Sometimes it’s the little moments that bring me the biggest smiles – like when Rondel asks if Limerick can sit on Grandma’s armchair with him, and Limerick runs over to climb up.
At first they both looked pretty happy snuggled up together.
Limerick soon realized that he’d gotten into more than he bargained for, though!
But how can you really complain when greeted with such effusive and exuberant affection?
November and December are very joyful, celebratory months in our house, because in addition to the normal holidays we have three of our four birthdays (rather nicely spaced over the season, I might add). The festivities begin with my birthday, then Limerick’s two weeks later, continue through Thanksgiving a week after that, pick up my husband’s birthday about two weeks after Thanksgiving, and end with Christmas and New Year’s about two to three weeks later. Adding to this festive spirit that strikes me at the beginning of November is the fact that the weather here finally becomes cool and crisp right around the same time. It finally feels like the world is ready for cookies and hot chocolate and pot pies and stews and fresh bread and festive music (I try to wait on the Christmas music but I feel so ready for it!). There’s just something so much nicer about baking with all the windows open and a cool breeze wafting through the house than with the windows shut up and the AC on trying to combat the triple-digit temperatures outside…
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In the few weeks between “hot” and “freezing” (“freezing” having a very generous definition for us wimpy Phoenicians), we spent almost all our time outdoors and fell in love with our little park. (see the pants and long sleeves? I think it was in the high 70s when we were there… we really are wimps about the cold).
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I’m always trying got encourage the boys to get out of the built environment (as much as possible given that we live in a very urban context) and lately I’ve been working on getting them to walk on the grass instead of on the sidewalk. It’s not as smooth and stable so they don’t prefer it, but Rondel was more than happy to run into the grass in order to give that big tree a hug.
It reminds me of the library I grew up going to as a little girl (in semi-rural Pennsylvania) – my mom and I would always stop to hug the big oak tree in the front. It makes me happy to pass that on to my son now.
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Limerick gets super focused sometimes and he always looks so fat and grumpy when he does 🙂 It’s neat seeing him so engaged in what he’s doing though.
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Rondel used to be quite nervous around slides, but as he’s gotten older he’s gotten a lot more comfortable with them. Limerick suffers from no such anxieties… now my only difficulty is trying to keep Limerick from going up the same slide that Rondel’s trying to go down!
I hope your November is beautiful and joyful as well. Head on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today!
I remember learning, as a child, about the ship St. Louis that sailed from Germany in 1939, carrying over 900 Jewish refugees to a Cuba that had just closed its doors. Turned away from her destination, the St. Louis asked President Roosevelt to give them safe harbor (a choice he could feasibly have made using the power of the executive order), but he never even replied. In the end, the passengers were scattered throughout Britain and Western Europe; half of those who returned to the continent were killed in the war. Hitler received the clear message that the rest of Western civilization was not particularly concerned about the fate of the Jewish people.
Why was the United States so cavalier about the fate of these individuals, so cold to their plight? The USHMM has a good summary:
Despite the ongoing persecution of Jews in Germany, the State Department’s attitude was influenced by the economic hardships of the Depression, which intensified grassroots antisemitism, isolationism, and xenophobia. The number of entry visas was further limited by the Department’s inflexible application of a restrictive Immigration Law passed by the US Congress in 1924. Beginning in 1940, the United States further limited immigration by ordering American consuls abroad to delay visa approvals on national security grounds.
In short, substituting anti-Islamic sentiment for antisemitism, the United States was facing exactly the same attitudes in 1939 that she is today in 2015. Her citizens were afraid – afraid for their own economic security, afraid to be drawn into global problems, afraid of war, and afraid of people whose appearance, culture, and beliefs were different than their own. We have our own problems; let those people take care of themselves and leave us in peace.
In C.S. Lewis’s book That Hideous Strength, he allows the characters to muse for a while on the particular genius or defining characteristic of several different nations – in essence, the way in which those nations, despite the grime and decay of sin, most especially reflect some aspect of the coming kingdom of Christ.
He doesn’t make two blades of grass the same: how much less two saints, two nations, two angels. The whole work of healing Tellus [Earth] depends on nursing that little spark, on incarnating that ghost, which is still alive in every real people, and different in each. When Logres really dominates Britain, when the goddess Reason, the divine clearness, is really enthroned in France, when the order of Heaven is really followed in China – why, then it will be spring.
Since the first time I read that passage as a teenager I’ve wondered what could define the United States, my own country. It’s only now, as I consider the refugee crisis, that I think I see what is best, most characteristic, most beautiful about us – and what consequently is most violently attacked.
The United States, in theory, as a concept or an ideal, is a nation that welcomes the poor, the oppressed, the pioneer, the explorer, the entrepreneur, the “huddled masses yearning to be free,” and offers to each of them the opportunity to labor, live, learn, and love to the best of their ability. We’re not, historically, a country that supports and provides for each other well, but we are a country that provides opportunity well. In every age people have come here seeking that opportunity, and it has been here waiting for them. And as representatives from all nations and cultures have come here seeking that opportunity, we have taken them in and, though we have most definitely not always embraced the diversity they bring, we have given them the freedom to be and express who they are. With time, they become American, but they don’t need to lose their heritage to do so.
It is the same with God’s kingdom. All nations will come to it, seeking life, seeking love, seeking to learn and labor for a better future, and all those peoples will be assimilated into one people, His people, but they won’t have to lose their traditions and history to do so. We will be proudly and beautifully ourselves, carrying the full rich textured fabric of our past and our culture, as we walk into His kingdom, and all nations will be represented there in the fullness of their glory as well.
Is it any wonder, if this is the divine spark within our nation, that it should be so constantly besieged? It is always our fear that impedes us – our fear of the unknown future and our forgetfulness of the past.
Throughout our history there has been this countercurrent running, this voice that whispers fear in our ears. It tells us that letting in these new people will compromise our own position – steal our jobs, endanger our families, threaten our comfortable way of life. Having received opportunity for ourselves, our temptation is to withhold it from others. Having been born to privilege, safety, and relative wealth, we fear that offering the opportunity for others to work for those things will entail losing them ourselves. Having lived in freedom, we condemn others to oppression even as they beg at our feet for us to open our doors, or risk their lives to enter illegally.
I pray that this time, in this hour of need, our borders would open to those seeking shelter, desiring a new life, wanting simply the opportunity to pursue happiness and love that we have declared an inalienable human right; that we would overcome our fears of different cultures and religions and see the humanity behind them; that we would risk our comfort and security ever so slightly to save families and children from torture and death. I pray that we would not repeat our failure of the 1930s, ISIS terrorism standing in for Hitler’s Holocaust.
Is it too much to ask? I think not.
I don’t think we give converts enough credit (or, perhaps, enough patience).
Those of us who grew up in the church, do we really understand the immensity of declaring a changed worldview? Even after the change has occurred (in that slow, subtle, steady way that people usually change), the declaration is still a drastic and public event. If the convert is coming from a family or immersed in a culture that looks down on their new beliefs, it’s even harder. They know the questions that will be coming – and even worse, the silent looks, the whispered judgments, the unspoken assumptions.
Let us all give each other the grace to change at our own speed, and the courtesy not to assume we know exactly what those changes entail when they come. But let us also pray for the courage to be honest about our own changes, and not hide behind a comfortable mask as our true self morphs into something else.
Sometimes God answers your prayers for discernment and direction by shutting the door you’d hoped to walk through.
My husband and I received one of those answers yesterday and responded by watching “Inside Out” and eating almost a whole batch of Smitten Kitchen’s chocolate caramel crack. (Which is pretty much the best stuff ever for dealing with disappointment, or just for enjoying on the sly every time you walk past the freezer where you’re trying to save it for holiday gifts…).
It’s just, sometimes the path in front of us is beautiful and we can’t wait to walk forward on it, and sometimes it’s an ugly and desolate road. Sometimes it’s a smooth and level walkway, and sometimes it’s a steep and rocky trail. And the thing is, it’s easier to endure for the long haul when the surroundings are pleasant and the walking is easy. It’s easier to sing songs on the trail and stop to take pictures of the scenery when you’re not laboring just to catch your breath with every step.
The hardest path I ever had to walk was through the darkness of depression. Knowing that God brought me through that treacherous valley gives me hope that He’ll bring me through this desert as well. They’re very different places, but the need to endure is the same, and the God who gives strength is the same.
I’m not going to deny that I was upset by God’s answer to this prayer we had offered up to Him. God doesn’t need me to pretend that I’m happy or that I understand when I’m not and I don’t. But I’m also not going to act as though this “no” defines my life right now, or let it color every other “yes” that He’s given me. He has blessed us in abundance, and if He chooses not to bless us in this way that we had hoped for, it will be ok. We will keep hoping and keep trusting, as we have been for the past few years, and we will keep working with patience and endurance on the pathway He’s given us.
It seems like a long, straight, foggy road these days. Stretching onward, infinitely onward, perhaps – although for all I can see, it could turn at any moment. I just keep putting one foot in front of the other, day in and day out, walking down the road, in hope.
Halloween came in the midst of my hard drive problems but fortunately my mom took some pictures on her phone! The boys are at an age where they each like to imitate the other, so I thought it would make the most sense for them to dress up as the same thing. So here are my little firefighters:
This was Rondel’s third Halloween but the first we’ve celebrated as a family. He was only a few months old for his first, and I was overwhelmed with becoming a mom, so we passed; for his second, he still didn’t really grasp the concept and I wasn’t invested enough in it to make him a cool costume just for my own enjoyment. This time, he decided what he wanted to dress up as and was pretty adamant about us taking the time to find and assemble the costume.
As you can probably tell, he was pretty excited about it! This is after we got home from walking around our neighborhood. I was worried that he would be confused or overwhelmed by the whole concept of trick-or-treating, but he thought it was the most awesome thing ever. He would march right up to people, say “trick-or-treat!” and reach right into their bowl of candy! Sometimes he had trouble remembering to take only one piece…
Our actual “neighborhood” is a townhome complex and no one had lights on or expected kids to come around, so we walked across the street to an actual neighborhood with homes and families, and there were tons of fellow trick-or-treaters, decorated houses, and people just sitting on their driveways hanging out. It’s a nice Arizona tradition that makes Halloween into a mini block party, with everyone visiting outside. There was an old woman who kept giving my kids more candy because they were so cute, a young single guy hanging out on his pickup truck with a jack-o-lantern lit up by a phone, a couple of Royals fans who kept us updated on the game, and more. There were whites, blacks, and Hispanics; old people and young people; single people and families; and everyone was expansive and friendly in this sort of community holiday spirit.
And that’s why I celebrate Halloween – for that community, that connection with my neighbors, that smile on my toddler’s face and the mirrored glow on the face of the grandmother giving out candy wishing her own babies lived closer. It is a good thing to enter in to the culture around us, to sanctify it by our presence, instead of always backing out and creating a sub-culture. There are times when it is the best choice for our families to step out of the mainstream culture, to a greater or lesser degree, but for us Halloween is a perfectly safe and fun way to be a part of our neighborhood, so why not enjoy it?
It’s no secret that one of the most glaring differences between Protestant (particularly Evangelical/low church) and Catholic Christianity is in their beliefs about and attitude toward Mary the mother of Jesus. To a Protestant, the Catholic veneration of Mary looks disturbingly like idolatry. But I’m beginning to have significant qualms about the almost callous disdain some varieties of Protestantism have towards Mary, not least because of the implications it has for their understanding of femininity and their treatment of women.
If we believe that Mary was chosen essentially at random, that God could have used any woman to be the mother of His Son because all He needed was womb space and human DNA, we reduce our understanding of womanhood to that of physical maternity and that all-too-distasteful word, breeding.
If we believe that Mary was chosen through God’s will alone without regard to her personal choice, as strict Calvinism logically implies, we reduce her “yes” to a meaningless appearance and reduce our view of women to less-than-free agents. We open the door to rape and abuse because we turn God Himself into a rapist.
By removing from our faith a vision of Mary’s beauty – of the cosmic power of her choice to cooperate with God’s grace and enter into His redemptive plan – we lose our vision of the full beauty and power of women in general. Sisters, what matters most about us isn’t our ability to bear children and bring babies into the world. What matters most is our choice to say “yes” to God’s plan, our ability to change the course of history by choosing to live for Him.
In the Catholic understanding of Mary, we see God choosing a woman to play the most important human role in His salvific plan. That’s the kind of thing He does: He takes the weaker, the oppressed, the downtrodden, and glorifies them. And people who by nature and social norms are accustomed to power and respect are unnerved or threatened by that. Maybe that’s why the certain churches reduce Mary’s role to her womb. But what Catholicism offers is is a vision of womanhood glorified and beautified by grace, lifted up in queenly majesty as it offers itself to Him in free love and humility.
That is the picture of womanhood I want to emulate and grow into personally, and it is the perception of women that I wish could permeate our families, churches, and society at large.
While reading through Philippians a few days ago, I was struck by Paul’s incredible emphasis on unity in the first few verses of Philippians 2. Look how he sets it up:
…if there is any consolation in Christ…
…if there is any comfort of love…
… if there is any fellowship of the Spirit…
…if there is any affection and mercy…
…if any of these things apply, then be like-minded, have the same love, be of one accord, and be of one mind.
He’s not asking for much – just for the basic elements of the Christian faith working in our hearts and in our relationships with God and others. He’s not saying, if you have a surplus of consolation from Christ for your own sorrows and troubles, then move on to unity with your fellow believers. He’s not saying, if you are so comforted by the love of God that you feel love overflowing out of you, then go ahead and try to be one with other Christians. No – if there is even the tiniest bit of comfort and consolation in the love of Christ, if there is even the faintest hint of community through the Spirit or kindness and mercy in your heart, endeavor to live as a unified body.
Be like-minded, he says – be one in doctrine and understanding of the faith. Have the same love, he says – be one in love for God first, not falling away to love other things more, even other good things. Be of one accord, he says – be one in purpose and in fellowship, following God together and not each according to his own whim. And be of one mind, he says again, emphasizing that unity of teaching, doctrine, and understanding. In this unity, the Philippians would be able to fulfill Paul’s joy in them.
All the following verses, that famous passage about humbling ourselves and putting others first as Christ did in the Incarnation and on the cross, should be read in light of these first two verses. Why are we to esteem others as better than ourselves, and look out for the interests of others, and imitate the humility and obedience of Christ? That we might become a more unified Church, one in mind and heart and will, bound together by the love of Christ and the work of the Spirit.
It makes me think that the Reformation was one of the most unfortunate things to happen in the life of the Church (although it was the natural consequence of the sin that the Church had allowed into even her highest offices) – I can’t think of anything else that has splintered Christianity and destroyed our unity (on institutional and personal levels) to such a degree.
Rondel has been asking me to sing firetruck songs to him every day for the past couple weeks, typically with some very unique requirements:
“Sing firetruck song bout firetruck with no wheels!”
“Sing firetruck song bout firetruck with no siren!”
“Sing firetruck song bout firetruck with no light!”
“Sing firetruck song with tow truck in it!”
And so on.
Needless to say I don’t actually know any songs that fit these specifications, so I’ve been making them up and now my own silly firetruck songs are stuck in my head. For posterity, and maybe for a laugh, here are the two current favorites:
“There once was a big red firetruck
Who used to drive all around the town
If there was a fire, he’d put the fire out
And all the other cars would cheer and shout
‘We love you, we love you, big red firetruck!
Thank you, oh thank you, for putting the fire out!’
Then one day, his wheels fell off
So now he couldn’t drive anywhere
He was stuck in the fire station sitting on the ground
And if there was a fire, the building just burned down.
‘Where are you, where are you,’ the other cars would shout,
‘We need you, we need you, to put the fire out!’
But then a tow truck drove into town
He saw the big red firetruck sitting on the ground
He bought him some new wheels so he could drive around
And the big red firetruck went to put the fire out.
‘Hooray, hooray,’ the other cars all say,
‘Thank you, nice tow truck, for giving the firetruck new wheels!'”
And then the song that really gets him thinking about deep moral quandaries (seriously, he goes through a roller coaster of emotions with this one, and his face gets all concerned and focused):
“A little tired firetruck drove down the road
He’d had a long day and he wanted to go home
But first he thought he’d take a nap right there by the road
So he pulled off to the side and soon he fell asleep.
While the little firetruck slept there by the road
A big green tow truck happened to drive by
I think this tow truck must have been a mean guy
Because he took the firetrucks wheels and left him all alone.
When the tired little firetruck woke up from his nap
His wheels were all gone and he was stuck there on the ground
There was nothing he could do but sit there and cry
He was so sad because he had no wheels.
But then a nice tow truck was driving down the road
And saw the little firetruck so sad and all alone
He towed him into town and helped him get new wheels
And the little tired firetruck was so happy once again.”
The crazy things we do for our kids… I wonder if he’ll even remember that we used to sing silly firetruck songs together in a year or two. That might be better than having to sing them every day for that long though!
update on the computer – I lost the internal hard drive as well as the external drive containing my most recent backups (the last two years of data). I’m just glad I didn’t have a book or dissertation in process on either of those drives! 🙂 My kids’ pictures have all, except for the last two weeks of October, been uploaded to either my phone, Facebook, this blog, or my parents’ computer, so I haven’t lost any of those memories, and that’s what was most important to me. I was able to restore the internal hard drive but I haven’t started rebuilding it yet because my dad got me a new SSD internal drive for my birthday! Much gratitude there – and good timing too, for the drives to fail just in time for my birthday. So when that arrives and I get it installed, I’ll reinstall all my software and start rebuilding my photo library and taking care of the new pictures from my camera. And my husband got me a wireless external drive that I’ll be able to use for automatic backups so hopefully this will never happen again!
I am so blessed to have people in my life who help me out with these things… 🙂 Common sense and practicality are not my strengths!
update on the family – Limerick is starting to talk all the time! He has so many words and his favorites are apple and bubble (he gets so excited when he sees an apple or a bubble and I think it’s partly because he can say the words). When I left for work yesterday morning, I heard him say “bye!” after I shut the door, which was really sweet. Rondel didn’t get the concept of saying goodbye until he was over 18 months, which just goes to show how different every baby is, I suppose.
Rondel has been telling me stories about cars, developing opinions about everything, and melting down when he doesn’t get to do something he was hoping to do (like play with cars at the store, or look at cars on the phone, or watch a truck video…). I’m trying to take advantage of those moments to validate his feelings and reconnect with him, and we usually end up playing and laughing together, but it’s hard if Limerick is also falling apart, which he sometimes does just because he hears his brother being so upset. On a lighter note, he’s also been pretending to be sad or upset to get attention, see how we’ll respond, or make Limerick laugh. He can hardly keep a straight face and it cracks me up!
They still love being together and Rondel is becoming a sweet and protective older brother. Limerick hasn’t been feeling well the past few days and Rondel will come over to him and give him a big hug and say, “hug Limerick make him feel better!” He’s navigating the transition from babyhood to boyhood with considerable poise, and sometimes he’ll say to me that he’s a big boy and a little baby, or ask to be held like a little baby, and after a few minutes of snuggling he’ll announce that he’s a big boy again and run off. Limerick just follows him around wherever he goes – that boy adores his brother.
My husband and I are waiting to hear back on something big that could usher in a lot of changes in our lives but that’s all I’ll say until we find out more. I’m thinking about education and the future and trying not to let myself worry about things that are years away – that worry is the best way I’ve found to lose my focus in the present and fail to connect with my family here and now, so it’s something I’d rather avoid.
update on miscellany – the heat finally broke down here in the hot dry desert and we’re enjoying the most beautiful weather: highs in the low 70s and cool nights in the 50s. The windows are open all the time and the AC is off and when I turn the oven on to bake it feels cozy and warm, not stifling and oppressive. Christmas goodies are going to be made and frozen starting this week, people! I’ll try to get some pictures (hard, since I usually cook at night) to taunt you all with holiday goodness 😉
I hope you all are doing well! The blog should be getting back up to speed before too long.
little thoughts 