Lydia Schoch

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poems and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The Bridge Poem. What would we be like if we didn’t need human bridges?

From Your Body is Beautiful. My only critique: I wish it had acknowledged that not every body is healthy. The core message is fantastic, though.

Realize that beauty is just a concept. Keep it in perspective. Meditate on the miraculousness of your body, the cohesiveness of your insides. Those are the things that truly matter.

Your body is beautiful, perfect, outstanding the way it is.

Sperm Grown in a Test  Tube. How long will it be before human sperm is manufactured the same way? I also wonder what other applications this will have in the medicine of the future. Will it pave the way for us to create vital organs? Limbs? Entire new bodies?

Lessons We’re Learning Riding Mass Transit. The advantages of using mass transit. If only every community had buses, streetcars or a well-designed subway system!

The Case of the Missing Phone Call. Of compassion, medical appointments and crossed wires. I liked this post because it’s a good reminder of how hard it can be to step into someone else’s shoes.

This week I’m reading Peace Pilgrim. What have you been reading?

Earlier this year Drew and I watched Star Trek: Voyager. In the fifth season one of the characters invents Ancestor’s Eve, a spring holiday honouring some of the crew’s ancestors.

On April 22 I celebrated Ancestor’s Eve by re-telling stories from both of our families of origin. Some were silly, others serious and even though we have nine months to go before this holiday comes around again I’ve already begun to collect new stories. Next year we’ll expand the traditional definitions of ancestor and kin for this project- wisdom does not always come with age and there is far more to being a family than sharing DNA or bumping names in a genealogy.

Sermons – religious or otherwise – are a dime a dozen and morality tales only work if one already agrees with their underlying assumptions. A story without strings is different, though. (By that I mean a tale told without painting the moral of it in neon green letters across the exposition.) Yes, some mistakes we do have to muddle through ourselves order to grok a particular lesson but others can be learned from through observation.

One of my favourite things to do growing up was to sit with the adults and listen to their stories about engagements, abuse, comical misunderstandings about moist towelettes, the harrowing effects of untreated physical and mental illnesses, summer droughts, death, new babies, and conflicting opinions about that new restaurant in town.

As a PK (preacher’s kid) I probably heard more about the dark side of life than most kids who grow up in loving families. Occasionally mom and dad would gloss over certain details or clarify particularly troubling situations later on with us but I was never frightened by what I overheard. It was just part of pastoring. I’d like to recreate this experience here at On the Other Hand.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to begin gathering your own stories for Ancestor’s Eve next spring. Anything that has taught you or someone you know is eligible. I’ll mention it here sporadically over the next ten months and am hoping to share some of your stories along with my own at the end of April 2012.

Are you in? 🙂

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, photographs and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

The explanation for the figure on this tree is something I haven’t figured out yet. (Photo credit – Usien.)

Oprah and Zoe. How do you respond to people who assume that you share their religious beliefs and are dismissive when they discover the truth?

I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires. – Susan B. Anthony in an address to the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1896). If only she and I had been born into the same generation. We would have so much to discuss!

Torches on the Earth. There’s something soul-soothing about watching a day unfold into night.

You Can Talk to Me. I hope this catches on. Sometimes it’s nice when friendly extroverts start up a conversation.

From Let Love:

You too are enough, you too are perfect in your imperfection.

That knowledge is all the momentum you’re ever going to need. If you’re looking for answers, for meaning or purpose, for a way to change or to gather hope, for a bit of peace or a little faith, then look in the mirror. The answer is you. You are what you’ve been looking for. You are where change, hope and faith live and breathe.

That Ringing Sound. Is this the future of story-telling?  It reminds me of stories I grew up hearing from other kids.

A Post-Apocalyptic Society and How it Can Save Us. My brother, Aaron, sent this to me. Read it even if you have no interest in this genre. The yearnings it describes are, if not universal, then at least extremely common.

I haven’t read any new books in the last week or two. What have you been reading?

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, poetry, comics, photographs and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

A Simple Way to Kick the Multitasking Habit. One of the most helpful blog posts I’ve read so far in 2011. Multitasking has never been something that works in my experience.

Miscarried. Fair warning for sensitive readers: this poem is a heart-wrenching account of the author’s miscarriage.  It’s an absolutely fantastic piece, though. (Thank you, Daphe, for tweeting about it.)

How Babies Are Born. As an Agnostic I can make no claims about what happens after death. If some part of us does live on, though, I sincerely hope that this will be the fate of at least those of us who choose it.

Life in Miniatures. A continuation of my love for the whimsical life from last week’s Suggestion Saturday. There’s something so irresistible about adults who still see the wonder in our world!

This is Not a Painting. Click on the link for a landscape photograph that looks like a painting. Unbelievable.

What have you been reading?