Lift Up Your Hearts!

The first thing I did this morning was fall out of bed. After 11 days of sleeping on a futon in Japan, the floor was two and a half feet lower than my half-awake body expected.

Eventually I will post a more chronological story of my version of our trip to Japan; in the meantime, Janet has an excellent rendition on her blog.

Modern American Christians know so little about worship, and I include myself as chief of sinners. I find it a difficult concept because we have few practical referents. Being in Japan has opened my eyes just a little to what we are missing.

Experiencing, albeit briefly, a culture where it is natural to show respect and give honor by bowing gives much more meaning to worship practices like kneeling, bowing, and genuflecting. If we Americans knew more about physical acts of respect in everyday life, we might know more about worship.

And if we lived with Mt. Fuji dominating the landscape, we might know more about awe and reverence. Seeing her suddenly appear, as the haze lifted, was an experience that made me understand a bit why she is seen as a goddess. Fujisan towers with indescribable splendor over the other, much closer, and otherwise quite impressive mountains that ring Janet's Kofu Valley. Seeing her first thing in the morning, from Janet's balcony window, makes my knees weak and causes involunatary exclamations of amazement. I feel like greeting her personally.

And yet we (I) claim to worship, not a spectacular mountain, but the Creator of that mountain, of all moutains, of all that is, was, and ever will be. How often is that evident in our church services, let alone our lives? Truly our understanding is minuscule and our faith paltry!

Chronological stories from our trip to Japan will have to wait until I have more time, but I'll try to fit in an occasionally tidbit here and there.

Many people have heard of the really fancy Japanese toilets, the ones with heated seats and more buttons than a DVD player, including Cover-Up Sound, Wash, and Blow Dry. I haven't had the opportunity to try anything but the warm seat feature (especially nice in unheated bathrooms), but we'd certainly have one if they were readily available at a reasonable price in the United States. I suppose we could special order one for an outrageous sum, but they aren't that wonderful.

It would take not money, but a societal attitude change, to make another of the great Japanese toilets available in the United States: the "squatty potty." Nearly flush with the ground (pardon the pun), these toilets are particularly great for public places, as they are much easier to keep clean than the kind we are accustomed to. They are also surprisingly easy to use. Before I tried one, I couldn't picture using it successfully, but it's really no problem at all.

My favorite Japanese toilet is the kind in Janet's apartment. It's a "normal" toilet with one fabulous feature: the tank lid is a faucet/sink arrangement. Flushing the toilet causes water to pour out of the faucet for handwashing purposes; the water drains into the toilet tank and is used for the next flush. What an economical, ecological idea!

There were any number of reasons why we shouldn't have gone to the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra's A Celtic Fantasy concert last night. We have a huge deadline looming, and delightful out of town company as well. However, a commitment to a friend kept us from taking the logical course and giving away our tickets, and are we glad we didn't miss the performance!

When the OPO brought renowned flutist James Galway to town we enjoyed that concert tremendously. Last night’s Celtic Fantasy, featuring OPO principal flutist Aaron Goldman was every bit as delightful, if not more so. As Galway had done, Aaron played both flute and pennywhistle with grace and beauty and skill. Memo to the Orlando Philharmonic: James Galway is no doubt a very busy and expensive performer. Forget the big names: give us more Aaron Goldman! (More)

Forget the green beer. After having discovered genuine Irish ancestors in my heritage, I'm even more convinced that any good celebration of St. Patrick's Day must include singing his very own hymn, usually called St. Patrick's Breastplate or I Bind unto Myself Today. The words are attributed to St. Patrick himself, with the modern, metrical version provided by Cecil Frances Alexander.

The challenge in St. Patrick's for first time singers is finding the flow; the first verse is shorter than the rest, one or two verses (depending on the version) are sung to a different tune, and usually you must turn the page to complete this hymn. (In my favorite hymnal it covers four pages!)

The tunes are Irish and easily singable, however, and the words packed with theology, beauty, and joy. Do yourself and St. Patrick a favor, and honor him on this day by becoming acquainted with this grand and glorious expression of ancient Celtic Christian faith.

The Oremus Hymnal includes the commonly sung verses and page numbers for St. Patrick's Breastplate in a large collection of hymnals.

The Cyber Hymnal includes two additional verses that are rarely sung but give even more of a feel for the ancient Celtic culture out of which which it arose.

This Irish Culture and Customs site has a non-metrical translation of the poem.

We should visit restaurants more often when they are closed! My post about the Sake Moon tells how we discovered that fine restaurant because the one at which we had intended to eat was not open. Ironically, our next great discovery came because the Sake Moon was closed when Porter was in the mood for pho. (More)

Two recent articles on homeschooling were brought to my attention; specifically, they are about unschooling, that branch of the homeschooling movement that seeks to liberate students from the oppressive assumptions and restrictions of schooling as much as from schools themselves. Each article was reasonably positive, yet was too short to be of much use, and included a few blood pressure-raising statements. (More)

For many years before he died, my father would come visit us for a month each year around February (usually a good month to exchange Pennsylvania for Florida temporarily). Once a week he would take us to lunch at the Sakura, the best Japanese restaurant in our experience, including the time when all the restaurants of Boston were at hand.

Alas, when we returned from Massachusetts we were able to enjoy only one more meal at the Sakura before it closed. We've spent the last three years searching for a substitute, to no avail. The Asian restaurant that took its place isn't bad, however, and that's where we headed last Monday night. We remembered too late that it is closed on Mondays, but that disappointment quickly turned into a blessing. (More)

Happy Pi Day, everyone! Since I don't habitually use the 24-hour time format, or more truthfully, since I have better things to do (sleep) at 1:59 a.m., I choose to mark the occasion at 1:59 p.m. Too bad I don't have time to make a nice strawberry-rhubarb pie today....

Our local newspaper includes Parade Magazine in its Sunday edition. I find it generally to be a waste of paper. (A judgment almost equally true of the whole paper, now that it has gone to a format that emphasizes pictures over words, but that's another blog post.) However, I ususally find Marilyn vos Savant's column interesting, and this week it was especially so. (More)

Last year I was well prepared for Ash Wednesday, with a rather extensive personal program planned out for Lent. This year, what with company and an intensive two weeks devoted to reroofing our house (and not done yet), it came as a shock this morning to realize that February is over. We were thus saved from having to decide with which of our two churches to celebrate Shrove Tuesday, a small blessing but one we could have done without. No crawfish gumbo, no pancakes.... :(

Maybe I'll dust off some of last year's ideas...they worked pretty well.

It is nearly as dangerous to base life's decisions on individual scientific studies as it is on Bible verses taken out of context. Nonetheless, I enjoy reporting encourging news, and this morning's is about chocolate. This Scientific American article reports on a study of the cocoa consumption (in any form) of 470 elderly Dutch men, which found that those who ate the most cocoa were half as likely to die of cardiovascular or any other disease as those who ate the least. They haven't identified the protective mechanism yet; maybe it was the antioxidants, maybe the men were just happier. :)

Still, there's no need to go overboard on the Ghirardelli. The average daily cocoa consumption of the highest group was "more than four grams." Four grams is not a lot of cocoa, even in its pure form.

What is worse, dying because you can't afford medical treatment, or dying because the cogs in a socialized medicine system decide they can't afford to treat you? Or because someone else thinks you would be better off dead than alive?

A high court in the United Kingdom has ruled that two year old Charlotte Wyatt's life belongs in the hands of the hospital where she is being treated; her parents cannot force doctors keep her alive if the doctors decide it would be in the child's best interest to die.

Whatever your views on what would be best for Charlotte, and whatever confidence you might have in your own doctor, this court precedent should terrify you. The chasm between trusting the advice of a doctor who has treated your family for years and proven his compassion and competence, and submitting to the decision of a medical bureaucrat (be he doctor, judge, or accountant) that the patient does not deserve to live, is that between heaven and hell.

Affluenza, by John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor (Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, 2001)

affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more

Many years ago I was walking through downtown Wayne, Pennsylvania with my father, and we stepped into the Encore bookstore. While browsing, I came upon The Plug-In Drug, Marie Winn’s indictment of television. It was a life-changing book. (More)

Fixed ideas, even if later discredited, are hard to dislodge. This is why urban legends and Internet rumors must repeatedly be quashed. Either we like what we "know" and don't care enough to be concerned about its veracity, or a new generation comes upon the outdated information and unwittingly embraces it. Or both.

This, I'm afraid is what will happen in the case of obstetrical practice. Several years ago a study (the "Term Breech Trial") led to the conclusion that it was safer for breech presentations to be delivered by Caesarean section, rather than vaginally. Consequently, this has become standard, established practice.

However, an article in the January 2006 issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology reports serious flaws in the Term Breech Trial, and concludes that the recommendations from that study should be withdrawn.

Most cases of neonatal death and morbidity in the term breech trial cannot be attributed to the mode of delivery. Moreover, analysis of outcome after 2 years has shown no difference between vaginal and abdominal deliveries of breech babies.

Because Caesarean sections are considered to be more convenient than vaginal deliveries (nature is so messy!), and because people seem less inclined to sue doctors for interventions than for not intervening, I don't expect to see a rise in the number of women allowed to attempt vaginal deliveries of breech babies. Nonetheless, it is important to note yet another instance of major life decisions being made on the basis of erroneous data.