my gray head in sorrow to the grave

I have more than two gray hairs.

I've been hiding the two pretty carefully for the last few years, but this morning, just now in fact, there were definitely more than two. And it didn't matter which way I combed anything, I couldn't hide all of them.

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

What kind of person should I be? Should I enter the realm of everlasting dye? Should I decide, in humility, to clothe myself in good works rather than vanity? Should I carefully blacken each hair with shoe polish?

I'm pretty sure that my mother doesn't have any gray. She's pointed it out to me several times. Of course Matt is almost completely gray, but he's a man, and so he looks awesome (when he doesn't wear his phone on belt).

Help me out. I need some serious pros and cons. Feel free to wildly quote scripture if you want.

Tea, its possible to get it right (partial repost)

This was posted yesterday on Stand Firm.

I'm thrilled that seminary education in America is FINALLY getting down to basics. 

Anyway, it reminded me of some early brilliance on my blog, a post I called 'Manifesto'. Here is the meat of it.

Matt’s must be brewed and hot as he is waking up, so it is timed (at home the beans are ground at 3:55am and the hot water hits the newly ground beans at 3:57 and he pours his first cup at 4am exactly. On occasion I forget to put the pot back in place the night before and the coffee brews all over the floor). Can’t imagine what it would be like if he didn’t have his coffee in the morning. May God, in his mercy, preserve us.

I don’t drink coffee. I only drink coffee under duress and when it is heavily laced with chocolate. So of course, when I met Matt’s family for the first time, and the awful truth came out, the household was thrown into mayhem. In the intervening years various efforts have been made. Matt’s parents now own a total of 5 teapots. They have an unheard of variety of teas. On our arrival, there is always half and half, cream, three kinds of milk and bottled water on hand. And, very importantly, there is in residence a new and efficient hotpot.

The trouble, of course, is that this is a nation of coffee drinkers. The fabric of national identity and purpose is woven through and supported by coffee. The drinking of coffee and the mishandling of tea is a point of pride, an under-girding means by which the people of this great land continue to live.

And so it is impossible to get a decent cup of tea unless one makes it oneself. And here is the source of the real trouble. As one drinker of tea in a land of coffee, I inspire real fascination and curiosity. Women especially think, ‘oh, that’s so cute, we should have a tea party.’ By which they mean a tea pot with tepid water, a bag on the side, a wedge of lemon (or something), some ‘cute’ cups and a cookie. And then we all sit around and talk and feel cozy. There are books to go with this experience. I saw one today called ‘A Cup of Comfort’ and a couple of other soupy looking items.

Well, all you fascinated and curious coffee drinkers, That Is Not a Cup of Tea.

First of all, tea Like Coffee, provides caffeine. Tea Drinkers drink it to survive, not to feel ‘cozy’.

Second, it has to be prepared properly (see below).

Third, drinkers of tea already have everything they need—pot, cups, cozy, hot pot and Tea. Giving a tea drinker a lot of fancy fluffy paraphernalia is a nice thought but probably misguided. For example, knowing that I drink tea, Matt and I were given a total of ten tea pots at our wedding. No dishes, no tableware, no household items (well, a few very lovely things) but really, overall Tea Pots. And almost 20 tea cups. Even though I was already properly equipped at the time of my marriage owning a sensible pot and cups to go with it.

So, here is how to make a cup of tea.

Fill a tea kettle or hot pot with cold water. Turn it on. Let it come right up to the boil. Take it off. Pour some blazing hot water into a pot. Swirl it around. Let the pot become good and hot. Put the kettle back on. Dump the water out of the pot. Put in the tea (loose, of course, is best, but don’t be above a good bag—At Least Two for a full sized pot, probably more if it’s bad tea). When the Kettle is back up to the boil, pour it directly onto the tea. Clap the lid on Immediately (don’t leave the lid across the room and wander around looking for it while the tea becomes cold). Put a cozy on the pot or wrap it in a couple of kitchen towels. Let it sit for about 3 minutes. Drink it. Either with milk or milk and sugar or lemon. Whatever you do, don’t heat water a little bit and the pour it on a bag in a cup. If you’re going to do that just go ahead and drink water.

Monday Blog Haze

I've always found it most annoying when people change the look of their blogs, in perpetuity, while never actually blogging. Unfortunately and hypocritically, I fell into this very trap this morning--its been nearly a whole week since my last post, and here I am fussing with new templates and trying to figure out if I can add a facebook 'like' button under each post (so that the masses of you can all 'like' this on facebook) and updating my blogroll and rearranging the elements....
But other than being thwarted from watching the world cup and trying to beat off a horrible rash on the poor baby's tiny derrière (caused, doubtless, by the Abidjan like humidity and the insane rate at which she is teething) and letting the office descend into mind numbing chaos through disinterest and sloth and driving to Ambridge, MA for Bp. Murdoch's instillation and coming home to a posse of children single-mindedly devoted to the idea of a lemonade stand, well, I just don't have anything to blog about.
So I will end this farce of a post and go waste time reading about disastrous rumors in the Anglican Communion and maybe indulge in a little actual work looking for a Latin teacher for Soli Deo Gloria Classical School. Anybody interested?

clean up clean up everybody everywhere

We've reached another level of awesome something. Yesterday Elphine got a bee in her bonnet to load the dishwasher and did a Remarkably good job, and then she wanted to feed the baby a massive bowl of banana which went all the way down the baby and not anywhere else (AMAZING), and then she ran the dishwasher and unloaded it. She was thrilled with herself. "This is so fun," she said.

"I'm glad you feel that way," said I, "would that you always love to clean the kitchen."

"Why wouldn't I?"

"Because," I said, "someday you'll wake up and you'll have to do it and you'll start whining, just like you do when you have to clean your room."

"Na-huh" she said, "I'm always going to like it."

"Ok, I'll remind you in a few weeks that you said that."

Meanwhile, her brothers were lying on the floor picking up one tiny cheerio at a time moaning and moaning, "I'm so tired! Picking up cheerios is so hard. I need to eat a lot of food. Can I have a Popsicle?"

At the same time Gladys was raging around telling everybody what to do, "Clean up!" she shouted, "Mooooooooommy, Womulus isn't cweaning up!"

She anticipated the baby needing a change and brought me a diaper, wipes and a plastic bag. "I'll change her," she bellowed condescendingly.

"No you won't," I said, "but thank you for the diaper." She took the wipes out and handed them to me one by one. I felt vaguely managed and therefore rebellious.

"I can get wipes out myself."

"No," she said, "I'll do it." She's like a tiny Attila the Hun, ready to conquer the household if we don't beat her off. Later she came in with a page full of addition sums and a pen. "Now I will do my maffff, "she shouted.

"Whatever," I said.

Sermon from Yesterday: Part Two on the Holy Spirit

[This is a collaborative effort, a sermon by committee if you will. Matt wrote it twice and then I rewrote it and then I ended up preaching it. The sermon starts with several examples of how people talk about the Holy Spirit. Can't remember what I said to introduce it.]

"I visited that church and the sermon was biblical,
and the people were nice
but I just didn't feel the Spirit there."

"Have you been filled yet?
Have you received the second blessing?"
Well, I think so, I trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of my sins.
"Well, that means you are going to heaven but if you had received the second blessing then you would speak in tongues. Do you speak in tongues? No. Well then let's pray together that you can be filled with the Spirit."

"My wife and I felt called to this mission three years ago. Lots of people have spent lots of money to get us here. The people of this village have built us a house but we've been praying about it and just don't feel that sense of peace that tells us the Holy Spirit still wants us here. So we're leaving. God's plans are obviously not our plans. Our ways are not his ways."

"The Spirit does seem to be saying to many within The Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God’s good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones."

It has become increasingly common
both in mainline denominations
and in some (not all) radical charismatically inclined bodies
to blame just about everything on the Holy Spirit.
For all the contemporary talk of spiritual gifts
(and there are indeed spiritual gifts)
and spiritual power (which is real)
and claims of being spirit-filled
(every believer is filled with the Spirit)
the Holy Spirit is often reduced to a religious euphemism for
“what we want to do.”

Not only so,
confusion about who the Holy Spirit is
and what the Holy Spirit does
leads not only to very bad teaching on the corporate level
but in a very personal way
to broken promises,
ruined relationships
and radically selfish behavior among individual members
of the church.
Our task today is to clear away some of the confusion.

But this is not going to be an easy six part way
to know who the Holy Spirit is
and how to know he is working in your life.
While this subject is eminently practical
every single solitary human being who knows Jesus,
loves him
and trusts in him has the Holy Spirit living inside him or her
you can't get more practical and personal,
we're not going to go at it from that angle.
Rather, you'll find much of our ground familiar,
and that's because the problem
most people and churches have
with the Holy Spirit
is the same problem
they have
with everything that has to do with the Christian life,
and that problem is the Bible.

If you cast your mind back to the examples above,
you will be able to see that in each case
the Holy Spirit is separated out
and examined
and used Apart From Scripture.
That in each case
the Bible is over here
and the Holy Spirit is over here
and sometimes they relate to each other,
but sometimes they contradict each other
and that when that happens,
the Holy Spirit wins.
Or rather, the desire felt to be associated with Holy Spirit
wins.
So the missionary couple feels free
to break their oaths to their colleagues and supporters because they feel peace about it
and confuse that peace with the Spirit.
So the Episcopal Church is free
to depart from the clear teaching of scripture
about sex and marriage
because the Spirit speaks more clearly
through the majority vote of a small denominational gathering
in North America
than he did through the apostles.
So the person who speaks in tongues,
which is certainly a gift,
assumes that he has a second,
greater blessing,
a higher standing in the Spirit,
than those who do not,
despite what scripture clearly says about the divine distribution
of different gifts in different ways.
In each case,
the Holy Spirit is autonomous from,
sometimes even contradicting Scripture.

This is madness.
As we saw last week in our discussion of the Trinity,
the Holy Spirit is God.
He is not a breath of air or an energy field or the force.
He is the third person of the One Godhead
constantly
and completely
and everlastingly
relating in self giving love
to the Father
and the Son.
He cannot be divided from the Father and the Son
and so, necessarily,
For this reason,
and for another equally important one
he cannot be divided from Scripture.

Turn with me to the Scriptures to see how this is true.

Let's start with Jesus.
Turn to John 16:13-14.
Jesus is with the disciples
on the night before he will be given up to death
and he is instructing them,
comforting them,
trying to clue them in to what will be happening.
Jesus says "When he, the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you."

First of all, let me disabuse us all of the idea
that Jesus is talking to all of us
when he says
that the Spirit will guide you into all truth.
The 'you' is the 12 disciples
those who they confirm
and those who saw the risen lord
and were called directly by him to be apostles
Mark, Titus, James, Paul for example.
The 'all truth' is the truth recorded and revealed
in the books that make up the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit will supernaturally 'guide' them,
so that as they teach
and write
they will,
by the Holy Spirit,
speak and write the words of Christ.
They won't be making it up,
they will be helped and guided
by the Holy Spirit
to write Scripture.
The New Testament was authored
both by the men who wrote it,
and by God the Holy Spirit
who lead the apostolic authors into all truth.
Who, in that collaboration,
is stronger?
Who has the power?
Who has the wisdom?

Just to grind this point into the ground,
the apostles,
not you,
sitting out in the woods with your good thoughts,
not me,
will be lead into 'All Truth'.
Thats all done.

Ok, Jesus goes on,
'he will not speak on his own; he will speak what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.'
The Holy Spirit will be acting in perfect unity
with the Son
who is perfectly obedient to the Father,
when he superintends the writing of the Scriptures.
He won't be making it up.
He will only speak what he hears.
He's never never never going to say something
that is counter to the will,
purpose
and desire of the Son
who is perfectly obedient to the Father.
Its not going to happen.

And finally,
"He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you."
The Holy Spirit's mission,
his goal,
his reason for being is to glorify the Son
whose purpose,
whose reason for being,
is to glorify the Father.

So, the Holy Spirit is the author of the New Testament.
He cannot be divided from it.
But what about the Old Testament?
We find the answer also in the New Testament.
Turn to 2nd Peter 1:20-21.
Peter is explaining how the OT came to be
and how we know it is trustworthy.
He writes,
"Above all you must understand that no prophesy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophesy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit."
The exact same process that produced the New Testament, produced the Old.
The Holy Spirit carried along,
he breathed into the minds and hearts
of the writers of the Old Testament
what they were supposed to say and remember and write down.

Furthermore, in 1st Peter 1:10-11,
Peter points and attributes the words of the Old Testament
to Christ.
He writes,
"Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and the circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing."
They were waiting for the Christ,
the Messiah,
they were looking for him,
pointing toward him,
reaching out to him.
It was his words that came under their pen.

The individual Christian,
the Church
cannot separate the Holy Spirit from the Holy Scriptures.
The scriptures are the words of Christ,
the Son,
and it is the task of the Holy Spirit to glorify the Son
by taking his words
and making them known...
not undercutting them.
The Holy Spirit is never, therefore,
never going to contradict the Holy Scriptures.

On the contrary,
if you want to hear the voice of God,
if you want, in your ordinary day to day life,
to feel the presence of God,
to know him,
to be guided by him,
to find out if he loves you and how much,
to figure out what to do with yourself,
how to relate to the people around you,
if that is what you want,
then there is one place to go
and that is the Bible.
And that is because for the believer,
the Holy Spirit's task is not reveal to new revelations
or new truths to astound our friends,
but to illumine,
to help you understand what has already been so carefully
and perfectly revealed.
He does that supernaturally
through your personal study,
through teachers
through preachers,
applying those words to your life and to the life of the church.
Let me try to very briefly outline what this looks like.
Earlier in the week, Monday in fact, I indulged myself in some panic about the future. We're commanded by Jesus not to worry, 'don't concern yourself about tomorrow, sufficient for the day is its own trouble', there are enough disobedient children and piles of laundry and emails to answer today, why worry about what you can't accomplish tomorrow? Nevertheless, I let myself go there, and in going into the Kingdom of Anxiety, I put aside any trust or interest in God I should have had. Nevertheless, tomorrow came, even though I didn't want it too, and, because over a long time of many many many days I have developed the habit of reading scripture, I turned to that habit thoughtlessly. I flipped open my laptop, clicked on the assigned readings for the day, pushed the little audio button, closed my eyes and tried to drown out the arguing of children and attend to the nice voice of the man reading the Bible on the computer. It was a psalm. Can't even remember which one. "Can God set a table in the wilderness?" the psalmist asked. Clearly no I said to myself and then tried to move on the next passage, but I wasn't really awake and so I accidently pushed the audio button and heard the whole thing again. "Can God set a table in the wilderness?" No, honestly, no. I mean, yes he can but no. A third time, against my will, I pushed the audio instead of moving forward. "Can God set a table in the wilderness?" I was completely undone.
Let me return, for just one moment, to something I said at the beginning. The Holy Spirit's ultimate purpose is to glorify the Son. He did this perfectly in the authoring of scripture. But he goes on doing it by bringing to life those of us who were dead in our sins, by bringing our lives up against the Scriptures to rebuke, guide, save and sanctify us, to make us Holy. His life giving breath makes it possible for us to do what our ultimate purpose is, and that is to glorify the Son.
Amen.

7 Fly By Quick Takes

One

The baby has two new teeth, blast it.

Two

The baby is trying to crawl, blast it.

Three

The zucchini, of course, radishes, of course, are coming up, but the foxglove seems to be dead or against me, or something.

Four

Good Shepherd's Block Party Summer Ice Cream Health Fair Extravaganza is Saturday. Hope you'll all be there! We're going chiefly for the awesome pony.

Five

Alouicious decided to read three books yesterday after whining about reading for almost a whole year. Strange child.

Six

I just found David Mitchel's Rants done back in January. How did I miss these before?

Seven

Matt is preaching about the Holy Spirit this Sunday. In light of all the wretched heresy the Episcopal Church and other mainline denominations embrace concerning this member of the Godhead, it should be a good and enlightening day. You can always tell the Holy Spirit is at work on a given Sunday, at Good Shepherd, by the sheer insane energy that "permeates" (heh) the space and people.

Go check out Jen.

I think maybe she really wanted to go to the party after all

I am way sleep deprived which is allowing me, strangely enough, to feel a modicum of pity for the Presiding Whatchamacallit of the Episcopal Organization (to borrow freely from MCJ, who, by the way, just provided a bitingly sarcastic fisk). I mean, let's be honest, we all really want to be Anglican. Whether or not any of us believe in Jesus, or love the Bible, or know what the 39 Articles say, none of us, not a single one, like to be criticized, however mildly and even for something that's true. And so for his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury to vaguely suggest that perhaps we have determined, maybe, possibly, to consider walking in a different direction for a time, well, its a wretched blow. It would ruin my day. Especially as there's been no indication all along that his Grace felt this way at all. On the contrary, he's been doing everything humanly and politically possible Never to have this be a possibility. Its like finding out your BFF has decided to dump you and go to the mall with the person you hate the most. I mean, I'd be royally ticked off too particularly if I'd had no warning.

It has been my considered opinion for many many months that this isn't really about theology, its about personality. I don't think Rowan could stand being around Akinola--he probably just grated on his nerves. But then, over time, poor KJS turned out to be just as grating. She's too American. Her trousers are cut badly. Her voice is faintly mannish. And worst of all, she can't take a hint or engage in the gracious and beautifully hypocritical political dance so mastered by her predecessor. Of course Rowan did his blessed best to overcome the cringe factor on both sides, and of course he doesn't want a single solitary province to walk away (except for maybe bits of Africa, but just the really annoying bits), but when he finally came to the election and consecration of Ms. Glasspool and the horrendous dance of all the nations, after having tried so hard to accommodate the US in every way, after waiting and waiting and hoping and hoping that some side would give in, in other words, when all of the work lead no where and no behavior was changed, a grating and pushy and entitled personality probably helped push him over the finish line. I mean, no amount of money can make an unbearable person bearable.

Which is deeply and pathetically sad. I hate being dis invited to anything, or finding out that there was a party carefully organized with no reference to me. KJS and TEC LONG to be in the club. That's what this whole mess has been about all these agonizingly long years. Trouble is, the church, however hard it tries to be, is not a club. And none of us get to have exactly what we want because we're not in charge. God is in charge. He will do what he will do. We can lie and deceive ourselves and write carefully worded letters but eventually the Holy Spirit, whose poor name is so unmercifully bandied about these days, will reform and purify the church, the love and body of our Lord. But it hurts, and so today I'm going to pray that KJS has time for a nice latte and a green muffin and some time with her favorite lawyer and maybe a little yoga and that maybe, just maybe, the pain of this moment will crack open a window for the truth to blow in.

If you don't have anything to say, don't say it.

I've been trying to think of something to blog about for the last few days but, honestly, nothing exciting has happened worthy of mentioning. Well, other than our car dying completely. I could mention that, but its too sad to dwell on. We're waiting for a second estimate and then we'll have to decide whether to bite the bullet or not.

Other than that I'm just anxiously watching my garden in hopes that it will grow.

In many ways, I am frequently grateful when I have nothing of note going on. It means nothing bad is happening and that is always a reason to rejoice.

So, have a good day. I have to go feed the hungry hoards of children roving over the horizons like mastodons.

She who dwells in the Kingdom of Incompitence, How does her Garden grow?

Some of my seeds are coming up.

I didn't expect to be amazed but I'm beyond amazement, living solidly in the land of shock. As one notoriously bad with plants, the wreckage of my gardening endeavors lies behind me like a compost heap of destruction. I've managed to kill every single African Violet I have ever laid a hand on, plus a nice purply thing that was supposed to live forever and be able to start more plants off by cutting bits off, a perfectly shaped little evergreen tree that I intended to plant out but couldn't decide where to put and so it gave up, my Christmas poinsettia which someone brought it back to life while we were gone but appears again to be sick. And these are only the plants I can remember off hand.

But for some bizarre and mysterious reason, there are little tiny zinnia plants poking through, as well as spinach and radishes (I think the radishes are supposed to be indestructible but I have a hard time believing it). Now I'm filled with anxiety that rabbits will come, or blight or bugs or something. And then there's horror of the instructions on the backs of all the seed packets that say 'thin plants when established' which sounds like a perfect opportunity to ruin everything.

The things my mother planted last year are doing beautifully, of course. The pink rose is covered in waxy fragrant blooms and the larger pink thing is an array of glory. Even though I look at the label every day, I can't seem to keep the name of it in my mind. I read my fine, sensible gardening book straining and trying to dimly understand what on earth the splendid author is talking about. I've read carefully about a hanging tomato contraption but darkness veils my understanding of how it works.

It will be no surprise to you how much comfort I take from the words of Jesus, that we plant and water, but God makes seeds grow. We tear down and kill, but he binds up, heals, and gives life. We forget to water, but he, out of mercy, sometimes brings rain.

child trying to get out of unloading the dishwasher

A: "Did you run the dish washer last night?"
Me: "Yes I did."
A: "Well, there's one knife that's really dirty and that tells me that everything in the dishwasher is really dirty."
Me: "Put that knife in the sink. I know I ran the dishwasher. Not everything will be dirty."
A looking sly: "Well, it tells me that everything is probably dirty."

wordless wednesday

this cat has too much hair

I increasingly can't move because of the cat. After ignoring me for two weeks after our trip, he climbs up on my lap every time I sit down, puts his claw-ridden paw on my chest and stares unblinkingly at me. You can't look anywhere else, you can't go anywhere, the claws pretty well keep you motionless (I say you, but obviously I mean me. I don't think he does this to anyone else).

If he would get up, I would, of course, leap up with a cry and a song and go water all the seeds that are sitting, newly planted, in the ground, probably being eaten by all the horrible bugs Elphine carefully dug up to show me and try to make me touch. She has entered, with full force, the Moral Stage whereby she wants to know whether or not Jesus likes whatever it is we're doing. "Does Jesus want us to plant this here?"
"Does Jesus think we should be doing this today?"
"Are Muslims Christians?"
"When is the next election? Who does Jesus want to win?"
"Does Jesus like this kind of grass?"
All these questions where hurled at me in the space of a few minutes. My first instinct, of course, is always to shout, "How should I know!" But I tried to think of answers to this myriad of wondering.

But I can't move yet, howsoever hot this cat may be (hotter as he's stopped chewing off his own fur and its all grown back). So, I guess I better just read more stuff on the internet. Its God that makes the seeds grow, anyway.

long overdue pictures

These are in reverse order because I'm not smart enough to outwit blogger.


Here is Kaw Lake in Oklahoma. It was so pretty in the evening and very calm after the gale force winds. We stayed far away from the water for convenience and ease of having children not fall in. Oklahoma was by far the best place to camp (cheap, water and electric at every sight, nice bathrooms, beautiful lakes, few government regulations and officious park rangers. In fact, the park people were lovely friendly both at Kaw and Lake Euphaula.) Dinner that night--hot dogs for the children, summer sausage stew with white beans, fresh rosemary and vegetables for Matt and me.

This is the culmination of Alouicious' week long birthday. I added blue food coloring to a vanilla chocolate mix (I was tired and didn't feel like making an actual cake). I added weird layers of strawberry yogurt and strawberries and blueberries. Basically it was so horribly sweet I could barely bare to eat more than one bite. He wanted 'fancy pancakes' (crepes) but, heaven be praised, I didn't have the recipe.


Here is the post office/bank at the Little House in the Prairie. It was all that we had ever hoped and dreamed.



Elphine in front of a replica of the Little House on the Prairie. It had been a few months since we had read the book but she remembered the details and knew what was supposed to be there and where it was supposed to be. Sad to see that they'd added a lot of sort of knick knacks (like fake sunflowers. Still, very exciting it was to be there and see how very very little it really is, roughly the size of my kitchen now.



Here is the first camp ground in Ohio and the only time I was unable to be cheerful. I really hate to be cold, under any circumstances, for any reason, and it was very cold. Fortunately for Matt, he had a thermal artic ready sleeping bag and so he slept beautifully. I, on the other hand, had a regular sleeping bag, a baby, and the blanket of death. Arguments ensued when Matt thought we should all awake with a song and a lark at dawn. Wacko. (Also, he had some kind of thermal hat and sweater. He clearly knew it was going to be cold but did nothing to prepare me for this eventuality. I'm still having a hard time letting go of the bitterness experienced on this occasion.)

7 Really Quick Takes

One
So excited about the World Cup. Have entered into quadrennial arguments with husband about why soccer is the best sport ever. Plus, found awesome Ap for awesome phone allowing me to be completely disengaged from reality pursuing minute by minute news about all players. Cote d'Ivoire is playing!
Two
Trying to figure out to organize my life so that I can watch soccer at 7am and 2pm every day in other locations (as we have no tv). So far I think I'll be starting every day at Crepe Heaven, and then showing up at various friend's houses in the afternoons. I know some of you think I'm kidding, in which case, you will be so disappointed when you find out I'm not.
Three
Was given the insane and unhelpful and unfriendly gift of Amish friendship bread. Didn't realize it was the Amish equivalent of an old fashioned chain letter. Somehow ended up with Two Batches and came to the belief, mid afternoon, covered in sugar and pudding, that I was wrestling with Leviathan and there was no way I could win. Carefully packaged up 7 starter bits and drove them desperately all over town. Biding my time to be able to give an armload of batches back to the person who gave it to me.
Four
Baby has entered new and clingy stage whereby no one is able to feed her cereal but me. Never had a clingy baby before and am now stuck holding and feeding a baby that is old enough to crawl around and eat many interesting things from the hand of many interesting people (like her father). Flattered, of course, but really.
Five
What with the World Cup and just general homesickness, have taken it upon myself to teach the children to speak some French. Taught them how to ask to go outside and then, because I'm so funny, told them they couldn't go outside unless they asked in French. Alouicious immediately dissolved into tears (which is always what I did when my mother tried to make me speak French) and said 'I won't remember how! Why can't we speak our own language?" (which is always what I said when my mother tried to make me speak French). Had to feed him pieces of Amish friendship bread and speak soothingly to him in English till he calmed down.
Six
Disappointed at so many invitations to 'stop using Facebook for a week' just when I've started to really use Facebook.
Seven
Not going to clean anything in the house until I actually plant out my bowl of flowers in the garden. Sick of cleaning and cleaning every day only to find that I haven't had time to garden again. So obviously the cleaning has to go. Maybe we can do it in French.

Go check out Jen!

Thursday on the Links

As I begin to type it occurs to me that I have not dealt with the mass of pictures on my computer proving that we did, in fact, camp and that we did, if fact, have a good time. I need to post them because everybody who has asked and been told that 'it was great!' begins to look crosswise and clearly doesn't believe.

That being the case, I did just want to point out this. Matt and I watched as much of it as we could bear and then I had strange and unpleasant dreams. I know all the chit chat has been about there being many many fewer people there than planned for, but may the Almighty preserve me, if I had been suckered into going, I would have had to sneak out the back within just a few minutes of being there. Mid way through I was shouting, 'Just Pick Something!' Do you want to be Chinese? Then pick that. Scottish? By all means. Native American? Whatever. But pick something! There's no way that all the nations of the world are filling the pews of the Episcopal Church of So. Cal. I'm thinking, that for anyone who can manage to watch the whole thing (without skipping forward and then lying about it) and can offer the best and cleverest one liner, of sending along some kind of prize. I'm pretty sure no one would win because its so desperately unbearable to watch.

And so, as a balance of to the link above, I give you my favorite thing on youtube right now,


And now once more into the frey.

article from One News Now

A very nice article was just written up in OneNewsNow. Here is the link.
And here is the reporter talking about the whole matter.

Light and Darkness: or an autobiographical interlude

I read this excellent post (please please go read it) yesterday and sat down to compose a comment. Very quickly, however, the enormity of what I wanted to try to say became too great for a simple comment and so I find I have to write a whole post of my own.

My very earliest recollections of life do not include electric light. I'm not sure how old I was when we moved to Farakala, but we lived next to the old village, before everyone moved to the road to be more 'modern'. Our house was a horse shoe-ish circle of six mud huts with thatch, joined by small passage ways so that you could go all through the house inside or cut through the court yard from one room to another. It wasn't a particularly well built house and besides being beset by termites on every side and in every crack, it eventually melted in the rain and we were forced to move.

The new house was half way between the old village and the new and was designed in the style of a french chateau. The foundation was sturdier, the walls straighter, the thatch thicker and I was older. No longer wanting to play in a pile of sand in the courtyard, or tie kittens on my back as if they were babies, I now participated in the rhythm of life to a greater degree, or at least as much as one can on holiday from boarding school.

There are several, as Jen at Conversion Diary calls them (haven't found the post though), hard stops to a life without electricity or running water. In the morning, water has to be brought in, preferably while the day is still cool. In the afternoon, it is too hot to go anywhere or do anything. And in the evening, the twilight period, the time between full sun and complete black, is only about 20 minutes. If you haven't filled the lamps in the morning or waning afternoon, you are racing against the light to fill them enough to carry you through the evening, and to light them. Once darkness has fallen, the deep quiet and deep darkness restrict movement and work.

But it was, and is, always my favorite time of day. It was so unlike my life now. We were never organized to cook supper before dark. There are too many things to do in the daylight hours, and cooking is perfectly achievable by lamp light. We never ate anything before 7:30. And then, baths were usually had, carrying water heated on the stove across the house to the bath hut, bathing by candle light. And then there was plenty of time to read. But you wouldn't want, certainly, to undertake a major cleaning project after dark, as I generally do here (I scrubbed the fridge until 10 o'clock last night and was fairly and completely exhausted after).

Visits could be had after dark--walking out,whether the moon is a sliver or full, the stars are bright enough, practically, to provide light, carrying with you a large stick and a lantern or flash light, remembering always to look down and keep to the path.

I'm getting all weepy as I write this because I miss it so much. Honestly, one of the biggest shocks to my system on moving to the US, besides the wonder of the grocery store and the overwhelming selection of toothpaste, was the unrelenting electric light in the evening. The absence of silence, the blaring light, the constant drone of computers and refrigerator and shouting of the dishwasher, all of it combines together to be psychologically wearing.

And, in my electric life now, though I have light enough to read and pray at any hour, I don't pray at night, much. We don't, as a family, sit together in candle light and sing the phos hilaron or pray, 'be our light in the darkness and defend us from all the terrors of the night', because we already have light, and we don't remember that there are terrors. We could, but we're busy up to the point of sleep.

It is a great loss. But also, my fridge is clean.

Sunday Sermon: Acts 1:1-11, the Ascension of or Lord

I mourn for you, having to listen to me on the Feast of the Ascension. In my own brief experience in ministry, I have heard Matt preach three phenomenal sermons on the Doctrine of the Ascension. I commend them to you, I hope he'll gather them together and post them online. Indeed, I took copious and detailed notes of his sermon last year and if you did also, then you will recognize a lot of what we're about to discuss together.

There is an old old story,
told in West Africa,
that god, or sky,
Clé,
used to live very close to the earth.
He lived so close that you could even bump your head on him.
And god and man got on well together and were able to communicate directly.
You might be able to guess what happens next.
Woman, one day,
for no reason that any one knows,
became irritated and took her pestl
e, her stick she uses to pound grain,
and poked god very hard.
Not surprisingly,
God became angry and retreated a little distance.
But woman was still irritated,
and so she lifted up her pestle and poked God again.
And he retreated even farther.
At which point woman,
with all the fury of woman,
climbed up on her roof
and lifted her pestle high
and poked God a third time.
God then became more angry than you can imagine
and retreated very far up on high,
so far that we cannot communicate with him directly anymore.
Now, to talk and be with God,
you have to go through a jinn or a spirit or even an ancestor to ask God for what you want.

Those of you who know your Bibles should be able to recognize some nuggets of truth
in this old story that tries provide an explanation for why there is evil and brokenness in the world,
how it is that we know there is a great divine ultimate being
with whom we have so little contact
but whom we long to know
and about whom we wonder and make up systems to try to approach,
elaborate systems by where we might get God's attention.
One such nugget of truth is that we,
of our own free will,
offend God,
we push him away, as far away as we can.
We don't want his interference in our daily affairs,
we don't want a relationship with him until something goes wrong.
And here is the second nugget of truth.
Because we have offended God,
we can no longer approach him directly, without an intermediary.
He is so holy, he is so perfect,
that were we to come directly into his presence we would be rent,
utterly torn asunder,
destroyed.

At this point you may be worried that I am going to lovingly and slowly unfold the wonders of the whole of salvation history--
how it was that Adam and Eve pushed God away,
rejected him
how, rather than rightfully and truly destroying them then and there
God set in motion a long and perfect plan to restore the brokenness,
to be able to come back close and speak and live and dwell with them, with us.
Don't worry, I'm skipping to the end of the story.
Today is the celebration of the culmination, the finishing, the completion of that work.

Turn, if you would, to Acts chapter one.
Jesus, you might remember,
is a particularly special and amazing person.
He has two natures
he is both fully God, completely and completely
not the sky come down to hover next to us,
but God himself as God
and,
in his second nature,
fully human,
not a sort of spirit or ghost or jinn.
Jesus laid aside the glory of heaven
to come down here and muck around with us,
to eat with us, our best meals and our worst.
He heard our high ideals and our low maligning gossip.
He heard our high hopes and cowardly longings.
He saw all that we did and said.
And ultimately,
when the time was right,
he gave himself up to die the death allotted for us--
the sure and just punishment for our rejection of God,
our willful rebellious sin,
the fair and right punishment of that action is death.
Jesus stepped into that space,
in that moment
and became the one perfect complete atoning sacrifice for sin.
He could do this, you remember,
because he was perfect in his humanity,
and in his divinity he was strong enough to bear the sin of any and everyone who puts their trust in him.

We tend to stop there. Praise God, Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Its the right answer to every question asked in church. Jesus died.
But that was only part one of three.
The dying was important,
but if Jesus had only died we wouldn't all be here this morning.
The second part was that he rose up, he is risen, he is alive.
Death couldn't hold on to him, it wasn't strong enough to destroy.
On the contrary, Jesus destroyed death.
Sure, we die,
but not forever.
He destroyed death for ever.
Anyone who trusts in Jesus, hopes in Jesus, loves Jesus,
that person is not bound by death.
That person is alive forever in him, both spiritually
spiritually we shouldn't ever be dead, or dying,
spiritually we should be maturing and getting stronger and less broken and less dead every moment,
but also physically.
Your body will die,
but on the last day
your body will be raised up,
just like Jesus here, in this text.
Same body but new, better, glorious, complete,
not broken,
not in pain,
not showing the signs of 5 babies and counting,
talk about broken.
That was the second part,
he rose.

The third part right there in your text.
As he was talking to them,
he was raised up on a cloud and removed from their sight,
and two men in white said, get it together, obviously your plans are not his plans.
He is not going to be King of Israel,
he already is King of the Whole World
and you have a lot of work to do for him,
as his brother,s his friends, his body, the sign of his presence on earth.

Now, many of you might think,
what's the difference between Clé retreating up into the sky out of anger,
and Jesus disappearing in a cloud,
abandoning, for all its looks,
his friends to a life of hard work and suffering
I mean, look around, if this isn't suffering, I don't know what is.

Is it the same thing? No.
Clearly no. It is not abandonment, nor retreat. Jesus' Ascension into heaven is,
at the very least,
three vitally important things for us.
Obviously more, so many more that I wish we had time to talk about.

First, Jesus ascends to heaven, not just goes up in the air but spiritually ascends into heaven, to sit,

that means that the work is done, you sit down when you've completed something

Jesus accomplished the salvation of all who believe and hope in him,

he conquered death,

therefore he sat down

at the right hand of the Father. He ascends to heaven to rule and direct the church which is his own body.

Ephesians 1 verse 20 "and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name for ever and in every age and place and time

verse 22 and put all things under his feat and made him head over the all things for the church

verse ²³ which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.
In other words, Jesus, from the right hand of the Father, is directing and moving the church through the power of the Holy Spirit to do the work of spreading the Kingdom of God, of filling up the earth with the good news and the love of Jesus.

Second, he ascended and sits at the right hand of God the Father
so that He might reconcile all things to the Father
Colossians 1:19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
As the Accuser accuses and tries to destroy you,
Jesus is there,
at the right hand of God,
giving you to the Father
if you are found in him,
you are covered with his blood,
you are clean
you are therefore reconciled,
Jesus is reconciling you.
Do you feel awful when you sin?
Do you feel God's call to do something difficult and unpleasant?
That work is being done by Jesus
through the Holy Spirit
in the presence of the Father.

Which brings us to third and most strange thing that Jesus does.
Hebrews 4
14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
So far from retreating from us,
in Ascending into heaven,
Jesus draws us up into heaven with him to the very throne of God,
the presence of the Father, to live with him there.
Now, I know its sort of hard to see that this is the case.
When I am drifting around my house,
shouting at my children to stop dithering and Pick Up,
you would probably not think,
she is here,
but she is also in heaven with Jesus at the right hand of God
enjoying his perfect love and grace and mercy,
reveling in his holy and life giving will,
but it would, in fact, be the case.
Now, we don't often revel in the presence of God
and enjoy him
and live as though this were true,
which is sad, because it is.
We can live this way.
I've been trying to lately.
There are a whole lot of places in Scripture where we are commanded not to worry,
or be anxious,
places where we are commanded not to be angry,
where we are commanded to love everybody,
especially those who are difficult to love.
We don't do any of those things but that the Holy Spirit lives in us and does them in us,
but we also do them because we are spiritually in heaven with Jesus
when you whisper, 'O please God, help me' that prayer is spoken to God the Father
Its not a shout into the void.
Why then
for heaven's sake,
wouldn't you pray?
Why wouldn't you live cheerfully and joyfully
with confidence and contentment?
We are not abandoned. God has not retreated from our sin and trouble.
He has come to save us,
to redeem us,
and to draw us up into his presence.
Draw near to the Glory of God.
Approach his throne with confidence.
Let your heart be rend open before him.
Give him the desires of your heart.

Come and worship the King.
Amen.

The Cold Clear North

Obviously we're back.

My blogging capabilities are seriously limited for the moment because Gladys, shock and horror, spoiled my laptop whilst we were all in Corpus and while it is on the mend, may the Lord be ever praised, it is virtually impossible to blog on it. So my usual routine is disrupted and when that happens blogging is always the first thing to go. Furthermore, we neglected to bring the camera home with us and so there will be no pictures until it arrives in the mail.

While I await the camera and the full restoration of my computer, I am trying to unpack and de-clutter and re-acclimate myself to the cold. Did you all know that it snowed here on Sunday? I'm digging out sweaters and socks and trying not to resort to profanity. Matt kindly and lovingly left the window open last night so that we wouldn't "be too hot". I invited all the children in to bed this morning to warm up thereby getting my own back.

Matt is fussing to get his computer back from me, so I will only say that camping was A Great Success. If you have five small children and you decide to drive across the country, I would encourage you most strongly to consider camping. It was lovely, warm, pleasant, pretty and apart from the chiggers, everyone had a good time. By far and away it beat being cooped up in various tiny hotel rooms and eating at Denny's. And, of no small triumph, it was extremely cheap.

And now, once more into the fray.

Non Public Service Announcement

Mommy, is your email working at all? I've tried to email several times? Are you on Facebook? Is there anyway to communicate with you in a less public way than this blog? I miss you.