In this YouTube clip, I discuss both the positive and negative aspects of the anti-supermom trend and what it means for women. While the focus in recent years has been on becoming a domestic diva, some moms are proudly headed in the opposite direction. Here, I offer some analysis as well as a few thoughts to help women find their identity and maintain their voice in the crowd.
Why Are Christians So …?
It amazes me how people get miffed about religious passion yet will do anything for love.
If you can’t shut up about how much you love your significant other, imagine what it’s like trying to shut up about someone who loved you so much that they gave their life for yours?!
Why are Christians so passionate? (Or, negatively stated, “zealous” or “pushy” ?)
Because they are motivated by and responding to Christ’s love:
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” – John 3:16
“By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” – 1 John 4:9
“By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.” Psalm 48:9
“Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.” Psalm 136
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” – Romans 5
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” – Ephesians 2:4
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” – Romans 8:35-39
“Let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” – 1 John 4
“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” Revelation 1:5-7
“But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.” – Titus 3:3-5
Format for Twitter Links
This is how I tweet links on Twitter :
I chose this format for tweeting links because it conveys the necessary information in a clean, minimalistic way.
Because Twitter highlights links in blue, the eyes skip the link and focus on the title.
Follow me — and let me know if you’d like for me to follow you back!
Public Education is a Social Service
Education cannot be separated from the rest of life. It is learned from life. It applies to life. It is social.
Yet, for some reason, people are surprised when schools “butt” into the lives of students.
Given the nature of education itself, how can they not?
Instead of wasting energy being indignant over government-funded schools “overstepping boundaries”, why not entrust your children’s privacy and welfare to a scholastic institution with whom you agree and who shares your same values?
Quote: Roger Ebert’s Tweet on Breasts
“Am I odd? Cleavage doesn’t awaken my feelings of lust, but those of the hope to be comforted. Cleavage. It speaks to us from the time before memory of love, comfort, warmth, softness and food. Cleavage. Oh yes. Cleavage.” – Roger Ebert, via Twitter. (Tweet #1) (Tweet #2)
This is a beautiful quote describing the nurturing aspect of breasts! (Did you know the word nurture and nursing have the same Latin root, nutritus?) I’m making a note of this quote for the next time I teach on breastfeeding during my Bradley Method natural childbirth classes.
Reminds me of the feeling of peace and comfort captured in Isaiah 66:11-13 :
For you will nurse and be satisfied at her comforting breasts; you will drink deeply and delight in her overflowing abundance. For this is what the LORD says:
“I will extend peace to her like a river,
and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm
and dandled on her knees.As a mother comforts her child,
so will I comfort you;
and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”
As we see here, the Creator even uses breasts in an analogy, demonstrating that He knows and cares how we humans think, feel and function, and that such wording would resonates within us with understanding. I can’t even think of a clearer metaphor, can you?
God made breasts. God made the warm fuzzy feelings of both desire and comfort that humans naturally associate with breasts. He made these feelings work together to form a loving bond – between mothers and babies, and between husbands and wives.
Praise Him!
As Christians, let’s not be embarrassed to tastefully mention breasts, m’kay?
By the way, Klimt is one of my favorite painters. A large print of Mother and Child (detail from The Three Ages of Woman), used to hang in my living room back home, just above the rocking chair where I would often sit and nurse my babies.
(HT to @clergygir1, my Twitter friend Jen, who is a breast cancer survivor, for ReTweeting this! Please check out her encouragement-filled blog, Clergygirl : Waving a flashlight through the murkiness of life.)
Fishy Forgiveness : Thirty-Eight Dead Daffodils
Thirty-eight.
That is how many one-inch stemmed daffodils my two oldest boys picked today from our landlord’s garden. I am really sad because it was my older kids who know better, but chose to picked the flowers anyway.
I found out about the flowers when one of my sons brought two of them to me for my windowsill.
Recognizing that they were not our daffodils, which would have been easier to overlook, but instead the frilly ones from the landlord’s driveway-ditch garden, I ran out to to the garage only to find the boys whacking a heap of daffodil heads with sticks.
When caught, the boys claimed they had been picked for me. However, if they had intended to be given as a gift, I don’t understand how mutilating the petals with sticks would make them more presentable.
Shocked by the size of the pile, I counted the flowers while the boys watched.
The landlord came out of his blue-tarp covered shed and walked over towards us. I bowed deeply and apologized for the destruction of his flowers. I made the boys bow and also offer a more formal apology.
The landlord laughed. His ancient face wrinkled into a thousand lines.
He shrugged and said in English, “Okay!” He then reached down to a clump of growing daffodils, plucked them by the heads and threw them on the ground. I said, “No no no… gomen nasai … Not okay!”
I am pretty sure he understood what I meant, but I honestly did not understand his response. It was certainly not an acknowledgment of the apologies, and I couldn’t tell if he really didn’t care or if he was pissed off about the flowers and was showing me that there was nothing that could be done to save them at that point.
I marched the boys into our house, disciplined them, and then reviewed the obvious rules for playing outside which included, “stay out of the rice fields and irrigation channels” and “don’t take things that are not yours.”
Later, the landlord brought over a large, pungent, dried headless fish as a gift.
Tabitha gave him a handful of teriyaki-flavored dried squid tentacle snacks in return.
He thanked her and wolfed them down happily.
As for what to do next? I will probably write up an apology and ask a friend to translate it for me. I think it will recognize the hard work the landlord has put into his gardens and apologize for their picking the flowers without asking. It needs to be in real Japanese, not my undoubtedly poorly pronounced attempt to communicate.
Even if it turns out that landlord doesn’t care, it is never ‘okay’ for my children to take things that do not belong to them, no matter how well-intentioned.
I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with this fish.