Since my default drive is set to cheap, my idea of shopping is checking clearance racks. I was doing this in Bozeman a couple weeks ago when I found a dress in a beautiful shade of blue. I tried it on and it looked pretty good, but it was missing something--a waist. What a coincidence, I am missing a waist also. You would think a time called "middle age" would be more cooperative about whittling your middle. Then I realized having a good figure at my age would be akin to false advertising. From the back, my body would be writing checks my face couldn't cash. Age is something better worn as a matching set.
Along the same lines, I know a young woman subsisting on a deprivation diet because she is hoping to be picked up in the "Man Market". This is wrong for several reasons, one being that she was not overweight to begin with, another that a man shopping for an emaciated woman is someone who she should pick on, not be picked up by. The third reason is that unless she wants to stay on that deprivation diet the rest of her life, she is guilty of false advertising. In this case, a weight-loss leader ad. It's better to sit on the shelf than be stuck with a man who only shops in the health and beauty section.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
The Sound of Your Name
There is a new country song I like called "Lookin' for a Woman Like You". In the verses the singer describes his carefree bachelor days, but in the chorus he is looking for a woman like his wife. My favorite line is "I love the sound of your name". I wondered if my husband loved the sound of my name. He said yes, but only an idiot would have said no. Do I love the sound of his name? Not exactly, but I love the place his name comes to rest inside me. Deep, deep in my heart.
Monday, April 23, 2012
10 Things You Won't Hear From a BSF Discussion Leader
I have previously admitted to being a Bible Study Fellowship addict. I have stayed in it for 20 years because the accountability and application questions have changed my spiritual life. I would rather be a junkie than a flunkie. But there are rules--guidelines actually., and that is the basis for the following post. It is kind of an inside joke for my fellow addicts. Ten things you will not hear from a BSF discussion leader:
1. Would you like another cup of coffee?
2. If you don't have an answer ready, just share off the top of your head.
3. Don't bother giving a scripture reference.
4. The notes were terrible this week.
5. What church do you go to?
6. Any last minute requests before we pray?
7. Who is the guest you brought with you today?
8. We'll stay here and finish while the others go to lecture.
9. It's alright to share her name, we're discreet.
10. Text me the recipe during the lecture.
1. Would you like another cup of coffee?
2. If you don't have an answer ready, just share off the top of your head.
3. Don't bother giving a scripture reference.
4. The notes were terrible this week.
5. What church do you go to?
6. Any last minute requests before we pray?
7. Who is the guest you brought with you today?
8. We'll stay here and finish while the others go to lecture.
9. It's alright to share her name, we're discreet.
10. Text me the recipe during the lecture.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Missing Dinner
I miss dinner most nights. It's not that I don't eat it, of course I eat it, but it's not the same with us two middle aged mutton grazing sedately at one corner of the dinner table. I miss the clatter of utensils, the clamor of conversation, the corruption of manners and the complaints of my children. When the kids were growing up, we had two course meals. My cooking efforts were followed by teaching a course called Table Manners and a course in making Pleasant Dinner Conversation. Although my kids used passable table manners at home, my sons became afflicted with some sort of etiquette Alzheimer's after they became adults. If I ever see a T shirt with the disclaimer "My mother tried to teach me manners", I"ll buy two for my sons (and one for my husband). My daughter didn't forget what I taught her, but there was no way to foresee what novel ideas might occur to her after she left home--like drinking from the faucet sans glass.
My attempts to achieve Pleasant Dinner Conversation were thwarted by my children's contrariness, my spouse's cluelessness and my own contributions from my work as a nurse aide. When the bulk of your job involves measuring body functions and fluids, it is easy to derail decorum. When I was a young bride, learning to cook was an adventure. Making healthy, balanced meals on our unhealthy, unbalanced budget afforded great challenge. Next there was the challenge of children. The challenge was not to cook for them, it was to survive them and help them survive each other. Cooking for them was fun. I made Easter egg nest cookies and animal shaped pancakes, although my animals looked like they came from another planet or the bacterial kingdom. Grilled cheese sandwiches were coded, diagonal cuts meant Velveeta, straight cuts were cheddar. Horizontal raisins meant the peanut butter on the celery was chunky, vertical for creamy. Mealtimes were messy, but they mattered because that uncooperative flock was family.
Though I cook the same food, my attitude is often why bother. We still eat balanced meals, after all, it's easier to balance two things than four. We visit about our day and no one interrupts or spills anything. We are boring. I'm too old to procreate, dinner guests are too polite, and random rude people are too hard to boss around. But I have no more time for lamenting, it's time to make dinner--and miss it.
My attempts to achieve Pleasant Dinner Conversation were thwarted by my children's contrariness, my spouse's cluelessness and my own contributions from my work as a nurse aide. When the bulk of your job involves measuring body functions and fluids, it is easy to derail decorum. When I was a young bride, learning to cook was an adventure. Making healthy, balanced meals on our unhealthy, unbalanced budget afforded great challenge. Next there was the challenge of children. The challenge was not to cook for them, it was to survive them and help them survive each other. Cooking for them was fun. I made Easter egg nest cookies and animal shaped pancakes, although my animals looked like they came from another planet or the bacterial kingdom. Grilled cheese sandwiches were coded, diagonal cuts meant Velveeta, straight cuts were cheddar. Horizontal raisins meant the peanut butter on the celery was chunky, vertical for creamy. Mealtimes were messy, but they mattered because that uncooperative flock was family.
Though I cook the same food, my attitude is often why bother. We still eat balanced meals, after all, it's easier to balance two things than four. We visit about our day and no one interrupts or spills anything. We are boring. I'm too old to procreate, dinner guests are too polite, and random rude people are too hard to boss around. But I have no more time for lamenting, it's time to make dinner--and miss it.
Monday, March 26, 2012
The Airing of My Ways
Since the beginning of my marriage, my life has revolved around the spin of propellers, the pumping of pistons and the whoosh of jet engines. I helped put my husband through tech school the first two years of our marriage and have lived off that investment for nearly 33 years as he has made his living as an aircraft mechanic and director of maintenance. However, aircraft have been part of my life since childhood. Our family budget required low cost, better yet, free entertainment and one of those expense neutral activities was driving to the airport to watch airplanes take off and land. In those days no one feared terrorism because we were all going to be annihilated by nuclear bombs anyway. Anyone who wanted to was free to visit the airport. There were no gift shops and bistros, just vending machines with cigarettes, little candy bars and flight insurance.
The next big bang in the flight plan of my life was the arrival of sonic booms, which we accepted as a by-product of progress. One vivid childhood memory is of my little brother standing in the back yard, pointing at a contrail and saying "Airplane! Airplane!" He was young, handicapped and hard of hearing so it came out more like "A-pay!", but was still more understandable than Herve Villechaize on "Fantasy Island". On the day the first jet aircraft came to Missoula, I was there in the crowd, immersed in a sea of adult shoulders, which turned out to be a good thing, since it protected all but my legs from the blast of air and gravel when the engines started.
The airport was the extent of my aircraft aspirations. Flying was a privilege of the rich. Those of us grounded in the solidity of the middle class expected to remain on the ground. Though the aircraft were primitive by today's standards, the service was first class. Back when flight attendants were called stewardesses, stewardesses actually attended upon those on the flight. An airline pilot could reasonably anticipate affluence as a destination.
Today the sky is not the limit. If flying is no longer a privilege of the rich, it is also no longer a privilege. We show up 90 minutes early for the opportunity to be lined up, stripped, scanned, searched and separated from our possessions. Modern flying has all the glamor of incarceration. And yet, even from the steerage section of the sky ship I have a god's eye view of the sky above and the corrugated clouds below as we speed across the vastness of continents and oceans and I feel privileged to live in a such a time, to know that somewhere a child is looking skyward and seeing--me.
The next big bang in the flight plan of my life was the arrival of sonic booms, which we accepted as a by-product of progress. One vivid childhood memory is of my little brother standing in the back yard, pointing at a contrail and saying "Airplane! Airplane!" He was young, handicapped and hard of hearing so it came out more like "A-pay!", but was still more understandable than Herve Villechaize on "Fantasy Island". On the day the first jet aircraft came to Missoula, I was there in the crowd, immersed in a sea of adult shoulders, which turned out to be a good thing, since it protected all but my legs from the blast of air and gravel when the engines started.
The airport was the extent of my aircraft aspirations. Flying was a privilege of the rich. Those of us grounded in the solidity of the middle class expected to remain on the ground. Though the aircraft were primitive by today's standards, the service was first class. Back when flight attendants were called stewardesses, stewardesses actually attended upon those on the flight. An airline pilot could reasonably anticipate affluence as a destination.
Today the sky is not the limit. If flying is no longer a privilege of the rich, it is also no longer a privilege. We show up 90 minutes early for the opportunity to be lined up, stripped, scanned, searched and separated from our possessions. Modern flying has all the glamor of incarceration. And yet, even from the steerage section of the sky ship I have a god's eye view of the sky above and the corrugated clouds below as we speed across the vastness of continents and oceans and I feel privileged to live in a such a time, to know that somewhere a child is looking skyward and seeing--me.
Christicism
On a radio preaching program last week, I heard a pastor, with whom I normally agree, talking about knowing the will of God for your life. He called one view the "Dot" theory, which says God's will for you is this one specific point from which you must not stray. His opposing theory was that that God has a general will for your obedience but doesn't particularly care what job you take, where you live or who you marry as long as you are not disobedient to scripture. I think the truth lies in the middle of these two extremes. God's will is neither a hard to find tightrope nor a toll gate past which you can wander as you please.
I did agree, however, with his assertion that many Christians interpret random events as signs of God's direction. I call this Christian mysticism or, since I never use two words when I can get by with one, "Christicism". One common form of this is "Bible roulette", opening the Bible to a random passage and taking that as God's message to you. The "scripture shuffle" works on the same principle but uses cards with verses on them. Some Christians use the "Walkie Talkies" technique. They use the phrase "God told me" as if they were in constant, verbal communication. This is, at best, presumptuous and often used to defend unwise behavior. If God told you to do something, it can't possibly be wrong. Then there is the "Signs, signs, everywhere a sign" method. For example, when I asked my teenage son to pray about whether he should attend youth group, he told me God didn't want him to go because he missed the white goose. He had prayed that if God wanted him to go to youth group, he would hit a white goose when he was hunting. Signs that are dependent on our cooperation make it easy to manipulate God's will without even consciously aiming to. Unfortunately this "God's Will Hunting" method is also used by adult, long term Christians. One of my church friends found a complex, affirming message from God through finding a barrette that matched her outfit. Her life was filled with mystical messages from God. The combination of circumstances + deceitful hearts seldom = Godly wisdom.
Why would God go through all the effort to produce and preserve his word if he planned to reveal himself through subliminal messages? Most of us can barely understand liminal messages. My first 15 years as a Christian I wanted to be in God's will but was never really sure that I was. Then I started BSF and discovered that being in God's will was the intersection of daily study and application of God's word + life circumstances. Those pesky application questions with which BSF mines the daily study changed my life. Knowing God's will for my life has gone from an occasional flash to a steady beacon. I no longer wonder and wander. Frankly, I am a little frightened of, and for, Christians who take their guidance from the schizophrenic spirituality of circumstance. Finding God's will is both simpler and harder than the Magical Mystery Tour of Christicism.
I did agree, however, with his assertion that many Christians interpret random events as signs of God's direction. I call this Christian mysticism or, since I never use two words when I can get by with one, "Christicism". One common form of this is "Bible roulette", opening the Bible to a random passage and taking that as God's message to you. The "scripture shuffle" works on the same principle but uses cards with verses on them. Some Christians use the "Walkie Talkies" technique. They use the phrase "God told me" as if they were in constant, verbal communication. This is, at best, presumptuous and often used to defend unwise behavior. If God told you to do something, it can't possibly be wrong. Then there is the "Signs, signs, everywhere a sign" method. For example, when I asked my teenage son to pray about whether he should attend youth group, he told me God didn't want him to go because he missed the white goose. He had prayed that if God wanted him to go to youth group, he would hit a white goose when he was hunting. Signs that are dependent on our cooperation make it easy to manipulate God's will without even consciously aiming to. Unfortunately this "God's Will Hunting" method is also used by adult, long term Christians. One of my church friends found a complex, affirming message from God through finding a barrette that matched her outfit. Her life was filled with mystical messages from God. The combination of circumstances + deceitful hearts seldom = Godly wisdom.
Why would God go through all the effort to produce and preserve his word if he planned to reveal himself through subliminal messages? Most of us can barely understand liminal messages. My first 15 years as a Christian I wanted to be in God's will but was never really sure that I was. Then I started BSF and discovered that being in God's will was the intersection of daily study and application of God's word + life circumstances. Those pesky application questions with which BSF mines the daily study changed my life. Knowing God's will for my life has gone from an occasional flash to a steady beacon. I no longer wonder and wander. Frankly, I am a little frightened of, and for, Christians who take their guidance from the schizophrenic spirituality of circumstance. Finding God's will is both simpler and harder than the Magical Mystery Tour of Christicism.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
A Wail of Two Cities
Rio de Janeiro has a giant statue of Christ and Carneval, Butte has a giant statue of Mary and St. Patrick's Day. Carneval is one last rowdy blowout before the privations of Lent. St. Patrick's Day celebrates the arrival of Christianity in Ireland with a festival of drinking and fighting. It is to Lent what a Cold Stone, "Gotta Have It" binge is to a diet. Carneval features elaborate costumes and floats. Butte. . .has a parade, and lots of green things. Carneval takes place in the hottest part of South American summer, St. Patrick's Day is during the last vestiges of North American winter.
The ontological argument for the existence of God posits that universal belief in a deity is proof he must exist. The prevalence of similar religious celebrations in such diverse cities posits the universal desire to get drunk and debauched. Also universal is the price that must be paid for revelry, what goes down, must come up. Some of it months later--in court. In Portugese it is called a ressaca, in English, a hangover. That is where the wails come in. Exotic Rio de Janiero, Brazil and Butte, America is about as mixed a drink as you can get, yet once a year they become kindred spirits.
The ontological argument for the existence of God posits that universal belief in a deity is proof he must exist. The prevalence of similar religious celebrations in such diverse cities posits the universal desire to get drunk and debauched. Also universal is the price that must be paid for revelry, what goes down, must come up. Some of it months later--in court. In Portugese it is called a ressaca, in English, a hangover. That is where the wails come in. Exotic Rio de Janiero, Brazil and Butte, America is about as mixed a drink as you can get, yet once a year they become kindred spirits.
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