oh for heaven's sake

It's already Saturday and I haven't posted, my email box is overflowing and I have stacks and stacks of reading I'm still supposed to have got through. For all that the depth of what we're doing is maybe, at best, skin deep, we're managing to keep very busy. Here's my take in the first morning the first session--amazingly, its been about the same since then.

"Its 10:00am and we still haven’t had any lecture or anything. We’ve drawn two drawings, without words, because words would be easy and bad. The first picture is our ‘common expectations in learning’ and the second our ‘distinctive learning’. Now we’re talking about the pictures. What continues to amaze me, should perhaps not be that surprising, is that, in this first class called ‘Bible Interpretation’ we have not read, yet, the Bible. We’ve read a book on feminism, one on the history of the formation of the Bible, one on how to read the Bible. But we have not read any of the Bible. Maybe we’ll get to in the hope that is to come, what, in Catechesis, we like to call ‘The Parousia’. I am pleased that the class is uniformly hostile to Dornisch."

Today we're going to talk about Maria Montessori and take inventory of our personal spiritual lives. Wish I could say more but I'm already late for class!

at school

I've arrived in St. Louis for my four day intensive time (the course is Bible Interpretation). Baby is teething so its going to be a super fun week I can tell. I'm cramming all the reading down my throat, metaphorically speaking, and complaining with my classmates about the impossibility of having to 'draw my world view'. However, the silver lining of the day was reading Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Collaboration of Men and Women in the Church and in the World. Of course, as a protestant, I'm not particularly concerned with what the Vatican has to say about so many things, but I found this letter to contain some very nice lines.

Formed by God and placed in the garden which he was to cultivate, the man, who is still referred to with the generic expression Adam, experienced a loneliness which the presence of the animals is not able to overcome. He needs a helpmate who will be his partner. The term here does not refer to an inferior, but to a vital helper. This is so that Adam's life does not sink into a sterile and, in the end, baneful encounter with himself. It is necessary that he enter into relationship with another being on his own level. Only the woman, created from the same 'flesh' and cloaked in the same mystery, can give a future to the life of the man.

The document doesn't quite arrive at the love/respect level, but it goes a good distance away from feminism. I'm just irritated overall by the 'church's', and everyone else's for that matter, need to affirm the role/position/wisdom/etc. of women. Its tiresome. Anyway, the great fight begins in the morning, I will update as it rages.

sunday's sermon

Having wrenched this sermon from my inner being, there's no way I'm going to write anything else today. And if you're bored by the sermon, you can go check out the church website. Also, note some new blogs on the side bar.

http://binghamtongoodshepherd.com/sermon10.15.06.shtml

This is a picture of my world view

In an effort to be properly submissive AND proverbs 31, I am obediently going to school even though it makes no sense, to me, to do so at this time. My husband told me to get this degree, and so I'm getting this degree. Maybe God will let me know why as I go along. So my first class is Bible Interpretation and the syllabus is impossible to understand. We're supposed to go through first and second 'naivete', by which I assume the professor means 'iteration' or 'first try, second try' or something. Then a week ago, the week's homework popped up before my eyes, the first task of which was to 'draw a picture of your world view'. Isn't that nice. Problem one being that I don't know how to draw. I'm learning, but I havne't got very far yet. And second, 'world view'? So this is what my husband suggested as a good option. I think it should go over well. After all, we're only spending one whole day of the four day intensive time covering 'fundamentalism', because that's the gravest threat to the church today. That should be fun for me, holding the Scritpures authoritative in all my antiquated primitivism.

sausage, oregano and thyme

Of course, having started a blog and been convinced in my own mind that I have plenty to say on every subject, I’m sitting here in the wreck of eaten lunch and school books and projects, with a whining baby swinging gently at my side with nothing interesting to say. Because frankly, wrestling with my oldest over what sound the letter ‘M’ makes is mind numbing. She insists that ‘M’ says ‘Ssss’ or ‘Q’, but nothing like ‘Mmmm’. Her poor eye is swollen up from some weird bug bite and she is sniffling, but undaunted. Amazingly she loves school, even when we don’t know what we’re doing from one minute to the next. And she boldly proclaims to the neighbors that she is doing it at home, which makes them look at me skeptically and me wonder if I’ve lost my mind. Well, I haven’t lost it, but its numb, blank, void. And so, instead of staring blankly at this page or even tackling the overwhelming pile of laundry or homework, I am going to leave this aside and go make meat balls—gound beef, sausage, thyme, oregano and maybe some garlic and onion.

Links not working

Just noticed that my blog roll thing isn't working. Will have to fiddle around trying to make it work. Sorry about the delay

Update
Problem Fixed!

So, I'm having, for school, to read a book called Feminism and Beyond: A Theological Reflection for the Next Aeon, by one Loretta Dornisch. I believe she is a Dominican Sister for which she is to be congradulated and admired. However, this book is a rediculous waste of my time. Let me just lift a few precious lines from this inspiring work. "Some Protestants are in the liberal tradition. They believe Christianity must accomodate itself to a scientific world view and to insights from the modern sciences. Christianty must be able to correlate with experience and reason"(82). No really? So liberal protestants believe in science (as opposed to conservative protestants who only believe in God) which helped them "gradually develope readiness for the approval of women's ordination" (83). Because that's the highest good. The Church is supposed to 'develope readiness' for important liberal values--women's ordination, same sex blessings, abortion, the stupification of the next generation. Sister Dornisch probably doesn't know any conservative protestants personally.

Welcome to my new blog, like the world needs another blog. However, I have much to say, so here goes.