Lift Up Your Hearts!

Half the Sky:  Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)

Inspired by the PBS documentary and the recommendation of a friend, I put myself on the library waiting list for Half the Sky.  As usually happens, it became available at an inconvenient time, and I had to return it to the library in a hurry.  That was back in October, so I'm trying to craft this review from my hastily-scribbled (typed) notes and quotes.

The book is better than the television show, if only because it features fewer American pop-culture icons and more real people.  It also, of course, gives more detail, though there is something to be said for the visceral effects of seeing and hearing the people behind the words.  Both left me with two distinct reactions, neither of which is probably what the authors had in mind.

When reading (or watching) these stories of unbelieveable brutality and oppression of women, the first, and no doubt intended, reaction is, "What are we doing to our women and girls, to the majority of the population of the world, to half of the very image of God?"  Particularly since the authors relate all these horrors while barely touching on the problem of sex-selective abortion.  And yet my lasting impression followed almost immediately:  What have we done to our men and boys?  Not everyone will agree, but I say that there is something even worse than the atrocities committed upon these women, and that is being the kind of person who commits such acts.  Ultimately, no solution to the problem of violence against women will succeed unless the rehabilitation of men is also addressed.

Not that women, as a sex, are innocent:

In talking about misogyny and gender-based violence it would be easy to slip into the conceit that men are the villains.  But it's not true.  Granted, men are often brutal to women.  Yet it is women who routinely manage brothels in poor countries, who ensure that their daughters' genitals are cut, who feed sons before daughters, who take thieir sons but not their daughters to clinics for vaccination.  One study suggests that women perpetrators were involved, along with men, in one quarter of the gang rapes in the Sierra Leone civil war.

But by and large, men have the power, and they use that power in ways that hurt women, even their own wives and daughters.

Some of the most wretched suffering is caused not just by low incomes, but also by unwise spending—by men.  it is not uncommon to stumble across a mother mourning a child who has just died of malaria for want of a $5 mosquito net and then find the child's father at a bar, where he spends $5 each week. ... Roughly 7 percent of the total spending of the poorest people in Indias's Maharashtra State went to sugar. ... [I]n much of the world even some of the poorest young men, both single and married, spend considerable sums on prostitutes. ... [A]t least in Udaipur, the malnutrition could in most cases be eliminated if families bought less sugar and tobacco. ... If poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do in beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries.  Girls ... would be the biggest beneficiaries.

Or, as my son-in-law succinctly put it, "Men can't be trusted to bring home the bacon rather than eating it on the way home."

Why not?  Why is it that when women in poor countries get jobs, they use the money to feed and educate their children, but men spend their incomes (and their wives', if the money isn't hidden from them) on beer, cigarettes, and prostitutes?  It was (is) not always thus:  men used to be proud to support their families, and many still are.  Perhaps in this country one can cast some blame on feminism, which robbed men of the assurance that their own sacrifices were essential to their families' survival.  But in many poor countries little of the bread ever made it to the children's mouths until their mothers began earning it.  Here's one theory:

[Quoting David Landes, the eminent Harvard historian] The economic implications of gender discriminaion are most serious.  To deny women is to deprive a country of labor and talent, but—even worse—to undermine the drive to achievement of boys and men.  One cannot rear young people in such wise that half of them think themselves superior by biology, without dulling ambition and devaluing accomplishment.

(On a side note, while I applaud the movement in some Christian circles to encourage boys and men in chivalry, graciousness, and love, I cringe when I see how often this is taught through the idea that boys are superior to girls—sometimes even to the extent of being stronger and wiser than their mothers!  As Landes said, this is not only harmful to their mothers and sisters, and future wives and daughters, but to the boys themselves.  Here's an article I ran into recently that addresses a related problem, and has the lovely title, Why You Should Stop Treating Your Husband Like a Toddler, and ACTUALLY Respect Him.)

On the bright side, as men see the economic potential and power of their wives, they often come to respect them more, and then see the value in educating their daughters.  On the other hand, there's a clear risk that they will only see the economic value, and women will find themselves further enslaved, working at a job, running the household as usual, and funding their husbands' bad habits as well.

Half the Sky rightly celebrates the efforts of women worldwide to address the problem of their own oppression, but it will take both men and women, working together, to address the heart of the tragedy.

I'll leave my second, and quite different, take-away from Half the Sky for another post.  I was going to add some more quotes, but as they, too, are on a different subject, so that will make a third post—a record for one book review, I think.

A friend made this comment about the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision:  While some of us commemorate this sad anniversary, others actually celebrate it.  Naturally, that set me thinking.  It's the celebration, not merely of the right to abortion, but of abortion itself, that makes this issue so weird, and so inflammatory.

I could so, so easily support leaving all difficult medical decisions to the family.  Having experienced painful, personal, life-or-death medical decisions myself, I know I don't want the government making them for me.  Because, like it or not, in this fallen world there are times when the better (not to say good) choice is to end life rather than to prolong it, to take a life rather than to save it.

But in our society there are many people who glorify, not just the legality of abortion, but the procedure itself, and that's where they lose me.  If we cheer when a criminal is executed, if the homeowner gets a thrill out of shooting the housebreaker, if the wholesale destruction of an enemy town causes rejoicing, if "pulling the plug" on an invalid is an easy decision, if we can end a child's life without grieving deeply and without seeing the action as anything other than a last, desperate resort ... then we know that no matter how necessary the choice may sometimes be, our consciences have been compromised and cannot be trusted.  And therefore we sometimes, however reluctantly, let the government in—to set the boundaries we refuse to set for ourselves.

The bathroom itself is still under construction, but the shower was finished and functional in time for Christmas.  Porter and our neighbor did the construction, and if you have any questions about building a shower, Porter can tell you plenty that he wished he'd known before starting.

But isn't it gorgeous?  We put the seat and grab bars in with an eye to the future (and specifically for Porter's father's Christmas visit), but we find them helpful even now.  I love the handheld showerhead, and am lobbying for one in the other bathroom, too.  (Click on pictures to enlarge.)

In the midst.  Not pretty.  That worm-like thing in the second picture is a root.

The result!

It's been two weeks since a posted about a "happiness moment," and I was beginning to wonder.  It's not as if I've been unhappy, but I hadn't had any of those particular moments I'm trying to document.  Then yesterday I had two in close succession.

The first was sitting on the back porch, on my favorite swing.  It was early in the morning, and (at last!) cool enough to enjoy snuggling in my beloved Kevin Blanket (made for me many years ago by a then-young nephew).  There was a very gentle breeze blowing, so soft that I felt it only as a coolness on my face, but occasionally strong enough to move the leaves on the trees.  When I see that, I always think of two things:

John 3:8:

The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it,
But you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes;
So it is with every one who is born of the Spirit.

and Christina Rosetti's poem:

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you.
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I.
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

And both make me smile.  Then my mind wandered:  How the Holy Spirit is represented in the Bible by such elemental images:  wind, fire, water.  How Christ, though described with a variety of images, both material and abstract (e.g. light, vine, truth) is most fully represented to us by elements that are distinctly human, living and festive:  bread and wine.  And both of those thoughts made me smile, too.

Later I had the same feeling just walking through the house.  As always happens when we have guests, the approach of our weekend visitors inspired a flurry of activity, of pushing cleaning and organizational project either to completion or at least to a point where the chaos is less noticeable.  With the visitors here, and further work impossible, I could walk into each room and simply enjoy the clean lines and reassuring evidence of work well done.  Such a moment is always worth savoring, and makes me smile even in remembrance.

Focusing on the Foundations
Concentration:  Physical
Category:  Health
Goal:  Consistent exercise

If I put exercise on my resolution list, I end up feeling guilty.  But I feel guilty if it's not on my list, so it might as well stay there.

Last spring my reasonably good exercise habit was sidelined by an injury.  Nothing serious, but it hurt to walk, and since walking was the heart and soul of my exercise, all things ground to a halt for half a year.  Longer than that, actually:  I was feeling better after six months, but by then I was out of the habit and into the holidays.  But in that time I could feel my body deteriorating, much more than ever before, so I know I must make this a priority.  And an important part of the plan must be alternatives so that minor injuries don't devastate the whole enterprise.

One thing I've learned is that for me, at this point in my life, I have to make the plan simple and easy.  Part of the struggle was designing a workable metric.  After all, "consistent exercise" is not a very specific goal.  In the end, I stripped it all down to time.  More than any specific exercise goals, I just need to get moving.  I almost reduced it still further to "exercise events," i.e. one point for every time I got out the door for a walk, or took the time to do some pushups, or whatever.  However, I did want to complicate things enough to include in some way the whole trio of "frequency, intensity, and duration."  And so, voilà! the "exercise-minute."

The exercise-minute takes into account the intensity of an exercise.  For normal walking, biking, and swimming, 1 minute = 1 exercise-minute.  For running, sprint biking or really fast swimming, 1 minute = 10 exercise-minutes.  I just made that ratio up; the point isn't to be specific in terms of health benefits, but to encourage activities that will provide more cardiovascular benefits.  In addition, I want to include other exercises, such as those for flexibility, balance, and strenthening my core and upper body, and I can't do (say) 30 minutes of pushups with the ease I can walk for the same time.  For the moment, I'm using the same 10:1 ratio for these; as I said, I need to keep it simple or I will spend all my time tweaking the metric and not setting foot out of the house.

Here's what the graph looks like so far.  Like the sleep graph (and unlike the reading charts), it's not cumulative; I want to see how I do from day to day.  I began on Monday, and have as yet done nothing but walk.  But a start is a start!

Kluge:  The Haphazard Evolution of the Human Mind, by Gary Marcus (Mariner Books, 2008)

After reading Kluge, which only made my reading list because the author's Guitar Zero was unavailable, I'm all the more anxious to read the book that so impressed my daughter, because I found this one decidedly unimpressive.

I'll admit my prejudice up front:  Unless I've chosen a book for it's religious content, I don't like books that wear their faith ostentatiously.  Example:  A robust and glorious Christian faith shines better through every corner of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, without any direct mention of God, than the in-your-face faith of much of the "contemporary Christian fiction" genre.  Kluge makes this error loudly and heavily, and if it hadn't been for Janet's enthusiasm for Guitar Zero, I might have given up on Kluge.  To be honest, though, I have a terrible time dropping a book even if I've determined it isn't worth my time, on the thought that despite all appearances, the book just might get better.  And I'm glad I stuck with Kluge.

It's best, I think, to think of it as two parallel books.  One is Marcus's attempts to explain the quirks, foibles, imperfections, and out-and-out breakdowns of human mental systems, as failures of evolution.  Simply put, evolutionary processes, although able to produce remarkably functional, successful, and even beautiful organisms, usually stop short of the best.  With evolution, "good enough is better than perfect," and if a system works well enough to give a reproductive advantage, eons of selection are not likely to be unravelled even if a future organism would do better with a fresh start.  Thus as life evolves, new systems are layered on old ones, and the layers do not always interact in the most efficient manner.  The human brain is a "kluge," cobbled together from from parts as old as life and as recent as yesterday, and in human behavior, the rational, thinking part of the brain is often overruled by more primitive reactions.  I'm not doing justice to his thesis, but that's the gist.  This is the book I thought I was going to be reading, and like Made to Stick, is a good look at why we're not as rational as we think, how this weakness can be used by others to our detriment, and what we can do to mitigate the situation.

The second "book" is a fascinating view into the mind of a materialist.  I don't mean "materialist" in the sense of "consumerist," one who is driven by material desires, but one whose world-view is materialism ("a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter").  This is the in-your-face religion that I object to, and it begins in the second paragraph of the first page:

If mankind were the product of some intelligent, compassionate designer, our thoughts would be rational, our logic impeccable.  Our memory would be robust, our recollections reliable.  Our sentences would be crisp, our words precise, our languages systematic and regular....

And in the penultimate chapter:

It seems safe to say that no intelligent and compassionate designer would have built the human mind to be quite as vulnerable as it is.  Our mental fragility provides yet another reason to doubt that we are the product of deliberate design rather than chance and evolution.

This theme is repeated ad nauseam throughout the book:  If I were creating the world, I would have done X; since what I observe is Y, then there is no design and no designer (with or without evolution as part of the process).  Naturally, I rattled off several alternatives to his "my way or no way" argument with almost no thought at all.  (The world was created by a designer whose idea of the best design is different from his; the design was initially perfect but was later marred by other forces; there is/was a designer, but one who is not compassionate; it shouldn't be hard to come up with others.)

As put off as I initially was, this is actually as interesting as the other part of the book.  It was fascinating to see the world through the mind of one for whom evolution is not merely a mechanism, but a religion.  In many ways, Kluge is a remarkable attempt to make evolution answer the question that all religions and philosophies must wrestle with:  sin.  Of course Marcus does not call sin by that name, but that's what he's dealing with nonetheless.

To be human is to fight a lifelong uphill battle for self-control.  Why?  Because evolution left us clever enough to set reasonable goals but without the willpower to see them through.

In fact, Marcus deals with many of the great questions of mankind, and I find that commendable, even if some of his attempts to force answers out of evolution seem to me as stretched as the ancients' adding sphere upon sphere and complication upon complication in order to account for the motions of the heavenly bodies without considering that the earth might revolve around the sun.  Marcus wants a consistent, definitively explainable system—a desire as old as Job.

As interesting as his theories are, I don't like Marcus's ideal world.  He's much too enamored of computers, and repeatedly asserts that our minds are obviously defective because they don't work the way he would design them—like computers.  I like that our language is sometimes ambiguous, irregular, and unsystematic.  I'm glad I'm human, and not Vulcan.

Most of all, there seems to be no place in his ideal creation for free will (another difficult concept for any religion), which I believe explains much of the gulf between the intelligent, compassionate creator and the all-too-visible faults of the world we know.  It is also the capacity which—more than toolmaking, more than language, more than intelligence and the ability to reason—makes us truly human.

One thing that had impressed Janet with Guitar Zero was Marcus's humility.  Since I didn't notice that at all—"God should have done things the way I would have" is not exactly a humble attitude, and neither is "if you don't agree with me, there's something wrong with your brain"—I'm left wondering if it's a matter of personal growth over time (Kluge is the earlier book by four years), or the difference between his attitude toward something he knows he knows nothing about (music) and that toward his field of expertise (psychology).  Certainly Kluge has one significant mark of humility in my mind:  On the cover of the book the author is identified as simply "Gary Marcus."  I am not impressed by the habit of many authors of putting all possible letters prominently after their names:  John Doe, Phd, MD, LLD, etc.  Credentials are a good thing (Marcus is identified on the back cover as "a professor of psychology at New York University and the director of the NYU Child Language Center"), but I see no useful purpose in boasting about one's degrees on the front cover.

A couple of random quotes:

[Humans tend] to believe that what is familiar is good.  Take, for example, an odd phenomenon known as the "mere familiarity" effect:  if you ask people to rate things like the characters in Chinese writing, they tend to prefer those that they have seen before to those they haven't.  Another study, replicated in at least 12 different languages, showed that people have a surprising attachment to the letters found in their own names, preferring words that contain those letters to words that don't.  One colleague of mine has even suggested, somewhat scandalously, that people may love famous paintings as much for their familiarity as for their beauty.

Scandalously?  Not at all.  I thought it was obvious, and in large part a good thing, that familiarity with a subject increases appreciation which increases the desire to learn more which in turn increases familiarity.  It's a blessed cycle, unless there's something bad about the subject itself.  Isn't that a great deal of what parenting is all about, helping our children become familiar with, and thus inclining their hearts toward, the good, the true, and the beautiful?

Pay special attention ... to what some economists call "opportunity costs"; whenever you make an investment, financial or otherwise, ponder what else you might be doing instead.  If you're doing one thing, you can't do another—a fact that we often forget.  Say, for example, that people are trying to decide whether it makes sense to invest $100 million in public funds in a baseball stadium.  That $100 million may well bring some benefits, but few people evaluate such projects in the context of what else that money might do, what opportunities (such as paying down the debt to reduce future interest payments or building three new elementary schools) must be foresworn in order to make that stadium happen.  Because such costs don't come with a readily visible price tag, we often ignore them.  On a personal level, taking opportunity costs into account means realizing that whenever we make a choice to do something, such as watch television, we are using time that could be spent in other ways, like cooking a nice meal or taking a bike ride with our kids.

There's a lot more in Kluge I could talk about, but I'm thinking about opportunity costs now, so I'll stop here.

Manalive, by G. K. Chesterton (Dover, 2000, originally published in 1912 by the John Lane Company)

Orion is upside down.

My first view of the Southern Hemisphere sky; floating above a seemingly infinite abyss while snorkeling through crystal-clear water; reading C.K. Chesterton’s Manalive.   Awestruck, weak-kneed, disoriented, and just on the edge of fear.  How can I review a book that reviews me?

Reading Chesterton can be a lot like trying to drink from a waterfall.  I know I’m in the presence of a mind and a spirit much greater than my own.  There’s wordplay and swordplay; there are twists in the logic and logic in the twists.  It’s like riding a well-designed roller coaster, or skiing down a slope that’s just beyond your skill level.

I hear you muttering through your clenched teeth:  “Get on with it!  What is the book about?”  In a phrase:  the joy of being alive.

Okay, okay.  From the back cover:

Innocent Smith … is taken up by a fierce wind one day and dropped on the lawn of a boardinghouse inhabited by a group of disillusioned young people. … In the course of the book, Smith courts and remarries his wife repeatedly, lives in various houses, which all turn out to be his own, and attempts murder, but only succeeds in firing life into his victims. … Manalive is full of high-spirited nonsense expressing important ideas:  life is worth living, one can break with convention and still maintain moral and ethical standards, and much of the behavior that civilized man has been led to believe is wrong, isn’t wrong at all.

That’s about as good a summary as you’re going to get, though it is rather like trying to learn what a roller coaster is by consulting Merriam-Webster:  an elevated railway …  constructed with sharp curves and steep inclines on which cars roll.

You have to brave the ride.

Sometimes guilelessness can be cluelessness.  Sometimes it can be hurtful, too:  the art of the polite compliment is not one of my husband's strengths, and he is consititutionally unable to "throw" a game, even if his opponent is a small child.  But in a world of deception, the honesty is refreshing and reassuring.  If he says something nice to you, you know he means it; and if you beat him in a game—well, that's quite an accomplishment, much cherished by the more competitive members of our family.  At Thanksgiving, when much of his time is spent playing games with our nephews, I believe their goal is never so much to win as to "beat Uncle Porter."

And this is (one of the reasons) why I love him:  My brother came for a visit during the time our bathroom was radically torn up, with all but the necessary accoutrements removed.  We cleaned up before he arrived, but put only the minimal, essential articles back, since there was more work to be done after he left.  I noticed that Porter had included among the "necessary items" a clock that my brother had given us.  "That was thoughtful," I commended him, "remembering to put back D's clock for his visit."  Puzzled, he replied, "For his visit?  I put it out because I use it."

I don't plan an update on my Focusing on the Foundations progress every single week, but I will post periodically because knowing that I'll have to admit to failure is a significant incentive to diligence.

As you can see, by keeping my goals for the first week modest (i.e. just two), I've done all right.  The dotted lines are where I should be to be on track for meeting my goals; the solid lines show my progress.

The 10:00 bedtime definitely required some discipline to meet, but I only slipped twice.  Once (11:00) we had a guest for dinner, and were having such a good time I could hardly say, "Sorry, you must leave now; it's almost my bedtime."  As with many rules, this one will no doubt work best if I allow exceptions—as long as they are truly exceptional.

With the other (10:15, though it was actually 10:09; the chart is denominated in 15-minute increments, with rounding) I learned an important lesson.  There was a kitchen project I wanted to finish before going to bed, and I rushed around like a madwoman to get it done (almost) in time.  But then I was so hyped-up I lay awake for another two hours, totally defeating the purpose of the 10:00 bedtime.

The history reading has been going well, largely because I take the book with me in the car whenever I'm not driving, though I have been able to find some other times as well, which accounts for being slightly ahead of schedule.

Because I only started the chronological Bible reading today, I've left off that graph, figuring there's no point in cluttering up the post with a depressingly empty chart.  I'm only up to January 1.

I'll be adding more projects as time goes on, though not all of them will be as quantifiable as these.  That's a pity, because the charts and graphs really do help!

Focusing on the Foundations
Concentration:  Spiritual
Goal:  Read through the entire Bible in 2013, chronologically

Ever since reading and reviewing The Chronological Guide to the Bible, I've wanted it to re-read it while simultaneously reading the Bible according to its chronology.  Reading through the Bible in a year is not too ambitious a project (our former rector does it every year), but does require discipline, especially when coordinating it with another book.  I'm also starting a week late.  But you can hardly get more foundational, in spiritual matters, than a good knowledge of the Bible, so there it is.

A scene from a couple of weeks ago:

My husband, his sister, and our nephew are playing a game.  They have repeatedly assured me that they are having fun, and I must believe them, because as soon as they have completed this game they will move on to another—probably a two-person game so said nephew can return to the Lord of the Rings tome that has absorbed much of his free time this week.  (Despite repeated pleas for game-playing, he has managed to complete two of the six books thus far.  And win most of the games as well, which as you can imagine frustrates the dedicated game-players no end.)

However, an observer of the yells, groans, grimaces, and (mostly) muffled curses might be justified in imagining the participants engaged in arduous forced labor.  If this is fun, count me out.  Which they do;  my sister-in-law and I now have an agreement:  She doesn't ask me to play games with her and I don't ask her to ride roller coasters with me.  (Even though I couldn't resist sharing that Manta is the Best Roller Coaster Ever.)

It got me to thinking.  I was a reasonably normal child, and our family enjoyed playing games together; why, then, do I usually find the idea of scrubbing the kitchen floor more attractive than playing games?

I've come up with a few reasons, none of which is completely convincing in itself.

Time (specifically, the lack thereof) is certainly a big factor.  With a Bucket List^* heavy enough to make Giles Corey plead, I'm not inclined to spend hours on an activity that is neither my duty nor particularly enjoyable.  But that just begs the question:  Why do I no longer find games enjoyable?

My lastest inspiration is that not all game players are alike.  There are those who play to play, and there are those (the majority, apparently) who play to win.  I believe I am in the first category.  It's not that I don't like winning, but it makes me very uncomfortable if any of the other players is made unhappy in the process.  Perhaps it comes from being seven or more years older than my siblings; that kind of age difference precludes developing a cuthroat approach to games.  The day my young brother freaked out over being "attacked" in a game of Flinch was the day I lost interest in playing the game.  I also remember an incident when one of my childhood friends and I were playing Monopoly:  she was losing, and became upset, whereupon I shifted strategies so that she won (without, I hope, noticing that I was throwing the game), and afterwards contrived to avoid playing games with her whenever possible.

Then again, it may be my attention span.  I generally am not fond of watching movies—the thought of committing 2 - 3 hours to a movie makes me feel claustrophobic; I'm trapped.  On the other hand, I do enjoy watching several 40-minute episodes of a good mystery television series one after another.  I may end up spending three hours staring at the screen, but there are several built-in escape hatches should I wish to bail out.  Games are the same way:  The games I enjoy playing are short, and though I may play several in a row, I'm not stuck with a long-term commitment.

Or it may be a dislike of regulations and complex rules, the same attitude that turned me off completely to organized sports.  In elementary school I loved sports.  I loved soccer, and baseball, and volleyball, and every other competitive sport we played, both in gym class and at recess.  On summer nights the kids in our neighborhood almost always convened for kickball or another game until it was too dark to see.  But these were wild-and-wooly, free-for-all games, even in gym class.  We followed the basic rules about scoring, but with none of the strategy.  In soccer there were no rules about who could chase the ball, and most of the game was spent tearing up and down the field as everyone tried to get the ball into the goal.  (Needless to say our passing game was not very intelligent.)  Volleyball was a friendly game, with the main object being to get the ball over the net; there were no nasty spikes, no need to stay in your assigned position.  And the play was generally supportive, with teams encouraging one another.  It wasn't about winning, although winning was fun; it was about the sheer joy of physical activity and growing strength, endurance, agility, and skill. 

Along about middle school, however, everything changed.  Suddenly, winning mattered more than playing; ability and strategy mattered; and rules multiplied.  Sports simply were no fun anymore, and I retreated from being an eager, active player to one who did no more than the minimum required by gym class.  I vividly remember my first and last volleyball game at an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship camp in college:  I'd been told it was important for camp fellowship, and was a friendly game.  My siblings, avid volleyball players themselves, would have found it friendly and relatively non-competitive, I'm sure, but the intensity and the yelling and the insistence on hitting the ball "right" (rather than just getting it over the net) completely spoiled the game for me.  Fellowship or no fellowhip, I wasn't at that conference to be screamed at and then made to feel guilty for not enjoying the misery.  As C. S. Lewis said, "Straight tribulation is easier to bear than tribulation which advertises itself as pleasure."

Those are the ideas I've come up with so far.  I don't think they completely explain my attitude, but it was an interesting meditiation and I've probably unearthed some significant factors.

Do you have any other suggestions?  What kind of game-player are you? 

^*I'm told I use the term Bucket List incorrectly, that it's supposed to be for things like riding in a hot air balloon, travelling to New Zealand, or climbing Mt. Everest.  But can I help it if the things I want to accomplish before I die are more mundane?  Not that "get all our photos scanned, organized, and put into albums" doesn't seem an awful lot like climbing Mt. Everest.

Three Happiness Moments marked this Epiphany day, all in the morning, all milder than the events I've mentioned before:  more a smile of pleasure than a "wild stab of joy."

The first is the hardest to explain.  I was coming off a verbal rebuke over something that needed to be done and which had already that morning nagged me painfully without words—as had several other undone projects.  I was feeling overwhelmed; but the joy and peace came in the mere act of unloading the dishwasher.  Was it pleasure in the cleanliness, thankfulness for the new appliance, or relief that a job, however small, was actually being accomplished?  I don't know; that's why I'm chronicling these moments.

The other two occurred in church.  It's not hard to explain the one that came as we began rehearsing our anthem:  gratitude for our new choir.  And I guess there's no no surprise in the last, either, for I was kneeling for the Eucharist; still, that joy isn't consistently predictable.

Then there was Skyping with our Swiss family in the afternoon; that's not the kind of Happiness Moment I'm trying to figure out here, but there's no doubt it contributes to a great deal of pleasure.  :)

This morning's Happiness Moment came in our living room, dark save for the illumination of the Christmas tree, in a time of quiet meditation and prayer.  Gazing at the tree, I recalled my childhood Christmas trees, and favorite ornaments, and all the joys of decorating, and baking, and family times.  I listened to my husband and his father working quietly in the kitchen.  And life was suddenly very good.

In keeping with my efforts at chronicling those indefinable, momentary feelings of happiness that catch me almost by surprise, I'll mention one that occurred last night, fleeting but sweet.  It was inspired, I'm sure, by an admixture of a good friend's visit, a dinner of a particularly good quiche, and good fellowship around dessert with a centerpiece of an amazing Canadian ice wine and an associated lecture from the Great Courses on the subject.  The actual moment, however, came later, while looking into our new shower (pictures to come), which added overtones of beauty, good work done well, and a sense of being clean, warm, and at home.

Perhaps it is the wine course that leads me to try to describe these "happiness moments" as if they were wines.

I often puzzle about what makes me happy.  What do I enjoy, what do I find to be fun, what conditions make me stop and think, almost with a start, "I am happy"?

It's surprisingly difficult to discern.  So what I'm going to try to do this year is make a note of those moments, and the circumstances under which they occurred.  It goes without saying that many, more fundamental factors undergird this happiness, but what I'm seeking at this point is the extras that bring the joy bubbling to the surface.

Today, for example, I felt the surge of joy for "no particular reason"  My father-in-law was reading contentedly in his recliner chair; my husband working away in his office (perhaps not so contentedly, but without obvious signs of discontent); I was unhurriedly working ("labor without perturbation") on bringing order to the house and organization to the New Year (activities I always find quietly satisfying if I am not under time pressure); there was good music playing in the background, including recently (thanks to the random selection of our music player) a selection from the soundtrack to Local Hero, which always makes me smile, because it makes me think of my brother and how blessed I am to have such a wonderful family (even though it's a bittersweet joy as I grieve once again that we are so far apart); and I smiled again at the memory of a three-way phone call with our children.

A full cup of quiet happiness is hard to beat.