May 5, 2011 · 9:00 am

Sometimes It’s a Molehill

Last fall Drew’s parents arranged for the family to gather for a long overdue family photo. My first thought: can I get away with not wearing makeup for this event?

His mom was concerned about color coordination and everyone looking his or her best for the photo. Choosing complimentary outfits wasn’t an issue. I’ll wear almost anything but I really didn’t want to deal with an itchy, irritated face for the next few days just to satisfy social expectations.

Normally I can sniff out a compromise in almost any disagreement or misalignment of expectations. This wasn’t one of them. Knowing the expectations and traditions of certain family members I braced for friendly persuasion and mentally prepared a list of reasons why I was declining to participate in this ritual. The conversation began…

Family member #1: “Lydia, I noticed you’re not wearing any makeup. Do you want to borrow some of ours?”

Me: “No thanks.”

Family member #2: “You don’t need it, anyway.”

The introduction, climax and conclusion of a conversation I’d spent so much time preparing for ended up occurring in a handful of sentences. It was the last thing I’d expected to happen.

Sometimes there are mountains.

Sometimes there are molehills.

Slowly I’m learning not to assume how steep the hike will be until it actually begins. 🙂

Respond

Have you overreacted to anything recently? Is there anything that reminds you not to worry about what will happen tomorrow, next month or next year?

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May 2, 2011 · 9:00 am

Celebrating Osama’s Death

Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid of his home in Pakistan over the weekend. I found out about this last night when Drew logged onto one of his social networking sites.

The first wave of reactions: nearly universal glee.

This makes me uncomfortable. Yes, Osama was responsible  for decades of severe human suffering. I completely understand feeling relieved or happy that he can no longer orchestrate the injury or death of anyone but there’s something that bothers me about spontaneous outdoor parties celebrating the fact that someone else is no longer alive.

Osama’s death is the end of possibilities. When someone is still alive there is always the hope of rehabilitation. A corpse can’t be tried in a court of law or sentenced for his crimes. The dead cannot atone for what they have done any more than they help those they have hurt find closure. Death is the last sentence in the life story of an individual. The loose strings of everything left unsaid and unlearned flap in the breeze. In this case there are a a hell of a lot of strings.

A single death isn’t going to nullify the danger of al-Qaeda. If anything I’ve read speculation that it will energize their followers and we will see more acts of violence against innocent people in retaliation. I hope these predictions are wrong, that if nothing else Osama’s death will mark the beginning of the end of their power.

No comment on what the U.S. should or could have done instead. I don’t know what the best answer is but neither can I celebrate the death of another human being.

A final thought. I’m borrowing this from the Facebook page of a friend but will leave self-identification up to that individual. 🙂

As you talk about this news, I hope you will consider how your response can counter rather than reinforce the cycles of violence that spin around us. And please God, help us bring healing beauty to the ugliness of violence in whatever small way we can. Today.

 

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April 30, 2011 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: April 30, 2011

Here is this week’s list of charts, videos, quotes and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one. Groucho Marx

Tree of Life. A visual representation of every known species on earth. I never would have guessed there were so many fungi.

Should You Bring It Up? Despite what the rest of the site may say I’d argue that this chart is as handy with family and friends as it would be with a significant other. Don’t bash people over the head with complaints or dive into complicated disagreements when you’re sick, tired or hungry. Do give them the benefit of the doubt and listen to what is actually being communicated. It isn’t anything I haven’t heard before but there’s something eye-catching about seeing it in a flowchart.

Spam. Someone has finally figured out a use for those unsolicited emails that pop up in your inbox promising to improve your sex life. I love how each image plays around with our preconceived expectations of language.

Via Cynthia from A Life Profound:

What I’m reading: Kale Capek’s The Absolute at Large, a classic scifi tale about a scientist who accidentally releases God into the world.

What have you been reading?

 

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April 28, 2011 · 9:00 am

Why Are You So Crabby?

Some fairly serious posts are tentatively scheduled for next week. In the meantime I’d like to dissect this strip from one of my favourite web comics, Mimi and Eunice.

It is one of the few items on my RSS feed that made me cringe-fully laugh out loud this week. When I was a kid I used to subtly irritate my brothers until they reacted. As far as I can recall it was never anything cruel or painful – just standard sibling teasing. When they retaliated mom and dad would often blame them for instigating the entire thing.

I don’t remember why I did those things. Maybe they had teased me earlier,  maybe I thought it was funny or it might have just been a bizarre developmental phase. When my youngest brother finished high school I apologized to them for being sneaky and annoying. Despite the decade or so that had passed since we’d stopped interacting in those ways I still felt a touch of guilt for my part in it.

Why do adults act like this? We (typically) don’t physically jab one another with our fingers but I’ve seen more than one person a few decades removed from elementary school draw out the same reactions in others with a sharp word or aggressive body language. Every time it happens I wish I could temporarily re-write the rules of polite behaviour so I could ask what was happening in his or her life that made it seem ok to agitate someone else like this.

Is someone else poking their buttons? Have they had a horrible day, month, year and are running dangerously low on compassion? Do they enjoy introducing more pain into the lives of others? Why play innocent when the other person finally reacts? Have they missed social cues and don’t realize what they did?

I also wonder why more of the Eunices of the world don’t climb out of their comic strips. Sometimes this isn’t possible, of course, but if I was in her cartoon feet I would have disappeared halfway through the first panel. When Mimi was ready to apologize and stop poking me I’d come back and forgive her…but not before then.

 

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April 25, 2011 · 9:00 am

Choosing Friends, Choosing Enemies

This post is a response to Why Not Want to Like? Ever since this short poem was posted last week I’ve been mulling over why we like some people and dislike others. From the link:

Why wouldn’t I want to try to like everybody I meet?

This isn’t something I’ve discussed here before but everyone has what I can best describe as their own flavour, scent or musical note. That is, each of us has a unique combination of personality traits, general interests, character, beliefs and outlook on life. Sometimes there’s an automatic sense of compatibility when two new friends meet. At other times there isn’t and personalities clash. When this happens it doesn’t mean that one person is right and the other wrong any more than it’s right or wrong to mix musical notes or spices. Some combinations work well, others won’t.

Liking someone in a platonic way has two different meanings to me: one has to do with how one acts, the other with how one feels.  I can treat others with kindness, courtesy and respect but I cannot  sit down one day and decide, “I’m going to enjoy person X’s company this afternoon” or “person Y is my closest friend starting…now.” My brain just doesn’t work that way. Relationships tend to have lives of their own and I’ve been surprised more than once by who has and has not become a good friend.

So I’m going to assume that liking people in the above link refers to how we treat them. Under that assumption I completely agree with the above post. (It would be incredible if we were able to flip a brain switch and choose which emotions others stir up, though!)

What is fascinating is how much choosing to act in certain ways around others can influence what one thinks about them over time. I’ve seen people who were once defensive or angry but who chose to remain respectful and de-escalatory gradually repair unhealthy relationships. Others I’ve known have forged adamantium-strength bonds with people from such radically different paths that I never would have pictured them getting along so splendidly.

The entire topic reminds me of being told to love everyone when I was a Christian. As a child and teenager I couldn’t imagine doing this. Love was a natural outgrowth of relationships formed over many years. It wasn’t something that could be harvested and passed out to the hungry like ripe tomatoes.

Eventually someone explained that what it meant was we should be treating everyone the way we’d want our relatives to be treated by strangers, not that I literally had to love every other person in the universe as much as I did family and friends. That helped. Mostly. (What can I say? I was the sort of Christian who took these things extremely seriously!)

Respond

How do you interpret calls to “love your neighbour” or “like everyone you meet” in your daily life? Can you control whether or not you like someone? If so, will you teach me how to do it? 😛

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April 23, 2011 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: April 23, 2011

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

Sun and the Moon. There’s something in this photo that I didn’t notice the first time I viewed it. Can you figure out what it is? The answer is in the text at the bottom of the link if you need help.

Zombie Boy. What stood out to me the most about this interview was how much the man who is covered in tattoos that make him look like a rotting corpse changed when the people around him began treating him with kindness and curiosity. It was not the reaction he expected!

Honest Logos. I didn’t understand all of these logos. Do you? I will say, though, that the ones I did figure out are far more entertaining to look at than the real logos they’re mocking.

Global Warming Solutions Mind Map. These are all great habits to acquire but I can’t help wondering if it would actually make a big difference even  if we could convince every household to cooperate. From what I’ve read most pollution either comes from corporations or is a result of our infrastructure. (I could be wrong about that.)

What I’m reading: Jodi Picoult’s Sing You Home. It’s about a divorced couple who goes to court to determine if one of them is allowed to use their frozen embryos to have a child when the other vehemently disagrees with that plan. Fascinating stuff.

Is this photo as mesmerizing for you as it is for me? I wish I could paddle into it and see what is hidden behind the fog.

What have you been reading?

 

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April 21, 2011 · 9:00 am

A Review of Fall to Grace

Jay Bakker’s new book Fall to Grace: A Revolution of God, Self and Society explores the meaning of grace and how to live out the idea that God loves us unconditionally.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with what Christians mean by the word grace: think of it as being loved, honoured and favoured by someone without doing anything to make them feel that way about you. Usually, but not always, that someone is God.

To be honest I spent the first half of this book waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’ve known more than one Christian who segues from talking about the gift of grace to sharing their list of rules that need to be followed in order to keep it. Jay never does this which was intriguing and surprising.

The best part of the book by far were the grace notes, interludes written by people Jay knows who have lived through difficult experiences.  True stories have always been my favourite part of reading books about theology or ethics. There is something about learning what another human being has been through and what he or she has discovered as a result that is a thousand times more informative and instructive than reading a hundred pages of even the most well-written ideas.

This book focuses heavily on the application of grace as it is related to one particular issue. I would have preferred to hear how Jay’s ideas about grace impact his reaction on a wider variety of topics. Too often conversations about grace whittles down to the same subjects over and over again and his message would have been been more effective had its arguments drawn from multiple examples.

I’d recommend this book for Christians who are interested in taking a second look at how they think about God and live out their beliefs. Most of the arguments and Bible stories that are used as examples in this can be easily understood by someone who isn’t already familiar with them but it isn’t written specifically for non-Christians. It’s sort of like visiting a family in the middle of a (good-natured) debate. Those of us outside of the family listen to various points of view but we don’t have a personal stake in how it is all sorted out.

Note: I received this book for free through the viral blogging program at www.theooze.com.

 

 

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April 18, 2011 · 9:00 am

Play: It’s Not Just for Kids

Each of the following items is interactive in some way. It’s up to you to figure out how they work.

Have you figured out how each one works yet? If you’re stuck click here. It’s also a good link to explore if you’re looking for similar games. The man who creates them has a fascinating site!

Play

The mechanics of playing has been on my mind recently. Every child I’ve ever met has been interested in some sort of imaginative or creative play and many of my adult friends continue to experience our world with fresh eyes.

I think the Internet is like an adult version of a playground or park. There are many different activities going on at once and one can usually jump easily from one game to the next. It’s also something that we spend time on because it’s entertaining. Some people earn a living online but this doesn’t seem to be the motivation of most.

If only the Internet could somehow include a real sandbox and swing set, though! Those were my two favourite parts of going to the park as a kid. (And as an adult. 😉 )

Why do we play? It’s fun. Sometimes it helps us express emotions or ideas that are difficult to draw out in more grown-up ways like writing or talking. Everyone has a story to tell.

Why do some people stop playing? I wish I knew.

How would you answer these questions?

 

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April 16, 2011 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: April 16, 2011

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

Gee Whiz. I’m not usually into love songs but this one was worth watching.

Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters. This stirs up emotions that haven’t been named yet.

Valhal-Mart. What would happen if toy stores began selling action figures based on your deity? The author of this post explains his mixture of emotions so transparently that it is as if you and I are standing in the toy aisle next to him. I had no idea, though, that anyone still worshipped Thor.

Hobbit Houses. If I ever become incurably wealthy I’m going to build a cozy village of hobbit houses out in the country. You’re welcome to join me! 🙂

Guide to Laundry Symbols. One of the funniest and most creative interpretations of common symbolsI’ve seen in a long time. It’s also a good reminder to laugh. Life is too short to take everything seriously.

How society’s ideas about masculinity harm men. (Trigger warning: there is a description of gang rape about 9 minutes into the talk.)

What have you been reading?

 

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April 14, 2011 · 9:00 am

How to Discuss Politics

So, you’ve finally chosen a political party. Congratulations! Here are a few things to remember as your country prepares for the upcoming election:

1) God is on your side.

2) There’s no such thing as common ground. Either they have the unvarnished truth or you do.

3) Except when it comes to atheists and agnostics. Everybody knows that it’s impossible to be a moral, upstanding citizen without god.

4) The best way to convince others to agree with you is to start a heated political debate every time you see them. Don’t worry if they start changing the topic or asking you to talk about other things instead. This simply means they’ve realized that you’re right.

5) The best way to win political and religious converts is by insisting that the country cannot be governed properly without consulting your holy book. The more you intertwine the two the more both appeal to those with other beliefs.

6) When in doubt assume the worst-case scenario if one of their people is elected and the best case if one of your own wins.

7) You can tell how qualified and trustworthy a candidate is by how closely his or her religious beliefs match your own

8 ) Don’t waste time learning about the political systems of other countries or how the decisions made by your leaders may affect them.  If possible, refuse to learn even the names of their leaders or the outcomes of their elections. Information like this only clouds your judgment and makes voting that much more difficult.

9) It’s ok to lie about what the other side says, believes or does if it furthers your cause.

10) Finally, never forget that god has a special plan for your country that can only be brought to fruition if enough people vote for your party. Anyone who votes for someone else is sending a clear message about to whom they’ve given their allegiance.

 

 

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