Kissing

Go here for some good (local) laughs. Who knew Jeff was so funny?

remember, imagine

Cora Lynn posted about imagining ourselves in different lives. It got me thinking! What did I used to dream of?? What am I still dreaming of ??

• When I was a little girl, I thought I'd be an archaeologist. I really wanted to study old stuff and learn about how people used to live.
• I used to think I'd be an accountant in a big firm or organization. I envisioned myself focusing on organizational change, human resources, responsible fiscal management, and in general, being very clever. Making lots of money was also part of that plan.
• I used to think that I would live and work and love in the North End of Winnipeg forever. I thought if I loved every hurting family, gang member, or prostitute that I met, their hearts would change. I think I cried for two years when I stopped working in the North End.
• Stay at home mom. There's a job I've always wanted! I've always pictured a clean house, a much less rigid schedule, some varied volunteer work...getting down on paper that book I've been writing in my head for the last 10 years...
• My most craziest, unlikely dream? I'd love to own a combination coffee shop/bookstore/bed & breakfast. It even has a name... "The Resting Place". I know this little town that could really use one of those...

I also polled my family about what they want to be when they grow up.

Sydney's response: I want to be famous. Don't ask me what's gonna make me famous, I'm only 10. I have lots of time to decide.

Owen's response: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (He's sleeping) But I know what he'd say: I want to be a skateboarder in a great rock band. (with Joey, Braden, and Ben... and Trev needs to learn keyboards!)

Brendan's response ( to the question "when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?" : An Executive Director in a Residential Group Home. (good thing, I guess!)

one of the greatest joys

One of the things I'm most thankful is my daughter. Sometimes I drive her crazy and nag like.. well, a mom... but for the most part we really get along. (unless there have been too many sleepovers!) We spend a lot of time in the kitchen, and she is becoming quite a little chef. She makes the guacamole we often snack on or bring to friends' homes, she often makes the dressing for our salads, and she is keen to help out peeling, chopping, grating or whatever needs doing in the kitchen. (well, not the dishes so much....)
She now uses the oven very handily, and loves to try new recipes.. last week she made a graham wafer chocolate cake that was sort of like a brownie and very good!
Today is just a day of realizing that Syd is pretty amazing, and I enjoy spending time with her more and more every day. We've had a couple of good talks lately and she is becoming wise now that she's more than a decade old!
Moms and daughters have a special bond... and I'm thankful for that bond to be getting deeper as we spend time together doing the boring stuff of life.
(moms and sons have a unique bond too! thats another post...)

'Til we Have Faces

I wasn't feeling well one day this week, so I stayed at home. After sleeping for a while, I realized that I could read a book! I have been on a strict diet of books related to the course I'm taking, but I wasn't in the mood for those. I remembered that I had borrowed 'Til we Have Faces' from Jessica, so I decided this was the day to read it!

WHAT A GREAT READ! I love CS Lewis, how he has such a great way of putting stories and characters together to make complicated concepts downright simple. The deeper meanings are always there, the parallels to scripture. Always eye-opening.

This story is a retelling of the myth of Psyche and Cupid. I had to google the story to learn the details, I don't remember learning this myth when we studied mythology in school. Although I do vividly remember that section of Gr. 9 English in Mrs. ... what was her name!!?? Brendan remembers her hitting him over the head with a particularly poorly done assignment.. first name was Linda... used to sit in her car at lunch and smoke... What was her name?!?!? anyway, we digress.. she taught us Mythology, but not Cupid and Psyche.

Til we Have Faces is mostly a love story - but not in the traditional sense; its not a romance, but a story that makes us think about Love. ... how evil tries to make it ugly, how there are so many incorrect interpretations of love, how the deepest love is embodied in the selflessness and sacrifice that is always part of it..

I wanted to believe that the title "Til we Have Faces" was somehow a take on I Cor. 13:

We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.

But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. v.10

It's not though, I read that the book was originally supposed to have an entirely different title, but the Publishing Co. didn't like it, so it became TWHF.

I'd like to include some quotes, I think I'll update this post later with some. I can't right now, since I'm at the office and the book is not at the office.

interesting data

... felt compelled to jot down some of these stats I'm reading today.. stuff to chew on;

from Macleans Jan 21st issue (article called 'How to Fix Boys')
"The most startling change between teenage culture today and 30 years ago is the way more and more teenage boys have moved away from the courtship of girls. Online pornography has displaced the pursuit of real girls for a significant number of boys."

and;

"The pornography of 30 years ago was Playboy .. boys today can watch pornographic material on 50", high definition flat screens - engaging them in an entirely different way. Today, its common for boys to prefer pornography to the real thing: stating that girls are too demanding, they want you to do stuff, they cost too much money, a porn site is $12.95/month and the girls on it are prettier."
From an interview with Leonard Sax, a child development expert who wrote 'Boys Adrift'

How about this comment on our consumptive patterns?
Quoted in an article about the effects of advertising; 'The Distorted Mirror' by Richard Pollay. (in the Journal of Marketing)
(referring to the unintended consequences of advertising from a National Science Foundation review of the effects of advertising on children)
"encouragement of unsafe behavious, confused assessment of products, encouragement of inappropriate standards of choice, promotion of parent-child conflict, modeling of hazardous behaviour, reinforment of (gender) stereotypes, cynicism, and selfishness. "

...most fascinating of all was that the above quote about children and advertising was written in 1978 back when wage earning adults were the target of advertising campaigns. Wonder what studies reveal now that most marketing strategies target children and adolescents?

... ahhh, community!

I noticed that one of my Facebook friends recently had the status; "Liza is thinking about community... what does it really mean?" I've thought alot about community, especially when I taught the Sunday School class about it last year at KPAC ... we humans are strange creatures in that we crave community like crazy, and simultaneously put up all sorts of walls and electric fences to prevent it from truly happening in our lives.


We're part of a small group through our church, and I know we're blessed to be part of this little community. Last night, we watched the video in the series we're studying, and while I have no real problem with the video facilitator, yesterday I was just having a real struggle to connect his generalisations with my experiences. It's been a rough go with the kids lately, wonderful as they are, and there just isn't a lot of respectfulness and obedience happening at our place. I was hearing (and the video may not have actually been saying this, but its what I heard!) that there is this easy formula of loving parents creating stability and boundaries which results in responsible, respectful kids. I sat there quietly with this inner angst about it, and when someone actually invited me to participate in the post-video discussion, I about spilled over with this frustration I had been trying to keep inside! I felt like the speaker was making it sound oh-so-simple, and it just isn't! And it was safe to let my frustration spill out ... because I was in a safe place of real community. And it was good to 'let it all hang out' and feel not judgement, but support.

I experienced community again with my friend Sheryl today at lunch today as she allowed me to spill it all (and more!) again... community, especially true, loving, challenging community, is a great gift. I'm not sure we can get where we're meant to go without it.

I later talked to another coworker, who challenged me to reconsider some of my struggles, and then to my sister, Lorrie ... and each little piece of 'community' helped me to feel safe, cared for and provided real insight and wisdom. (and no one just said what I wanted to hear, but they somehow knew what I needed to hear!)

I'm thankful to be in community with people who remind me of what I can so easily forget or overlook.

And I'm especially thankful to God, who is sovereign over it all, and who doesn't stop forgiving me for being as frustrated and forgetful as I so often am. What 'community' does best of all is point me to Him.

A side note:
Owen noticed this little toy in one of my clothes drawers tonight, I've kept it safe for several years. It was perfect timing for the tangible reminder I needed.

This little motorbike was Owen's FAVORITE toy at Grandma's when we'd visit there. We'd regularly go for Sunday dinner, and my little toddler-genius would walk in the door and run for the box where the toys were kept and dump it out in search of the 'geen bike'. Then he'd keep it with him all night, standing it up by his plate while he ate. And then we'd try to remove the bike from his tightly clenched, grubby, ketchup-y fist and he'd insist on bringing it home. To which we'd remind him that there were only a few toys at grandma's, but LOTS of toys at home; so the bike had to stay at grandma's. (he was our first child, so, yes, we did try to reason with a toddler!) The bike would be left behind, and the whole scene would be played out again one week later.

Somehow, the bike did eventually end up at our house, and somehow I put it away in a clothes drawer for safekeeping. I'm glad O noticed it today, and I'm really glad to remember my sweet little boy playing with sweet little toys.

a glimpse into the research...

I'm working on this course called 'Everyday Spirituality' and am really enjoying the lectures and reading. I'm pretty nervous about the assignments, mostly because my post secondary endeavors (which were many moons ago!) have focused on things like accounting and statistics; the kinds of courses where there is only one right answer. Can I really do this? Time will tell....

Anyway, for the paper I'll be writing on Rural Spirituality, I've been reading some essays by Wendell Berry. He's pretty radical, but I've been chewing on some of his ideas all day.
Here are a couple of examples:

(from an essay called A Remarkable Man, about Nate Shaw, a black farmer from Alabama wrongly imprisoned in the 1930's)

"... he burdens us with his character. Not just with his testimony, or with his actions, but with his character, in the fullest possible sense of the word. Here is a superior man who never went to school! ...." what a trial in fact that is for us, and how guilty it proves us; we think it ordinary to spend twelve or sixteen or twenty years of a person's life and many thougsands of public dollars on "education" - and not a dime or thought on character. Of course, it is preposterous to suppose that character could be cultivated by any sort of public program. Persons of character are not public products, They are made by local cultures, local responsibilities. That we have so few such persons does not suggest that we ought to start character workshops in schools. It does suggest that 'up' may be the wrong direction." (emphasis mine)

And..

"The organized church makes peace with a destructive economy and divorces itself from economic issues because it is economically compelled to do so. Like any other public institution so organized, the organized church is dependent on 'the economy'; it cannot survive apart from those economic practices that its truth forbids and that its vocation is to correct. If it comes to a choice between the extermination of the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field and the extermination of a building fund, the organized church will elect - indeed, has already elected - to save the building fund. The irony is compounded and made harder to bear by the fact that the building fund can be preserved by crude applications of money, but the fowls of the air and the lilies of the field can be preserved only by true religion, by the practice of a proper love and respect for them as creatures of God. No wonder so many sermons are devoted exclusively to 'spiritual' subjects..."
(from an essay called God and Country)

Not sure I could ever live up to Mr. Berry's ideals and practices; but its sure been interesting reading! Another interesting essay is called Why I will not use a Computer - not sure what to make of that one! :o)

who's wagging what?

I'm pretty certain that we're not alone in feeling like family life is a more than a little chaotic with adolescents. Some days it feels like the tail is wagging the dog! (or more crudely (aptly?) stated: the inmates are running the asylum!) Every day brings new challenges and what we figured out yesterday no longer applies.

(flickr.com)