Perhaps you’ve not been introduced to Dietrich Bonhoeffer? Today is his birthday, and 106 years ago he entered the world, along with his twin sister, Sabine, in Breslau, Germany, bringing great joy to Paula and Karl Bonhoeffer, and eventually there would be eight children who had the most lovely and nurturing family a child could hope for. Above the west entrance of Westminster Abbey in London are 10 modern martyrs – Bonhoeffer’s statue is among them. In the briefest of words, Bonhoeffer was a theologian, a pastor, a writer, a Christian, a prophet, an anti-Nazi spy. He was executed on April 9, 1945 in a German concentration camp for his involvement in a plot to assassinate Hitler, just days before liberation of that camp.

But I’d like to talk about why we should be concerned about Bonhoeffer in the 21st century.

Eric Metaxas has recently written an award winning biography of Bonhoeffer, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. I liked it better than the massive volume by Eberhard Bethge simply for its readability and style. Metaxas explains why we should care about Bonhoeffer:

Bonhoeffer’s relevance to us today is staggering, and I confess that when I began writing the book I had no idea I would stumble over so many powerful parallels to our own situation. For one thing, the story of Bonhoeffer is a primer on the burning issue of what the limits of the state are.

Exactly why is he relevant to such a degree that people are still writing biographies about him and giving talks and holding congresses? Germany in the 1930s and 40s is challenging to comprehend — the Nazi and Jewish issues, of course, the role of the church, and I wonder how to extrapolate from those times without finding a Nazi behind every overreaching government act.

The state of Bonhoeffer’s world was that the German Christian church looked the other way as Jews were being carted off for “resettlement in the East.” In Bonhoeffer’s last great work, Ethics, though unfinished he considered it his magnum opus, he rebukes the church for her grave offenses against humanity and allowing herself to be subjugated by the Nazi regime:

The church must confess that she has not proclaimed often or clearly enough her message of the one God who has revealed Himself for all time in Jesus Christ and who will tolerate no other gods beside Himself. She must confess her timidity, her evasiveness, her dangerous concessions…She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven…She has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of the lord Jesus Christ…The church must confess that she has desired security, peace and quiet, possessions and honor…She has not borne witness to the truth of God…By her own silence she has rendered herself guilty of a failure to accept responsibility and to bravely defend a just cause. She has been unwilling to suffer for what she knows to be right. Thus the church is guilty of becoming a traitor to the Lordship of Christ. [Ethics, p.117]

Could this not have been written ten minutes ago, as Metaxes said in an interview?

What are today’s burning issues? I ask, as I seek to find Bonhoeffer’s relevance.

Abortion is one. I’m not comfortable addressing this contentious subject. Every person I know has been affected by this, either she has personally had an abortion or knows someone who has. And so who wants to go around telling a woman she is a negligent person, a selfish creature, a murderer? Not me.

I vaguely, then rather insistently, wondered if Bonhoeffer ever had an opinion on the topic of abortion or the right to life. I discovered in his book, Ethics, what I was looking for.

Destruction of the embryo in the mother’s womb is a violation of the right to live which God has bestowed upon this nascent life. To raise the question whether we are here concerned already with a human being or not is merely to confuse the issue. The simple fact is that God certainly intended to create a human being and that this nascent human being has been deliberately deprived of his life. And that is nothing but murder. [Ethics, pp 175-6]

Bonhoeffer considered many facets of abortion, including the pastoral care that necessarily should be involved:

A great many motives may lead to an action of this kind; indeed in cases where it is an act of despair, performed in circumstances of extreme human or economic destitution and misery, the guilt may often lie rather with the community than with the individual. Precisely in this connection money may conceal many a wanton deed, while the poor man’s more reluctant lapse may far more easily be disclosed. All these considerations must no doubt have a quite decisive influence on our personal and pastoral attitude towards the person concerned, but they cannot in any way alter the fact of murder. [Ethics, p 176]

He further speaks to extreme cases:

…with regard to the killing of the fetus in cases where the mother is in danger of losing her life. If the child has its right to life from God, and is perhaps already capable of life, then the killing of the child, as an alternative to the presumed natural death of the mother, is surely a highly questionable action. The life of the mother is in the hand of God, but the life of the child is arbitrarily extinguished. The question whether the life of the mother or the life of the child is of greater value can hardly be a matter for a human decision. [Ethics, p 176 n. 12]

I’m amazed at the specific issues Bonhoeffer addresses with regard to abortion, and it all leaves me little room to wonder what Bonhoeffer would say today in the 21st century. As Eric Metaxas said, Bonhoeffer is staggeringly relevant. He further makes it clear that the right to life is not based on the qualities of the individual.

Life, created and preserved by God, possesses an inherent right, which is wholly independent of its social utility. The right to live is a matter of the essence and not of any values. In the sight of God there is no life that is not worth living. [Ethics, p. 163]

The distinction between life that is worth living and life that is not worth living must sooner or later destroy life itself. [Ethics, p. 164]

It would…be intolerably pharisaical if society were to treat the sick man as though he were a guilty man in order to put itself in the right at his expense. To kill the innocent would be, in the extreme sense, arbitrary. [Ethics, p. 165]

I read all this from Ethics just yesterday and my head fell into my hands and I wept. I almost didn’t want to know; silly, it’s not like Bonhoeffer’s opinion would change my mind, I had concluded when I was very young that abortion was an injustice. But have you ever experienced knowledge that suddenly unloads responsibility? It was this, and I wept, and I couldn’t even allow myself to grasp the entirety as I would have literally fallen to the ground from the weight of it.

I don’t want to become a radical, oh, at least not any more radical than I already am. It’s dangerous to be radical. It’s so much safer to be non-radical, at least on this side of Heaven. Bonhoeffer was a radical of sorts by all accounts, and he paid for it with his life, with a a piano wire around his neck as he dangled naked in the courtyard of the Flossenbürg Concentration Camp in Germany.

And yet he is my hero, and has been for two decades. Someone gave me The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer when I was in my early twenties, and that was my introduction to this compelling man. I read bits and pieces and the words just sat smoldering in the recesses of my mind for twenty years. I do gravitate to the edge of costliness, but to actually take the leap, like Bonhoeffer, is not fully in my nature.

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. [Cost of Discipleship]

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God. [Cost of Discipleship]

So from the beginning of my life as a committed Christian, I’ve had in the background of my thinking, always, the cost of discipleship, which is of course clear in the teachings of Jesus, but made so visible to me by Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer was continually accused of being a single-issue fanatic in his time. And why? He vehemently opposed Nazi interference in the church and so was stripped of his pastoral license and forbidden to speak in public or print or publish. He then helped Jews escape to Switzerland which led to his first arrest. Don’t we look back from our vantage point and not see this as fanatical at all? We are not allowed the privilege of seeing our present from a future viewpoint, and that’s why I spend all this time with Bonhoeffer, searching and probing for relevance and truth to help myself, and maybe spare myself from death of conscience.

But I’ve come to realize there are rarely single-issue fanatics. There is a vast underpinning of philosophies and moralities that find expression in a single-issue, and start digging and you will find the true breadth of it all. Bonhoeffer’s extensive writings demonstrate this theory, and the complexity of what appears to be a single-issue begs to be examined.

Five years ago, on the anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s execution, I wrote an essay exploring Bonhoeffer’s call to the church, a call to action for times when the state is involved in illegitimate actions. I said I’d write more later. And here it is, it took me a while. I quote again from Bonhoeffer’s writings in Ethics, scathing words to the church in his day relating to the Jews, but equally applicable and significant for the unborn in our day:

She was silent when she should have cried out because the blood of the innocent was crying aloud to heaven…She has not raised her voice on behalf of the victims and has not found ways to hasten to their aid. She is guilty of the deaths of the weakest and most defenseless brothers of the lord Jesus Christ. [Ethics]

Bonhoeffer, oh, could he have known that he would suffer to the last and to the fullest, with Christ and with the Jews? I do think he knew, and he intentionally chose the way of the cross.

If we have watered down the gospel into emotional uplift which makes no costly demands and which fails to distinguish between natural and Christian existence, then we cannot help regarding the cross as an ordinary everyday calamity… We have then forgotten that the cross means rejection and shame as well as suffering.

The Psalmist was lamenting that he was despised and rejected of men, and that is an essential quality of the suffering of the cross. But this notion has ceased to be intelligible to a Christianity which can no longer see any difference between an ordinary human life and life committed to Christ. The cross means sharing the suffering of Christ to the last and to the fullest. [Cost of Discipleship]

May I leave you with some resources for you to further examine the relevance of the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to your world? Following are some links (which have been of immense help to me) to books, essays, videos, blogs, all of which either directly speak of Bonhoeffer, or involve current issues to which his principles could be applied.

Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas
National Prayer Breakfast, 2012, with Eric Metaxas (begin at 35 min. in)
Marco Rubio Pro-Life Speech at SBA event
Catholic Leaders Urge Parishioners to Denounce Mandate
Bonhoeffer Blog
Bonhoeffer Timeline
Dietrich Bonhoeffer Reading Room (links to all of Bonhoeffer’s works as well as books/writings about him)
God & Caesar by Dr. Laurence White
Bonhoeffer Blog Discussion Group @ Pebblechaser
Bonhoeffer Documentary
Bonhoeffer: Agent of Grace – DVD
Hanged on a Twisted Cross – film

Technorati Tags: abortion, Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Eric Metaxas, Ethics, Jewish question, Nazi Germany

Scrubbing the dirty linens necessarily had to come first. There I’d sit, out under the endless expanse of Southwest blue, small pail under me, usually an old paint can which left merciless indentations in the backs of my thighs, and just before me like a yawning silvery gray band sat a large stainless steel basin. The brightness of metal caught the sun and cast a glow against the brown earth, loose and dusty, but hiding just below was endless clay.

First, I’d dump a cup of suds right in there, that same tub we used for baths and dishes, then I’d position the old hose that snaked about from a spigot at the side of the house, and being this close I had no cause to worry about kinks in the tubing like when watering trees a hundred yards out. A turn of the valve, an eruption of liquid, and I’d be careful not to waste a drop of that first spurt, hot from sitting in the length of hose, the only hot I’d get.

Cottons, and small knuckles, invariably, rubbed on a metal washboard, fingers quickly numbing from cold. I could never figure how to scrub the material closest to the big brassy buckles and buttons on my dad’s heavy overalls and was continually vexed by those fixtures. Scrub, wring, toss in a bucket. When all pieces were washed, I’d empty the great tub, at first by the pail, then once I could muscle it, by tipping the basin, creating rivulets and muddy swirls and soon my toes were submerged and curled under mud and clay. When you live in the desert, water is extra fascinating.

I would refill the washtub for a rinse that never seemed to run clear, and now hands were raw and back aching.The water would be brown and filmy by the time the last sock was scooped up from a bottom crevice, the last shirt wrung as tight as my tired arms could wring. A final dragging of pails heavy with washing over to the lines that stretched from east to west between wooden poles, beckoning to take my load, and I was at the best part of the job.

Arms stretched up, toes stretched, too, to hang the clean, wet clothes, and retrieve the dried, and this was a happier place.

There is nothing tragic in an eight-year-old having to wash tubs of laundry by hand. Millenia of young girls have been little washerwomen and mothers’ helpers and labored under more than this. Ancient girls would have cleaned their clothes by pounding them on rocks and washing the dirt away in the streams, and made their own soap, too, from the fat of sacrificed animals. When I was eight, the electric-powered washing machine was barely 70 years old and it’s not unreasonable that I should still be scrubbing clothes.

No, the tragic things aren’t the work and crudeness of the apparatus. It was my mother, sick in mind and body, lying in bed for weeks –in the hot summers even–loaded down with heavy blankets, alternately shivering and fevering, wet cloth on her forehead, and so the child was loaded down with all that laundry. Always with a wet cloth to cool her head, that’s how I remember my mother.

It was my father, inexplicably letting a brand-new washing machine shipped by my aunt from nearly two thousand miles away sit untouched in an outbuilding. After a while, the mice took up residence in the beautiful machine, and after a greater while, it was unusable, important parts chewed through. Really, it wasn’t inexplicable, it was the way he did most everything, in fits and starts and always undone. I spent many moments lost in dream over that machine, as if it were a magic capsule to usher me into normal life.

On the rare occasion when a friend was over, and it was laundry time, she would enjoy helping, quite entertained by the novelty of the washboard. In those instances, it was all joy — splashing water, wringing contests, and a race to the clothesline. The clothesline. If the cord had more tension, I could be a tightrope walker. If it were stronger, I could swing from my knees and do a cherry drop like on the monkey bars at school.

The clothesline was the end of the job, reaching up toward blue sky and all clean around me, and endless possibilities.

Technorati Tags: washboard, laundry, childhood, hand wash laundry, clothesline

I’ve always wondered about how the Chinese proclaim a message or theme for each new year, awash in traditions and rituals, based on a complex Chinese calendar and Chinese zodiac. My own quiet celebration and resolution is not so festive, but observed in my own way.

I met a new friend recently, the mother of a friend, actually. She is a small, wizened Hispanic woman who speaks of signs and symbols and prophecies in the most colorful way, and she shared with me that 2012 will be the year the bride knew He loved her. I took this word for myself, as it greatly resonated with me.

The little woman related an anecdote to me, her words tumbling faster than I could catch, of two friends, and one knows she is completely loved by the other and is thus willing to share quite openly and honestly with her companion, with no fear of being taken wrongly or judged harshly and no fear of loss of that friendship because she knows how that love won’t break. This brief narrative was the beginning of my understanding of a powerful message of knowing you are loved and the consequences of that knowledge. I missed some points, I do know, and she knew it, too, and expected that I would.

And that is how it must be between you and God, she declared. When I am completely at rest in the solid, unmovable fact that God loves me, I am willing to take risks, to be utterly vulnerable and honest with Him, to throw myself with abandon into all of Him. And then there can be real relationship.

I’ve pondered, too, the relationship from the other end. If God knows that His bride is completely and passionately in love with Him, then perhaps He has access He didn’t have before? He can open Heaven’s gates and pour down abundant blessings and ravishing love upon the bride that He knows is also unmovable in her love for Him.

And further yet, there are applications in these earthly vessels of husband and wife, mother and daughter, father and son, friends, sisters, brothers. You must know the critical nature of this point? Knowing you are deeply loved, oh, there is nothing like it to make for a glorious marriage, friendship, relationship.

2012: The Year She Knew She Was Loved — I hope to share my journey of realizing this.

Technorati Tags: Chinese New Year, faith, Love of God, The Year of 2012

And the angel said unto them, “Fear not! For, behold,
I bring you tidings of great joy, Which shall be to all people.”

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David A Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.” – St. Luke

Bright and joyful is the morn,
For us to a Child is born.
From the highest realms of Heaven,
Unto us a Son is given.
{Hymn~Bright and Joyful is the Morn}

Bring a torch, Jeanette, Isabella
Bring a torch, come swiftly and run.
Christ is born, tell the folk of the village,
Jesus is sleeping in His cradle,
Ah, ah, beautiful is the mother,
Ah, ah, beautiful is her Son.
{Hymn~Bring a Torch}

Gather around the Christmas tree!
Gather around the Christmas tree!
Evergreen have its branches been,
It is king of all the woodland scene;
For Christ our King is born today!
His reign shall never pass away.
{Hymn~Gather Around the Christmas Tree}

Gather around the Christmas tree!
Gather around the Christmas tree!
Once the pride of the mountainside,
Now cut down to grace our Christmastide;
For Christ from Heav’n to earth came down,
To gain, through death, a nobler crown.

Gather around the Christmas tree!
Gather around the Christmas tree!
Every bough bears a burden now—
They are gifts of love for us, we trow;
For Christ is born, His love to show,
And give good gifts to men below.

Hosanna, hosanna,
Hosanna in the highest!

Merry Christmas to you, with love from our house to yours.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, christmas decorating, Christmas tree, Merry Christmas

I am desperate for anticipation in this season of Advent, the awaiting of the coming of the Messiah. Mother Teresa once remarked that John the Baptist was the first person to rejoice at the coming of the Christ when he jumped for joy while still in Elizabeth’s womb, and Jesus was yet in Mary’s womb. That’s the kind of joyful anticipation I want.

I start with Isaiah.

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse;
from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.
The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of might,
the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD—
and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
Isaiah 11:1-3

Feeling like a stump, it’s so reassuring to know that the Spirit of the Lord is coming. “From his roots…” and I wonder about what keeps roots alive and I’m still astonished that fruit should come from there.

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
Isaiah 53:2

On this paved road to Bethlehem in my century, knowing the end of the story is a unique perspective, a blessed place. I don’t have to look for the signs, read the skies, search the prophets. But I think about the days of Isaiah, when the Advent was but a distant hope, and there is something unrivaled and momentous about that place, too, a place of watching, waiting, hoping. Anticipation stirs passion, and I’d like to go there, to Isaiah, in my mind, because here and now, with the gift already come, I sigh and fear falling into lethargy.

…from his roots a Branch will bear fruit.

When dear women in my life have babies, I visit them in the hospital and nearly without fail, I cry. Tears flow from wonder at the beauty and miracle, and how can I not notice the Mystery? The Spirit of the Lord rests heavily there, and I fairly swoon at the smell of the newborn, like milk and honey and fresh rain, and the sight of his tiny curled fingers–and I’m desiring now to be lifted to the heights at the thought of that One Baby, and I’m mortified that I don’t approach the Christ-child the same.

Was there a moment, known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped their hands for joy? ~ Madeleine L’Engle

I’ve asked the questions a hundred times at least, “How are you feeling?” as I observe the swell in the belly of my sisters and friends. “Are you hungry all the time, are you nauseous?”

I want to be hungry all the time as Advent proceeds down this crowded, bustling road to Bethlehem. Hungry to feel His presence, to simply anticipate. For now, I just feel nauseous at my dispassion, but it’s a start.

I’m asking what it takes to feel hungry, and perhaps part of the answer is an empty space, a fasting from busy, a tenable chance for hunger to wake me into longing and then I’ll hold my breath with the stars. I need an unpaved, uncrowded road to Bethlehem here in my heart.

Technorati Tags: Advent, Blogging to Bethlehem, Christmas, Isaiah

It’s not that Dostoevsky is unreadable for the lay person. Yes, degrees in psychology and Russian history would help, but for a writer who is considered to be one of the world’s greatest authors and this his greatest novel, he’s very accessible.

You may find yourself asking, “How could he know me?” To read Dostoevsky is to stand naked-hearted before a wise and piercing being and it’s quite uncomfortable to be so exposed. The major themes that course through The Brothers Karamozov are broad but it’s uncanny how they light in a small place of your own nature and prick your conscience. He is a master. Were he alive today, or had I lived 150 years ago, I’d have wanted him for a friend and confidante during my darkest inner battles, and he would look straight through me and diagnose me and make such sense that I’d be well just for having been diagnosed and having seen such stark and beautiful truth.

The Brothers Karamozov is a big book of ideas, nearly 900 pages of dialogued postulations on love, guilt, forgiveness, responsibility for one another, money, the existence of God, atheism, socialism, freedom. And who among us hasn’t grappled with those big ideas in some small or grand way?

And there’s an intriguing story, too, that weaves these big ideas all together, a family tale that follows the lives of the Karamozov brothers and their father and surrounding characters. There is a love story, a murder mystery, a courtroom drama, and always deeper meaning. Indeed, the entire nation of Russia is a character in the story, as is God himself, as even a cursory read reveals.

The allegorical depth of The Brothers Karamozov is part of its richness and acclaim. The brothers each are emblems and caricatures–Ivan is the intellectual atheist; Dmitri is the worldly sensualist, Alyosha is the spiritual soul. Other allegories include each of the Karamozov brothers being subjected to three temptations, as in the biblical story of the temptation of Christ, each with varying degrees of success according to their character.

In fact, it is this story of the temptation of Christ in the chapter on Ivan’s Grand Inquisitor that was one of my favorite parts. I had never read a more complete or compelling account of how Jesus was tested in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11). The first temptation, for the hungry Jesus to turn the stones into bread, Dostoevsky extends and shows himself to be a brilliant theologian. Jesus said no, that man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth of God.

And Dostoevsky conveys this was an issue of freedom, as his Grand Inquisitor promises man, as Satan promised Jesus, everything in exchange for freedom, that single thing that defines man. The Grand Inquisitor tells the man that people are too simple and unruly for freedom, that what they really need is bread, to “feed men, and then ask of them virtue.” The Grand Inquisitor goes on to claim that “freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together.” His indictment against Christ is that He turned down social justice for the sake of freedom and the bread of heaven.

The Grand Inquisitor makes such an eloquent case in this chapter that any atheist who reads it champions this as his proof. But Dostoevsky, having travelled through atheism and out the other end to Christianity, is in an uncommonly opportune position to be exquisitely credible to both sides, and still win. He thus commented on his own faith and responds to atheists and critics of The Brothers Karamozov:

The dolts have ridiculed my obscurantism and the reactionary character of my faith. These fools could not even conceive so strong a denial of God as the one to which I gave expression… The whole book is an answer to that…. You might search Europe in vain for so powerful an expression of atheism. Thus it is not like a child that I believe in Christ and confess Him. My hosanna has come forth from the crucible of doubt.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s own life informed his writing of The Brothers Karamozov in many ways. As a young man, he was a socialist revolutionary who ended up arrested by the Tsarist police for associating with a secret socialist group. Dostoevsky claimed to not be against the Russian government but against the institution of serfdom. The next decade found him in prison and labor camps in Siberia. He emerged from the experience, having nothing to read but the gospels, one of the few books allowed, not a social revolutionary, but a spiritually awakened man.

A journalist recounting Joseph Frank’s staggering biography of Fyodor Dostoevsky offered this insight into the theme of The Brothers Karamozov:

Dostoyevsky, in Frank’s view, is comparable to Dante, Shakespeare and Milton in the grandeur of his thought and the power of his spiritual vision. His goal in this novel, Frank says, was both to portray the breakdown of social and family life (the principal theme of the much weaker ”Raw Youth”) and to warn, through the three Karamazov brothers, Ivan, Dimitri and Alyosha, and their corrupt father, Fyodor, against the impending collapse of Western civilization, which was inevitable unless humankind embraced a return to the (Orthodox) Christian faith.

Dostoevsky indeed believed that the only salvation for us all is not found in politics, but in faith. There are so many more characters for you to meet in The Brothers Karamozov, countless conversations and incidents, that will illuminate this truth and more. There is Father Zossima, the crazy Father Ferapont, Katerina Ivanovna, Grushenka. There is this:

Ah, children, ah, dear friends, don’t be afraid of life! How good life is when one does something good and just!

and

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. One cannot exist in prison without God; it’s even more impossible than out of prison. And then we men underground will sing from the bowels of the earth a glorious hymn to God, with Whom is joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love Him!

and

Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears.

As the book’s final line echoes, “Hurrah for Karamozov!” Read it, you will be flattened, raised, amazed, challenged. This is the best I can do, for I have a long way to go in really understanding it all.

Technorati Tags: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian literature, The Brothers Karamozov

The wooden bench in the hallway, between the pot-bellied stove and the hanging ivy in a macramé plant holder, that was where I learned to love. With my skinny legs dangling almost to the worn linoleum and my green eyes hung down to avoid Mrs. Young, I studied the brown and orange geometric lines on the floor beneath my dirty tennies with intensity. I had picked out the shoes myself from the rack at Value Village in Tucson and now they were squeezing my toes and maybe my heart. Mrs. Young had placed me there on the bench and I burned with shame.

Despite my anxious discomfort, this house was warm and safe, and the place to learn about how normal people do life. Like a plant engaged in phototropism, I found a light source and turned to it for survival.

I was there for church, a house-church in my desert village, planted in that southeast corner of Arizona by Providence for my sustenance. I think now of Deuteronomy 8:15. “He led you through the vast and dreadful desert, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock.” This place was my water.

Strings of memories wrap around this place like a large ball of twine, strong enough to tie a young sapling to a stake to steady it in the wind. Holy words were said there, pudgy old ladies in flowered dresses and bloated ankles served potluck meals, and I heard laughter. I cherished a few special sanctuaries as a child, the leafy branches of the poplar tree in my own yard, the flat roof top of our shed, and here too in this place, the swing in the side yard where I’d tuck my feet up under me to get away from the chickens or where I’d lazily rock and pretend I lived there.

And there was Mrs. Young in front of me, the best mother I knew, her brown hair in a bun with gray wisps falling near her porcelain face. She and Mr. Young owned the general store about five miles down the dirt roads that criss-crossed the clay and dust, grasses and tumbleweeds, and sometimes I’d walk all the way there just to buy a Baby Ruth. A small group of girls, including myself, and a little Korean girl named Kim wearing the prettiest clothes of all and shiny black patent leather shoes, we’d all been playing after Sunday-School.

And why, I don’t quite know, because I was the least of them all and thought so little of myself, but I had been terribly offensive that day, and perhaps I’d fallen victim to that psychology of only liking what is “similar to me,” and in fact in my tiny homogeneous community I’d never known anyone before who wasn’t white like me.

“You are not being very nice, young lady!” Mrs. Young had seen it all, heard the words, noticed the hurt, and pulled me aside there to the bench. I was ablaze with honest shame because it was all so dreadfully true. I wasn’t nice, and I didn’t like her daughter, and I had actually said to the brown girl, “you can’t play with us.”

The best mother stood over me and spoke to me privately about her daughter, an adopted Korean girl with impossibly thick black hair, smooth brown skin, and small dark eyes that held all of Seoul. Mrs. Young told me where her Kim came from, that she was just like me, and though very few words were said, something in her voice seared my soul about the dignity of each human life. She asked me to apologize.

I embraced that other little brown girl. She soon, almost instantly, became my first best friend, a treasure. I spent many nights at her house, and we were just two little girls with dreams, and we’d give each other a head massage as we sleepily talked about the possibilities out there in the great big world. She wanted to be a gymnast. I thought the circus sounded fun. We ate spicy kimchi at her house and dressed up in kimonos. Mrs. Young told me how much Kim wished for hair like mine, and I told my sisters I wanted to be Korean.

If you never have a best friend you can’t learn about things like keeping secrets, writing notes with bubble letters and hearts, sharing those silly glances when you have a crush. You learn that girlhood is universal no matter what your race or religion or social status. Sometimes you get hurt, too, like the time in 7th grade when I moved away for a year and after I came back, Kim had a new best friend. Things were not the same, and a year later, Kim moved away to California.

But I thank God for Mrs. Young and that holy bench, and this lesson in love.

Beloved, let us love another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. I John 4:7

(to be continued)

Technorati Tags: childhood, faith, friendship, God, love

Our paths connected through our children and so I didn’t expect to be sitting there talking about our mothers. Kelly is one of those rare, faithful confidantes who is an exceptional blessing to know, the kind who sees you through weary, complicated trials and you shake your head sometimes marveling at the loyalty and wondering how you gained such a friend.

Behind me a sheet of water was eternally cascading down an ornamental fountain. The small café was cozy with warm colored walls, burnt yellows and cinnamon, just big enough for a dozen or so comfortable patrons. I was late to our breakfast appointment and greeted her with a hung head. She laughed at me and was thankful I had still come.

“How are the kids? And your mom?” Kelly’s inquiring brown eyes searched out the answer, glossy auburn locks falling perfectly past her shoulders, and I remembered I hadn’t applied a spot of make-up in my hurry.

The waitress offered the special, eggs Benedict with Hollandaise lime sauce and cooked pears over sourdough, or something along those lines, I couldn’t remember but ordered it anyway. I squinted at her hard, trying to recall just where it was the previous day I’d seen her. It came to me, it was the library. Her son brushed past mine, my freckled boy who clutched the Scooby-Doo video in his little hands, utterly cheered to find it there, finally. This mother with son at the library – I’m always so happy to see mothers with children at the library, it’s my strange joy. And her son wanted that video, too, and he squalled to his tall, blonde and beautiful mother, “It’s not fair!”

And those were the very words I painfully expressed to Kelly over coffee and breakfast platters, just as petulant as that child. Why should I have to take care of my mother? She barely took care of me, I practically raised myself, and it wasn’t fair, and sadly it was only at the end of the meal I considered my unforgiveness.

It happened that some years after I met Kelly, her mother moved in with her, too, and like mine, has degenerative brain problems. She’s forgotten how to comb her hair and take a walk. Her conversation has dwindled to “no.” Kelly gracefully chided me with, “At least yours talks.”

And grace it is that I need at this moment, and the compassionate forbearance of mercy. I know it. I know it by its absence. I know it by the tightness in my chest when she walks into a room. Oh, grace to cleanse my irritated soul. The way she shuffles, asks again what day it is, tells me she forgot how to whistle, burps at the table, a thousand ways that need grace.

I mourn that I’m not doing this well. I mourn that my own children observe my lack of grace and mercy, because one day, they may need to draw on it.

Kelly explained how she came by new grace for her mother. “Last time,” she shared, speaking of her mom’s prior six-month stay, “it was really hard and I was always frustrated.” But then she returned from retrieving her mom from a sibling who shares the care-taking, and here sensitivity laced Kelly’s every word. The mother she knew had never a hair out of place and things ordered just so, but now her hair was stringy and unkempt, her clothes ill-fitting, and her exercise unattended to. Sometimes it is seeing the indifference in others that provokes us to tenderness.

“Is that honoring to my mother?” Kelly had asked herself with renewed humanity.

Those words tumbled around my head. Honoring. The sheets of water continued to course behind my chair, molecule after molecule, and I wanted to jump right in and wash away the vexation, the impatience, the anger. Could I replace those insipid characters with esteem, respect, appreciation, love? And how? One molecule at a time by the grace of God.

Is it fair that Jesus died for sinful me? Is it fair that I don’t deserve his grace but receive it freely and abundantly? I guess fairness really can’t be part of this equation, but forgiveness, yes, to forgive as I have been forgiven. And that will be another story, my friends.

He has show you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8

Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Ephesians 4:32

Technorati Tags: alzheimers, caretaking, dementia, family life, God, grace

The day he taught her to surf was a beautiful day with slate-gray waves pushing up arcs just her size and sun and wind offering competing comforts. She, so brave, he, so proud. And me, just so content to watch the unfolding of a love transferred.

We talk often about the future and where we’ll live and how we’ll live, as if we really have the freedom to make our lives what we want. And always, the ocean comes up. He wonders if it’s just childhood nostalgia, a deep longing for the simple, but a deep so elusive one wonders, was it real?

The mighty waves call “come ride with me,” and awaken something unutterable and eternal. The two push out there, and then she comes gliding in with a smile and flicker that tells me she’s been captivated, too, as deep calls unto deep.

The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders, the Lord thunders over the mighty waters. ~ Psalm 29:3

The house of the Lord is all around, they entered it there, so real in the surf, and it’s here too in my desert, and may I dwell in his house all the days of my life, may I notice the beauty of the Lord as I seek Him in his temple.

Technorati Tags: childhood, family life, Oregon Coast, Psalms, surfing

We could have been at a mountain distillery in Scotland, and indeed, my sister Nancy had just returned from a month in that lush, green country and deposited this array of single malt Scotch whiskies on my dining room table. She regaled us til past midnight with stories of the Highlands and its clannish folks, along with histories of each distillery, some centuries old, which produce one of Scotland’s finest gifts from her unparalleled mountain springs. Nancy spoke of oak casks and aging and proofs and I delighted in the mere names on the bottles.

And so I thought of this visit with my sister when I read this bit about two-hundred-proof grace and one man who found it:

The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellarful of fifteen-hundred-year-old, two-hundred-proof grace—of bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about perfection—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, nor flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter in. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

I saw that quote yesterday and so my mind began throbbing about grace. I considered how my sister’s Scotch was proof enough with just a whiff to convince me of its power and how just a taste sent my nagging cold into oblivion, and wasn’t grace good medicine, too, especially for ailments of the conscience?

And then today, as the Lord would have it, I got to follow up on Martin Luther’s wild discovery, uncovering, about that grace. A radio show this morning told the story about the day Luther was conducting his very first Mass (still in the Roman Catholic church, and before his crisis of faith that led to the Reformation). His father, bursting with pride over his son, who he really wanted to be a lawyer, but at least now he had an official vocation, invited his closest business associates to the momentous event.

Martin Luther executed the mass flawlessly, up until the point where he was to pray over the bread and wine, to supernaturally intercede for it to become the actual body and blood of Christ. And then, in what his father hoped to be Martin’s finest moment, Luther froze. He opened his mouth to speak and not a word came forth. He trembled. Sweat beaded down his face. Another priest had to take his place.

Luther’s father pulled him aside afterward to express his agonizing disappointment, and really, because he was humiliated in front of his important friends. Luther, ever the man to feel the full guilt of his humanity, but so deeply aware of Christ’s presence, was only able to say (something along the lines of), “But, I was holding Jesus in my hands!” He was terror-struck at the thought of the majesty and justice of a holy God right there in his hands, his own sinful hands, and could not go on.

Who am I that I should lift up mine eyes or raise my hands to the divine majesty? For I am dust and ashes and full of sin, and I am speaking to the living, eternal and true God. ~ Luther

And what does this have to do with grace? Because Luther so desperately himself needed grace, because he literally could not function without it, as evidenced by this terrifying experience in his first Mass in which grace alone could stand between him and a holy God, though he hadn’t yet grasped that, because of this and so much more, Luther found a way to grace.

He was condemned as a heretic, but he had found grace.

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times. ~ Luther

And what are we to do with this gift of two-hundred-proof grace? Accept it, for it was prepared for us and done before the foundation of the world, and is already ours for the taking, and isn’t it just ridiculous to leave a gift unopened under the tree?

This is Part III of my study on Romans 12:3-8, just a look at grace in this post, because as Martin Luther preached in his Preface to the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans:

To begin with, we have to become familiar with the vocabulary of the letter and know what St. Paul means by the words law, sin, grace, faith, justice, flesh, spirit, etc. Otherwise there is no use in reading it. ~ Luther

And here is Part I and Part II.

Technorati Tags: faith, grace, Martin Luther, Scotch whiskey

Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. Romans 12:4-5

Part I: Many members and functions; one body.

Unity in diversity is the beautiful picture here. Both physically and spiritually, many parts make up the whole. Each unique, specific, necessary, and diverse part fits together to make one unified healthy whole. Without the eye to see the danger and relay it to the brain which tells it to the feet which run, the whole body is in jeopardy. (see I Cor. 12:12-27)

God’s purposes are sovereign…the diversity of gifts is necessary to accomplish His unified purpose.

This is the DNA of all creation. Within the cosmos, the earth cannot say to the sun, “I don’t need you,” or to the moon, “please move other there.” No, our very existence would cease; it must be precisely as God ordained, and He calls it “good,” as when He marveled at the diversity of creation in the very beginning.

There is only one body. Not two or three. Haven’t we all learned through trials that it’s critical to the health of the whole body that we not take up any offenses, feel like we don’t fit in, and look for some other body? Our enemy is skilled at setting up counterfeit bodies, like cults or gangs, that mimic some of the good “belonging” feelings of the one true body of Christ and so ensnare the unsuspecting or the weak, but are actually dangerously unhealthy. Our membership has only one place to be redeemed and that is in Christ.

“…and these members do not all have the same function…” And oh, the trouble in keeping the parts where they belong! My kids used to be silly with Mr. Potato Head and stick an ear where an eye should go or feet on top of his head. Do you recall the Mr. Potato Head character in Toy Story? He was a jealous, rude, and unfriendly character — precisely our traits when we wish we were mouths instead of hands or feet instead of eyes. May we rejoice in our distinct giftings with humility and understanding.

Part II: Each member belongs to all.

We are mutually dependent on one another. How can we really, humbly know that our gifts are not for any selfish purpose or display, but always for the good of the whole? We have a profound interconnectedness by which we need each other, even the meekest contribution.

It’s no wonder that the section of Romans directly following this passage on gifts is all about love, as that is the key:

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:9-10

To love sincerely is to accomplish this “belonging to” with grace and triumph.

A pastor once told it this way:

“A number of years ago I fell and injured my wrist rather severely. It swelled up and got very painful. And the rest of my body felt so bad about it that it sat up all night to keep it company. That is what the body of Christ is to do when one member is hurt.”

We see a moving demonstration of how “each member belongs to all the others” from Christ on the cross as he utters in one of his last moments:

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved, standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. John 19:26-27

To know that within Jesus’ dying words was this request to live out our Christian experience in fellowship with one another and caring for one another as if they were our very own flesh and blood (and oh, the beauty of His provision for his mother) ~ this is another gift from the cross. Each member belongs to all.

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others. ~ Augustine

Jesus, we praise you for the privilege of membership in your body, each of us different members. We ask for your grace to keep us functioning exactly as you designed. Help us to honor one another as though we each belonged to the other. Amen.

Technorati Tags: Body of Christ, Romans 12:4-5, spiritual gifts

As Kevin DeYoung points out in this insightful article titled Children and Secondhand Stress, research has shown that it’s not the parents’ ability to make their children feel loved or appreciated that’s the problem…it’s the anger.

It’s Mom or Dad with a short fuse of patience because what they’re really worried about is how to pay the bills or make the dinner or find the time to do everything they’re juggling, and it’s overwhelming to the point of explosions of stress that shower down on the children, wounding like sharp bits of shrapnel that never really get removed.

The interesting thing about blast injuries that involve shrapnel is that the deadlier physical trauma actually occurs from blast overpressure, or shock waves. Especially when the explosion occurs in a confined space. External injuries aren’t evident, but inside? Lungs can be collapsing, hearts can be bleeding, brains can be swelling.

Really. It’s that deadly. We should be more intentional about removing stress triggers in our family life.

Maybe we schedule fewer family activities that require the hurry and rush that inevitably causes stress. Are there other ways to simplify our lives, like downsizing and eliminating things that cost more, so there’s less financial demand on the parents? Maybe take time at the beginning of each week to schedule meals so the family dinner isn’t a grab-n-go scramble, but a thoughtful and peaceful event?

The next time I’m driving down our gravel road late for life and spilling out my anger and stress-laced piercings on those absorbent souls, I hope I remember my dad’s old Ford rumbling down Havasu Way, a trail of dust pluming into the Arizona sky behind us rivaled only by his toxic smoke irreversibly penetrating my lungs. And I will pause, pull over if necessary, roll down the windows, and breathe slow.

If we’ve blown it, parents?

Pray. Always pray. Both alone and together. Ask forgiveness. Hold tight one another. Breathe fresh clean air and listen. And make the necessary course corrections.

Blessings on us all as we pursue peace and patience.

This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God. James 1:19-20

Technorati Tags: faith, family life, simplifying, stress

For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Romans 12:3

This verse precedes an amazing section of scriptures in which Paul lists several gifts (charismata), gifts of grace freely given by God for the benefit of the whole body of Christ. I’ve always hastened over this verse that begins the introduction to the gifts, but I’d like to take a closer look.

Part I: For by the grace given me

Before Paul speaks this word of warning and instruction, he notes that he’s only speaking “by the grace” given to him. Might we also, before we speak words into someone else’s life, be sure the words are foremost given in grace?

And then I noticed this other thing about “for by the grace” –over there in Galations 2:9, Paul has a word about this grace:

James, Peter and John, those reputed to be pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me.

We are called to recognize the grace giftings of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Grace in this sense means a special endowment that brings responsibility for service. Paul is adamant that his apostleship be recognized by his fellow believers, and always he points to Christ as his authority to exhort and instruct them. And didn’t Paul know the consequences of opposing this call to acknowledge the God-given grace at work in a believer? {His letter to the Galations reveals that the gospel gets perverted otherwise, and that is a whole other study.}

I will be looking for the grace in you.

Part II: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought

As I investigate more deeply this call to humility, I find something intriguing about its connection to grace (what I will call grace-gifting in this context).

I read in 1 Peter 5:5-6 to clothe yourselves with humility toward one another because

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

And then,

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.

If we are proud, vain, conceited, thinking about our own greatness, I believe we’re in danger of not receiving, or losing, our grace-giftings, as this grace is reserved only for the humble.

Paul knew something powerful about this relationship between humility and grace-gifts. It is Paul who continually (and in true modesty) proclaimed himself the “chief of sinners” and “the least of the apostles.” Apostleship was bestowed upon him by the grace of God and he knew it, he knew it wasn’t of himself.

If we could know it, too, that self-pride and grace-giftings cannot reside together in our hearts, we would be so powerfully moving in our gifts and a tremendous blessing to the Body of Christ.

Part III: In accordance with the measure of faith God has given you

Our measure of faith is critical to this whole process of our calling to exercise our gifts. It seems there are different measures of faith. As Paul states in Romans 12:6, we have different gifts, and the various measures of faith needed to carry out these gifts is a gift itself. We need to know our measure of faith and act accordingly.

Dangers lie on both ends, both in underestimating our faith and in overestimating our faith.

To underestimate our faith can lead to spiritual laziness, and can be likened to the man who buries his talent. He neglected the abilities God gave him, out of fear, and do you remember? It was taken away from him and given to the one who showed himself wise in the use of gifts.

To overestimate the faith God has measured to us is equally dangerous. Perhaps we’ll try to serve in ways God hasn’t prepared us for. Maybe we’ll be sidetracked from our true purpose. We may find ourselves walking into situations we naively or pridefully think we’re equipped to manage and find ourselves floundering. Or maybe we become like the clay who says to the potter, “what are you making?”

To exercise your grace-giftings exactly in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you, though? That is effective, life-giving stuff that benefits the entire body of Christ.

Jesus, we praise you for the privilege of your grace, we ask for your help in keeping us bowed low before you, to have a correct view of ourselves. What an honor to be faith-filled believers in your service, and help us to always embrace our gifts in accordance with that faith, for the good of the Body and to your glory. Amen.

[Part II of the Romans 12:3-8 series is here: Many Members, One Body.]

{visit the Christian Blog Carnival for more great posts}

Technorati Tags: faith, grace, humility, Romans 12:3, spiritual gifts

“Your pace will change from a sprint to a marathon,” she counseled. These words brought immense hope to my soul on the heels of a few exhausting years that did indeed feel like the 50-yard dash on replay every hour of my day.

The thought of a marathon panics some, but its pace is slower, steadier than the sprint, and yes, we still have a race to run, but perhaps it didn’t have to kill me?

I had been waiting for this comfort, and many translations in fact interpret the words “hope in the Lord” as “wait on the Lord.”

Following a difficult circumstance that involved condemnation, emotional pain, all my own irresponsible and naive decisions, and despair of such magnitude I thought I might die of it, I discovered the truth that those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

This renewal of strength is conditional of course, as all of God’s promises are, on a decision I had to make: would I hope in the Lord? If so, then I could soar with the wings of an eagle! I could run and not grow weary! I could walk and not be faint! These are miracles, all humanly impossible, for who among us can sprout wings or never tire or feel faint after endless movement?

I remember praying to God to make me invisible. For the first two weeks after this situation erupted, I couldn’t leave my house (except for the picking up of the raw fragments of it all), held there by my own almost manic despair.

My husband did the shopping, errands, and all necessary functions of life as I half-lived, my movements like a lizard’s tail that moves after it’s been dropped from the body. When finally I did have the strength to make one small trip to the store, I got through it by praying, “Lord, please let people miraculously look right through me. Make me invisible. I can’t handle the bitter words.” I yet had no hope and felt no grace.

I lived for a long time in fear and mistrust, which may be the antithesis of hope. Fear of never recovering, mistrust of the intentions of everyone, afraid of sleeping, for then the shadow of death settled in. And then came the period of the sprinting, sometimes running hard to prove I was something, sometimes running hard just to get away. I was wounded too much to hope, I thought. I couldn’t speak and I was mute and knew no one and no one knew me.

I lived in the Psalms during the dark days as in no other season of my life. In fact, I believe I never before even remotely had an emotional connection with the Psalms, with the pursuit of enemies, the sheer agony of despair that David cries out about. I never before needed Hope like I needed it during those years. I cried out to the Lord out of the brokenness of my spirit as I had never before cried. I could almost physically feel my mind splintering.

And behold, this hell is the very best opportunity to experience Hope, though who would want to live in these dark David-like caves? But who was called a man after God’s own heart?

“Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall.” These words precede the promise in Isaiah 40:31. In my own strength and youth (immaturity), I was weary and had utterly fallen. I needed Hope.

It took time, but gradually I re-entered normalcy as best I could, and bit by bit He renewed my strength. I would still be in that cave were it not for this promise of God: Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. God-sent friends thoroughly loved me through these months and years, believed in me, lifted me up, and indeed still lift me up, like the wise woman who shared the gift about the marathon. I clung to His Word. I was as the deer who panted for water.

Biblical hope is powerful and mighty to save. This hope is an expectation that positively, absolutely the thing will come to pass. The hope we’re waiting for is always God’s salvation, both His eternal salvation and the salvation we need in the daily moments of life. It’s beyond me, yet I must actively participate.

I found that Hope required me to move. I wanted to lie in bed in my despair but it was in the rising up, pursuing Him through prayer, worship, and meditation upon the Word, that Hope changed me.

Hope renews, and I’m also learning that it’s a daily renewal. Hope yesterday was for that day. Today? I need it fresh. Because sometimes, I still hear a graceless word and want to crawl in a cave and am overcome by fear and mistrust.

As Vincent McNabb, Irish scholar and priest, once said, “Hope is some extraordinary spiritual grace that God gives us to control our fears, not to oust them.” I pray daily for that special grace to have Hope for the day, for new wings and fresh feet.

{A very special thanks to Anita at Dreaming Beneath the Spires who first invited me to write on this topic.}

And sharing today with Ann at A Holy Experience, as she also explores Hope.

Technorati Tags: faith, God, Hope, Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength

A few of my photographs…this first one, such a sweet little duckling, and such a sad story! My dear friend Linda, my country neighbor…her little son called me up several weeks ago, entreating us all to come and see! the baby ducks had been born! We all just oohed and ahed at the darlings, hiding there under the mama. It was hot, and a tray of water had been set out for them to wade in. Somehow, no one quite knows how, every one of the six ducklings drowned two days after this picture. I’ll frame this for Linda.

This old fence, like any other country fence, its splintered wood and barbed wire marking a boundary, just captured me. Who twisted those wires way back before rust took hold? What was this barrier keeping in or keeping out?

Did you grow up looking forward to the fair? For me it was the Cochise County Fair in Douglas, Arizona when I was very young. You must know about the cotton candy, cowboy hats and rodeo, happy music, dizzying rides, the earthy smell of livestock, colorful people? Oh, I loved it, and also that long, quiet ride home, all exhausted from that spun out endless day, sleepy eyes on the black sky with twinkling stars, one with my name, and if I turned my head back I could still see the fireworks exploding against that great dark canopy above.

My last year there, I brought my 4-H lamb. There under the bluest sky with those classic Arizona clouds, little white puffs that went on forever, I washed my lamb in the livestock pen, preparing for a final shear, adding to those little white puffs above. This was a market lamb, and this was time for goodbye, a goodbye to daily feedings, walkings, worrying about weight, wool, and bracing a lamb. I remembered when I chose this one, there at Diane’s place down the dusty road from me, and I had the last pick since I drew the shortest straw, but this was the best lamb for me, even though he escaped more than once to explore the tumbleweeds.

My kids didn’t have animals to show this year, but perhaps next time. We submitted photographs, carvings, crafts, paintings, and joined the community of people that have been gathering for a century to show the best of their harvest and hands.

Luke won a blue ribbon for his angry-browed, scar-faced, Victorian button-eyed bear.

Josie won a second-place ribbon for her watercolor of a glass bottle. I was glad the judges overlooked the potential awkwardness of an eight-year-old painting a wine bottle, but she just loved the design on the label.

Levi’s soap carving was fun, another second place. After learning how to do this at school, we spent a terrific summer day at the table slipping about in soap shavings, all the children armed with butter knives and Ivory, and Levi was the only one who could master this art. I remembered him telling his teacher, “I didn’t know I could do this.”

Then there were the “crazy critters”–those healthy creatures carved from our very food, the cucumber shark, the apple swan, and the potato porcupine.

Until next year, my fair friends.

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood, Cochise County Fair, country life, Deschutes County Fair, food art, photography

The potbellied raindrops came thundering down, the cat hid under the bed, the dog barked at the booms, the kids danced all silly out there under umbrellas, and I was in awe. Don’t you love a good storm?

The voice of the Lord is over the waters; the God of glory thunders. ~Psalm 29:3

It was rolling out there last night and I couldn’t take my eyes off the yellow hue of the sky, the light spectrum showing off a new reflection. Now, yellow can have a lowly meaning, as in a yellow-bellied coward. But did you know that a pure, bright yellow is the easiest color to see and that some people blind to other colors can usually still see yellow? And yellow can also symbolize wisdom, intelligence, joy, creativity, and of course energy, as in the powerful energy source of the sun. Have you seen yellow after a storm?

It’s His glory I hear in every rumble and His splendor I see in every strike of light. I do feel small at times like these, and wonder who am I that you are mindful of me?

And then, suddenly, the sun broke through! If only you could have seen through the new lens that flipped, creating vivid, high-contrast shadows thrown long from the junipers, you’d beam and be in awe, too. Thunder still pealed in the distance, echoing a reminder from a far corridor that God’s voice thunders in marvelous ways and he does great things beyond our understanding (Job 37:5).

Luke found a puddle in the midst of this, as all children do, his toes squishing the sticky earth as delighted as a rhino taking a mud bath, while rain pelted his enormous maroon and white umbrella, magnifying the sound of every drop to the decibel of a cannon. I did the same as a child, and would have wondered at any kid in my desert who didn’t like to jump puddles with face in the rain.

Why is this so, this irresistible draw to these pools in the mud? Maybe we’re born to love this, some wild sense of freedom and power, and weren’t we born of the dirt anyway? That day when God scooped up a handful of soil from the ground, it must have been wet and moist, for in those days before the rain the water came from the depths. We all desire to know where we come from, and this was the beginning.

And could it be there’s a sense in this small puddle of the child feeling so big it’s like walking on water? That’s what Jesus did in a storm–He walked on water, so I suppose it’s natural for us to long for the same.

Today, there’s no trace of the storm. It fled fast across mountains and plains for new encounters, and I’m left with the reverberations in my head, and continued pondering of His displays of power. As Psalm 29 ends, after a vivid description of God in the storms, we’re told that “the Lord blesses his people with peace.”

Peace to you~I love that it ends with peace.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~41-50}:

::thunderstorms::best friends::visiting sisters::tennis with child and grandma::chess with a friend::wildflowers picked for me::great coaches::boys learning football::catching crawdads::river play::

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood, counting blessings, country life, faith, family life, God, Psalm 29, puddles, thunderstorms

The Day of Sewing was like magic, this enchanted day where sisters weren’t fighting, arms were for hugging, and needles were only for making something beautiful. It started the day before with a teenage babysitter who completely showed me up–and showed us a way toward love and bears.

While my husband and I were out dining with old friends in a nearby town, the four children were left in the care of Abby, an able young girl who turned out to be more capable and skilled than I could have imagined. She was brave to take on the four kids and the grandmother who couldn’t remember names, dates, or pills, and little did she know she’d also be threading bobbins and teaching backstitching before the night was over.

The sewing machine had sadly been consigned to the corner of my closet for a number of years, me too lazy to figure out why it wouldn’t stitch, and perhaps ungrateful for this thoughtful gift from my husband from a birthday past. The girls hauled it out when Abby came, their hopeful eyes begging the question, “Can you make it work?”

“It just so happens I can,” was the happy reply.

And so I came home to a mess of fabric scraps spilled across the walnut floor, machine whirring and bears stuffed with the most cheerful of hands. “Look, Mama! A teddy!” shrieked Luke as he thrust a skinny blue bear with white stuffing leaking from all sides toward my chest.

The hour was late, the entire floor was swept into the oversized old red gift bag, and kids were soon ushered to bed. The miracle that unfolded the following day was bigger than all this.

I left for an early doctor’s appointment the next morning, kids still in bed with my husband in command. Yet savoring the joy of the previous night, I had no thoughts of how the remnants of all that would sweetly hem in around the four.

The Day of Sewing was in full swing when I cracked the door after my doctor visit. Both boys, both girls, all busy with patterns, cutting, sewing, stuffing. Their ages stack up at 6, 8, 10, 12, and they all stitched together with no attention paid to numbers or genders. I didn’t even need to convince the oldest boy that sewing was cool, and I had a great story ready, even.

I told him about how the younger kids went on a field trip to the smoke-jumpers unit, and how they have a sewing room there because all the manly firemen who jump out of airplanes made their own uniforms there, their broad fingers running industrial machines for every task from a delicate parachute repair to building a thick pair of fire-resistant pants.

The morning scene in my living room, that frenzy of strips of cloth and bolts of color and stitches whipping, was all about creation and reconciliation.

My older girl can have a sharp tongue that pierces little hearts and my constant reminder to her about tone, words, kindness, seems nagging. She has some repair work to do (and don’t I, too), especially with her little sister. Josie loves dresses, and Jaime, not so much. But I watched as Jaime fitted the fabric for Jo, carefully considering what style her sister wanted, and the patience, oh the patience! It was redeeming.

Stitch by stitch, their souls were being connected. Jaime held the fabric tight against Josie’s back, and her “Keep still, Jo,” hit just the right note of a big sister intent on being helpful and Josie received it with love.

“Can I please wear this to town?” Josie pleaded. “No, it’s not done yet, you can wear it Sunday.” I was thrilled; she felt like Cinderella and Jaime was the fairy god-mother. It was shortly after this scene that the girls appeared in their matching t-shirts and pants.

For the boys, I suppose anything involving a power-operated machine is enticing. Both made bears, pillows, pouches, and other oddities. Luke entered his Victorian-button-eyed sky blue bear in the upcoming county fair in the 6 and under division, and is prouder than a haute couture designer.

The Day of Sewing was literally an all day activity, and something of His restoration was threading through the fabric of this family. Now I’m off to buy more sewing notions for the ravenous seamstresses and seamsters.

{Thank you to Abby, who began to unravel it all.}

The Practice of Love
.

Technorati Tags: art, childhood, faith, family life, dressmaking, sewing

The brothers ran together, again together. These grown men with children of their own who now run together, up at the crack of dawn to reconnect the joy of boyhood that’s always down in the heart somewhere.

We had watched the old home movies the night before, those captured bites of colored motion and time, my husband and his brothers as playful little boys in snowball fights and splashing wars and games with Grandpa.

I heard the small clatter in the kitchen at 5:30 a.m. as the brothers stole a mini-breakfast before heading over to Smith Rock for the sunrise run with several hundred other brave early rising runners. I wanted to go, to see it myself and snap that photo at the finish line. But it was more than the early hour that kept me home. This moment was just for the brotherhood, this triangulation of boys that makes its own unique folk sound just like that metal instrument that sings when touched with the wand. The triangle can always beat the call to dinner later.

Back home with stretched legs and aching calves, I saw the boys happy and accomplished and fulfilled. Next year at Smith Rock can be the call. Shouldn’t we all run this race together?

After the run, we all, the brothers and families, headed out for a day full of fishing, swimming, sunning, and barbecue. The brothers’ children then had splashing wars and mudball fights and silly games at the lake.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~#31-40}:

::brothers running in the early morning::racing numbers::catching little bass and throwing them back::home movies 40 years old::the good family memories::little boy making mud trails on shore::little girl building princess castle of same mud::playing with cousins::grilling burgers::blowing out candles on the cake::

Technorati Tags: childhood, counting blessings, country life, Central Oregon, faith, family life, Smith Rock, One Thousand Gifts

I hastily wiped my dripping hands on the red flowered towel hanging askew from the oven door and answered the commanding ring of the phone.

“Hi, this is Jasmine, can I talk to Jaime?” trilled the young voice, obviously experienced in phone-calling.

My kids aren’t phone-talkers yet, and at ten, I’m not ready for my daughter to jump into the world of wireless communication. After a brief hello, Jaime queried, “What did you call for?” because she’s not accustomed to this way, and surely one only calls if one has a question or certain purpose? Jasmine hesitated only a moment, it seemed, and I learned later she had phoned simply out of boredom.

“I just got done making toothpaste,” Jaime offered. I heard the confusion on the other end as one of our many family peculiarities was revealed. Jaime had come to me several days ago complaining that every time she brushed her teeth, her eyes were watery and stinging. “I must be allergic to toothpaste,” she surmised.

Being the independent, thinking person she is, Jaime set out on a quest to discover a perfectly natural toothpaste that would leave her with clean teeth and clear eyes. Tom’s of Maine seemed to give rise to no problems, so I suggested she make a list of every ingredient in the standard Crest versus the Tom’s. What was Tom’s missing that the other had? She couldn’t figure it out. I was sure it was the sodium lauryl sulfate, but was surprised to see that the Tom’s of Maine variety she used actually did have that ingredient.

Coincidentally, The Toothpaste Millionaire by Jean Merrill was on my bookshelf at this moment, on loan from the library, and by the way, it’s a fantastic children’s book on entrepreneurship and business. Having read bits of it already, Jaime took it up again when I reminded her of a recipe the boy in the book used to make his toothpaste.

There followed the collection of various ingredients–mint and lavender from the garden, vanilla, cinnamon, flour, starch, and of course baking soda. She settled on a mint flavor, but only after much trial and spitting and because she didn’t want to take my advice right off the bat.

Jaime now has a small tupperware tub of sticky toothpaste next to her sink that she uses daily. She’s bugging me to take her to the camping section at the store to buy those reusable tubes. I’m so proud of her. She wants to sell it and make money, but I’ll tackle that problem another day. I do think I’ll let her call Jasmine on the phone so she can tell her all about her plan.

Technorati Tags: childhood, education, family life, The Toothpaste Millionaire, entrepreneurs

Not only had she stolen my heart, she set up a play-date for me. Her own money, her own kind heart, her…just her. She really melts me. A tear escaped later at Starbucks as she paid for my coffee, along with our friend Julia’s latté and her own hot cocoa, and I fought the strong urge to pay myself. No, I had to let her do this. This gift was hers to give and her eternal blessing.

::love letters from my children::dates with daughters::connections with sons::a faithful dog::a broken egg, found and treasured::Vacation Bible School::crème brûlée and the way it makes me all happy when seven little girls say it’s the best dessert ever and thank you for making it::friends who bless::so many good books::summer swims::counting my blessings today.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~#21-30}

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood, counting blessings, country life, One Thousand Gifts

::missing front teeth::sisters::learning to ride::a horse to love::finding expression for your passion::sketching by the lake because your grandma sketches and you’ve inherited her gift::being six and finding a butter knife washed up on shore, treasuring it like you’re in Ancient Egypt and you discovered a king’s tomb::reflections in the water::learning to sense which way the wind’s blowing::cat and dog curled side by side::counting my blessings today.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~#11-20}

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood, counting blessings, country life, family life, One Thousand Gifts

::freckles and big ears on my boy, and his home-made fishing pole::strawberries growing plump in my garden::noses buried in books::fish taco night::surprise meeting with an old friend::wildflowers thrust through the window for me by her small hands::their joy at discovering a quail’s nest::the bright blue butterfly that followed me around::frogs that let small girls catch them::picnic on the front lawn with all their little book club friends:: counting my blessings today.

{Counting One Thousand Gifts~#1-10}

Technorati Tags: childhood, counting blessings, country life, family life, One Thousand Gifts

{life}

{death}

{the breath of God}

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, country life, nature hike, nature study, Oregon wildflowers

If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines. ~Robert Brault

Technorati Tags: childhood, family life, Sahalie Falls, McKenzie River, Oregon hikes, nature hike

Standing in that room where I had longed for beauty, it was daylight and I looked about the mess and had ideas: I could conquer this! The rough wood I planned to paint a lovely blue, just like the French gate in Marseilles. And curtains! With lovely ruffles! Cupboards could neatly enclose the old open-faced shelves nailed to the wall and much could be done for beauty. I was not afraid.

Then the most curious thing. I looked below me through an opening in the floor, and kneeling with utter surprise discovered another dwelling of such beauty and majesty–fine marbled floors, a stately curving staircase leading to greater rooms and even an indoor pool. (Or was it utter surprise? Dreams are so difficult to gauge, that realm where even the most bizarre is not astonishing.)

Why was I living in this shack when under my very feet was a mansion?

Nearly as soon as my eyes took in the beauty of those impressive quarters, I heard a wind gaining strength in the distance, knowing instinctively the gales were headed my way. Suddenly, the door to the mansion below flew open and I was filled with old terror. There at the doorstep lay a girl, a waif, as if blown in by the east wind. Was this a picture of myself, was I afraid of entering into the beauty? Fear and beauty cannot live together, just as disorder and beauty cannot.

The girl stood up, revealing a pack on her back. The knap-sacked stray with long straight brown locks, unkempt with the wind, walked almost defiantly into the entry of the great mansion, and I was afraid, feeling that she did not belong here, threatened by her very presence. Was she a symbol of every fear that threatens to undo me, a whole suitcase full of anxiety?

Just today I had another perspective. I may be living in a mansion but not really living. I may have at my disposal all the riches of Heaven and be ignoring them, or just peering at them through the cracks, perhaps relegating myself to a corner. Why, oh why, would a child of God behave this way?

Such thoughts found home in me today as I walked into the guest room of my real-life house, now clean. But this room had sat a mess for months, a living specter of misorder within a mansion. Not until yesterday when the floors were cleared of shambles and every carpet tuft free of box and burden did I understand: if I exercise discipline and look closely at what I already have, I may discover that I am indeed equipped for every good work.

And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 2 Corinithians 9:8

I’m growing in strength and beauty, but still I journey, and have miles to go before I sleep.

********

My Reflection in the Dirty Pane Glass, Part 1

Technorati Tags: childhood, dreams, faith, family life, God

When nightfall turned windows into mirrors, I used to look into one of the dusty old frames on the east wall and stare hard, willing the glass to produce a beautiful me, praying to God to let me see myself as I would someday be; beautiful.

The night-darkened window cast back a grainy romantic picture, and waved by the layers of dirt and oil, I could imagine in the shadows. I imagined a beautiful, grown-up girl in a pretty house.

I had to call my sister to ask her if we had a mirror. I remembered a small, round one that my dad used for shaving, but Heather would know the details. Yes, we had a mirror, she said. It was as I thought except I hadn’t considered that my chest would tighten and my breath catch as I tried to remember. The east wall, why was I standing there, what job was to be done along that wall? Nothing, Heather said, it was a tiny space between the front door and the refrigerator and I would have had to stand on my tiptoes to see myself in the window, but I must have done it many times, this I do remember. I did have a job in that cramped spot, that of baring my heart to God begging for beauty.

The prayers to be beautiful were constant. Poverty can feel ugly, and I felt the depths of it. I remember the day in Sunday School when the teacher asked us children to raise a hand if we knew someone more poor than ourselves. Apparently we were to pray for that unfortunate soul. I knew no one with less than myself, but raised my hand anyway, thinking that maybe the Cartmells had it worse but knowing deep they really didn’t, not missing the furtive glances my way. Why would a teacher ask such a thing? And there was my teacher at the elementary school who went round the class after Christmas asking each child to share what he received. I lied and made up gifts and everyone knew I lied. I vowed to never ask a child that question.

I could have been a child-leper, calling out ahead in a thin voice of shame, “Unclean, unclean.” Our shack made of corrugated iron and rough wood, dirt thick on the floor, a crude hole in the floor with a pipe for water serving as sink, and always undone~this, this was my shame and ugliness.

Long I’ve considered my childhood but just now have discovered something. What frightful thing I couldn’t put my finger on I’ve now marked. It wasn’t just that we lived in extreme poverty, that my mom was unstable, that my dad was the town drunk, neglectful and abusive, though these are frightful things. It was the disorder and the chaos and the filth.

Always dirty clothes, dirty dishes, junk strewn about, boxes stacked with items long-forgotten by all but the mice, piles of old construction materials in the side room anchored in the dirt, and how could I have ever expected to feel beautiful? Being raised in such a chaotic mess I wore it every day as my garment and I felt ugly.

I was haunted for years after I left my home in Arizona, too afraid to look deeply for the reason, afraid my memory was hiding something sinister. I was terrorized at night in my dreams and it was always that place, the mess, the demons of disorder that thrashed to get me. The nightmares were me as child straining under shame to make order and quickly present an unsullied home to a soon approaching visitor. Never was that mission accomplished before I woke in a black panic.

Beauty is ordered by God. I longed for it like the deer pants for water. It was not my vanity. God set the universe in order, and the stars that sailed bright by my window each night were exactly in their place, and the sun followed his path across the sky in a manifest pattern as if on some invisible line, and absolutely everything in all creation is meant to be ordered and this is beauty.

Thus says the Lord, who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; the Lord of hosts is His name: “If this fixed order departs from before Me,” declares the Lord, “then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before Me forever.” Jeremiah 31:35-36

I’ve heard several people throughout my life share of growing up in poverty but never quite knowing how poor they really were. The common thread was that without exception these people came from loving families where there was a rhythm to life that included breakfast, lunch, and dinner, evening family time, whatever kind of order that particular family possessed. Their clothes were clean even if threadbare and simple, their tummies were filled even if with rice and beans every day. And that is beautiful.

I’m so grateful for the Arizona desert. Were it not for the mountains He called up, the stars He appointed to their place, the surety of the rising and the setting of the sun, the rhythm of seasons, I would have had no order and no beauty. I cannot express the comfort of seeing stars align into the Big and Little Dippers and Orion’s Belt, without fail. Though no trace of order could be found inside that rundown shack on Havasu Way in Cochise County, Arizona, all the beauty and sequence of the universe was beckoning me from outside–and so I lived outside as much as possible.

God answered my prayer. He eventually took me out of that place, and through a journey too much to recount, I’m a beautiful, grown-up girl in a pretty house, more beautiful than I could have imagined in that darkened window. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” These words from 1 Corinthians 13:12 are doubly meaningful.

Though He is far from done with me, God is steadily teaching me how to carefully arrange my home and my family life, and I am called to teach my children so they too can find beauty in the order, and whether rich or poor in dollars, they will be rich in beauty.

To appoint to them that mourn in Zion, to give to them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. Isaiah 61:3

[My new home full of light and love and laughter; and yes, that is my old home at the beginning of this post.]

{to be continued…I will share a most curious dream I had after I began this post last week.}

Technorati Tags: beauty, childhood, faith, family life, reflections

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn opens with Rat and Mole setting off at night down river to search for Little Portly, the misadventurous and now missing young son of Otter. Presently, with dawn approaching, Rat becomes entranced by a distant, clear piping.

O, Mole! the beauty of it! The merry bubble and joy, the thin, clear, happy call of the distant piping! Such music I never dreamed of, and the call in it is stronger even than the music is sweet! Row on Mole, row! For the music and call must be for us.

The call? I bring to the reading of The Piper all that I believe, and while the god Pan is pure pagan myth, I extract the goodness, for every good thing comes from God. And so I hear the call as from Him who created all things, and even His creation calls out to us.

You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. Isaiah 55:12

Rat and Mole continue on until they come to a small island fringed with willow and silver birch and alder, and it is here, whispers Rat, “in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him.” And find Him they do, and what a glorious picture of what it may be like to stand before God in all his holiness.

Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror–indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy–but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend. and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.

When finally the pair have the courage to raise their heads, they see a creature described clearly as that ancient demigod with the pipes, the legs and horns of a goat, that god of shepherds and flocks, of mountain wilds and music. And they call him Friend and Helper, and there sleeping beneath his watch is the round little otter. Then Mole and Rat, breathless and filled with love, “bowed their heads and did worship.”

Did you see our Friend, Jesus?

Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. John 15:12

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. John 15:13

Did you see our Helper?

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. John 14:26

The Vision vanished and then Mole and Rat and even Little Portly forget. The gift of forgetfulness was bestowed upon them, lest they dwell only on that most beautiful moment, the memory of it overshadowing all the rest of life and spoiling it. Even this was familiar to me, and I thought of Jesus transfigured.

The account described in the gospels (Matthew 17:1-13, Luke 9:18-36) comes to mind, in which Christ reveals his glory to some of his disciples, and Moses and Elijah appear. Peter reminds me here of Grahame’s Rat in his request that Jesus allow him to put up shelters there on the mountain for them–he clearly never wants this out-of-the-world experience to end! But it must. It’s not an earthly possibility to live as if in Heaven. We must wait, lest our world lose all color and purpose.

There are times for not forgetting, to be sure. Israel is warned again and again to not forget the goodness of the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:11, Psalm 78:11). But the point I draw here in The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is that it’s impossible to look upon the full glory of the Lord and remain there until we ourselves are glorified in that eternal state. (Romans 8:17-19). Paul says that God “dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see.” (I Timothy 6:16.)

Have you ever woken from a beautiful dream only to forget it? Have you grasped a deepest truth only to lose it? The Piper at the Gates of Dawn ends this way. Rat has finally understood it all and is about to share it with the wondering Mole.

Ah! now they return again, and this time full and clear! This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing, simple–passionate–perfect—-’

`Well, let’s have it, then,’ said the Mole, after he had waited patiently for a few minutes, half-dozing in the hot sun.

But no answer came. He looked, and understood the silence. With a smile of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep.

After I read the chapter to the children, I asked them about the piping creature. “He’s like God,” and “He’s like Aslan,” were some responses. Though C.S. Lewis’ Aslan is so much more developed and clearly a Christ-type, Graham’s piper is still so revealing of the character of God, and, to borrow Rat’s words, it was very surprising and splendid and beautiful.

Technorati Tags: The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

82 it was this year. The six-year-old had to help her blow out the candles. She ate four pieces of cake, only because each time I offered a new piece she had forgotten already about the previous piece and her stomach hadn’t yet caught up. S’pose that wasn’t nice of me. (It really wasn’t out of spite, she just awfully seemed to want more cake).

Sometimes I’m angry. Uncle Doug wrote her a letter which she received yesterday. It was a birthday card that he’d misaddressed so it came late. She was already confused about that when her eye fell upon the sticker. For his return address Uncle Doug used one of those free labels that Some Charity sent in hopes of procuring a donation. It had his legal first name Basil on the label because who knows from what list direct mail marketers got his name.

So my mom says, Oh, I see that Doug is now going by the name Basil. I wonder what he’d like me to call him. Jenny, should I start calling him Basil? No attention paid to his personal signature of Doug on the birthday card, or perchance to the fact that he has always and only in his whole 84 years gone by Doug or Douglas.

Despite numerous, dreadfully numerous, attempts to explain that Some Charity doesn’t really know Uncle Doug and he just uses the free address labels because he’s frugal and that obviously he would have let her know if he changed his name, my mom insisted that he must have, for there it was on the sticker. And *I* was the one who was crazy for not thinking so, too. Yes, I lowered myself in my frustration to saying, You Are Crazy to think that.

I maintain a multi-generational family and do struggle along with millions of other “sandwich generation” folks in the raising of my own young children while caring for an aging parent. I just read a statistic from Pew Research Center that 1 in every 8 Americans aged 40 to 60 is doing this. This is what happens when people live longer and start families later.

Sometimes I feel every warning sign they tell caregivers about: burnout, anxiety, anger, fatigue, depression. Sometimes I laugh and feel doubly blessed. It depends on the day. I thank God for my husband who has the most amazing sense of humor about it all, and willingly shares his castle.

Because my mom has lived with us since our oldest (11) was an infant, this lifestyle is all my children know. I’m glad for that. Nothing was disrupted in their life by suddenly having Grandma move in. It was always this way and this is just what you do. My kids had a conversation in the back seat of the car one day about who would take care of mom when she was old. I was so stinking proud of them for coming up with a plan for my old age that included each one of them hosting me in a rotating fashion. Of course we all know it will be JoJo who takes care of me. She decided that when she was six.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

James 1:27 says this, and yes, I comfort in these words not because I feel so self-righteous, believe me, I don’t, but because I need to know that we care for those in need because we are commanded to do so, it’s biblical. On hard days, it really helps to have that to lean into, lest I be tempted to fold. Speaking of fold, my mom is really good at folding laundry. Of course there is absolutely no guarantee about in which drawer clothing will end up, and I just realized that explains my son wearing my husband’s running underwear as shorts. It’s all part of the sandwich and sometimes the lettuce is wilted but you eat it anyway and it still nourishes you.

~~~~~~~~

She Speaks Conference, July 22-24: women connecting the hearts of women to our Father. If, like me, you feel called to serve the Lord through ministry to other women, whether it’s speaking, writing, or mentoring, please check out this.

A Holy Experience is offering a scholarship to the She Speaks conference, a Proverbs 31 Ministries event, held in Concord, North Carolina on July 22-24, 2011. Click here for instructions on how to apply.

Technorati Tags: alzheimers, dementia, elder care, sandwich generation

But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Revelation 2:4

Start there.

*UPDATE*
Dear readers, I apologize for the lack of body here! I meant to post something with depth but coming off strep throat/exhaustion, that’s about all I could say for today.

But I do believe the best place to begin on this issue of reconnecting to your lost loves is to recognize that you left or wandered, and to confess that to the Lord and let His spirit bring you back.

This verse in Revelations is from a letter written to a church that had done many things right and well, but they had also done this one grievous thing: left their first love, that first passionate love of a new believer in Christ.

How to get back there, whether it’s to the love of God, spouse, or a leisure pursuit, involves taking inventory, like those letters in Revelations do so well, acknowledging the successes as well as the failures, and developing an intentional plan to get back on track.

Journal your plan and find a way to have accountability. Let a trusted friend in on your desire to return to your first love and say, “hey, hold me responsible!” If we are talking about your relationship with God or your spouse, returning to your first love is beyond critical, so take every last measure conceivable to rekindle the romance.

This process will involve much grace, a lot of humility, learning to forgive both yourself and others, and perhaps more effort than you think is humanly possible. And speaking of humanly possible, this isn’t. The only being that can bring something dead back to life is God himself. Call upon Him, and He will answer.

{Parts of this post were previously published here at Diary of 1 on April 6, 2008.}

Planning, planting, nurturing, enjoying the beauty and the bounty~there are so many facets to a child’s gardening experience that makes planting a garden one of the most treasured gifts you can give your child.

You should have no trouble in getting a child to garden with you. No surprise, children are drawn to dirt like nothing else! You mean you want me to dig holes? I’m allowed to get filthy and mucky? To direct that childish energy and wonder into a productive endeavor like a garden is not only wise on the part of the parent, it’s a lifelong blessing to both of you.

JoJo spent several hours some time ago with her pint-sized rake and shovel. I was working on the main garden area while she staked out a spot of her own. The other children were doing likewise. I hesitated a moment when suddenly all the kids wanted their own garden space in addition to the main garden. Was this okay? Would I be teaching them to be selfish and look out only for themselves?

I ended up deciding that the sense of community and family in the main garden would not at all be diminished by each child’s ownership in their own scratch of earth. In fact, it would probably deepen their respect for the family garden, knowing the responsibility and effort their own gardens required.

I found a wonderful book to guide me through some activities to do in the garden with children. It’s called Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: gardening together with children, by Sharon Lovejoy. The book covers not only the basics of how to plan, plant, and care for your garden, but the top 20 plants for kids, theme garden ideas, and many little bits of garden wisdom.

I would say that my first tip for gardening with children is to involve them in every decision. Where should we put the garden? Is this spot too shady or too sunny? This area is nice and level, but we’ll have to dig up some rocks, is that okay? What shape do we want the garden to be? What should we plant that will thrive in our region? Let’s test the soil and decide what supplements we may need. All of the issues that arise in the planning of the garden are incredible teaching tools, and there’s no better way for your kids to really understand the complexity – and joy – of it all than to walk through it with you step by step. And the sense of ownership will be there from the start – the greatest motivator I know. I never have to twist their arms to go work on the garden.

Here are the top 20 plants for children to grow. This list comes from Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots, based on the fact they are proven winners:

They have personality, fragrance, texture, and color — vibrant color. They grow quickly — something kids need in response to their work. And they’re versatile; they can be used as jewelry, toys, clothes, musical instruments, and household utensils.

1. Pumpkins
2. Sunflowers
3. Gourds
4. Corn
5. Berries
6. Hollyhocks
7. Carrots
8. Mimosa
9. Poppies
10. Tomatoes
11. Trees
12. Alliums
13. Potatoes
14. Woolly Lamb’s Ear
15. Four-O’Clocks
16. Evening Primroses
17. Radishes
18. Nasturtium
19. Moon Plant
20. Lemon Verbena

Do keep in mind your climate – some of these will fare better than others depending on where you live. In Central Oregon, for example, root crops like potatoes and carrots grow well with our short growing season and cool nights; but for some vegetables like corn or tomatoes, a short-season variety is a must for your plant to mature.

Theme gardens can be a joy for children, and I’ll highlight just one of the themes from Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: the pizza patch.

The Pizza Patch: gardening in the round is sure to delight children who are used to seeing a straight-row vegetable garden. This pizza patch garden is a giant sized six-foot-wide wheel shaped plot, divided into seven great wedges and edged with a thick rock crust. Ms. Lovejoy suggests the following ingredients for your pizza patch garden, but you can add other favorites as well:

3 seedlings plum tomatoes
6 seedlings cherry tomatoes
3 seedlings small eggplants
3 seedlings bell peppers
1 seedling zucchini
1 seedling rosemary
3 seedlings oregano
3 seedlings basil
3 seedlings onions
3 seedlings garlic
6 seedlings “Lemon Gem” marigolds
6 seedlings “Kablouna” Calendulas
Aged, bagged manure

To begin this project, select a flat 10×10 foot plot of ground that gets at least 6 hours of sun a day. Place a stake in the center of the area, and tie a 3-foot string to it. Your child can take hold of the very end of the string and walk in a circle, while another child walks behind with a hoe to mark what will be the outer boundary of the garden bed.

Divide the garden into slices: mark spots at 32 inch intervals along the outer edge. Draw a line with a stick from each of the seven marks to the center stake, to denote the seven slices. Then place rocks along those lines for a permanent boundary, and you can remove the center stake.

Place the five tall vegetables in each of the five slices on the northern side of the wheel – the plum tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, and zucchini. In a slice on the south side, plant the herbs, onions, and garlic. Set aside one slice to be the pathway for the little feet tending the garden. The bright gold marigolds and Calendulas can be filled in around the vegetables and herbs, the “cheese” of the pizza.

To plant each slice, start from the center and work your way out. Plant tomatoes, eggplants, bell peppers, and zucchini 12-18 inches apart. In the small herb slice, space them 6 inches apart from the onions and garlic. The flowers are scattered throughout each slice, but allow 3 inches between them and other plants.

When harvest time comes, you can throw a big pizza party with toppings straight from the garden!

You can find more fabulous garden ideas and activities to do with children, such as a sunflower house, container gardens, and a moon garden, in Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots.

Don’t forget to teach your children about the use and care of gardening equipment, about watering requirements for various plants, and about safe weed/pest control. You can also measure plants, make growth predictions, learn about pollination, visit with a master gardener…the opportunities in a garden are endless. Mostly, just have fun!

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, family life, gardening with children, high desert, outdoor education, planting

{If you read to the end of this very long post, you’ll see our daily schedule, and that despite the seemingly rigorous routine, we have a ton of fun!}

Monday through Thursday we follow a very structured program, with every half-hour increment planned carefully and little time wasted. Friday is a no-school day, reserved for field trips, outings, family time. This type of co-op is not for everyone, but I’d love to share how we do it, because depending on your goals for educating, it just might work for you.

A homeschool cooperative is a group of families who choose to work together on a consistent basis in the educating of their children, a “mini-school” of sorts. Some co-ops meet once a week, some once a month, and in my case, every day, with each child having one or two others working at their same level.

But first, why co-op? I’ll give you my goals, though there are many more out there that are equally valid. I’ve homeschooled solo in the past, just me and my kids. That was a great season, and rather laid-back without the intense structure under which I currently operate. But my needs have changed and this season calls for
1) efficiency, 2) accountability, and 3) positive social pressure.

Regarding efficiency, I had to be honest about my many obligations. I have another job that consumes quite a bit of time, and streamlining is critical for me. Afternoons require a free block of time to work on the business I run with my husband, and though I work from home, I can’t, in fairness to my kids, have my work constantly interrupting their education. Those dedicated blocks of time are vital to our overall family productivity.

Why couldn’t I just be efficient on my own? First, more teacher-parents means the same number of teaching hours yields a multiplied teaching time with the other teachers than on my own. The first grader learns to read during the same period the second grader is taught to write, impossible on my own (at the same time) with the level of care I want. Co-oping lets me leverage time. Second, there is the matter of accountability, addressed below–would I be efficient without a structure forced upon me?

Accountability was an issue I had to candidly face. I’m prone to procrastination and distraction, and without those little hands knocking on my door by 7:20 a.m., I can assure you I wouldn’t always be dressed and ready to tackle all that a day holds in the life of a busy homeschooling/business-woman mother and wife. I’m willing to share my house, give up some privacy, and add to the wear and tear around here, to ensure that rain or shine, we do school.

I believe in the discipline the children are presented with, the order that follows, the resulting self-regulation that begins to take hold. I lose some flexibility, a Holy Grail to many homeschool parents. If I don’t feel like doing school, or my kids want a day off, or there’s an enticing rabbit trail to follow, it’s too bad, the others are showing up. But really, when you look at how much free time we have compared to regular-school counterparts, it’s a small sacrifice.

Positive social pressure is the last goal I’ll discuss. I wanted an education model that included daily work with peers. Not a once-a-week or monthly interaction, but day-in, day-out. I’m not wanting public school, but I am wanting to meet my kids’ spoken wishes for friends to work with and my own desires for them to experience a healthy social pressure.

Friendly competition is a marvelous thing for pushing a child to their best limits. Iron sharpens iron, and for our little co-op, the small sparks that fly tell me that we are helping to work out each other’s character, we are showing the other a different way to think, we are growing together more than we would alone.

What does my schedule look like? It’s changed throughout the year slightly, as one of the moms had a baby and is now homeschooling at home, so we currently have six kids here each day instead of nine. But, here is what we started with, four families hoping for the best education for their children. You’ll see that the students range from K/1st to 4th grade, we cover all the core subjects, and each mom has the opportunity to teach her own child throughout the sessions. (The moms are called “J,” “K,” and “L,” since that’s what each of our names begins with.)

Our Homeschool Co-Op Schedule

7:30-8:00

J teaches Abeka 1st grade phonics lessons to the K/1st kids
K teaches Abeka 2nd gr. phonics lessons to 2nd level kids
L teaches First Language Lessons to the 2nd/3rd level kids
Independent: 4th grade does independent reading of chapter books

8:00-8:30

J teaches Five in Row and First Language Lessons to K/1st
Independent: 2nd level kids do Abeka 2nd grade cursive handwriting practice
K teaches Writing with Ease Level 3 to the 2nd/3rd level kids
L teaches Writing with Ease Level 4 to the 4th graders

8:30-9:00

J gets K/1 started with Abeka 1st grade cursive handwriting
L teaches literature to 2nd grade with various chapter books
K teaches Writing with Ease Level 3 to 2nd/3rd level kids
J moves from K/1 to begin teaching First Language Lessons Level 4 to 4th graders
[note--on Mondays, this time slot is devoted to a Baking Class run by K]

9:00-9:15

Kids take a snack break– our early start gives us very hungry kids by 9 a.m.

9:15-9:45

K teaches Abeka 1st grade Spelling to the K/1st kids
J teaches Abeka 2nd grade Spelling to the 2nd and the 2nd/3rd level kids
L teaches Abeka 4th grade Spelling to the 4th graders

9:45-10:45

L teaches Singapore Math 1A to the K/1st kids (they go til 10:15 only, as they need an extra break)
J teaches dual classes of Singapore Math 2A to the 2nd level kids, and Singapore Math 2B to the 2nd/3rd level kids; a lot of back and forth between groups.
K teaches Singapore Math 4A to the 4th grade kids

10:45-11:00

Kids take an outside break–riding bikes, digging in the dirt, playing with the kittens, etc.

11:00-12:00

J teaches History to all kids: Story of the World, vol. 2, Middle Ages on Monday/Wednesday
K teaches Science to all kids: Apologia, Exploring Creation with Botany on Tuesday/Thursday
[note--an art teacher comes every other Monday during this time slot]

And that’s the end of our school day! We do assign homework every day. Always reading, and a small amount of spelling and math. One of the moms has been good about helping us schedule field trips with other homeschool families. We’re planning a trip to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland in March. And the final quarter of school will see us taking a break from Story of the World to do an Oregon Trail unit, culminating with an overnight trip to Baker City, Oregon to visit the Oregon Trail Museum and surrounding area.

We took time off from Botany during the cold winter months to do a human body study, and built our very own bodies as we studied each organ!

Links to the curriculum I use:

Abeka phonics, spelling, handwriting
Five in a Row
First Language Lessons
Writing with Ease
Singapore Math
Apologia Science
Story of the World History

Lists of chapter books each level has read so far this school year (and wrote reports, created posters or other visuals for, and presented before all the students):

2nd grade
Frog and Toad are Friends by Arnold Lobel
Frog and Toad Together by Arnold Lobel
Frog and Toad All Year by Arnold Lobel
Owl at Home by Arnold Lobel
Sarah Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
Minstrel in the Tower by Gloria Skurzynski
The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Moffats by Eleanor Estes

2nd/3rd level
They read some of the above and also:
Ramona’s Father by Beverly Cleary
Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry
Heart of a Shepherd by Roseann Parry

4th grade
Old Yeller by Fred Gipson
Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman by Dorothy Sterling
Turn Homeward Hannalee by Patricia Beatty
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
The Perilous Road by William O. Steele
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
The Swiss Family Robinson (unabridged) by Johann Wyss

Yes, that is a lot of reading! These particular kids are generally great readers, and we do expect a lot in the way of good literature. This heavy of a reading schedule may not work for every child, but if it does, don’t miss the window of opportunity! A few of the kids got through books they were struggling with by having a parent co-read with them or listening to parts of the book on audio CD.

A P.S. on pitfalls–True, a lot can go wrong with a homeschool co-op. I’m sure some of you have horror stories. Here’s a short list of some red flags to watch for as you consider whether you’d want to commit to something like this.

Having different goals.
Not being willing to compromise on curriculum, schedules, discipline, or pace.
Having differing student or teacher expectations.
Disagreements over the role of faith/biblical teaching in education.

P.S.S.–I don’t have time in this post to cover the many other benefits of a homeschool co-op, but want to quickly acknowledge that I love for my kids to learn from other teachers, to experience varying teaching styles and other parents’ areas of expertise. I so appreciate the daily fellowship with other moms, and I really adore all those kids!

How do you homeschool? Do you work with other families? Share your journey in the comments box!

Technorati Tags: education, homeschool co-op, homeschool curriculum, homeschool goals, homeschool schedule

…for chocolate truffles and coffee, dark as midnight and as smooth and strong as David’s stones, and particularly for the thoughtful hand that delivered the gift.

…for rib eye steak and a night in, and mostly for the request from him to cook a special gourmet dinner together in the kitchen. Who is this sophisticated man and where is the uncultured one I married? (wink)

…for a new refrigerator that doesn’t leak, doesn’t freeze the lettuce within two hours, doesn’t belong to another century, doesn’t open the wrong way, but does come with a message from above that says “I love you and I will bless you when you least expect it.”

…for my grandmother’s watch, newly discovered last week in a box of junk jewelry left to me twenty years ago, and for the ultimate surprise that it indeed works and is a beautiful piece of antique art, running a bit fast just like she used to.

…for gratitude, a gift in itself.

One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are by Ann Voskamp

A book review by Jen

One Thousand Gifts is the beginning, a game of sorts, to list one thousand things in life for which to be grateful. Ann Voskamp discovers that with each listing, her joy enlarges and she is soon addicted to the joy, in the very best of ways. It’s easy to dismiss this itemizing as an amusement for the immature, but as I began my own list, I chanced upon a switch.

• motherhood
• that breathtaking moment when I first saw Lake Huron, horizon melting into sky
• that perfect Labor Day at South Jetty in Florence, the warm sand, collection of seashells, children digging, laughing, running from waves
• encouragers
• dried desert mud that crackles under your bare child feet
• the park bench across from the White House in D.C. that supported my lonely, peaceful lunch breaks in ’93.
• music

The ticking of the thanks triggered something. It’s like when a circuit breaker trips in the house leaving you powerless and dark, only you don’t know where to find the electrical panel to reset it. This is it, my friends! It is the giving of thanks that corrects the problem that caused the breaker to trip in the first place. A ground fault is one reason why the power can go off, and Ann Voskamp identified the root cause of this fault: ingratitude. Breaker! Breaker! Let’s give thanks!

Ann scatters herself, her humanity, just right throughout this book, and I am left knowing that she is an authentic woman who has deep places of pain just like the rest of us. We learn of the death of her little sister, her mother’s mental illness, her own dark interior struggles. And so I connect, I engage, I truly learn.

I had shadows of doubt about Ann Voskamp at various points in OneThousand Gifts, but Ann is like that children’s word game where Grandma loves poundcake but hates chocolate cake, she loves Pringles but hates chips, and you have to know that Grandma’s secret is that she only loves things that begin with “P.”

So it is with Ann. She loves the Christian mystics but hates the idea of wisdom found outside of Christ; she loves to run with the moon and lie prostrate in fields but hates nature worship; she digs deep into her soul to share it raw with the world but hates narcissism. You have to know that Ann’s secret is that she is indeed a woman after God’s own heart.

I did come to a certain point in the book where I thought I couldn’t go on. Voskamp spends an entire chapter describing a bubble of soap, its shape, its color, its chemical composition, more of its color. It was the night I had hit the wall of exhaustion and emotional overload and my husband had to tuck my crying eyes into bed, pulling the patched quilt up over the worry, hurry, fear, condemnation, the crush of life that threatened to undo me, then he finished the dinner I had abruptly left and tended to the four children’s bedtime. And I’m supposed to draw comfort and wisdom from the sudsy bubbles?

I still don’t completely get it, but I understand that a writer has a certain style, and Ann Voskamp is a poet and I love words like she does, though we may play with them differently. So I will let her talk about suds in the sink all day long if she wants because in the end, I rose large the next morning, new grace upon me, and I remembered how much I loved bubbles as a child, the endless joy in swooshing the wand to create the perfect sphere to run after and chase with the wind, and the sheer delight in catching it before it burst into another dimension.

Here’s the thing. I am working really hard at this thing she calls eucharisteo–what Christians know as the Eucharist, or communion, the taking of the bread and wine. This charis grace, chara joy, eucharisteo thanksgiving. I’m working harder than I have in a very long time, because I have to or I will shrivel. There are some tools in this book to help this jumble of myself to begin to conquer life-smothering fear, to reach for a firm grip on His everlasting love for me, to give thanks in all things in such an unceasing way that the power is restored in this short-circuited woman.

A thousand thanks to Ann Voskamp for writing this book.

P.S. I want to know why the sows were losing their litters. A small complaint, but she never tells us.

P.S.S. Thank you, Ann, for ending in Paris, the place where God says, “Enjoy Me.”

Technorati Tags: Ann Voskamp, eucharisteo, faith, gratitude, One Thousand Gifts, thanksgiving

Someone we know is training for a triathlon, and upon reading the nutrition section of Joe Friel’s Triathlete’s Training Bible, he’s been requesting unusual amounts of brightly colored fruits and vegetables. What happened to my meat and potatoes man, his wife wondered? He’s still there, but make it lean, if you please.

Please enjoy this picture of me risking my digits to cut a fresh pineapple in honor of the health conscious athletes in my own family. And do look closely at the bowl, for each and every pomegranate aril was hard fought and I even had to do some research to learn how to de-seed this ancient fruit without ending up in an awful pulpy mess.

I’m actually having fun with with exotic fruits lately, and may have to expand beyond my small town grocer in search of things stranger and wilder. I have the idea that the more bizarre the fruit, the healthier it must be.

Here is my little boy’s idea of an Iron Man, versus that world famous triathlon called the Ironman. I do believe I would sooner suit up like him and be Iron Man versus do Ironman. But either way, it’s all good! And fruity. I’ll write to you from Kona someday.

Technorati Tags: Iron Man, pomegranate, spaghetti squash, triathlon training

On a totally superficial level, I love this time of year as well for the lingering effects of the Christmas gifts. I’m wearing the super cute handmade apron my husband gave me (Becky, you are amazing, it’s perfect!), feeling all officially housewife now. And I was under the influence of Rouge-Bleu for several days, amazed that my husband again surprised me by finding the one and only wine import I’ve ever asked for, made by my friends in the south of France. (Again, Becky, you came through on this as well–thanks to you and Brian for finding that wine shop). If you have never tried a really great French wine…the search ends here.

Back to my reflection and renewal, I just started a new Bible study by Nancy Leigh DeMoss called Seeking Him. It covers topics such as revival, humility, repentance, obedience, and grace. I’m looking forward to seeking Him this year.

Here’s wishing a Happy New Year to you! A toast for my friends:

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
~ Lord Alfred Tennyson

It wasn’t Susan’s fault that she was only a corncob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn’t see. Laura Ingalls Wilder, Little House in the Big Woods

I caught my breath on these words, picturing Mary and Laura playing for hours in the dusty-spicy attic with nothing but a rag doll and a corncob. Life was very hard, I know, and sometimes the romanticized view of pioneer life does it such injustice…but still. Still.

Having no flat, dimensionless drivel flashing before them incessantly such as modern children are subject to, these girls had the freedom to develop the creative power of a brilliant sunrise. That Laura’s corncob doll was given such power of feelings, and never a second’s thought as to her stature, speaks volumes for the strength of simplicity.

I told my children to guess what Pa did with the pig’s bladder. First, they had to be informed what a bladder was, for they didn’t know. In 1870, a four year old knew what a pig’s bladder was, and what fun it could be! Pa blew it up into a little white balloon, which the girls batted about and bounced along with endless joy. Who needs a bounce house? Oh, and the pig’s tail was even more fun!

I’m sort of old fashioned and nostalgic, so I need to not get carried away with sentimentality. I know that about myself. I live in the 21st century and I’m glad I do, but still. Good literature always demands a response from me. I can’t read something meaningful and not come away with an action, however small.

With Christmas just days away, and since tomorrow’s reading with the kids is the Little House chapter entitled “Christmas,” I have a reply. If you know Little House, you know that simple is not dull. Ma loved beautiful things, and I’m amazed at how she used so very little and so common a thing to make her home charming. I hope to create beauty with simple things.

Laura loved to look at the lamp, with its glass chimney so clean and sparkling, its yellow flame burning so steadily, and its bowl of clear kerosene colored red by the bits of flannel. She loved to look at the fire in the fireplace, flickering and changing all the time, burning yellow and red and sometimes green above the logs, and hovering blue over the golden and ruby coals.

Maybe I’ll make pancake men for breakfast for the kids on Christmas morning, like Ma. We’ll bake together, sing carols, make pictures in the snow, sit and look at the fire, read stories, and of course talk about the birth of Jesus.

Anyone have a pig’s bladder to lend me?

I hunted down gingerbread templates for very petite, wee little houses, perhaps a lean-to, that would not require me to produce 50 pounds of flour to make enough dough for nine houses, plus extra for the small child who would surely squeeze his house too hard and cry and want another one. I printed some templates, then began to fret over the gingerbread house “glue.” Do I use the recipe with raw eggs, surely it would hold better, and chance that no one would be poisoned a week later as she snacked on her house, or go for the no-egg less-hold version?

If not sleeping at all tonight is an option, I should definitely make 10 separate batches of gingerbread house dough, so these precious kids can each have their own Queen Anne Victorian scale model reproduction gingerbread house complete with turrets and spindles. I’m sure the other moms are doing this.

Lucky for me and my sanity, I came across a website from a mom who has been hosting gingerbread house parties for children for 15 years running. Mass quantities of children, at that. Not just one spoiled child who gets the Queen Anne, but up to 20 children who all make a blessed mess and have the time of their lives with…graham crackers!

Oh yes, I will! I don’t know where that article went, but I believe this woman made up the houses ahead of time, so as to be sure of the structural integrity of the (fake) gingerbread houses. Using about six to eight crackers per house, never mind they are small huts, it’s about a five minute per-house job to make up beforehand. All the less candy to get fattened up on, my dear.

In fact, I will not even make the cracker houses ahead of time. As it is now well past 10 p.m., snowing and pitch black, I shall go to the store tomorrow before our afternoon party to buy graham crackers, for who has four boxes of these on hand? Certainly not the woman who is even contemplating this endeavor at 10 p.m. the night before the party. Besides, the children don’t even know this is a gingerbread house-making party. It’s just a regular old Christmas party as far as they know, with perhaps eggnog and checkers. So they will have no idea they’ve been downgraded from the castle to the hut, from the homemade gingerbread to the cracker.

And this mom will keep her sanity. And they all lived happily together ever after.

Dinner tonight was rice and beans; a tip from another helper I like, Dave Ramsey. It’s a lovely meal, really; there’s a lot you can do with simple grains and legumes. I just heard of someone making fantastic East Indian recipes nearly every day with rice and beans that are gourmet meals. Mr. Ramsey’s basic advice is to try to live on very little as you are working your way out of debt or as you are trying to save.

In other mundane news, as if the condition of my sinks or beans didn’t bore you enough, I’m nearly caught up on laundry. Due to a certain child throwing 1/3 of his clothing down the chute in lieu of putting said clean clothes in the drawers, I had to rewash everything, not knowing what was soiled and what was fresh. We had a meeting, it won’t happen again.

Is it truly just about 20 day until Christmas? Everything just seems faster and earlier this year. We did some decorating (and cleaning) today with the Christmas tunes floating throughout the house. The stockings are hung and tomorrow we go to the Ochocos to cut down a tree. Those of you who don’t live in Oregon may be envious to know that for only a $5 permit you can cut down up to a 12 foot Christmas tree from the forest.

If I don’t make it back to this spot before Christmas, please slow down with me and enjoy the season. Celebrate the birth of Jesus in a new way this year. Begin a new tradition. Do something magical with your children. Play in the snow. Give from your heart. May the peace of Christ be with you.

Will my grown-up children catch a glimpse somewhere of our special Dansk and remember a warm, full table of family and love? I have no memories of a special tableware, because we had none that I recall, just a bit of this and that. I want my kids to have memories. They already know how I feel about our dishes, given my constant, “be careful, it was a wedding gift!” But I believe the less I say, the better. Just serve up good meals on the Allegro Blue, that’s all I need to do.

There are harvests of others kinds to ease the pain. I’m busy reaping the fruit of childhood. Raising kids is a continual and concurrent sowing and harvesting. Today I both collect the joy of children who know how to be silly, innocent little ones who at nearly ‘tweenhood still bless me with sweet simplicity, and also sow the seeds of self-control. Someone else will reap that one some day. I harvested a budding intellect in one child today, a seed which was sown beginning at birth in the countless hours of reading, playing, exploring with. Sowing and reaping, like my garden that I’ll soon start again, is a forever process.

This is us traveling at high speed up an Oregon sand dune and screaming with…something like a thrill.

So, the past month has seen the end of a season and the beginning of another–a normal part of life but somehow something I’ll never be totally comfortable with. The wonderful lazy days of summer have been replaced with the fine pace of fall. Back when I lived in Michigan, at least I had the change of color, the spectacular foliage that compels thousands to take long Sunday drives just to take it in, breathe it in. Here in Central Oregon, what do I have to make fall really worth it all? The same green/gray junipers looking at me with their blue-berried eyes and unchanging scraggly limbs, no apple orchards to make an Autumn tradition, no piles of leaves to jump in. But, as a friend told me, look on the bright side–no change to cause a stress in emotions, no apples to dig worms out of, no leaves to endlessly rake into heaps. The grass is always greener!

One month of school under their little belts, and the kids are stretching into more of who they were created to be. So am I. In spite of and because of various trials and new situations we are facing, we are growing, growth pains and all, and it fits the season.

Though fall in Central Oregon doesn’t look like much, there is grand activity going on under the surface. The nights slowly get colder, and the garden gives us its last. Even with an Indian summer enticing us at the moment, I am not fooled. The purpose and function of fall can be missed, but it’s essential. The cold, shorter days play with our chemistry, but somehow prepare us for an eventual spring. Upheaval, activity, schedules, insanity…then a long, cold winter that relies on that burst of fall activity to carry you through safely til spring.

We won’t visit the sand dunes again until next Labor Day weekend. Until then, I’ll cherish the memories of sand-angels. Happy Fall, y’all!

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, Oregon Coast, autumn, fall

It seems I have to write honestly and come with words that aren’t backed with the full confidence and assurance I thought I had. I had wanted to share some secrets to peace, secrets like these:

You keep him in perfect peace
whose mind is stayed on you,
because he trusts in you.
—Isaiah 26:3

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
—Philippians 4:6-7

So, the secrets say Keep your mind on God and you’ll have peace. Go to God with your anxieties and He will give you the peace that dissolves all confusion. These are the words of my source of help and strength — I’m not mocking them, I’m just saying that there is clearly much more to these “secrets” than meets the eye.

Maybe my definition of peace is incorrect. I’d like to think that when a bump in the road comes along, I’ve equipped myself with big, fat tires and a great suspension system that diminishes the jolt and it feels more like a sway to the music than a bump in the road. But somehow, I still feel the rise and fall of every trial, despite my human attempts to reach the mind of God and that elusive “peace.”

If I readjust what I call “peace,” I might find some understanding. I’ve imagined peace to be a thing that eliminates the pain of life. I’ve imagined myself Dorothy in the center of a tornado being swept into the throes of a violent wind, feeling nothing but tranquility.

Ah, Dorothy. I’m learning that peace may not be the drifting on a cloud of calm that I had hoped for. It may be a certain grit and courage I have to bring to the situation to navigate the delusions and anxiety of the trial.

Behind the grit and courage is a word I missed in the verse I quoted above from Isaiah: trust. There is a steady faith and understanding that has to be clearly intact for peace to prevail. If I am shaken in my knowledge of the fact that God loves me and wants the best for me, if I am shaken in my belief in myself and my destiny, there will be no peace.

I may still have to feel the jolt of a speed bump, I may still feel the aches and discomforts of this life. I will surely be swept into tornadoes now and again. I can expect to feel some pain, but I pray that as I trust in the truth of who God is and who I am, I can find the peace that paves the way for me to bravely steady on.

Technorati Tags: Christianity, faith, God, peace

I learned several years ago when same dog unearthed a wild jackrabbit nest that it’s never recommended and nearly impossible to raise wild rabbits on your own, not to mention that it’s illegal to possess Oregon wildlife without the proper state and federal permits. The survival rate is miniscule. I had foolishly and greenhornedly gathered up two of the babies and brought them home, only to have them cry all night, and then I wanted to cry when I researched online and discovered that I was now party to the likely demise of the sweet bunnies. I got up before dawn the next morning and returned the babies to the very spot beneath the junipers where I found them, following the instructions I had read, and believing that, as stated, the momma would find them even though she had obviously moved her nest elsewhere by this time.

Having learned this lesson, I knew JJ couldn’t keep the baby jackrabbit that our dog was so pleased to deliver. I let her hold the baby, and little sister JoJo gave it some love too, as I reminded them of the literature that clearly counseled the return of the jackrabbit to its nest. The problem was, we had no way of knowing where in the midst of the hundred acre wood the nest could be.

These are the beautiful moments of our lives. There is something precious and priceless about loving a wild thing that must be let go, and making that decision on your own.

The children decided upon a location for the return, an area of junipers where the dog had been recently spotted. JJ and JoJo prepared a safehouse for the newly orphaned bunny who would hopefully soon have a reunion with a mother who would be calling her baby for a midnight feeding. A careful hole lined with soft grasses, some twigs meticulously set across the top of the child-made nest, and some tender goodbyes and goodlucks were the scene.

Goodbye, wild bunny who brought a thrill of delight and a living nature lesson to my children.

Technorati Tags: baby jackrabbit, Central Oregon, family life

One fun discovery was skunk cabbage, which we found growing in swampy areas near Clear Lake, the “lake born of fire.” I don’t know if the volcanic rock sediment makes it grow so huge and odorous…there is a reason it’s called skunk cabbage. Don’t eat it. It won’t kill you, but you’ll be sorry.

To give you some proportion, here are the kids with their cabbage leaves. Can you believe I let them take these home with us IN THE VAN as we traveled for several hours? What a migraine.

The leaves are now shriveled up on the front porch, but it was fun while it lasted!

Technorati Tags: McKenzie River, Clear Lake, Cold Water Cove, Cascade Mountains

Here is a photo tour, and I hope to update this post with all the names of all these specimens, but for now, please enjoy the beauty. Over the next week, I’ll be working with the kids on creating a nature journal with the proper designations for each flower. I don’t have in hand a Central Oregon Wildflower book, but I’ll pick one up tomorrow.

First up, this pretty long-stemmed flower was discovered by my daughter growing amongst the sage.

This gorgeous lavender colored wildflower appeared in a few different locations, and has a short blooming season. I believe it’s called a “phacelia,” and it almost seems to glow.

Next, I almost stepped on this miniature deep purple-petaled beauty. It’s called a monkeyflower. It was all by itself, I believe the only one I saw. Barely a stem, it seemed to have sprouted straight from the grains of sand.

Another low-growing flower called Bitter-Root was discovered near some volcanic rock. This specimen was confined to a small area, and only grew next to the moss-covered stones. It’s the closest thing to a desert rose on my property. There were both white and pinkish varieties. Traditionally the roots were peeled, then cooked and eaten, or dried for future use by the natives.

This was an interesting white daisy, with only three distinct petals at this point. Isn’t it pretty? It might be a blackfoot daisy. I wish there were enough to pick a bouquet and place on my kitchen table, but as with all the wildflowers here in my desert, they show up as a rarity with a bountiful rain, so I leave them where I find them. We go out for hikes nearly every day, so I do get to enjoy them while they last!

I almost missed this next bunch of pink blooms with yellow centers, but luckily I had my children’s eyes. Lower to the ground – perhaps this is why they seem to uncover more than I do? These are Mohave Asters.

Ah, I loved this next one before I found out what it was, the first wildflower I saw this spring! The tall blades it grows within, the puffy oblong yellow cluster of blooms, reminds me of a tiny version of the yuccas I grew up with in Arizona. But it’s HIGHLY POISONOUS! Yes, it’s called Death Camas, and for good reason. Beautiful to behold, deadly to ingest.

The final bunch of wildflowers I discovered were the brightest yellow delicate tassels near the edge of the cliff. These are called “Oregon sunshine” and it’s a terrifically happy flower! Each petal was like a spike, each flower beginning with arms reaching straight to heaven, then slowly opening as the day unfolds.

I hope you enjoyed my Central Oregon wildflower tour. We are blessed with such beauty in our backyard.

“…Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.” Mt. 6:28.

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, high desert, wildflowers

My dear friends Jane and Julia were my company, along with the heavenly music, from cellos and violins to the lone harp that Julia was so happy to be just five rows away from. My mom was supposed to go with Jane and me, but wasn’t feeling well, so I called Julia at the last minute, and she was able to meet us there in a moment’s notice!

She was really meant to be there, I told her. She has a thing for the harp, and had the best seat in the house for harp viewing! Due to our late arrival, we were instructed to go down to the front left, directly in front of the lovely lady plucking the long strings. And I learned that Julia hadn’t been to the symphony since she was a child, so this was a treasured time. I totally owed her for taking my kids for me when Luke had his surgery last month, so the requiem was my requital.

The Requiem begins: “Selig sind, die da Leid tragen, denn sie sollen getrostet werden,” or “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.” I do wish that I’d had the program to follow along with (being late the ushers had left their places), as I don’t understand German, but I’m sitting here tonight going over the text and translation, hoping to someday hear this again with more understanding. But music does transcend translation, and it all still spoke to me.

So seid nun geduldig, lieben Brüder, bis auf die Zukunft des Herrn. Siehe, ein Ackermann wartet auf die kostliche Frucht der Erde und ist geduldig darüber, bis er empfahe den Morgenregen und Abendregen. Jakobus 5:7

Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, and how patient he is for the morning and evening rain. James 5:7

I had worked in my garden for several hours just before heading out for the concert, and returned home to a refreshing spring rain. I had been fretting about not watering my little seedlings prior to leaving. Oh, for patience.

Michael Gesme is the music director and conducter of the Central Oregon Symphony, and if you ever have the opportunity to see him, it’s an entertaining treat. He is an active conductor, so energetic and lively, and I did see him jump fully several inches at least once!

Thank you, Johannes Brahms, for a lovely afternoon.

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon Symphony, Michael Gesme, Johannes Brahms, Ein deutsches Requiem, A German Requiem

This photo is from a few weeks ago when we stopped at my neighbor Pixie’s house and the kids enjoyed her chickens. We are loving that spring is hopefully here to stay. It IS May, after all. But spring in Central Oregon is 70 degrees one day, hailing one inch stones the next.

Here are some more harbingers of spring around our place:

The snakes are coming out from hiding, and my daughter is there to catch them.

The grass is getting green and the long shadows of the afternoon are pleasant.

How is spring turning in your part of the world?

Technorati Tags: catching snakes, chickens, spring

So, I will repost the article I wrote last year on the subject of the French Resistance. You may have noticed that I am fascinated with France, I am gripped by the Holocaust, and captivated by WWII heroes. Thus, the subject of the French Resistance is of great intrigue to me, especially the women who gave their lives in this effort.

Please read this post on Berthe Fraser, a brave housewife who contributed to the salvation of her country from her simple domestic position. You will learn about what exactly the French Resistance was, as well as the trials and triumphs of such persons. The subtitle of April’s blog is “What you do matters,” and Berthe truly exemplifies this saying. You do not need to have a position of power or wealth to make a difference, you just need a willing heart of courage and valor.

History is simply the story of people, and I’m so curious about people. Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany by Marthe Cohn with Wendy Holden is an autobiographical book about a woman of the French Resistance – those mostly underground forces in France fighting Hitler and the Nazis in World War II.

I first mentioned this book on my blog last year in this post on Berthe Fraser, as part of a series I wrote on the women of the French Resistance. At the end of the post on Ms. Fraser, I recommended several books to those interested in other accounts of these brave women of the Resistance. One of these books was Behind Enemy Lines.

A few times in the life of my blog I’ve reviewed books and been contacted by the author to thank me. But nothing prepared me for receiving an email from the author of Behind Enemy Lines, Marthe Cohn, grateful that I’d included her book in my follow-up list of recommended reads. Folks, the woman is 90 years old and still living! And she knows how to send an email! Hallelujah!

We exchanged an email or two, and she agreed to do an author Q & A for me on this marvelous book of hers. Well, I’m here to tell you that I’ve not yet put that together, and shame on me for that! Which is why I simply cannot do a complete review yet on this book. However, this being Holocaust Remembrance Week, I had to bring this to the table and let you know it’s on my mind, and I’ll be following up, because as we know time is of the essence.

One question that I know I have for Marthe Cohn concerns the aftermath of the liberation. There’s a part in her book where she talks about seeing groups of ragged, skeletal, filthy, unrecognizable people with big, empty eyes roaming the streets begging for help. They were ignored. No one believed them. These were the remnant left of the Jews, hanging on by a thread, slowing making their way out of the liberated concentration camps. By this point, didn’t people know about the Holocaust? This was a gut-wrenching and scary moment for me, realizing that still, after all that, people could still turn their backs on humanity.

There will be more to come on this story, but I must sign off for now. God bless your week.

Technorati Tags: France, French Resistance, Holocaust, Behind Enemy Lines, Marthe Cohn, World War II

Suite Française portrays life in France from June, 1940 to July 1, 1941. The early German occupation of France and its impact on the daily lives of those involved is told with clarity and deep understanding of a depraved humanity and human conduct under significant pressure.

The story opens with residents realizing the Germans are at the gates of Paris. The narratives of a few people are followed as chaos ensues. The reader gets a sense of both the individual and the collective panic, with banks failing, railroads being bombed, houses being overtaken by Nazi soldiers.

The mass exodus from Paris is described in “Storm in June” with a beautiful, expressive tone, as the author relates a scene from a boulevard where families are moving with a dizzying agitation to pack up their families and belongings:

In the darkness the danger seemed to grow. You could smell the suffering in the air, in the silence. Even people who were normally calm and controlled were overwhelmed by anxiety and fear. … Panic obliterated everything that wasn’t animal instinct, involuntary physical reaction. Grab the most valuable things you own in the world and then . . . ! And, on that night, only people – the living and the breathing, the crying and the loving – were precious. Rare was the person who cared about their possessions; everyone wrapped their arms tightly round their wife or child and nothing else mattered; the rest could go up in flames.

The second novella, “Dolce,” describes a subdued and defeated French people in the village of Bussy who must live with an incoming garrison of Wehrmacht troops. We see a settling, an adapting to the new reality of an occupied country. There are collaborators and resisters, and all the characters in between.

Suite Française ends with the German regiment leaving the village of Bussy to continue their fighting in Moscow. The final scene describes the village onlookers watching the enemy pull out.

They had become accustomed to them, had looked at them indifferently, without being afraid. But now the sight of it all made them shudder. The truck, full to bursting with big loaves of black bread, freshly baked and sweet-smelling, the Red Cross vans, with no passengers – for now . . . the field kitchen, bumping along at the end of the procession like a saucepan tied to a dog’s tail. The men began singing, a grave, slow song that drifted away into the night.

About the Author:

Irène Némirovsky, a Jew from Ukraine, was born into a wealthy family that eventually fled the country during the Russian Revolution. The family ended up in Paris, and Irène quickly became a celebrated author in France.

Irène was not what one would consider an observant Jew. In fact, some have called her a self-hating Jew. Her willingness to convert to Catholicism for protection, her unsuccessful attempt to become a French citizen, her usage of anti-Semitic publishers to promote her books — all reveal a woman who was trusting in France and not Yahweh to save her.

But no matter, none of this diminishes the important place in Holocaust literature of Suite Française. You won’t find the spiritual Jewish perspective of an Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel in Irène’s writings, but this just highlights Hitler’s insanity. He didn’t care if you loved or hated being a Jew. The Nazis dealt the same hand of death to both.

Married to Jewish banker Michel Epstein, Irène had two daughters, Denise and Élisabeth. It was these two daughters we have to thank for the survival of the manuscript Suite Française.

By 1940, Jews all over Europe were deeply persecuted, and so it was with Irène’s family. She could no longer get her books published, and her husband could no longer work at the bank because of their Jewish ancestry. Despite having converted to Catholicism and being a popular literary figure in France, Irène was arrested in July 1942 as a “stateless person of Jewish descent” and sent to Auschwitz, where she died on August 17, 1942. Her husband shared the same fate a few months later in the gas chambers.

And what of the children and this book, Suite Française? Denise and Élisabeth were hidden in schools and convents until the war’s end. Their father, before he was taken away, had given them one possession to guard with their lives: a little suitcase which contained a special notebook. Can you imagine these two little orphan girls, about 13 and 5 years old, in hiding and in possession of this one family memento, too afraid to leave it, too afraid to examine its contents?

In fact, for over 50 years, the leatherbound notebook which contained Irène’s two novellas which comprise Suite Française, written in microscopic print to save precious paper, remained unopened inside of this suitcase. Irène’s daughters thought it was their mother’s journal, and knew that reading it would be too painful to bear.

Upon preparing to give her mother’s papers to a French archive in the late 1990′s, Denise finally had the courage to open the notebook. She discovered this extraordinary work, incomplete yet whole, written under the most formidable circumstances. The two novellas were intended to be the beginning of a series of five stories which would encompass the whole of the war, to its end. Irène wrote that the rest of the oeuvre was “in limbo, and what limbo! It’s really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens.”

Irène’s writing in Suite Française is remarkable not just for its brilliant composition but its perspective. Irène did not begin writing this book until 1941, literally as these events were unfolding before her. However, Suite Française reads not like the diary of one writing contemporaneously with the historical events, lacking a certain coherence, but it presents a viewpoint usually reserved for one who is a generation removed from the time in question who has had time to reflect.

I wonder if Irène’s placement in the timeline of human history prepared her for such a task? She had already lived as a persecuted Jew through a major war, and experienced firsthand the full circle of events. After the 1918 Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks seized her father’s bank and the Nemirovsky family had to disguise themselves as peasants and flee to Finland.

Denise reported after publication of Suite Française, “For me, the greatest joy is knowing that the book is being read. It is an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life. It shows that the Nazis did not truly succeed in killing her. It is not vengeance, but it is a victory.”

Universal Pictures has acquired screen rights to Suite Française. I think a better choice might be to make a movie about Irène Némirovsky herself, whose real life story is much more moving than the fiction she wrote.

sources:
NY Times article: As France Burned by Paul Gray
suitefrancaisefamily.com
Museum of Jewish Heritage: Woman of Letters

In other blogs:
dovegreyreader
the coffee spoon

Technorati Tags: France, Irene Nemirovsky, Nazi Germany, Suite Française, World War II

I barely caught it, but firmly caught the advice she gave me on how to make ginger tea. “Just grate some up in pan of water, heat and simmer it for a bit,” she suggested. She claimed it was great for arthritis, and I wondered if I possibly looked arthritic at the moment. Perhaps frenetic, as my four kids were scattered hither and there, grabbing goat cheese off the shelves and bumping into strangers’ carts. I do remember being told when I was pregnant and facing morning sickness that chewing on a bit of ginger would do a world of good for nausea.

I’ve drank plenty of ginger tea, usually a ginger-lemon or ginger-honey variety, but always brewed from a bag. I looked forward to this homemade brew from a rhizome that my little boy thought was a bag of doggie treats. Okay, I confess I was going to say ginger root, but upon further research, I discovered that only “common” people call it a ginger root, as it is botanically not so – it’s a rhizome because whole new ginger plants can self-generate from budded sections, whereas a root will die if split into sections.

I had a flashback to that time in my childhood when I went through a phase of wishing I had a different name – the name I had inexplicably chosen was Ginger, and my dear Mom humored me and called me Ginger until I grew tired of it.

At any rate, I promptly grated up a pile of ginger (way too much) and threw it in a pan of water and made some tea. With neither lemon or honey on hand, I added molasses to to my brew. Voila, Ginger Molasses Tea, the finest, spiciest, and most aromatic tea I’ve had in a long time! I prepared a cup for my mom, telling her how good it is for her, especially if she has arthritis. She looked at me askance, but with her memory, she doesn’t know if she has arthritis or not. What she does have, however, is apparently much benefited by ginger – poor circulation, migraines, chills, and more. After looking up the health benefits, I realized how grateful I am that my friend send ginger flying my way tonight.

Here are some of the benefits of ginger:

Ginger can block the effects of prostaglandin, a substance that causes inflammation of blood vessels in the brain that leads to migraines.

Ginger relieves nausea.

Ginger can help ease menstrual and stomach cramps.

Ginger has anti-inflammatory properties that reduces the pain of rheumatoid arthritis.

Ginger warms the upper respiratory tract, and is effective against colds and flu and even allergies.

Ginger stimulates digestion and relieves stomach gas.

Ginger has a positive effect on the circulatory system as it causes the platelets to be less sticky.

Ginger is a mood enhancer and stress reliever, due to its cineole content.

Ginger is a great mouth freshener.

Ginger has anti-fungal properties.

Cheers, have a cup of ginger tea!

Are you still covered with snow? Is the wind chilling you to the core? Take heart, it’s March! That means April and May are just around the corner. Are you thinking about what you’ll plant in your garden this year? I am, and I hope to add a few things to the mix this year. We started some vegetables last week, but here in Central Oregon, the rule of thumb on when to plant outdoors is “when the snow is gone from Black Butte,” which tends to be about June 1st!

Here is a lovely poem by Emily Dickinson, one of the greatest poets to ever write about nature, next to David. Enjoy these lines, and enjoy your March.

Dear March, Come in!
by Emily Dickinson (1830-86)

Dear March, Come in!

How glad I am!

I looked for you before.
Put down your hat —

You must have walked —

How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the bird’s;

The maples never knew
That you were coming, — I declare,

How red their faces grew!

But March, forgive me —

And all those hills
You left for me to hue;

There was no purple suitable,

You took it all with you.

Who knocks?
That April!

Lock the door!

I will not be pursued!

He stayed away a year, to call

When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial

As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise

And praise as mere as blame.

Technorati Tags: nature, March, Emily Dickinson, outdoors, poetry

I am from dusty country roads,
From Vick’s Vapor Rub
And handmade clothes.
I am from the dirt floors of a house built from corrugated iron and boards,
With unshaded lightbulbs dangling from cords.
I am from the mint patch, Arizona honeysuckle, and big blue sky,
The black walnut grove, blooming yucca, and tumbleweeds piled high.

I am from clothes on the line and Kick the Can,
From Andy and Nelda,
The Appalachian and the artisan.
I am from Heather and Nancy and Becky,
From pride and poverty and poetry.
I’m from you’ll catch a cold and don’t hold open the refrigerator door,
Revival meetings, The Old Rugged Cross, and stories of the saints of yore.

I am from Tucson and Scots-Irish and English blood,
From clans and crests
And ‘Touch not the cat but a glove.’
I’m from fresh peaches and blackberries picked by my hand,
Fried okra and black coffee cooked in a pan.
I’m from Great Uncle Fran who could stand on his head,
And Great Granddad who carved the presidents now dead.
I’m from the hillbilly, Confederate, Merchant Marine,
The carpenter, the teacher, and ghosts that are seen.

I am from Mama’s stitched up album,
Careful labels on each photo
Tell where I’m from.
Old black and whites with yellowed corner tape
Reveal my photographer mother with an eye for landscape.
I am from the snapshot of a small girl by the mailbox and mesquite,
A lovely memory from a lonely street.
I am from books and words and walks,
From designs in the clouds and the circling of hawks.
Where are you from?

I wrote this poem in response to the meme over at Chrysalis. Tonight is the last night to enter her contest, but I hope you’ll write your own and share it with me. The template for this poem is here, and the original poem of this style by George Ella Lyon is here.

Technorati Tags: family life, I Am From, poetry

What a harsh word to use – holocaust. I think about my comfortable, wise viewpoint of 2010 as I look back upon the Holocaust of the 1930s – 1945 in Europe. HOW could the bystanders and the apathetic and the scared and the collaborators have EVER let it happen?

And then I thought about what evil forces are at work at this moment in history, a very different holocaust, the annihilation of well-spent time, and I believe that my descendants will have the same judgement: HOW could the bystanders and the apathetic and the scared and the collaborators have EVER let it happen?

Time is…what? Even the greatest physicists don’t understand the nature of time. Time is clearly more than a hand on a clock. It is motion, logic, and life. Time is perhaps a dimension, an eternal state. Whatever it is, in our daily life we understand that we are limited in our access to time, and if more time is consumed than we have accounted for, we are left motionless, logic-less, and lifeless.

Oh, how often people say “I don’t have enough time” or “I ran out of time.” Time is a commodity that is essential to life itself, and so I’m not surprised that the Enemy of our soul would like to destroy our time. Since there is nothing new under the sun, I suspect that the modern version of time-wasters have some kind of past counterpart.

I’d like to try to identify some of the biggest modern time-wasters, then discern what it is that makes us human, and next, distill some basics of life that must be done before all else. I think this progression of thought will be helpful in eliminating those elements that steal time, and hope that we can make some radical changes to avoid a time-crisis of holocaust proportions. Finally, I’ll look at the elements of a holocaust.

First, what are some of the biggest time wasters? Here’s a short list I came up with, and by the way these are all probably addictions:

TV. There is an overarching theme of voyeurism and vicarious living in how 21st century people watch TV. That there was an uproar over Lost being scheduled opposite the State of the Union is pathetic.

Internet. Clicking with the theme of too much information. Both China and South Korea have pronounced internet addiction their number one public health issue.

Gaming.There’s the 23 year old I know who flunked out of college and lost several jobs over this online computer games addiction.

Junk. There’s the news junkies, the junk reading (ie People Magazine and all the junk novels masquerading as literature), junk talking (gossip is a huge time-sucker), junk shopping, junk managing.

A friend recently sent me an email ending with this pronouncement that says it best: So when you want to talk in real time, using real voice and ears, please feel free to dial us up. E-mail is OK, but you won’t find us on Facebook, tweet, twitter, or twerp; nor on YouTube, the boobtube, or at Jiffylube.

Next, identify what makes you human. This is really important because if we don’t understand how we are created to truly be fulfilled, we’ll keep squandering our time on unprofitable things.

Relationships, not reality-TV. Why do we care more about what celebrity couple has tied the knot than we do about the ties that bind?

Connecting with God’s Creation, not a Wii or a PC. What ever happened to the very dirt beneath our feet, the growing things, the natural sun, the natural?

Connecting with God, through the simplicity of personally reading the Bible and prayer. How much time, relative to this, do we spend pursuing the latest spiritual fad or trendy Christian author instead?

Finally, recognize the basics of life that must be done before all else. See, because time is in fact limited by the nature of our finite lives, it would be wise to do the things that have to be done first, those things essential to being human, then, whatever time is left, tend to the non-essentials. You may discover there actually is no time for the non-essentials. Sadly, we’ve reversed this precept, and are left with the essentials hanging out to dry. So, earn a living, take care of your family and home, and get enough rest, good nutrition, and exercise. That’s about all you’ll really have time for.

If there is a holocaust of time, who or what is the perpetrator? In the midst of a holocaust, it seems there are four main groups of people: the strong minority perpetrators, the weak majority victims, the mass of unassisting spectators, and the few and brave of the resistance.

My mind screams, “Hollywood!” “Consumerism!” “Gluttony!” But who can I point a finger at, where is the evil Hitler who is the diabolical villain behind the extermination of quiet evenings at home reading to your children and the massacre of talking to your neighbors after work instead of garage door up, garage door down?

Is it just modernity? Declining morality? Certainly there is a particular greed surrounding the monetizing of time that can be found in Hollywood and the corporate gadgeteers. There’s money to be made off of people wasting their time on your latest fad, gadget, game, icon, celebrity, or cereal.

The weak majority of Americans who fall for these artifices are suffering intensely. We have anxiety over the stress we feel on our time, so we’re perhaps on some kind of medication, we fail at family life, maybe turn to drugs or alcohol. It takes time to be healthy mentally, spiritually, and physically!

What about that mass of spectators that is typically found in a holocaust? I would describe the unassisting spectators as those whose heads are buried in the sand and think nothing is wrong. They love their sitcoms and sit idly by while their kids play violent games on the X-Box and become entrenched in a depraved culture with little likelihood of finding their way out.

And the resistance. I’m a big fan of the heroes of the French Resistance, the Dutch Resistance, and others who bravely fought to defeat the Nazis. They worked underground, through stealth and reconnaissance, and turned the tide. True, they were also betrayed, tortured, and killed. So, to complete the holocaust analogy, this is where it happens.

It’s the Resistance who need to be courageous in this battle for our time. Resist the time-wasters and for heaven’s save, do not allow your children to succumb to them. Get rid of your TV if you have to. Unplug. Kids do not have to join organized sports at age three. They don’t need to check Facebook and text their friends twenty times a day, nor do you.

Blessings upon your time, my friends.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. – Benjamin Franklin

Technorati Tags: faith, family life, God, time, time management

J: No, no, the angels are looking at nothing!

L: Well, let’s move the shepherd back here, he’s a lesser one anyway.

J: The Wise Man can’t be giving his gift to the cow, move him!

L: Oh, here’s the little lamb that broke last year. Oh well. It’s just one.

J: How cute, the camel is peering through the gate!

L: If only the angel could sit on top of the stable, there’d be more room and she’d be looking right down at Jesus. But she’d fall.

J: Everyone has to be looking at the baby Jesus!

(after many minutes of shuffling, conversing, and pondering the cramped quarters, the children reach an agreement)

L & J: It’s perfect!

Technorati Tags: Christmas, creche, manger scene

Actually, one of my kids found it in a box of my scant childhood mementos.

I wrote last December:

What was so magical about this double-paned case of shifting sand? For a little girl in a rather impoverished and remote desert region of the southwest, I could dream, carried away to nowhere in particular but someplace beautiful on every twist and flow of those magical grains. I longed to touch the sand that surely was silky smooth and would flow through my fingers like fairy dust.

Here it sits, right at home in my bedroom window, a magical melding of past and present. This was the first day of snow in Central Oregon, several weeks ago now.

Gazing out my windows at the crystalline air and bustling winterish activity, I had an epiphany. Something I can’t put into words, but a full circle was realized on this day.

My littlest made the first cheery snowball of the season.

His big brother followed suit in a grand way with his own ambitious snowball.

Who knew my little Magic Window circa 1975 would be a foreshadowing of such delightful affairs? I thought of a passage from Paul’s writings in the New Testament:

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 1 Corinthians 13:12.

Here’s to a continued revealing and clarifying of the “magic window” of our lives. May unspoken dreams come true. May dark days get brighter. May we soon be face to face.

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood memories, Christmas, Magic Window

Out of a dozen eggs, six produced these chirping beauties, and six were inactive. The eggs came from a local farmer, and these are not your run-of-the-mill ducks. Apparently the farmer had the male shipped from back East just to breed with a duck she had on the farm. I need to find out the name of the breed, and I’ll share that when I know. So, here are our classroom exotic Oregon Ducks! Go Ducks!

They have now returned to the farm. After two weeks and ducks that tripled in size and smell, their time had come. But not before many little children drew pictures of them, wrote stories about them, and even dreamed about them. Next up, a visit to the farm to visit Chloe, Blackjack, Stripe, and the others.

Technorati Tags: classroom projects, Central Oregon, Oregon Ducks, hatching ducks, education

You can click here to view President Reagan’s “Tear Down this Wall” speech at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.

“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Where were you in 1989? I was a freshman/sophomore in college and remember the winds of freedom and the breath of the Spirit of God sweeping across Eastern Europe. The topic was on the lips of everyone I knew, yet I was too young to realize what a momentous and once-in-a-lifetime event this was. I heard about miraculous events in Poland, not understanding exactly what “solidarity” meant, but loving the word.

The collapse of communism, as it unfolded before this young woman, was like a great revival movement, the product of much suffering, much prayer, much sacrifice, and great boldness. I wish I could go back to that scene for a moment and feel again what it felt like, this time with more wisdom and experience.

Celebrate freedom today!

Technorati Tags: Berlin Wall, collapse of communism, Ronald Reagan

October’s Party
by George Cooper

October gave a party;
The leaves by hundreds came—
The Chestnuts, Oaks, and Maples,
And leaves of every name.
The Sunshine spread a carpet,
And everything was grand,
Miss Weather led the dancing,
Professor Wind the band.

The Chestnuts came in yellow,
The Oaks in crimson dressed;
The lovely Misses Maple
In scarlet looked their best;
All balanced to their partners,
And gaily fluttered by;
The sight was like a rainbow
New fallen from the sky.

Then, in the rustic hollow,
At hide-and-seek they played,
The party closed at sundown,
And everybody stayed.
Professor Wind played louder;
They flew along the ground;
And then the party ended
In jolly “hands around.”

Isn’t that just entertaining to read aloud? I love it!

My favorite photo from last week is my 10 year old son putting together his “Snap Circuit Set.” He needs a more advanced electricity kit because he does this one by heart and so fast it would make Franklin and Faraday spin.

But he still loves it. What is it about boys and energy/power? Not that girls aren’t into this, I do have a daughter who loves to dabble with this electricity kit as well. But notice I said “dabble.” I certainly give my girls every opportunity I give my boys, and my 8 year old daughter rides a motorcycle right there with her big brother. But still.

Anyway, just look at his intensity and concentrated tongue as he eyes the invisible current; curious, so curious.

My blog theme this month was supposed to be something about mothers being present with their children. I haven’t written much, I’ve been busy. But a good sort of busy and doing what I can with the kiddos in the midst of busy-ness. I suppose I would just recommend to moms out there to include your children in whatever it is you are doing, and include yourself in whatever it is they are doing.

The jobs I give my children I do with them as much as I can. The girls are responsible for the kitchen. Since they can’t reach the cupboards, it means I have to be in there as the hand-to person, grabbing each plate and bowl as fast as they pass them up. As my boys tend the garden, watering and weeding, I will sit with my coffee and marvel with them at how tall the sunflowers have grown, and rejoice with them over the size of the squash.

I was careful to let my son know that I would love to take a picture of him as he constructed a current. This meant a lot to him. My daughter wanted to know that I took a picture of her, too, which I did. This wasn’t about them being proud of being in the spotlight, it was about Mom caring and noticing that they did something noteworthy.

I wrote about Lafayette’s triumph in the American Revolution, and while he returned to France a hero in 1792, the embodiment of hope for France and a French Revolution, he did not live to see France become an independent republic.

Lafayette had seen what revolution could accomplish. He had witnessed the freedoms enjoyed by the new America. His legacy could be that he brought this light to France, but he ended up losing the public’s confidence and becoming an ineffective revolutionary.

In the years leading up to 1789, Lafayette became a leader in the campaign against the monarch. But here is what I think went wrong. First, the French had been too horribly oppressed for too long. The revolutionary movement became extremely radical and vengeful, and Lafayette didn’t know how to turn this raw, bitter force into something controllable and beneficial. He went for a more moderate course, and this ended up killing his popularity and driving him into exile. I think an extraordinary person was required for this job, one who could move beyond the compromise of a constitutional monarchy into true democracy. Someone with preeminent diplomatic skills who could harness lightning like Benjamin Franklin.

Second, when Lafayette became a member of the French legislature, he wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (similar to the Declaration of Independence), and I believe he made a grave error. While the declaration stands as monumental in terms of setting forth fundamental human rights for all men, a first for France, it makes no mention of God as the source of human rights. The U.S. Declaration of Independence asserts that human rights are derived from the “Creator” and the duty of government is to protect these God-given rights.

The problem I see with not being specific about the source of human rights is that it de facto becomes the realm of the state. France struggled in emerging from the French Revolution with a democratic republic firmly in hand in part because France, while willing to completely turn its back on the Ancien Régime, the old order, it held onto bits that denied true God-given human rights. The country suffered through the bloody Reign of Terror, in which the guillotine was used for mass execution of “enemies of the revolution,” then France allowed herself to be swept under the dictatorship of Napoléon for a time, and then a constitutional monarchy under Louis Philippe (unfortunately and regretfully with the help of the Marquis de Lafayette).

The first stable republican government wouldn’t happen in France until almost a hundred years after the French Revolution began, the Third Republic, and even this was wrought with crises and controversies. France is now in the Fifth Republic.

The Marquis de Lafayette did continue to fight for democracy for France and his dying desire was for a pure republic in France. No two revolutions are the same and Lafayette is blessed among men in history to have lived through the many uprisings and changes in paradigms.

Technorati Tags: Bastille Day, France, French Revolution, Marquis de Lafayette

Historians all agree on the fact that without the significant economic and military aid of the French government, the fledgling United States of America would have likely lost the Revolutionary War against the British. And this particular Frenchman, the Marquis de Lafayette, was perhaps the most crucial piece of French support.

Born in 1757 as Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, he suffered the death of his father before he was two years old and the death of his mother at age 12. His family belonged to the French nobility, so he was left with quite a fortune. In addition, at the age of sixteen, he married into the very wealthy de Noailles family. There was no need to seek fame and fortune in a faraway land on a dangerous mission, so why on earth would this young man, only 19 years old, be so resolved to volunteer for the colonies in the American cause of freedom, a land he had never seen, a people he did not know?

I’m sure the reasons for Lafayette’s service in the American Revolutionary War are complex, and I’ve tried to search out some of his motives. The first thing that comes to mind is his youth. While at first glance it’s his age that strikes me as so uncommon for such a glorious cause, there is also a freshness and vigor and sense of invincibility that comes with youth. However, he did have a wife and young son he left behind when he first landed near Charleston, South Carolina in June of 1777. Being orphaned at a young age and married with child certainly matures one beyond his years. There must be more.

I turned to the issue of revenge. I considered the tragedy of his father’s death–his father was killed by a British cannonball during the Seven Years’ War. For a young man who likely longed to know his father and who he must have revered as a hero, I wondered if Lafayette had found vengeance for his father’s death. To support the American cause of liberty was to defy and destroy British domination. Revenge can only carry one so far, however, and reflecting on how Lafayette put his very life on the line, as well as spending his personal fortune to buttress the American forces, I searched still deeper.

When considering the whole of Lafayette’s life, well beyond the American Revolution, I found in him a profound and immense freedom-fighting spirit that must have propelled him even from youth. Were the American Revolution just about personal glory or youthful fantasy, Lafayette’s quest would have likely ended there. However, as we see him fight for representative government in the French Revolution, it’s clear that Lafayette was one of those unique persons in human history who was born to fulfill an instinctive yearning for freedom, no matter the time or place.

Independence and self-government are ideals that simply resonated with Lafayette. As he served under General George Washington, these two men developed a life-long friendship and considered one another as father and son. Great people like these do find each other, invisibly drawn together by the same passion and intellect.

Lafayette participated in key battles of the Revolution, including those at Brandywine and Yorktown. In addition to military expertise, he exercised great diplomacy in convincing the king of France to increase his support in substantial excess of his original intent.

As Americans celebrate their Independence, I do hope they remember France and one particular Marquis de Lafayette.

sources:
Lafayette, Hero of the American Revolution
Who Served Here? The Marquis de Lafayette

Technorati Tags: American Revolution, Fourth of July, France, French Revolution, Independence, Marquis de Lafayette

TRAIN.
First, here’s one of my favorite pictures from my photofiles:

A little train depot we pass nearly every day had a surprise for us one fall afternoon last season. The regular train was on vacation, and this beautiful steam powered locomotive, called the Mount Emily Shay #1, was there to greet us. Built in 1923, she worked for 30 years on a logging railroad in southern Oregon, then spent some time in West Virginia running tourists on the Cass Scenic Railroad. The “lockie” has since been retired to the Oregon Historical Society, which leases #1 to the City of Prineville Railway to occasionally pull its Crooked River Dinner Train.

There’s the facts, and for you train lovers, you will appreciate the history. My kids appreciated the power and beauty up close.

GARDEN.
I spent yesterday in the garden with the kids at my side. It was a treasured time. After moving my plants in and out of the house for weeks, and waiting for the last frost to come and go, I decided the time was perfect for their new home. Turned out it was a day late. The night before, I left the plants in the garage. There was a mouse. It ate the tops off the cucumbers. The peas were munched. The pumpkins were stubs.

I transplanted what I could into the garden, and reseeded almost everything. I may not have enough days to make it to harvest before a fall frost, but I’m taking my chances. No matter the outcome, I love working with my kids in the garden.

My husband shared my pain over those lost seedling leaves. He found a Maine Coon Cat on Craigslist. Apparently this enormous (seriously, it’s like a dog) feline mouser is the thing to have, and there’s a free one in Springfield, Oregon. To further protect against critters, he’s out right now putting boards around the bottoms of the garden, and I’ll be joining him shortly to help place rocks around the garden base.

FRANCE.
I’m so excited to be hosting another French Exchange Student. Helen comes in July. Do you remember when we hosted Elise? My kids still talk about our time with her, and it’s an enriching experience that I highly recommend for every family. So, as we prepared for Elise, we are now preparing for Helen.

Getting her room cleared out is the number one priority. It currently holds several dozen boxes of …. stuff. I love having a pressing reason to get things cleaned up! I mean it.

After having Elise as our guest, I also realized that the French have a certain expectation about food. Like, it should be prepared at home, not acquired at the drive-up window or in a frozen cardboard box. So, I need to get my menu in order.

Finally, language lessons are always fun for me, so the kids and I will spend some more time with French lessons. But that’s not a huge concern, since I already figured out with Elise that these Europeans nearly always speak English better than we will ever speak their language.

As far as activities, we just plan on living our normal life. The expectation of this particular exchange group is to just have an immersion experience with an American family as they go about their day. I will certainly show her some highlights of Central Oregon, but I have no plans beyond that.

Do you want to host a French exchange student? If you live in Central Oregon, get ahold of me right away, because there are still a few students needing to be placed here immediately.

Technorati Tags: family, France, gardening, ranch, seedlings, French exchange student, steam engines, trains

As I listened to a friend of mine speak this morning about attaining peace, I closed my eyes and imagined myself approaching the throne of God with every care in the world bulging in my arms. With each step, I laid something down. First, my big box of “school stuff” I bring home every night, from papers that need grading to literature books waiting for lesson plans to emerge. I took another step toward the throne and cast aside my cell phone with all its distractions and bad news. My house was dumped, my laundry, the future of my children, my finances, every anxious thought.

There are so many thoughts and fears that can crowd my mind. I have to be conscious of these words:

Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful. John 14:27

Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Colossians 3:15

Peace of Christ to you.

Memorial Day weekend has been wonderful. Family came to visit from the valley, and my kids enjoyed some precious times with their cousins and grandma and uncle. Lots of dirt and many baths later, we said our goodbyes.

Today, I took the kids for a bike ride down the gravel drive and onto an old BLM road. We stopped to pick cattails and JJ found a 1966 quarter half-hidden on the dusty trail. Further down, we came upon an old campsite of some former cowboys or pioneers – actually, that is the children’s hope, because it was likely just a place where many decades ago, people dumped their trash.

Here are a few photos I’d like to share:

Our dog, Riley, is turning out to be an extraordinary guard. He finally found the job he needed, being a cattle dog with no cattle to herd. The jackrabbits and the deer keep him busy. And the four children. Except for his dangerous habits of chasing cars, biting tires, and jumping on people, he’s mellowing out nicely and we look forward to many years with him at the ranch.

This view out the kitchen to the east is lovely, especially with the late afternoon long shadows. You can see Riley on the move here, enjoying some playtime.

I mentioned my husband building a garden structure a few weeks ago. I found this photo of him and Big L working together to string the wire around the juniper trunks he used for posts. We are getting a vision for this place and look forward to a good harvest. I spent much of yesterday preparing my garden beds for the vegetable starts that are still in my mud room. According to the OSU gardening calendar, I can plant outdoors this week or next. Finally!

Like all my children, JoJo and Little L love to explore. This rock down the cliff at the end of our property provides a scenic lookout. I remember climbing in the mountains near my own home as a child, and those are probably my fondest childhood memories. There were legends abounding about the grave of Chief Cochise being somewhere in these Apache mountains where I grew up, and that just added to the excitement of every childhood hike and mountain climbing excursion.

Cochise died after a long illness on June 8, 1874. Tom Jeffords was at his side near the end, and witnessed his interment in a crevice in the rocks of the Dragoon Mountains, near Cochise Stronghold, Arizona. Only his band and Tom Jeffords knew the site. They took this knowledge to their own graves, telling no one of the place where Cochise had been buried. (from findagrave.com)

I think my children will have their own fanciful notions about this land where we now live, and I hope they share these impressions with me as they grow up.

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, childhood memories, Cochise Stronghold, gardening

God spoke to me about my position with Him. How gracious and merciful of the Lord to keep inviting us back into His “game” and His calling and kingdom work, even though we throw gutter balls now and again.

[He adopted us] to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:6

It’s by His grace. Not by any merit of our own that we receive God’s favor. I am not invited to partner with the Lord because I have a perfect game–whether I bowl a 300 or a 30, I have still been “chosen in Him, before the foundation of the world” and I am loved no more or no less for the game (Eph. 1:4). This is truly glorious, as many versions put it, “glorious grace.”

I love Ephesians chapter 1. It’s a passage that I read to my firstborn nearly every night while he was still in the womb–it’s a passage you would truly want someone to speak over you, believe me. If you or someone you care about struggles with feeling a condition on the love granted to him/her, Ephesians 1 is a great place to begin correcting that. These are such soul affirming words, and my bowling lesson the other day reminded me of this.

I don’t want you to have to look too far for these life-giving, power-filled, blessing-bestowing words, so here is Ephesians Chapter One in its entirety:

Ephesians 1

1Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus:

2Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Spiritual Blessings in Christ

3Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 7In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace 8that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. 9And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.
11In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. 13And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.

Thanksgiving and Prayer

15For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, 16I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. 17I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. 18I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 20which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 22And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 23which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Technorati Tags: Bible, bowling, devotions, Ephesians 1

When I was with the doctor a few weeks ago, as he was fixing up JoJo (who needed a tick removed, eeewww), he still turned to me and said, “How about YOU? Any questions, anything for you, how are you?” So the doctor turned his attention to me and set me up with a regimen for some physical things I’m dealing with…”You need magnesium, Vitamin D, Potassium!” God was meeting me right in the midst of my ministry to others (which in fact has exhausted me).

Galations 5:13 says through love serve one another. This is a command from the Lord, but there is a blessing attached to our service. The servant will be first in Heaven, and it’s important in this life to set our eyes on Eternity. Mathew 20:16 states that “the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” Even Jesus did not come to be served, but to serve (Matt. 20:28).

What are some spiritual blessings that you would like, if you could pick? I think I would like the blessings of wisdom and faith, which are connected in a way: “But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind. For let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord, being a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.” (James 1:5-8)

Wisdom comes through experience, and often through serving and enduring difficulty. Knowing this should increase your joy as you serve, knowing that the blessing is great! James goes on to say that “Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those who love Him.”

Be blessed today.

Technorati Tags: Bible, devotions, God

All of these cups of seed and soil are sitting in our sunny mud room, busily sprouting in preparation for the big move to the outdoor garden after the last frost. Whether we will time the transition correctly, have the proper soil amendments, possess a well fortified fence to keep out the ever encroaching deer and jackrabbits, and be left with sufficient growing time for full maturation of the vegetables, all remains to be seen. Central Oregon is not a gardening paradise and there are odds to overcome, but it’s not impossible (even though my neighbor says it is). This is our beginning.

My husband recently built me a garden area. Can you make it out in this picture? I came home from a weekend away, and he and the kids made me close my eyes and led me out the back door to this sight that thrilled me. He had limbed up enough Juniper trees that were laying around the property, set them in post holes with cement left over from our building project, and only had to buy the wire fencing.

He still needs to build the gate, secure the bottom with boards, and string some baling wire at the top to deter the deer which can easily jump a 6 foot fence. We also have to bring in a ton of compost and nutrient rich soil, but I can see the finished product, and it’s beautiful. I’m sure you are getting the picture that gardening can be a lot of hard work, but it’s best to know the challenges before you begin. For a no-nonsense look at this from someone who has years more experience than I, read The Joys and Trials of Caring for your Seedlings.

Here are some tips on gardening in Central Oregon from the Oregon State Extension Service:

Although it may not be a gardening paradise, central and eastern Oregon is more than a wide expanse of high desert. Successful vegetable and fruit gardening is possible east of the Cascades if you take into account the area’s special and widely varying climate and soil characteristics.

The growing season may be as short as 80 to 90 days in central Oregon at elevations above 3,500 feet. In some of the lower elevations and river valleys, growing seasons may exceed 130 days.

Also, large fluctuations in daytime and nighttime temperatures, often as much as 40-45°F, affect vegetable and fruit production. Cool nights reduce the chances of successfully growing vegetables that like warm nights, such as lima beans and eggplants. (See story on growing warm-season crops in cool-season area.)

Soil types

Soil types in central and eastern Oregon vary widely. Light-textured soils, low in organic matter, nutrient content, and water-holding capacity, are found in parts of central Oregon and the eastern Columbia Basin area. These soils may require frequent applications of fertilizer and water. At the other extreme are the heavy soils high in soluble salts (which can create an alkalinity problem) found in many eastern Oregon areas.

Added organic matter such as manure or compost generally is beneficial for most central and eastern Oregon soils. (See story on improving soil.) Specific information for each area is available from county offices of the OSU Extension Service or from local garden centers.

Choosing crops

Concentrate on those vegetables adapted to your particular area. Avoid planting vegetables that require special, intense, or improved growing conditions. Root crops (e.g., potatoes, carrots, and beets) and cold-tolerant crops (e.g., cabbage, chard, leaf lettuce, and kohlrabi) do well in high-elevation gardens.

Short-season vegetable varieties offer the best chance of success. For example, cool nights during the growing season may cause a 65-day tomato to require 75 to 80 days or more to mature.

Planting dates

Planting dates for high-elevation, short-season areas generally lag behind those in other parts of the state. In high areas, gardens usually are planted from mid-May, for cold-tolerant plants, to mid-June. Later plantings often fail to mature before fall frosts. See the story on planting guidelines for suggested planting dates.

Use plant protection devices, such as row covers, hotcaps, and Walls-o-Water, to extend the growing season for vegetables requiring longer periods to mature.

Now, on to some fun seed activities to do with children. These three ideas are from The Family Game Book (1967, Doubleday-out of print). I think these are appropriate projects for all elementary grades. I just planted vegetable starters with my sixth graders (as well as my own children), and from ages 4 through 12, they all were totally engaged. One of my sixth grade students called me at home a few nights ago just to tell me how beautiful her new plants were!

1. See how seeds actually grow.

When a seed is buried in the ground, you can’t see exactly what is happening to it. Here is a simple experiment you can perform to watch the seed develop into a little plant.

Get a sheet of clean blotting paper or a small sponge. Put the paper or sponge in a drinking glass so that it is pressing against one side of the glass. Fill the other side of the glass with gravel or sand. This should press the blotting paper or sponge tightly against the glass.

Now get some fast-growing seeds like lima beans. Force them between the blotting paper and the glass. They should be pressing tightly against the glass so that you can see them through the glass. If the seeds don’t stay in place, you do not have enough sand or gravel in your glass, as its purpose is to keep the seeds in place.

Keep the blotting paper or sponge moist. In a few days you will see the seeds sprout roots. These are called root hairs. They help absorb food for the plant. After the roots become longer, carefully transfer your seeds to a dirt-filled flowerpot or even the garden–if it is warm enough. You will have a little bean plant. Just think how much you will know about this particular little plant!

2. How strong are seeds?

A rock is broken in two, and a healthy tree is growing in the split. Have you ever seen such a sight–a tree growing in a rock?

Perhaps you have seen a sidewalk with a crack in it, and a plant growing through it. Chances are that the seed of the plant split the sidewalk. It’s hard to believe, but here’s an experiment to prove that seeds can really exert great force.

Get a small flat bottle. An empty medicine bottle will do. Pack the bottle right up to the very top with dried beans, for beans are really seeds. Get a piece of cloth and tie it over the top of the bottle in place of the cap. Stand the bottle upside down in a glass partly filled with water.

Watch your bean bottle from time to time, and in a day or so you will discover that the bottle has burst. The beans soak up all the water and become swollen. As they swell they push against the walls of the bottle, and when they push hard enough the bottle bursts.

That is what happened to the rock and the sidewalk. Do you believe it now?

3. How important are the plant’s first leaves?

By now you have had some experience with plants. Have you noticed that all the different kinds of seeds you planted (flower and vegetable) start growing with the same kind of leaves? They all have what look like two thick leaves that dry up and fall off when the seedling develops other leaves. Have you ever wondered what these first leaves do?

A little experiment will answer this question. Plant three quick-growing seeds, such as bean or cucumber seeds, in a flowerpot. Water them and one day you will notice you have three little plants, all with the same two first leaves, which are called cotyledons.

Now, leave one seedling exactly as it is. From the second seedling, cut off one leaf. From the third, cut off both leaves. Continue to take care of your plants and you will discover something interesting. The seedling from which you cut off both leaves will be very small. The seedling with one leaf cut off will be a little larger. The seedling you did not touch will be the largest and healthiest.

From this experiment you can gather that the cotyledons are storehouses for the young plant and should fall off only when the plant is strong enough to get nourishment by itself. Losing first leaves too soon hampers a plant’s growth.

I hope you enjoy your seeds and seedlings this spring! Do your homework on best growing practices for your region, and don’t forget to have fun with the kids along the way. There are so many life lessons and spiritual truths to be learned from planting a garden.

Related post: Gardening With Children

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, education, family, gardening, outdoor activities, planting, plants, plant experiments, seedlings, vegetable garden, science

But, I was thinking about that little seed the whole time. AMAZING, that tiny seed that is SO powerful that it can be life giving and fruit producing. What a fantastic representation of the RESURRECTION power of Jesus Christ. It looks like this dead, dry little ball, and yet with the aid of some water, sunshine, and good earth, has the force to manufacture this product which can sustain a human being with its harvest! I just can’t get over how mind-blowing that is! How can something bigger than itself be brought forth out of dirt? How can something come from nothing?

When this son of mine was in-utero, God led me to a certain passage which I read over him almost daily. It was Ephesians Chapter 1. Recently, I heard a sermon on this scripture, and as I realized that I knew it so well that I could almost predict what the pastor would say next, I recalled this season of prayer and intercession over my firstborn.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way. Ephesians 1: 18-23

I’m sitting here marveling at how God in His wisdom and foresight brings all things together in His time. I have this swirl of thoughts and memories…visiting OMSI at ten weeks into my pregnancy and seeing the developing baby exhibit, realizing for the first time the fullness of life that was inside me. Attending an outdoor sunrise Easter service when I was about 10 years old, shivering on a hard chair with childlike wonder at the thought of the risen Christ, somehow symbolized in the sun rising over the Arizona mountains in all its brilliant colors. Wondering at how little seedlings poking up through a sidewalk could have had enough power to crack the concrete. All of these reflections are tied to the power, the potency of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Did you catch the promise in Ephesians chapter 1? The Resurrection power of Jesus Christ is available for those who believe!! Do you understand the kind of power it takes to raise someone from the dead?? It is power over sin and death. Power over every fear, sickness, unbelief, bad habit, and inherited disease. This assurance brings hope beyond belief.

I hope you have a transforming Resurrection Sunday~many blessings to you!

Jen @ diaryof1.com

Technorati Tags: Christianity, faith, family, God, Ephesians 1, Easter, Resurrection Sunday, planting, gardening

This enchanting, pastoral scene led to an all day baking session with a friend to stock up on meals and fill our freezers for those days when company is coming or time is scarce. We even wore cute aprons. I became delusional that I was born for baking and meal planning and living, well, sort of like the Amish. Simple, slow, homemaking and picking daisies.

(Excuse me while I go pull a frozen pizza out of the oven.) However, at this moment, I’m finding that I have no inner Amish and it would be all but deceitful to write such a post. I’ve had a rough few days and maybe rougher ones ahead. My house is a disaster with clothes, toys, and random items strewn helter-skelter like a really bad hair day. I feel far from the peaceful Amish that I picture in my mind’s eye.

I passionately miss my husband, who’s working out of town, my live-in mother is convinced the house will burn down just because a bad battery sent every alarm screaming through the night, and the dog has worms (the cat is suspect as well). I have parent-teacher conferences in two and a half days and a performance evaluation in one. And I can’t even come up with three more friends to give the next batches of Amish friendship bread starters to.

If you find my inner Amish, you can send it packing to Pennsylvania, because it would not be at home here.

I’m so glad that next week I get to celebrate the Resurrection, and, as you can see in my sidebar excerpt, I’m hoping for the power of the living Christ to be at work in me. I NEED it to be, and I hope (I know) that the resurrected Christ is more meaningful than my Amish fantasy.

Technorati Tags: Amish friendship bread, simplicity

1. Act it out. As I read aloud the lesson from our textbook, I have my students stand at their desk and create motions to go along with the words. If we are studying about Alexander the Great crossing a vast desert on his way to conquer another nation, I’ve seen students galloping on their horses, brandishing swords, or taking a victory stance.

A word of caution–if you don’t want this to get too out of hand, let your students know ahead of time what the boundaries are. After dealing with kids racing around the room, falling to the floor with gasps and spasms as they “die,” and engaging in hand-to-hand combat, I had to make some rules! Extra points went to groups who acted silently (so as to hear the teacher), stayed behind their desks, and if they must die, they do so with a minimum of fanfare. Just sayin’.

2. Group skits. This is a modification of number 1 above. Instead of each student acting individually, I assign sections of the text to groups of 3-4 students (about 1-2 pages per group) and give them 15-20 minutes to come up with a skit to represent their section. This is not meant to be an extended project, and must be accomplished within that timeframe.

Each group has up to five minutes to present their skit, so with about five groups of students, this fills the social studies period. Twenty minutes to read their section and prepare the skit, plus 25 minutes of group presentations – 45 minutes. Much more fun than just reading and filling out a worksheet. And truly, the retention is miles beyond the traditional approach.

A note on the skits–visit with each group as they are preparing, and point out the main ideas that should make it into their skit. They will need some guidance o this, especially if they are new to this activity. Names of characters should be stated, location and date should be made known. As your students become familiar with what you require, the quality of their skits really improves.

3. Poetry. From prose to poetry is the goal here. When we go the poetry route, we read the chapter aloud, then I offer a poem starter to get the kids in the right frame of mind. I’ve been requiring just six lines of poetry for now, because this is a more difficult one for my kids. As they become more comfortable with this method, I would expect my students to write eight lines for every page of the lesson.

Let’s try a quick lesson here. Go the the Alexander the Great wikipedia page and read the intro. Write six lines of poetry. Here’s my poem, done in less than five minutes.

Alexander conquered the world
In his statue his hair looks curled

A Macedonian king of Greece
Skilled in war, elusive with peace

He spread Greek culture far and wide
The Hellenistic period was his pride

It’s amazing how much you have to examine the words and think about synonyms to turn prose into poetry. I think this is a method I will continue to explore!

4. Jeopardy! Who doesn’t love a good game? We read the lesson aloud to get the big picture. Then break into groups of three or four students each. Each student must write at least three Jeopardy questions, which are then submitted to me to choose from. Sometimes, to get good coverage, I will assign groups the pages their questions must come from. I also typically have them label their questions Easy, Medium, or Difficult.

On the whiteboard, I draw a modified Jeopardy game board, with group names and points. We play a simplified version of the TV game show.

Some other ideas for teachers to explore…reader’s theatre, songs, puppet shows. The bottom line for me is this: how can I engage my students in a subject that is typically called “boring” by a huge number of young people? I know how critical it is to know our history – how else can we know ourselves? History is anything but boring!

If you have some great ideas for spicing up the social studies, let me know. And do you have an Alexander the Great poem for me?

Technorati Tags: education, history lesson ideas, creative social studies, teaching

I’d like to show you an example of a lapbook for Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls. I created this for my 6th grade students, and they are loving it. What I like most about the lapbook is the myriad of options available–all sizes, colors, shapes, and topics, all to be worked out according to the book and limited only by your imagination.

As a logistical note, I chose to make the entire lapbook right upfront, rather than make one mini book at a time, because with the way I set this up, the students are adding a bit to almost every mini book each day. You’ll need to gather two manila folders per child as well as the pre-printed templates which I’ll reference below (just follow the links). I would set aside two class sessions of 30-45 minutes each to set up the entire lapbook.

Start with a letter size manila folder. Open it up, and fold each flap into the middle and crease. And because I wanted an extra pocket in the back, I taped up the sides of a second manila folder and glued it to the back of the first folder. Here is what the lapbook looks like from the front:

As you can see, your child or student can decorate the front cover and also include some mini-books. I chose to affix three pockets for what I call “character cards.”

I picked three main characters from Where the Red Fern Grows – Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann, and as we read the book together in class, I prompt the students to stop and make notes on 3×5 notecards when they learn something new or important about each character. The 3×5 notecard must be folded in half or cut to fit into this pocket. Here are examples of student entries on their character cards:

Billy: (from Chapter 2) When he is ten years old, he gets infected with the “dog-wanting disease.” He is a real country boy, he knows every game trail and animal track, and is an excellent hunter.

Old Dan: (from Ch. 5) Larger than the girl dog and deeper red in color, and Billy notices right away that Old Dan is bold and aggressive.

Little Ann (from Ch. 5) Smaller and more timid, but Billy sees that she is very smart and sure of herself.

Here is the link to the template for the pockets.

Open up the lapbook and you’ll discover a treasure of little books:

I’ll start on the left inside flap. There is an Author mini-book, called a rectangle petal book. On the four outside flaps I wrote the words birth, early childhood, writing, and my one regret. Under each of these flaps, the students are to write a sentence or two about Wilson Rawls on that subject. I handed out this study guide for Where the Red Fern Grows which includes information for several of the mini-books, including this author mini-book. By the way, Wilson Rawls’ one regret was that his father died before Wilson could show him a copy of his book.

Under the author book is “the Ozarks” mini-book (the hexagon mini simple fold book), which in a traditional book report would be the setting. In this little space, the students will share details such as how the Ozarks are a highland region, and in Where the Red Fern Grows, the part of the Ozarks described is in the northeastern section of Oklahoma. Thick forests of oak, hickory, pine, and maple, caves, mountain streams, and abundant wildlife should all be mentioned.

The wheel book under the Ozarks book is for Sequence of Events. It is divided into eight sections, and meant for students to think hard about boiling down the main events of the book into just a few steps. For example, the first event listed could be The adult Billy has a flashback to his childhood after rescuing a redbone hound. The second event could be Billy works hard for two years and earns money to buy his hounds.

Right away you probably noticed the bright, multi-colored layered book called Chapter Summaries. We made these out of colored construction paper following these easy instructions. This is where the students record a few concise sentences about each chapter as they go, touching on the main action, thus creating an entire summary of the book by the time they have completed the last chapter.

I cut off a smaller section of the original layered book and used it for the skinnier multi-colored layered book to the right called Fave Quotes and Phrases. I encouraged my students to be on the lookout for figurative, expressive language, for which Wilson Rawls is famous, fun plays on words, or thought-provoking quotes. Examples that made it into some student’s lapbook are:

(p.21) I felt as big as the tallest mountain in the Ozarks.
(p.40) …croaking like a bullfrog that had been caught by a water moccasin…
(p. 88) …I wouldn’t blame the coon if he stayed in the tree until Gabriel blew his horn.

Under the chapter summaries is a Daily Journal, made using the same method as the chapter summary mini-book, except with plain paper. I typically give a writing prompt for this exercise, and here is an example of the prompt I wrote for Ch. 9:

Grandpa says, “I think it would be a good thing if all young boys had to cut down a big tree like that once in their life. It does something for them.” Do you agree with Grandpa, and why? Has there been something difficult you’ve had to accomplish that ended up increasing your courage?

The Book Report mini-book in the center of the lapbook is the most simple of them all. It’s a basic flap-book, and here is what’s under the cover – a place to record the nuts and bolts of the book: title, author, illustrator, publication date, setting, main character, and what I thought of the book.

Directly under the Book Report mini-book are two index card accordion books (very easy!). It’s hard to make out the writing, but they say Vocabulary Words. Listed here are words from each chapter the students may not be familiar with and should know. As you pull open the index card, there is a place for the student to write the words I’ve assigned, as well as their own personal list. Here is the word list from chapters 1-7 as an example:

allot v. to parcel out
cur n. inferior or undesirable dog; mongrel
fester v. to cause increasing poisoning or irritation
grit n. unconquerable spirit
mull v. to think over at length
muster v. to assemble; to gather
wily adj. full of cunning

A lapbook on Where the Red Fern Grows would not be complete without a mini-book on the coon! At the top right of the inside of the lapbook folder you’ll see the Raccoon flip-flap book. As you lift the cover of this mini-book, you’ll find three flaps to label, and under each flap the kids will write a description. For the coon book, the three labels I chose were Description, Behavior, and Eating Habits.

Another pocket is under the Raccoon book, labeled Spiritual Truths. Where the Red Fern Grows is chock full of biblical and moral truths and opportunities for spiritual growth. For example, after reading chapter 3 and learning how persistently Billy works for two years to earn the money for his hounds, students could write Proverbs 14:23 on an index card: In hard work there is always something gained, but idle talk leads only to poverty.

The final mini-book I’ve included in the lapbook for Where the Red Fern Grows is a must–a redbone coon hound book, and I chose the template of a T-book. Inside the flaps of this book are a square in the center for a picture of a redbone coon hound, and three other flaps for information about the breed. The study guide I mentioned earlier has a nice section on the redbone hound.

A word on attaching the mini-books to the base folder: Students either glued them down or stapled them. What happens if a student fills her journal and needs more room? She would pull off the mini-book, place it in the folder which is glued to the back of the lapbook, and make a new journal to affix into the lapbook. If you think you have wordy kids on your hands who will fill up their little books, think about attaching the mini-books with velcro for easy removal. The folder is also the depository where the student will empty out her pockets when they are full (the character cards and spiritual truth cards) to make room for more.

How does the teacher grade a lapbook? I periodically check on each student, walking about the room and inspecting a bit of each student’s book every day we use it, to ensure they are keeping on top of it. I also invite volunteers to share what they have written, which they enjoy tremendously. When we are finished with Where the Red Fern Grows, I will collect each student’s lapbook and grade each mini-book on a simple scale, giving an overall grade of up to 100%. The breakdown of points is as follows: All mini-books except the Chapter Summaries and Daily Journal receive up to 5 points each, and the Chapter Summaries and Daily Journal receive up to 20 points each.

That’s about it! I hope you were able to follow this lengthy description of a lapbook, and if you have any questions or ideas for improvements, please let me know. Where the Red Fern Grows is a fabulous book for a project like this, and is a book that should not be missed, whether you lapbook it or not.

Technorati Tags: book reports, education, lapbooks, literary log, mini books, Where the Red Fern Grows

I feel that this beginning part of our day is perhaps the most important thing I do. I had to work hard to squeeze it in, because if you work for a school, you know that your schedule is very tight with all the other subject requirements and content you are obliged to cover in a given year. But the beauty this brings to my classroom is worth every bit of effort. Music feeds the soul, and art, well, a good long look at a masterpiece could be the equivalent of reading a 300 page classic novel.

I have to make clear that this 10-15 minute art/music journal time is meant to be a broad overview to simply expose kids to the greatest works of art and music of all time. I figure that by the end of the school year, they will have been introduced to more masterpieces than most adults ever will be familiar with.

On the whiteboard, there is a section on the left side reserved for the daily journal questions. In bold letters I write “Look” with little eyeballs in the o’s, followed by the title of the painting and the journal question. Below this I draw an ear icon next to the word “Listen,” along with the title of the musical piece and a query. Writing prompts help them to get started and stir up ideas. Here are a few examples of how it works:

Day 1:

LOOK: The Dancing Couple, by Jan Steen, 1663.

Journal Question: Jan Steen loved to paint life “as it is,” and used painting as storytelling. What details of this painting tell you that Steen captured daily life with all its messiness?

(My students noticed broken eggshells strewn on the floor, a stray spoon, turned over containers, and a general chaotic, merry feeling.)

LISTEN: Art of the Fugue, BWV 1080, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), from Classical Kids, Mr. Bach Comes to Call.

Journal Question: A fugue is when you have have more than one musical line going on at once, and they all use the same theme. It’s called imitative counterpoint. Bach is the prime example of the fugue. Can you hear the themes?

(I will generally have the kids write in their own words what a fugue is for this journal entry, otherwise it would simply be a yes or no answer.)

*****

Notice that the above painter and musician come from generally the same time period. I like pairing them like this. Even better is pairing the artist and the musician from the same country and time period, and aligning this with your history curriculum.

Day 2:

LOOK: Red Boats in Argenteuil, by Claude Monet, 1875

Journal Question: Pure black is rarely used by the impressionist painters. Monet would instead combine several colors to achieve the appearance of black: blues, greens and reds. What color are the shadows in this painting?

LISTEN: Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, Introduction.

Journal Question: Write down each character and the musical instrument that corresponds to it. Which is your favorite?

*****

One of my proudest moments came earlier this year, just after the Super Bowl, actually. During the Super Bowl, a cute Coke commercial was aired, the one with the insects in a meadow who steal away with the sleeping guy’s Coca Cola. The entire commercial is set to just one sound, with no voices: the music from Peter and the Wolf. It was Peter’s theme, the most recognized piece of the composition.

That Monday, I asked my kids if any of them watched the Super Bowl and noticed the Coke commercial. A few of them made me jump for joy – Yes! they chimed in–it was Peter and the Wolf! A few parents even noted to me how surprised they were when their children recognized the tune. This small incident highlighted for me why I do what I do.

Now, I’d like to share some resources that make this art/music series possible and mostly FREE. I don’t have a written program I follow at this point, but I hope to develop one to make this much easier for teachers to replicate, along with journal questions for each piece. For now, I gather materials as I go, and decide about a week ahead of time what to present, trying to align this with our history/social studies units. Here’s a short list to get you started.

1. National Gallery of Art. Most folks are unaware that the National Gallery of Art has a free lending program. This has been invaluable to me! So far, almost all of my art, with the exception of some books I own, has come from this fabulous program. Most teaching packets come with a teachers guide, a CD of images, slides, and large color study prints. I sign up online for the programs I want, NGA ships them right to me at no cost, and I’m responsible only for the cost of returning them media mail. Can’t beat this.

If you don’t have a slide projector, look for one. Or just use the large prints. If you are fortunate enough to have a projector for your computer, you certainly have an easy job! Some of my favorite teaching packets so far have been:

Painting in the Dutch Golden Age
Picturing France (1830-1900)

2. Your local public library. This has been the source of nearly all my classical music for kids. If you have a collection built up already, you’re in luck. The most difficult part of the music for me was coming up with journal questions. I loved the classical kids CDs that incorporated a story with the music, because this made the journaling so much easier for the kids. This way, my questions can also be about details from the composer’s life, which are typically included in these CDs, or questions about the storyline if it’s an opera or ballet. Here are my favorites:

Famous Composers, written by Darren Henley, read by Marin Alsop.

Vivaldi, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak, and Shostakovich make up this delightful introduction to FAMOUS COMPOSERS, an Audie-nominated production filled with re-enactments, musical excerpts, and facts on the six composers. (from AudioFile)

More Famous Composers, written by Darren Henley, read by Marin Alsop.

This delightful production focuses on portraits of Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Rachmaninov, and contemporary artist Paul Williams. (from AudioFile)

Peter and the Wolf by Sergei Prokofiev, by Stephen Simon and narrated by Yadu.

Narrator Yadu sets up the classic story by introducing the characters and the individual musical themes that represent each one. His voice has an appealing storytelling quality but is not intrusive. The rich music itself, played by the London Philharmonic, directed by Stephen Simon, takes center stage. (from AudioFile)

The Story of Swan Lake, by Tchaikovsky, from Maestro Classics.

Featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra with music conducted by Stephen Simon, and narrated by Yadu. Also includes a biography of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and a lesson about the music.

Classics for Kids

A fabulous website that you shouldn’t miss!! Podcasts, a musical dictionary for kids, pieces from all the famous composers at the click of a button, and online musical games are just a few of the outstanding features of this award-winning site.

I hope you’ve been encouraged today to devote some teaching time to the classics of art and music. Just a few minutes a day, with consistency, will achieve more than you can imagine. Some of you may have some other great resources to add to my short list – if so, let me know about them!

Music is a more potent instrument than any other for education. Plato

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle

Technorati Tags: art education, music education, classical music, the master painters, journaling

Basically, by demonstrating that the human genome is deteriorating, and always has been since its origin, the theory of human life arising from random, beneficial, and increasingly complex mutations simply can’t be true. If we take an honest look at the human genome research, we will discover profound implications about our views of life, and we must conclude that The Primary Axiom is false.
A most enlightening and readable book on this subject is Dr. Sanford’s book Genetic Entropy & The Mystery of the Genome. If you have some basic knowledge of biology and genetics, you can glean everything you need from this book to formulate a solid reasoning for Creation or Intelligent Design.

Dr. Sanford begins his book with this Prologue:

In retrospect, I realize I have wasted much of my life arguing about things that don’t really matter. It is my sincere hope that this book can actually address something that really does matter. The issues of who we are, where we come from, and where we are going seem to me to be of enormous importance. This is the real subject of this book.

Modern thinking centers around the premise that man is just the product of a pointless natural process (undirected evolution). This widely-taught doctrine, when taken to its logical conclusion, leads us to believe that we are just meaningless bags of molecules, and in the final analysis, nothing matters. If false, this doctrine has been the most insidious and destructive thought system ever devised by man. Yet, if true, it is at best meaningless, like everything else. The whole thought system which prevails within today’s intelligentsia is built upon the ideological foundation of undirected and pointless Darwinian evolution.

This reminds me of the battle of wits about the poison in The Princess Bride. If Darwinian evolution is true, life is meaningless and therefore the doctrine itself is meaningless. If it’s false, it’s more than meaningless, it’s been a catastrophic blow to the sanctity of human life.

Man in Black: All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right… and who is dead.

Vizzini: But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you: are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet or his enemy’s? Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool, you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black: You’ve made your decision then?

Vizzini: Not remotely. Because iocane comes from Australia, as everyone knows, and Australia is entirely peopled with criminals, and criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

Man in Black: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

Vizzini: Wait til I get going! Now, where was I?

Man in Black: Australia.

Vizzini: Yes, Australia. And you must have suspected I would have known the powder’s origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Man in Black: You’re just stalling now.

Vizzini: You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? You’ve beaten my giant, which means you’re exceptionally strong, so you could’ve put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you’ve also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

Sanford ends the Prologue with a grave remark about the consequences of our thinking.

If the Primary Axiom is wrong, then there is a surprising and very practical consequence. When subjected only to natural forces, the human genome must irrevocably degenerate over time. Such a sober realization should have more than just intellectual or historical significance. It should rightfully cause us to personally reconsider where we should rationally be placing our hope for the future.

Exactly how Dr. Sanford unravels the mystery of the human genome, the “book of life,” I will leave for the author to reveal to you. As I said, the book is readable for a lay person, but the complexity of biological and genetic information that is built up chapter upon chapter is too much for this space.

Sanford covers topics such as how mutations consistently destroy information, how selection capabilities are very limited, and how mutation/selection cannot realistically create a single gene. There is a helpful glossary of terms in the back of the book. And most importantly, Dr. Sanford ends with a personal postlude giving an answer to replace a false axiom – Jesus Christ, our only hope.

Technorati Tags: Intelligent Design, creation, evolution, faith, Genetic Entropy, John Sanford, human genome, The Princess Bride

Dr. Benjamin Carson is one of the world’s best neurosurgeons. He made history in 1987 when he accomplished what every neurosurgeon before him had failed to do: he successfully separated Siamese twins who were joined at the back of the head. Many other “firsts” followed this, and Dr. Carson continues to blaze a trail in the field of pediatric neurosurgery. He is currently a professor of neurosurgery, oncology, plastic surgery, and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and he has been chief of pediatric neurosurgery at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center for nearly a quarter of a century.
His outstanding achievements speak for themselves:

In 2001, Dr. Carson was named by CNN and TIME Magazine as one of the nation’s 20 foremost physicians and scientists. That same year, he was selected by the Library of Congress as one of 89 “Living Legends” on the occasion of its 200th anniversary. He is also the recipient of the 2006 Spingarn Medal which is the highest honor bestowed by the NAACP. In February, 2008, Dr. Carson was presented with the Ford’s Theatre Lincoln Medal by President Bush at the White House. In June, 2008, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by the President, which is the highest civilian honor in the land. He has literally received hundreds of other awards during his distinguished career.

Dr. Carson has been a leader in scientific research his entire career. He has over 120 major scientific publications in peer reviewed journals, almost 40 books and book chapters, and grant awards of about one million dollars. With his clear intelligence in the fields of medicine and science, I think his opinion on the origin of life deserves to be heard.

Does evolutionary theory have any direct bearing on his daily work as a neurosurgeon? Only philosophically, I would say, but can you tell me one field of science where evolutionary theory actually makes a tangible, measurable difference in how that scientist works and contributes to society? It merely plays out in a theoretical or metaphysical or political way.

A lot of people believe in evolution because most scientists do (or at least it’s the common perception that most scientists do). I don’t know the statistics, but I suspect the number of scientists who do not believe in evolution is large and growing. I am not speaking of microevolution, but the general theory of Darwin that all life originated and evolved by gradual and chance advantageous mutations – which is entirely void of factual support.

Back to Benjamin Carson–I’m more than pleased to know that this distinguished man speaks openly and honestly about his faith in God and belief in a Creator and Designer. He looks to the facts and wonders at Darwin’s own assertion that within fifty to 100 years of his lifetime fossil remains would be found of the entire evolutionary tree, displaying an indisputable step-by-step evolution of life from amoeba to human. As Carson points out, this does not exist:

It’s just not there. But when you bring that up to the proponents of Darwinism, the best explanation they can come up with is “Well…uh…it’s lost!”…I find it requires too much faith for me to believe that explanation given all the fossils we have found without any fossilized evidence of the direct, step-by-step evolutionary progression from simple to complex organisms or from one species to another species. Shrugging and saying, “Well, it was mysteriously lost, and we’ll probably never find it,” doesn’t seem like a particularly satisfying, objective, or scientific response.

Dr. Carson is certainly a risk-taker in more ways than one. In fact, his latest best-selling book is called Take the Risk. In his surgical field, he continually pushes forward with innovation and new techniques. For example, with hemispherectomies (removal of half of the brain to prevent untreatable severe seizures), he significantly increased the safety of the procedure by coming up with better ways of controlling bleeding and infection, as well as developing a system of incrementally removing specific brain parts.

In his willingness to explain his creation views, he is also a risk taker. He addressed the National Science Teachers convention in Philadelphia and the very prestigious Academy of Achievement, which includes many Nobel scientists. Dr. Carson’s basic message was that “evolution and creationism both require faith. It’s just a matter of where you choose to place that faith.”

If you’d like to find out more about Benjamin Carson, there are some fantastic resources available. Just this past Saturday, Feb. 7, 2009, TNT aired Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. Superbly played by Cuba Gooding, you will be inspired to learn of Carson’s upbringing in extreme poverty in Detroit, raised by a single mother with a third grade education. Ben Carson’s story is also told in his autobiography, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story. Visit the Carson Scholars Fund for information on Benjamin Carson’s education initiatives and scholarships.

Resources:
Carson Scholars Fund
Benjamin Carson: The Pediatric Neurosurgeon with Gifted Hands
Ben Carson: The Faith of a Surgeon

Technorati Tags: Benjamin Carson, Christianity, creation, evolution, faith, neurosurgeon, science

However, mass conversions to Christianity as a result of his ministry are the reason for the label. About six million Muslims convert to Christianity annually, and an Islamic cleric admitted on al-Jazeera TV not too long ago that many of these conversions are attributed to Botros’ public ministry.

What is his secret, and how has he survived? I believe his greatest asset is his command of classic Arabic and his TV show broadcast in Arabic into the heart of Muslim territory. Born in Egypt, Botros has been hosting Truth Talk since 2003, a weekly 90 minute show where he expertly exposes the inherent contradictions of Islam.

Because Zakaria Botros knows Arabic and has read all of the teachings of Muhammed, the Quran, and countless other Muslim books, he is in an unusually strategic position to counter the inconsistencies of Islam with Islam itself, not just the Bible or Christian teaching. Botros is ultimately interested in saving souls, but is aware that a traditional evangelical approach will not work. He explained this recently:

I am not against Muslims although I am against Islam as a false religion. I don’t want to disgrace Muslims but to expose Islam. My ultimate intention is to glorify God and to save people, especially Muslims. Muslims are victims. Muhammad deceived them as he himself was deceived by Satan. Muslims believe that Muhammad is the best prophet, that the Quran is the only proper book from God, and Islam is the only religion from God. Muslims are in bad need to be saved from these false beliefs.

One example of how Botros will expose Islam with his polemic, debating style, was his lengthy exposure of a certain embarrassing aspect of Islamic law, which Islamic authorities are unable to rebut:

Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention a scandalous — and authentic — hadith stating that women should “breastfeed” strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is, according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women “forbidden” to the men with whom they are forced into contact — the logic being that, by being “breastfed,” the men become like “sons” to the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.

To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith department at al-Azhar University — Sunni Islam’s most authoritative institution — went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing “Rida’ al-Kibir” (sharia’s term for “breastfeeding the adult”), which prompted such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.

Another telling illustration of how Zakaria Botros forces Muslims to examine the roots of their faith is this:

One recent episode of Truth Talk, aired Nov. 21, cut to 20 separate clips, most of Cairo’s respected Al-Azhar University Sheikh Khaled El-Gendy, to debate the age of Aisha when she became Muhammad’s second wife. Islamic hadiths (the sayings and actions of Muhammad) say she was 6 years old when married and 9 when the marriage was consummated (and reportedly returned to play with her toys afterward). Yet many scholars—and a controversial new novel about Aisha, The Jewel of Medina by Sherry Jones that was dropped from Random House’s list because of Muslim threats—have tried to paper over the obvious morality issue of child marriage with assertions that Aisha was 14 or even 18. What’s at stake, it becomes clear as the episode unfolds, is whether the Quran and the hadiths can be both true and exemplary.

Whether Zakaria Botros is confronting universal jihad or the inferiority of women, he is always careful to painstakingly cover all the sources, quoting the original Islamic texts and inviting a response from the ulema, the expert Muslim theologians who articulate sharia law. Al-dalil we al-burhan, evidence and proof, is what he demands.

You may wonder how Zakaria Botros is still alive. You must know that any one of his statements would bring death if he were to be roaming the streets preaching in any Islamic town. He’s been jailed twice for preaching the gospel to Muslims, and was sentenced to life in prison. Miraculously, the judge instead released him on the condition that he be forced into exile – Botros had to leave Egypt for good.

After having ministered in Cairo for over 30 years, Botros moved to England. Since then, he “retired” into his airwave ministry. It seems the threats are just beginning. Botros is sure he’d be dead were it not for broadcasting from an undisclosed location. Jihadist groups have posted death threats worth up to a reported $60 million for his head. Zakaria Botros knows the seriousness of this. Growing up as a child in Alexandria, Egypt, Muslim attackers killed his young teenage brother. His response:

Instead of anger against Muslims, the Lord saved me from that. I had pity on them.

Botros does more than defy Islam. He offers an alternative, the truth of Christianity, and he consistently opens and closes his show with an invitation to his viewers to come to Christ. With the growing worldwide hostility to anyone who speaks out against Islam (for example, the Dutch lawmaker currently facing prosecution for anti-Islamic statements), Botros is truly fearless.

“Fear? I fear nothing,” says Botros. “My dictionary does not contain the word fear. I believe in God and I believe that the epistle of Ephesians says we are created in Jesus Christ for a plan, which was engaged from the early beginning. No one can cut it, and when it is completed no one can continue it.”

photo: World Magazine
sources: World Magazine, National Review Online,

Technorati Tags: Christianity, Islam, Zakaria Botros, Muslim, evangelizing Muslims

Berthe Fraser was among hundreds of people who rose to the treacherous task of defending France. Be they a housewife, a mother, a Catholic, a Jew, a communist, an artist, or a politician, these resistance fighters came from all layers of society, both male and female, young and old, and without their heroic acts, Hitler’s march through France may not have been halted.

The French Resistance took many forms, from groups of armed guerilla bands who escaped to the mountains, known as the Maquis, to organizers of escape networks for Jews and other targets of the Nazis, to publishers of underground newspapers, to those who carried out sabotage operations, to couriers who carried coded messages back and forth between Allied members.

Mrs. Fraser’s story begins with her birth in 1894 as Berthe Emilie Vicogne. She married an Englishman and thus became a British subject. When the rumblings of WWII hit France, Berthe Fraser was going about her domestic life in her hometown of Arras, France, all the while organizing an underground network that saved the lives of countless English agents and pilots. Her husband reported later to an English newspaper:

My wife was the head of a great movement, which worried the Germans stupid. She was the hub of this big wheel. Her first work was in 1940 when there were hundreds of British soldiers roaming around France. My wife started a movement which grew until it was a sort of underground channel. She sent dozens of British soldiers by devious means to the coast where they were smuggled to England.

Twice betrayed but never broken, Berthe Fraser was an unshakable woman for whom I have the utmost awe and respect. I can relate to where she was in life; a woman in her 40s, tending to her home. I don’t know if she had any children, but as a woman, I feel the risks of undertaking the work of the Resistance were doubly perilous.

I wish there was more information available about this woman. I know she suffered extreme torture during her second capture, and this trauma surely accounts for the lack of details. Who wants to recall the horror? I can find no record of a public interview. I discovered in the back matter of the book SOE in France by M.R.D. Foot, that Berthe Fraser died in 1956, her health never restored.

In 1941, someone betrayed Berthe, and she was arrested by the Gestapo. She spent 15 months in a Belgian prison, and was released in December 1942. Did this imprisonment deter her? No. Berthe immediately jumped back into the work of fighting Hitler’s campaign of death and terror.

No sooner had she got out than Berthe immediately contacted the officers sent into France from England, and embarked on a new phase of anti–Nazi activity, helping the Allies by supplying English agents with a complete support network of Resistance fighters. She looked after the foreigners, providing them with shelter, transport, and safe hiding places where they could engage in their clandestine missions. She arranged liaisons, transmitted vital messages, and took on the very dangerous role of courier, travelling far and wide by car, sometimes on foot, laden with documents, arms, and occasionally the dynamite required for sabotage operations.

Somehow she managed to evade discovery, collecting the supplies of weapons that were dropped by night at secret locations by British planes, hiding the vital goods in safe houses where they could only be released on presenting her signature.

Berthe had to go to great lengths to protect her English charges. Once, entrusted with the care of the well–known English agent Wing Commander Yeo–Thomas, known as “The White Rabbit,” she arranged a funeral cortege to transport the senior officer, hidden inside the hearse. He says she was “one of the great Resistance heroines…. She worked impartially for any French or British organisation that needed her.”

From the Charlotte Gray website, an excellent Warner Bros. movie about a Scottish woman living in England, parachuted into France by the British Government (SOE) to support the French Resistance.

Berthe was betrayed again in 1944, unbelievably by one of the very English agents whose life she saved. She spent six months in solitary confinement at Loos where she was tortured every day. She was stripped and flogged in front of Nazi troops and condemned to death. Never did she betray her friends in the Resistance or the English army. How many lives she saved through her own afflictions will never be known.

When the Allies stormed the prison on September 1, 1944, Berthe Fraser was just hanging onto life, and she is reported to have said, “Thank you boys, you are just in time.”

The story of Berthe Fraser stands as just one of the many heroines of WWII. If you’re interested in further accounts of the women of the French Resistance, I highly recommend the following resources:

Sisters in Resistance, a documentary film by Independent Lens.

SISTERS IN RESISTANCE tells the story of four young women who risked their lives to fight Nazi oppression and brutality in occupied France, not because they themselves were Jewish or in danger of being arrested, but because it was the right thing to do. Within two years of the start of the Occupation, they had all been arrested by the Gestapo and were deported as political prisoners to Ravensbruck concentration camp.

The documentary follows the paths of the four women — Geneviève de Gaulle Anthonioz, Jacqueline Pery d’Alincourt, Anise Postel-Vinay and Germaine Tillion — from before the war to the present. The women speak about what compelled them to resist, their roles in the Resistance, their arrests, deportation and liberation. They talk about the struggle to rebuild their lives after the war, their desire for children and their continued battles in the name of justice.

Charlotte Gray, a Warner Bros. film.

Set in Nazi–occupied France at the height of World War II, Charlotte Gray tells the compelling story of a young Scottish woman working with the French Resistance in the hope of rescuing her lover, a missing RAF pilot.

Based on the best–selling novel by Sebastian Faulks, the film stars Cate Blanchett, Billy Crudup, Michael Gambon and Rupert Penry-Jones. Charlotte Gray is directed by Gillian Armstrong and produced by Sarah Curtis and Douglas Rae.

For Freedom, a novel by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley. An excellent young adult book for grades 6-12.

Life for Suzanne David, a 13-year-old French schoolgirl and music apprentice, dramatically changes in May, 1940, when she and her best friend witness the brutal death of a neighbor when a bomb drops directly in front of them. Soon the Germans take over Cherbourg, and the Davids are forced from their home into poverty. Then Suzanne is given the opportunity to help the Allies. Bravely, she risks her life, family, and singing career in order to spy for the Resistance. The pace of this suspenseful novel, told in first person and based on a true story, moves swiftly into action within the first chapter, showing the young heroine as strong, courageous, and clever. Filled, but not laden, with the events of the war, and peppered with French language and the culture of music, this novel will appeal to readers who enjoy history and espionage.

Outwitting the Gestapo, a memoir by Lucie Aubrac.

A suspenseful rendering of Aubrac’s experiences as a French Resistance fighter during WWII. This memoir owes its existence to the 1983 extradition to France of Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyon.” In order to refute Barbie’s defenders and former collaborators, Aubrac told her story publicly for the first time- -and it became a bestseller in France. Focusing on a nine-month period that begins with the conception of her second child, Aubrac looks back 40 years at experiences of enduring intensity. During the war, the author, her Jewish husband Raymond, and other “resistants” published and distributed underground newspapers, found new identities and homes for fugitives, forged permits, stole guns, and blew up roads and bridges–all routine Resistance activities.

What makes this account special, however, is Aubrac’s irrepressible energy and resourcefulness, and the graceful way in which she interweaves her separate but parallel lives. As a mother and wife struggling in a wartime economy, she bartered for hard-to-find items; as a devoted schoolteacher, she applied the lessons of history to current events; as a secret member of the Resistance, she couldn’t disclose her true identity even to her most trusted colleagues, switching names and identities like a quick-change artist. Three times, she helped free her husband from prison. The last incarceration was the most harrowing: Walking into a trap, Raymond was arrested, tortured, and sentenced to die by Barbie himself. Despite her anguish, Aubrac tricked her husband’s captors into meetings and masterminded an intricate rescue. The Aubracs’ escape by airlift to London, where their baby was born, is tremendously exciting. A breathtaking account that feeds the soul as much as it satisfies the appetite for vicarious danger.

Sisters in the Resistance by Margaret Collins Weitz.

Weitz makes an important and unique contribution to the literature of the French Resistance and the history of World War II. Although countless studies have documented the heroic exploits of Resistance leaders during the course of World War II, few have focused on the pivotal role women played in the various underground organizations. Based on interviews with surviving resistants, this oral history contains the harrowing and often previously unrecorded testimony of a remarkable set of women. The author’s sensitive narrative places these riveting anecdotes and reminiscences into proper historical and sociological context as she examines and analyzes the ever expanding duties and assignments undertaken by women as France’s war-within-a-war continued to rage. An absolutely stunning and compelling chronicle of dauntless courage and unflagging patriotism.

Code Name Christiane Clouet: A Woman in the French Resistance by Claire Chevrillon.

A witness to the bleak fate of French Jewry in Nazi-dominated France, this remarkable author recounts her experiences from 1939 to 1945 in a personal though emotionally reserved way that makes her family’s tragedies particularly poignant. Her parents were upper-class, assimilated Jews; her father, Andre Chevrillon, was a member of the French Academy, a man Edith Wharton called “the first literary critic in France.” An English teacher in Paris when war broke out, Claire gives abundant details about the first days of the occupation, when France became a nation divided between the Petainists and those less willing to accommodate Hitler’s designs. In 1942, as repressive laws limited Jewish freedom (Claire’s mother was effectively imprisoned by her fear of leaving home wearing the yellow star), as her brother-in-law languished in a POW camp and her cousins were persecuted and eventually deported, Chevrillon joined the resistance, first in air operations and then in the code service, where she encoded and decoded messages between the free French government in London and de Gaulle’s Paris delegation. Chevrillon, who had contact with some of the most prominent members of the resistance, was betrayed in 1943 and spent four harrowing months in prison. The author’s goal was “to set forward the facts… not to analyze myself or my characters.” But her story, told without elaboration, is as dramatic and compelling as any fiction.

An American Heroine in the French Resistance: The Diary and Memoir of Virginia D’Albert-Lake by Virginia D’Albert-Lake.

In 1937, Virginia Roush, a strong-minded young woman from St. Petersburg, Florida, married a Frenchman, becoming Virginia d’Albert-Lake, and moved to Paris. During the war, she kept a diary, including almost larkish reports of her Resistance work. Part of an escape line that smuggled downed Allied airmen out of the country, she took them on secret sightseeing tours of Paris. In June, 1944, she was arrested by the Germans and sent to a sequence of concentration camps that included three spells in Ravensbrück. (The third time she was transferred from Ravensbrück, she weighed seventy-six pounds.) This book, comprising a diary written before her capture and a memoir written after her liberation, is an indelible portrait of extraordinary strength of character. In the diary she seems naïve and spirited; in the memoir she is sombre, reflective, and attentive to every detail.

Behind Enemy Lines: The True Story of a French Jewish Spy in Nazi Germany by Marthe Cohn.

This compelling memoir is testament to how extraordinary circumstances can transform a life-and how an extraordinary person reacts to difficult circumstances. Cohn was a typical French-Jewish teenager when WWII broke out, but as it did for millions of others, the war transformed her life in unimaginable ways. “There was no time to be frightened,” she and Holden, a veteran journalist, write. The first part of the book chronicles her family and friends’ response to the war. That countless other books have described the effects of the Nazi onslaught – the life-and-death consequences of the unthinkable decisions many were forced to make – makes her descriptions no less powerful and tragic. The narrative turns into a quasi thriller in its second half, depicting how the death of Cohn’s fiance led her, now a nurse, to join the Free French forces in the fight to defeat the Nazis. A blonde, fluent German speaker who never mentioned to her superiors that she was a Jew, she went on several life-threatening missions into German territory, earning France’s highest military honors. But she describes her actions without self-aggrandizement. What comes through is the importance of courageous individual action in the most dire situations. This is the amazing story of a woman who lived through one of the worst times in human history, losing family members to the Nazis but surviving with her spirit and integrity intact. Cohn now lives in California.

Carve Her Name With Pride by RJ Minney. Also on film.

Carve Her Name With Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris in 1921 to an English motor-car dealer, and a French mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police.

On June 7th, 1944, Szabo was parachuted into Limoges. Her task was to coordinate the work of the French Resistance in the area in the first days after D-Day. She was captured by the SS ‘Das Reich’ Panzer Division and handed over to the Gestapo in Paris for interrogation. From Paris, Violette Szabo was sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp where she was executed in January 1945. She was only 23 and for her courage was posthumously awarded The George Cross and the Croix de Guerre.

A Life in Secrets: Vera Atkins and the Missing Agents of WWII by Sarah Helm.

Vera Atkins, a legendary figure of British wartime intelligence, died in 2000 at the age of 92, but her secrets did not die with her, thanks to the brilliant investigative reporting of Sarah Helm, a noted British journalist and editor. Her book, A Life in Secrets, combines the history of a pivotal era with the nail-biting drama of the heroic operatives who were dropped into Nazi-occupied territories to contact and help form a resistance army.

Atkins worked for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which was formed in the dark days of 1940 after the British retreat at Dunkirk. Its mission was to wage a secret war until regular forces could be amassed to retake the continent. Her responsibilities were to recruit and train agents for SOE’s French section. Some 400 men and women were dispatched, and of these about 100 ended up “missing presumed dead.” Of special concern to Atkins were 12 female agents whom she could not account for after the war. Much of the book details her dogged pursuit of clues to their fates, leading to revelations of their incredible bravery when they were captured, sent to concentration camps and put to death.

Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France by Rita Kramer.

The true story of women agents of the secret World War II Special Operations Executive, mandated by Winston Churchill to “set Europe ablaze” by organizing resistance in occupied Europe during the prelude to D Day. Intrigue and heroism, adventure and betrayal figure in this account of British-led efforts to defeat the Nazis in wartime France, based on extensive research in records, documents, letters and memoirs, and the author’s interviews with surviving agents and officials. Despite sporadic defeat and betrayal, SOE leaders managed to delay the arrival of German reinforcements to the Normandy beachhead, contributing to the eventual Allied victory. Details of the operations of SOE recounted here remained secret for decades after the war, finally revealing the human cost of the reconnaissance and sabotage efforts that helped to shorten the conflict.

Technorati Tags: Berthe Fraser, French Resistance, France, Nazi Germany, Hitler, women in history

Just over five months ago, the Russian novelist and historian, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (December 11, 1918 – August 3, 2008), died in his homeland. What a loss to the world, this giant of the twentieth century who wrote from a Christian worldview to change the world.

Through the writings of Solzhenitsyn, the West became acquainted with the Gulag, the forced labor camps of the Soviet Union, in which he served an eight-year term for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter to a friend. Solzhenitsyn’s experiences in the labor camps formed the basis of his groundbreaking novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. His masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, came about a decade later, a scorching detail of four decades of Soviet terror and oppression. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1970.

At the end of Solzhenitsyn’s term in the labor camps, he was sent to internal exile in Kazakhstan, a common fate of political prisoners. During his imprisonment and exile, Solzhenitsyn turned deeply philosophical and spiritual and threw off the Marxism of his former days as a Red Army captain. His story sort of parallels that of Dostoevsky, who also spent time in exile in Siberia and had a quest for faith a hundred years before Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn was finally freed from exile in 1956 under the Khrushchev regime, and spent his time teaching and writing. However, after the ousting of Khrushchev in 1964, things took a turn for the worse once again. The KGB began seizing his manuscripts, and by 1974, Solzhenitsyn lived in exile once again. Once the KGB found the manuscripts for the first part of The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was arrested, deported, and stripped of his Soviet citizenship.

He found refuge in Germany, then Switzerland, and finally, the United States, where he ended up spending almost two decades.
In June of 1978, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was invited to speak at Harvard University, and began by addressing the graduates with a reminder that Harvard’s motto is “Veritas.”

Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit. And even while it eludes us, the illusion still lingers of knowing it and leads to many misunderstandings. Also, truth is seldom pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter. There is some bitterness in my speech today, too. But I want to stress that it comes not from an adversary but from a friend.

The entire text of this speech is brilliant and prophetic for 2009, and I do hope you take the time to read it. This portion of that Harvard address, in which Solzhenitsyn speaks of courage, or the lack thereof, is especially insightful:

A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life. Political and intellectual bureaucrats show depression, passivity and perplexity in their actions and in their statements and even more so in theoretical reflections to explain how realistic, reasonable as well as intellectually and even morally warranted it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice. And decline in courage is ironically emphasized by occasional explosions of anger and inflexibility on the part of the same bureaucrats when dealing with weak governments and weak countries, not supported by anyone, or with currents which cannot offer any resistance. But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?

One who has seen the depths of evil and is a person of any courage must tell the truth of the matter, as Solzhenitsyn has done time after time. From various writings and interviews I’ve come across, Solzhenitsyn is best characterized by Truth–he is compelled to reveal it. Being the remarkable, profound writer that he was, his words cannot be paraphrased by anything I could attempt to cobble together, so here are some more choice morsels from his pen:

Untouched by the breath of God, unrestricted by human conscience, both capitalism and socialism are repulsive. Source

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction. We cannot avoid revising the fundamental definitions of human life and human society. Is it true that man is above everything? Is there no Superior Spirit above him? Is it right that man’s life and society’s activities have to be determined by material expansion in the first place? Is it permissible to promote such expansion to the detriment of our spiritual integrity? Source.

Issues in Solzhenitsyn’s writings revolve around matters of conscience. He writes of God, justice, how people should live rightly in a corrupt nation, how the state has taken the place of the church, and always, truth.

Technorati Tags: Russia, Christianity, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Truth, Stalin, The Gulag, faith, Soviet Union

Suzman served in the South African parliament from 1953 to 1989, and fought a long, brave battle against government oppression of the country’s black majority. She was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and was one of the few white lawmakers to fight against the injustices of racially discriminatory regulations and ways of life.

For 13 of her years in parliament, Helen Suzman was the only lawmaker opposing the endless racist legislation introduced by the National Party government. She was called a “vicious little cat” by former South African President P.W. Botha and “An enemy of the state” by Zimbabwe’s President Mugabe – titles she wore a bit proudly in her maverick way.

Her story reminds me of another member of parliament in another country in another era. Just last week I watched the moving Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce (1759-1833), an evangelical Christian who was a member of the English Parliament. For 18 years, Wilberforce regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in parliament, and was also a lonely voice who fought on despite enormous odds. Wilberforce eventually passed a motion to end the slave trade in Britain, and in due course, an end to slavery itself in the British empire.
A century later, another battle was to be fought, and a daughter was born to Lithuanian-Jewish parents who had fled to a mining town near Johannesburg, South Africa, from their home country’s anti-Semitism. This child, Helen, grew up, and despite her white, sheltered, and privileged upbringing, came to see the tribulations of the black population and the evils of South Africa’s racial laws.

I first learned of South Africa’s practice of apartheid (social and political policy of racial segregation enforced by law) during high school. I read Alan Paton’s deeply moving novel Cry the Beloved Country for an AP English class, the greatest piece of literature to emerge out of South Africa. As a teenager, this was the most profound book I had ever read, and even now, over 20 years later, I still have not read a more penetrating, insightful, or beautiful novel.

Paton tells the story of a Zulu pastor searching a corrupt city for his son Absalom, and their lives intersect with a white landowner and his own son in a most tragic way, highlighting the racial divide of South Africa. The movie version of Cry the Beloved Country is also outstanding, with a brilliant performance by James Earl Jones as Rev. Kumalo.

What Alan Paton did for raising popular awareness of the plight of black South Africans through poetic prose, Helen Suzman did through tireless work in parliament. Back in 1967, Suzman visited Nelson Mandela in prison on Robben Island, where he served 18 of his 27 years in prison for anti-apartheid activity. Nelson later recalled of Helen Suzman:

It was an odd and wonderful sight to see this courageous woman peering into our cells and strolling around our courtyard. She was the first and only woman ever to grace our cells.

Mrs. Suzman was one of the few, if not the only, member of Parliament who took an interest in the plight of political prisoners.

Helen Suzman’s tireless crusading for the cause of the repressed black South Africans paid off, and apartheid began to be dismantled from 1990-1993, and Nelson Mandela was elected as South Africa’s first black president in 1994. Suzman was at Nelson Mandela’s side in 1996 when he signed South Africa’s new constitution. Mandela later awarded her with his country’s highest public honor in recognition of her years of campaigning on behalf of freedom for all South Africans.

Sunday, January 4, 2009 was the funeral for Helen Suzman in Johannesburg’s West Park cemetery’s Jewish section. Hundreds of mourners gathered to honor this courageous woman who fearlessly battled against apartheid.

I hope you have been encouraged by the story of Helen Suzman, and inspired to be a courageous truth-seeker in your own world.

I was immediately transported back to a long-ago Christmas, the Christmas of the Magic Window. It’s one of just a few childhood gifts I remember. This simple, hard plastic paned oval window encased blue and white sands that would swirl in amazing designs with just a turn of the hand, the colors never mixing, an ever-changing landscape of ocean waves, sand dunes, mountains, clouds.

The Magic Window is now considered a “vintage 70s toy” and I pondered how the simplicity of this object kept me mesmerized for hours in childhood wonder, and how the Magic Window earned such an esteemed place in my memory.

What was so magical about this double-paned case of shifting sand? For a little girl in a rather impoverished and remote desert region of the southwest, I could dream, carried away to nowhere in particular but someplace beautiful on every twist and flow of those magical grains. I longed to touch the sand that surely was silky smooth and would flow through my fingers like fairy dust.

Thirty years later, as I drove home enshrouded in the real-life Magic Window that was the road before me, I realized I was in someplace beautiful, the ever-changing landscape of my life cresting in new loveliness upon loveliness. Here a drop, there a rise, but always an intelligent design.

I wonder, do you hold a special Christmas gift or childhood toy in your memory?

Technorati Tags: Magic Window, childhood memories, Christmas gift, Christmas

About the Annie Moses Band:

First, this is a family outfit, whose members include parents Bill (composer/arranger/pianist) and Robin (lyricist/vocalist) Wolaver and their children: Annie, Alex, Benjamin, Gretchen, Camille, and Jeremiah, in ages ranging from twenty-four down to ten.

Second, their background is in classical music. The older siblings trained in the Pre-College Program at the renowned Juilliard School of Music; the youngest are well on their way to similar distinction. All have studied with renowned instructors; most have earned performance awards that testify to the depth of their artistry.

Together, as the Annie Moses Band, they combine all their attributes: love for one another, prodigious talent, as well as a creative curiosity that goes beyond the classics, beyond even music, and into the great questions of life.

Their music is fused with jazz, bluegrass, classical, celtic, country, and pop sounds, and is hard to define, but overall, there is a message of hope and love through Jesus Christ. Their latest Christmas album, This Glorious Christmas, was just released in October, and includes God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen and other classics, as well as another of my new favorites, the soulful Bethlehem House of Bread.

The lead singer, Annie Wolaver, is named after her great-grandmother, Annie Moses. Annie shared about her namesake:

Annie Moses was the eldest of 10 children. She married young and worked the whole course of her life as a hired field hand picking cotton. Despite the difficulties of an impoverished life, she was a tenacious and faithful woman who invested all she had in her daughter, Jane – who would grow up to be my grandmother. Jane was very musically gifted and she passed her passion for music on to my mother, who passed it on to me. Unfortunately Annie Moses died in her mid-40s of cancer, so I never knew her. But we wanted to remember and honour the legacy Annie Moses passed down to us.

What an inspiring story! I am addicted to their sound, stirred by their spirit. The Annie Moses Band cares deeply about the next generation, and hosts a Fine Arts Summer Academy where students can play with the band and other teachers and mentors.

The Annie Moses Band is dedicated to the spiritual and artistic development of young people. We have made it our goal to ignite a passion for excellence in the arena of the arts and to inspire obedience to the scriptural mandate to “Make His Praise Glorious” and to “Play Skillfully.”

The Fine Arts Summer Academy is our flagship showcase for this calling. Students are beckoned to come play along with the Annie Moses Band members and other FASA teachers and mentors, all ages and skill levels uniting in a marathon of outlandish music-making and skill-revving, culminating in three performances of a broadway-style musical extravaganza.

The Fine Arts Summer Academy counters current cultural trends of low expectations and inferior accomplishment by offering students an opportunity to hone their craft. It is an artistic workout that leaves even the most inexperienced participant with a life-changing revelation of their own potential.

If you’re in the Nashville, Tennessee area, and would like some fun, challenging music training for your young one, ages 4 through college-age, don’t miss this! Mark your calendars for July 10-25, 2009.

I’m on the other side of the country in Oregon, and this isn’t an option for me. However, I have friends here in Central Oregon who attend a similar, smaller-scale, music camp with another amazingly talented local family, so check out the Booher Family Music Camp held in Sisters, Oregon.

So, tell me, what music is awakening your soul this Christmas season? Had you ever heard of the Annie Moses Band before?

Technorati Tags: Booher Family Music Camp, Bethehem House of Bread, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, Christmas music, music, music education, Annie Moses Band

I felt like a modern-day shepherd, or maybe a wiseman, as I drove home last night, the brilliance of the convergence of Venus and Jupiter juxtaposed next to the crescent moon causing me to breathe deeply at the magnificent sight. What a perfect and fitting way to herald in the holy season as we celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ.

My children noticed, I noticed, people around the world noticed this awesome spectacle in the night sky. Did you see it? Look tonight…it won’t be nearly as perfect as last night, but it will be there.

For my Grandpa T., who served in WWI, and Uncle Doug who served in the Korean War.

Do you have friends or family members who have served in wars to protect our country and our national and individual freedoms? If so, be sure to thank them today. Perhaps a phone call, a letter, a small gift to convey your gratitude.

From our local Veteran’s Day Parade:

From my blog post from Veterans Day last year:

I remembered an old poem my mom wrote, and rummaged around this morning and thankfully found it. Her father was a WWI veteran. He spent the last decade of his life confined to a wheelchair, the result of mustard gas from the war. My grandpa died before I had the chance to meet him. But, thanks, Grandpa.

ODE TO VETERANS
by my mother

Have you survived the overflowing banks
of spring?
Tramped the long road of summer to the end?
Withstood the heartbreak and chill all
autumns bring?
Seen winter come, and still have breath to
spend?

Then I salute you, veteran of earth’s day.
You who have flown from dawn to set of sun.
Soon you will rise beyond the Milky Way
The toast of all in heaven, the long race won.

Also, you may want to look at my post on the Veterans History Project; here is an excerpt:

Would you like to participate in the Veterans History Project? The Library of Congress is collecting oral histories of veterans or civilians involved in war efforts. You can help by contributing a story or conducting an interview! With over 1,000 war veterans dying each day, the time is now to capture their stories and the valuable lessons to be learned from their personal accounts of their war experiences.

America, please honor your veterans. Remember. Give thanks. Understand that the freedoms we hold dear were paid for, and the price was very high.

I’m looking forward to a Saturday of catching up around the house. It’s as bad as my header at the moment. Boxes from our move fill one room and are scattered throughout the house and garage as well. I took one van full of “stuff” to Goodwill yesterday, and I hope to gather another van load today. I’m setting aside nicer things for our school’s rummage sale, but other than that, I don’t like to take the time to put on a garage sale, so typically, the bulk of things I give away.

My husband has been listening to Dave Ramsey lately, and keeps telling me, “rice and beans, beans and rice!” Basically, pare down, live simply and frugally, and within our means. Part of the issue in our family is time, which translates into an economic product if you really think about it. An enormous amount of time (and thus money) is wasted in organizing our “stuff,” finding it, putting it away neatly again. A move is a fabulous time to get rid of the non-essentials, as your possessions are being eyed in their entirety, perhaps for the first time in five or ten years.

My sister visited last week, and I was able to finally begin to purge my linens of my endless collection of baby blankets. She has a young one, and just as the little girl happily took my pile of pint-sized blankets, I was lighthearted to be free of the emotional attachment. At one point, though, I did snatch back one of my first child’s blankets, saying, “Wait! This was Little L’s crib blanket, I can’t get rid of it!” However, the thought of perpetually carting this baggage through life for no good reason won out, and the girl took home the blanket. (Don’t worry, all you memory-lovers, I’m keeping one special hand-made baby blanket per child!)

Will you leave me a comment and share with me what five non-essential items you can get rid of today? I’ll leave notes in my comment box for you, and tell you about some of my belongings that I clear out today…

I. For the frugal and simple approach, here is a list (in no particular order) to get you started. These materials can be gathered over time from a craft store, RadioShack, around your house and garage, thrift stores, garage sales, lumber yards, and more. Let me know what else I should add to my list, and some simple experiments to go with this list!

• mirrors
• magnets
• metal rods
• weights
• small motors
• coils of insulated wire
• mounting base and mounting bracket
• insulated tubing
• D-cell battery
• balloons
• paper clips
• string
• rope
• tape-duct tape, scotch tape, two sided tape
• tacks
• rubber bands
• washers, nuts, bolts, screws, nails
• pvc pipes with connector corners
• wire
• springs, hinges, clothes pins
• pulleys
• pipe cleaners
• casters
• straws
• pins
• scissors, exacto knife (be careful, adult supervision!)
• cloth patches, scrap material
• cotton balls
• bottle caps, wine corks
• markers
• pencil
• ruler
• drawing paper, notebooks
• paint
• paint brushes
• felt
• poster board
• popsicle sticks, toothpicks, craft wood, dowels
• connector ties, zip ties
• clamps and glue
• knobs, dials
• cardboard–toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, empty cereal boxes
• 1-quart milk cartons
• tinker toy pieces
• styrofoam pieces
• propellers
• tuning fork
• plastic soda bottles
• pH test strips
• hammer and small saw
• cheesecloth
• droppers
• filter paper
• forceps
• funnel
• litmus papers
• magnifiers
• fluorescent light

Now, what can you do with all these materials? Here are some ideas cards to keep handy, if your child/student wants a specific activity:

1. Human conductor of electricity

Supplies:
one ballon, one flourescent light.

Directions:

• Darken the room. Hold the fluorescent bulb in one hand and the balloon in the other. Rub the balloon vigorously on your hair.
• Bring the balloon near the bulb and watch what happens. Was that a flicker of light? Did the bulb really light up?
• Move the balloon up and down the bulb without touching the bulb. The light should sort of follow the balloon.
• Touch the balloon to the glass and see if you can get a spark to jump.
• You can’t believe your eyes… so, go back to step 1 and do it again.

2. Periscope-mirrored tube that lets you see over walls and around corners:

Supplies:
Two 1-quart milk cartons
Two small pocket mirrors (flat, square ones work best)
Utility knife or X-Acto knife
Ruler
Pencil or pen
Masking tape

Directions:

• Use the knife to cut around the top of each milk carton, removing the peaked “roof.”
• Cut a hole at the bottom of the front of one milk carton. Leave about 1/4 inch of carton on each side of the hole.
• Put the carton on its side and turn it so the hole you just cut is facing to your right. On the side that’s facing up, measure 2 3/4 inches up the left edge of the carton, and use the pencil to make a mark there. Now, use your ruler to draw a diagonal line from the bottom right corner to the mark you made.
• Starting at the bottom right corner, cut on that line. Don’t cut all the way to the left edge of the carton-just make the cut as long as one side of your mirror. If your mirror is thick, widen the cut to fit.
• Slide the mirror through the slot so the reflecting side faces the hole in the front of the carton. Tape the mirror loosely in place.
• Hold the carton up to your eye and look through the hole that you cut. You should see your ceiling through the top of the carton. If what you see looks tilted, adjust the mirror and tape it again.
• Repeat steps 2 through 6 with the second milk carton.
• Stand one carton up on a table, with the hole facing you. Place the other carton upside-down, with the mirror on the top and the hole facing away from you.
• Use your hand to pinch the open end of the upside-down carton just enough for it to slide into the other carton. Tape the two cartons together.

For more amazing science activities for the home or classroom, visit The Exploratorium.

II. A more high-tech and a bit more costly approach, but nonetheless an excellent option, is the PicoCricket Kit. This is an invention kit that integrates art, music, and technology, and is especially attractive to girls as well as boys.

The PicoCricket Kit uses a tiny computer which allows the student to make things spin, light up, and play music; you basically make your creations come to life with simple robotics. The price tag is $250 for the complete kit, which includes the following: motor and motor board, display, beamer (send programs from your computer to your PicoCricket), resistance sensor, sound sensor, colored lights, sound box, PicoCricket programmer (to control your creations), touch sensor, and light sensor.

Also included in the kit is easy-to-use software for programming the Cricket (PC and Mac compatible), USB cable, a collection of craft materials and lego bricks to create motion modules, and ten project placemats with sample Cricket activities.

This is a reusable kit–only the craft materials are consumable, but are inexpensive to replace.

Mitchel Resnick, an MIT professor who worked on the project, made an important point about the accessibility of the PicoCricket kit:


We knew that lots of kids are interested in art and music, so we wanted to make sure that there were lots of ways for them to be able to use art and music as an entry point to explore math, science and engineering.   

Wow~whether your budget is small or large, there are options. The basic inventor’s box is more time consuming to put together, but cheaper; and the pre-packaged kits offer efficiency but at a cost. I hope you’ve been inspired to provide some creative science outlets for your child or classroom!

The Greenhouse
I needed to buy some houseplants that would survive in very low light, so an outing to the greenhouse turned into a field trip. The owner happened to be there, and was gracious enough to lead my four children through the aisles of hanging ivy and water fountains, all the while instructing us on the names of the various plants and the best methods of transplanting and when to do so. Annuals, perennials, vegetable plants, hanging baskets, herbs…he noted everything as we passed. The kids caught maybe half of what he breezed through, but what they surely caught was his love of plants!

Many greenhouses offer organized field trips for school groups, and this one was no exception. While my group (my family) just walked in as customers to make a purchase, they were still very accessible and education-minded. It’s important to note that this was a small, locally owned nursery, and these are the best ones, in my opinion, to approach for an educational tour.

If, like me, you’re not looking to schedule a full-blown field trip, just try asking questions, and you’ll probably discover that the employees are fairly eager to pass on some knowledge, especially when you have children asking their own questions as well. You may want to take a few minutes before entering the greenhouse to prep your kids for the experience, and “plant” some questions in their heads to get them thinking, and encourage them to be inquisitive (but polite).

The Ranch
We happen to have some friends who raise Clydesdale horses, and this is where I would insert my recommendation to take advantage of friends like this! Not in a negative way, mind you, but if you have friends or family members who have a unique or unusual business, you don’t want to pass up that opportunity for your children to learn a thing or two.

So, our friend Alisha invited my family and a few others out for a “horse lesson,” as my daughter said. This daughter is my equine lover and longs for her own trusty steed. My girl was counting down the days until this trip, dutifully marking her calendar. I only wish the cowboy boots from Grandma had arrived before this trip–but it’s okay, the boots have seen plenty of action since. Alisha did a fantastic job of walking the kids through her stables and introducing the children to the various horsey things that seem to enchant young ones.

Before the kids left, they had all helped to groom several horses, feed them, pick their hooves, ride around the corral, and choose their own horseshoe to take home.

I think this was the favorite field trip of the year. All the families involved were so thrilled to have this visit to the ranch. I know this isn’t a feasible option for many of you who don’t live in the country or know ranchers/farmers. But I’ll bet if you sat down and really thought hard, you’d come up with someone you know in an interesting field of work who just might welcome a few kids into their daily routine, and maybe even enjoy it as much as the kids.

The State Park
We live near a gorgeous state park, and it costs just $3.00 to park and hike for the day. This is a great option for a field trip that incorporates natural science, geology, and even art.

If you go to this particular state park in the summer (Smith Rock in Terrebonne, Oregon), plan an early start to avoid heat stroke, and pack a picnic lunch and a sketch pad/pencil.

There is a perfect covered overlook with several large picnic tables which looks down on this breathtaking view you see here. I love this spot for the chance to have the kids sit and sketch the scenery and really notice the amazing rock formations and the gentle curves of the river.

Sometimes, I’ll have the kids stop and gather some leaves to look at later, but mostly it’s just a tremendous location that we never tire of.

The kids will of course discover caves and rabbit trails and rocks to climb. There are several large boulders they routinely climb up, nearly giving me a heart attack, but I forget what I was like as a child. The older I get, the more cautious I become and the more afraid of heights I get!

One nice feature about most state parks are the plaques of geologic or historic information planted along the way. Don’t rush past these if you want to get the most out of your field trip. I usually have a different opinion about some of the geologic timelines given in the typical state park plaque, but what a great learning opportunity to discuss these issues.

My kids often ask as we drive by Smith Rock, “Mommy, how did that get there?” and I can remind them of the plaque we read, with the illustrations of the volcanic explosion, and it all comes back. My older son now stops to read the plaque aloud to the other children and plays tour guide.

Oh my, there are so many other wonderful little trips we make around town. I may have to do another post to tell you about the museums, the free concerts, the goat farms, and even how to turn a trip to the grocery store into a field trip. I spend very little money on these outings, and I mostly stay local, but I’m discovering that what makes a valuable experience for one’s family is an eager attitude about learning. The ability to spot a teachable moment paired with an inquisitive spirit will bring many frugal field trips to your front door.

What frugal field trips does your town offer?

Technorati Tags: Central Oregon, education, family life, Clydesdale horses, nursery, greenhouse, outdoors, field trips, frugal, plants, ranch, Smith Rock

In our case, sleeping on the wood floor in the almost-done house, not yet hooked up to plumbing and just one or two electrical outlets functional, it was still quite an adventure. It helped the effect tremendously that this house is set among a twenty-acre juniper forest with regular visits from