Lift Up Your Hearts!

Our kids grew up largely ignorant of Sesame Street, and I'm not one bit sorry for that, but this seems to have been written for grandson Joseph.^*  (H/T Pami)

On the way home from church this morning, we stopped briefly at one of our local health food stores.  Yes, I said "one of."  Amazingly, we have three health food stores within a five-mile radius of our house.  This one is run by Seventh-Day Adventists, so it's closed on Saturdays but has the advantage of being open when we drive by early on Sunday mornings.

The cashier rang up our purchase of almonds and local, free-range eggs.  I did a double-take when she called out the total:  $9.11.

This morning the Prayers of the People were not the usual ones from the Prayer Book, but understandably had a special theme.  In addition to prayers for first responders, servicemen, and all victims of terrorism, our heartfelt cry went out through the following:

O God, the Father of all, whose Son commanded us to love our enemies: Lead them and us from prejudice to truth: deliver them and us from hatred, cruelty, and revenge; and in your good time enable us all to stand reconciled before you, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

and

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love: So shower us with your Spirit, that all peoples may be gathered under the banner of the Prince of Peace, as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

In response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, composer Robert Kerr wrote the following anthem for the Orlando Deanery Boychoir.  Later, we had the privilege of singing it ourselves, when Rob was our choir director.  Here's a version sung this year by the Boychoir and Girls Choir.

Lord, grant us wisdom in our hour of need.
And give us vision, that we clearly see,
Your loving nature, Your mercies' might.
Bring us from darkness in to Your light.

Lord, touch our nation with Your healing hand.
And give us comfort o'er all the land.
Reveal Yourself to us and make us whole,
Reside within each heart and soul.

For there are battles we must fight,
And stand with courage for what is right.
Against the evil which infects us still,
Lord, give us conviction to know Your will.

Please help the strong to defend the weak,
But not in anger or revenge to seak,
So through Your justice let conflict cease.
Oh, unify us, and bring us peace.

For there are battles we must fight,
And stand with courage for what is right.
Against all evil, sin, and wrong,
Give us conviction to carry on!

Alleluia!

Lord, bless our soldiers across the sea,
And help them to set more people free.
And in their hearts, may they have pride to sing,
"God bless America,"

God bless America, Let freedom ring!

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. ... Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ... Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. ... Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge. ... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (From Romans 12)

And may your every goodbye leave an impression worthy of being your loved ones' last memory of you.

Although I've been a Democrat for every one of my 50 voting years, I've been accused of abandoning the party by voting more often for Republicans than Democrats in recent years.  I've never been a party-liner for any party, but I don't deny the truth of that accusation.  I will plead, however, that it was my party that abandonned me, taking oppositional positions on many of the most important issues, not the least of which is the right and responsibility of parents to direct the education of their own children.

Be that as it may, it gives me pleasure to announce that my hero-of-the-day is a Democrat, the Governor (redux) of California, Jerry Brown.  Why?  Because of what he wrote, refusing to sign into law a bill that would have criminalized, for everyone under 18, skiing or snowboarding without a helmet.  (H/T Free-Range Kids)

I am returning Senate Bill 105 without my signature.

This measure would impose criminal penalites on a child under the age of 18 and his or her parents if the child skis or snowboards without a helmet.

While I appreciate the value of wearing a ski helmet, I am concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state. Not every human problem deserves a law.

I believe parents have the ability and the responsibility to make good choices for their children.

I'm not sure which is my favorite line.  It's a tie among "I believe parents have the ability and the responsibility to make good choices for their children," "I am concerned about the continuing and seemingly inexorable transfer of authority from parents to the state," and "Not every human problem deserves a law."

Well done, Governor Brown!  We may disagree on many points, but when you're right, you're right, and I'm happy to celebrate the victory.

Now that I have permission to use names (see Part 1), here's a photo (credit Joe Welby) of the wonderful Ashley Locheed (on the right) performing with Englebert Humperdinck at the Colorado State Fair. (click for larger view)

And here's a sample of Ashley's work not with Englebert Humperdinck.  :)  That's Chris Rottmayer on the piano.  Sorry, I don't know the other guys.

Since Hurricane Irene has been flirting with our friends and family all along the East Coast, I'm opening up this post as a place for updates, should you want to post any.

I'll start:  If it weren't for the news we'd have never known Irene went by.  Perhaps it was a little cooler and more humid than we'd normally expect for August, but we're back to hot-hot-hot now—and no less humid.

Next up, I'd like to hear from our nephew in Virginia, who should be feeling Irene's effects right now....

Update, placed here because I can't figure out how to put pictures in comments.  Tree down at the Flounder (one of three trunks, actually).  Click for larger view.

Photo credits PJS

More photos from PJS, 10 a.m.-ish.  That's the view from the Flounder, not from a boat!

(Please note that comments have spilled over to a second page.  Click the "Next" button at the top of the comments section to get to the most recent updates.)

London, 1969:  I was lost, though I didn't know it yet.  For reasons I no longer remember, some friends and I had become separated from the rest of our group.  Certain that we were in the right place, and expecting them to show up at any moment, we sat and waited.  And waited, and stared at the wall-sized poster of a man, a singer.  It was emblazoned, "Englebert Humperdinck." 

The only Englebert Humperdinck I'd heard of was a composer.  Said composer being long dead, I suppose the up-and-coming singer thought the cool name was up for grabs.

I would have thought that by now the name was again available for recycling, but Englebert Humperdink, the singer, is alive and singing.  How do I know, and why do I particularly care?  Not for his music, for sure (I still prefer the dead composer), but because our friend AL is booked to sing three shows with him!  How cool is that!

(P.S.  After some negotiation of the British telephone system, we left the 1969 Humperdink behind and were reunited with our friends.)

 Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture, by Adam S. McHugh (IVP Books, 2009)

(I wrote briefly about this book based on a Mars Hill Audio interview with its author; now I have finally read it myself and can do it more justice.)

Hello.  My name is Linda, and I'm an introvert.

(Hi, Linda!)

That's the way I once thought about this aspect of my personality type, as many people still do.  At best it's an affliction, a disease—if not evidence of weak character or even mental illness.

Rare is the book that will make me cry, unless it's in frustration over poor writing, but Introverts in the Church brought me to tears in the early chapters, as I recognized again and again how many of the characteristics of my own life fit into the introverted pattern.   "I am not alone" is a most powerful emotion.  I was also reminded of Marcus Buckingham's assertion that we spend too much time and effort trying to shore up our areas of weakness, and not enough building on our strengths.  Somehow we have been sold on the idea that introverts should work hard at being more like extroverts, rather than applying our strengths for the common good.  What's more, I discovered that in trying to act more like an extrovert (and doing it rather badly), I have myself misunderstood and hurt fellow introverts.

McHugh's focus is on how this dynamic plays out in the church, so the remainder of the book was not as emotionally moving as the beginning, but it, too, was revealing, as I gained insights into why introverts are often uncomfortable in modern churches, and why their unique gifts are just as important as those of extroverts—and may be especially valuable because we live in such an unbalanced time.

My comment that I should probably buy a copy of Introverts in the Church just so I could lend it out provoked the response, "Would you lend it to your introvert friends or your extrovert friends?"  The obvious response is, "To both."  To the introverts, so that they might experience the affirmation that their weaknesses are the flip side of strengths of which our world is in much need, and to the extroverts—exactly the same thing, actually, and so that they might understand, appreciate, and encourage the introverts in their lives.

As usual, there's no way a few quotes can do justice to the book, or give an adequate picture of what the author presents.  What's more, long quotations are discouraging to most blog readers, myself included, I am somewhat embarrassed to say.  Nonetheless, here is a small sampling of ideas that struck me, culled from the bookmarks that bristle all over the book's 200-some pages. (More)

My e-mail and blog activity will be curtailed, either somewhat or a lot, until we get a handle on some serious computer problems.  Let me just say this about that:  Computers ought to last at least long enough for them to become obsolete, which even in this fast-moving culture is more than 2 - 4 years.  And laptops should last longer than their batteries.

All that to say, if you need to reach me, e-mail might not be the best medium for a while.

I used to love shopping at Sears, insofar as someone who loathes shopping can, that is.  But today my frustration meter pegged.

I'm rather picky about my clothes.  Not in a fashion sense, but I want them to be comfortable, modest, and reasonably-priced.  That's a combination much harder to find than it should be.

After much trial and error, I found shoes, shorts, and bras that I really like, all at Sears, and I greatly enjoyed being able to order them online without dealing with travel, crowds, and (above all) dressing rooms.

Until now.

Now Sears does not carry my clothes.  Any of them.  Not my bras, not my shorts, not my shoes.  Now I must venture back out into the world of physical, retail stores and (ugh) Try. On. Clothes.  That might not be so bad if I had any confidence that what I want will be there to find.  Online searches have thus far revealed nothing equivalent.

Except, maybe, at K-Mart.

It appears that when Sears bought out K-Mart, they transferred the kind of clothes I like to the lower-class store.  I wouldn't mind so much, but there's no K-Mart nearby.  I'm guessing it may be worth the drive just to check it out, though.

Years ago, I volunteered at our local middle school.  From what I learned there, I knew it was not a place I wanted our kids to attend.  Most of the reasons were academic, but burnt into my brain still is the comment of one of the teachers to her class, in reference to someone I no longer remember:  She was the kind of girl who buys her clothes at K-Mart.

Having bought many a clothing item at said store, back when there was one nearby, I knew we wouldn't fit in—nor want to.

Still, it galls—that my taste in clothing isn't good enough for Sears!

What's your gut reaction to this story?

There are more than 1,000 varieties of bacteria that live within the human gut, and an average person can have around 300 different varieties of the little critters living within them. Each type of bacteria not only supports one another but support your ability to digest food, stay healthy, and if your gut community is a bit off, perhaps gain weight or develop diabetes.

Or this one?

[The] often-overlooked network of neurons lining our guts that is so extensive some scientists have nicknamed it our "second brain".  A deeper understanding of this mass of neural tissue, filled with important neurotransmitters, is revealing that it does much more than merely handle digestion or inflict the occasional nervous pang. The little brain in our innards, in connection with the big one in our skulls, partly determines our mental state and plays key roles in certain diseases throughout the body.

U.C.L.A.'s [Emeran] Mayer is doing work on how the trillions of bacteria in the gut "communicate" with enteric nervous system cells (which they greatly outnumber). His work with the gut's nervous system has led him to think that in coming years psychiatry will need to expand to treat the second brain in addition to the one atop the shoulders.

And from a much older source:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!”  On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other.  If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.  (1 Corinthians 12:21-26)

If you can read this, thank a teacher.

I've seen it on bumper stickers for years, and just today at the bottom of my Penzey's Spices receipt.  Only now did I finally wake up to the outrageous insult implied by that platitude.

With all due respect to teachers, of which there are some who are great and many, many more who do their jobs very well, how is it that we presume that a child, who requires only a reasonably supportive environment to learn to eat, to crawl, to walk, to understand, to talk, to love, to manipulate his environment—in short to acquire the essential skills of a lifetime in just a few years—how is it that we presume he cannot learn to read—a minor skill compared with all he has already learned—unless someone teaches him?

That's crazy talk.

I'm grateful for all who are willing to share their knowledge with others, and especially for those who make the sharing enjoyable.  I suspect that those who do best, however, are the ones who realize they are not teaching so much as facilitating a child's natural learning.

But that turns out to be much too big an issue to write about just because I was annoyed by a bumper sticker, when I'm surrounded by vacation detritus, my husband is hungry, and I haven't yet managed that shower I promised myself after walking four miles in the 95 degree heat....

My sister-in-law, ever the teacher, saw some children catching blue crabs from our bridge.  Walking over, she engaged them in conversation and taught them a bit about the crabs, in particular how to tell the males from the females.  One of the children, a ten-year-old from the District of Columbia, caught on right away:

Oh!  One is the Monument and the other the Capitol!

Brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.

(Photo credit Hackensack Riverkeeper)

Here's a quick post because the article frustrated me and I need an excuse to get off my feet for a few minutes.

For the record, I know that New Worship Conference Seminar: How To Talk To Note Readers is humor, and it did make me laugh.  But it perpetuates an unfair and inaccurate stereotype that pains me.  (Unless it's my over-worked legs and back.)

A note reader is someone with formal musical training who can look at a page covered with lines and dots, and actually sing it or play it.  Note readers aren’t normal humans.  Unlike me, they actually studied music in high school and college, whereas I didn’t have time to learn things like scales and signatures; I was too busy smoking weed and listening to Revolution #9 on the Beatles White Album....

First, the kind of "note reader" he's talking about can't just look at a note and hit the right pitch.  Okay, the instrumentalists can, but the human voice is a different kind of instrument and rare is the person with the ear to look at a note on the page and sing the correct pitch.

As for what I think he means—that is, being able to look at the patterns of notes in a song written in standard musical notation and know when to go up, when to go down, and whether to do so by a little step or a big leap—I learned that, plus a lot more, in elementary school, back in the 60's.  Ordinary, small-town, public elementary school, not high school, not college.  So if time signatures, notes, keys, and dynamic markings are foreign concepts in our culture, the first thing I'd ask about is what is going on in our schools.

You may have note readers on your worship team. You can recognize them because they usually have pocket protectors....

I know, I know.  It's humor.  But it reminds me of jokes about women drivers, or [insert ethnic group of your choice], which we have rightly come to recognize as in poor taste, at least.

(H/T Jon—thanks, my feet are feeling better now.)

Welcome home, Atlantis.  A moment of silence, please, to mark the end of an era.

No more will we step out our front door to marvel at the soaring arc of light as a space shuttle climbs into orbit.  No more will our whole bodies thrill to the iconic double sonic boom as it returns to earth.  I'm glad that this morning we were able to hear the boom-boom one final time.

Listening to the prepared statements and commentary on the television reminded me of a funeral—or worse, of the kind of laudatory speeches you hear from organizations when a long-term, once-valued employee retires or takes another job and everyone tries to pretend that his departure was voluntary.

What would John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Nikita Kruschev think to know that for an American to get to the International Space Station he must now be transported there by the Russians?

I like to hope that the drive, energy, enthusiasm, sacrifice, daring, and sense of adventure that powered America's space program still exists, flowing into other, less visible but perhaps even more productive, channels.  I look around and am not convinced, but I'd be glad to hear of examples, especially from the young people who are almost always the beating heart of such endeavors.  Not that a full-range of age and experience is not also necessary—and I'm still eager to hear more of this hopeful story of a 95-year-old visionary from the Occasional CEO.

Where I see such dedication and enthusiasm these days has a decidedly non-technological bent, even though the science-and-engineering types are well represented.  I see it in homeschoolers, homebirthers, midwives, alternative medicine, radical homemakers, large families, family farms, local and sustainable agriculture, heritage breeders, small businesses—in short, among the outliers, rather than mainstream America.  But perhaps that's due to my own skewed persepective.

Where do you see life, drive, commitment, and energy these days?

At Home, by Franz Hohler (translated from the German) (Bergli Books, Basel, Switzerland, 2009)

Franz Hohler observes the same situations you or I might, but sees them quite differently.  He sees stories.

At Home was a Christmas gift to Porter (thanks A&M!), and he found it the perfect book to read for his hectic life:  the stories are for the most part very short, and thus the book can be read in bits and snatches, here and there.  Not that you'll want to put it down if you can help it.

Some of the stories are a bit on the weird side (though not nearly as weird as Ray Bradbury's), but most show a very interesting perspective on life, and nearly all are enjoyable.  The tale of the man who inadvertently brings a baby devil home from the pet store is fascinating, perceptive, and frightening (though not at all in the modern gross-out horror film sense).  I, of course, enjoyed reading about and recognizing aspects of Swiss life; Hohler is Swiss and lives in Zurich.

Because it's very short, and because of its steel connection, I'll quote in entirety the final story in the book, hoping Herr Holner would consider it "fair use" and good advertising.  It's called The Mailbox, and provides a good snapshot of his style.

"I wish I were a racing bike," said the mailbox to the garden gate, "and could flit through wide plains and conquer mountain passes."

"You and your wishes," croaked the garden gate, "when you don't even meet the official postal regulations."

"One can always wish," sighed the mailbox, and continued to swallow bills, magazines, advertisements and postcards.

A little later he was unscrewed and replaced with a new one.  He was melted down.  Then together with old metal chairs, torn wire fences and bent screwdrivers, he was processed into light steel, landed in a racing bike factory, and was soon flitting across wide plains and conquering mountain passes and could hardly believe that he had stood for years in the same place and every day nearly choked on the mail.