one day secure her faith again.

Since faith fastens on to God’s benevolence, it yields gratitude, which in turn sponsors risk taking in the service of others. Grateful people want to let themselves go; faithful people dare to do it. People tether to God by faith can let themselves go because they know they will get themselves back.”

+ Neighborhood playgroup with beer and girl scout cookies = good times. 5:39 PM Feb 9th from TwitterFon
+ ♫ “It’s a mad mission / but I’ve got the ambition / mad mad mission / sign me up” ♫ 9:04 AM Feb 10th from web
+ went by the crestline starbucks to visit amanda. let the righteous indignation roll towards those that twart us. felt good. 10:29 PM Feb 10th from web
+ Just sang the alma mater and fight song with Kate and Michael! Wooooo-hoooo! 10:21 PM Feb 11th from web
+ @okcalvin verbing nouns is very controversial. “neighboring” (as in loving one’s neighbor) yay or nay? 12:42 PM Feb 12th from web
+ Kids riding bikes in the neighborhood, after Lisa strolled them to Brother Bryan park to play this morning. 11:36 AM Feb 13th from TwitterFon
+ On the way home from my largest family shoot ever, it went great but I can’t wait to be eating sushi with all my loves! 6:26 PM yesterday from TwitterFon
+ The marathon passes a block from our house, so we are out cheering with friends. 7:53 AM today from TwitterFon

If you feel inclined to get a last minute gift, don’t believe the commercials: most women do not really want the big red box of Russell Stover’s chocolates. Buy good chocolate. Even a couple bars from a high end grocery store’s inventory is much better than that red box.

Murder in the Cathedral is a short play by T.S. Eliot dramatizes the murder (and martyrdom) of Thomas Beckett, former archbishop of Canterbury. Having studied that period of church history during my college career, I found the play well done, interesting, and worth reading to be sure. Surely the use of the knights as tempters and the chorus to set the mood enhanced the play. The verse is well done, a bridge between Shakespeare and the modern world, and thus a good model to follow. It’s not lengthy or tedious, and would be appropriate for middle or high school students to read as well.

“The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.” (9/10)

+ On the way home from the library. Kate: “Wow! I can learn a lot from books!” 1:41 PM Feb 2nd from TwitterFon
+ @lizrwells Don’t be fooled, I am a wimp with a low pain tolerance, you could totally take me. Having Lexi at home was cool, though. 5:17 PM Feb 2nd from web
+ Mourning the mocha one of my children grabbed off the counter and spilled everywhere. I was really looking forward to that mocha. 2:41 PM Feb 3rd from web
+ @RaeWhitlock but I don’t find the suburbs inherently sinful, just boring and not my place. Is Ninevah more the large parts of the city 10:22 AM Feb 5th from web
+ That middle class people never enter? The places of great poverty and neglect? (N/W B’ham). Are we for the city or for gentrification? 10:23 AM Feb 5th from web
+ Wanting the right thing, the hard thing, so badly that I am starting to loathe the easy thing. 4:37 PM Feb 6th from web
+ Family is still being terrorized by a stomach virus. Strangely, I am the only one not to fall. Proves there is a first time for everything. 11:32 AM today from web
+ The terror is so great that my mother and sister fled for home, in hopes that they would not be sick on the way to North Carolina. 11:33 AM today from web