God shapes us

It is not you who shapes God, it is God who shapes you.
If then you are the work of God, await the hand of the artist
Who does all things in due season.
Offer God your heart, soft and tractable,
And keep the form in which the artist has fashioned you.
Let your clay be moist,
Lest you grow hard and lose the imprint of God's fingers.

~~Irenaeus, 2nd century bishop

Gay Marriage

by David Fitzsimmons

When I saw this in the newest edition of The Christian Century, I had to find it for my blog.

Friday Stuff

With Dennis so ill in Seattle and it being so HOT here in TX, I have not felt like blogging lately. And this is despite my responsibility at RevGalBlogPals to write today's Friday Five, which has had a healthy 29 responses (without mine). I am glad RevGals wrote about games, which will give me ideas for our family vacation as I am not a "game-y" person.

I want to write something, so I guess it'll be bullet-style, for my own benefit.

• TX heat--this is the hottest year in TX history since 1925. The only thing it is good for is hanging clothes out on the clothesline to dry, which I do almost everyday. Our two dogs prefer the house air-conditioned atmosphere, but a full laundry basket is a signal for both of them to come outside with me. Our beloved BLACK Lab, who died a few years ago, hated the heat so much that she could not be fooled by an empty laundry basket, when I sometimes tried to get her to go outside.

• Husband CB and I are flying to Seattle on Wednesday to visit Terry and Dennis. Dennis is having surgery to remove the tumor in his liver on Friday, July 24. We will stay one week. Then we'll come back to TX for six days before returning to Seattle with our family for a vacation, which is hard to predict with Dennis' future uncertain.
  

• Before my friend Joe died last year, I ordered a book with the subtitle "A guide to the emotional and spiritual care of the dying." I never read it, and it was shoved into a book shelf for the past year. When it was decided that we would go to be with Dennis, I found the book and started reading it. Facing Death and Finding Hope by Christine Longaker is just what I needed before this trip. The author is a Tibetan Buddhist who keeps emphasizing that we learn to die as we live: "Thus all the things that happen--especially the 'deaths within life' that we necessarily experience--are markers, along our path, pointing the way toward learning how to live, and in so doing, how to die." (15)

• This week has been a beginning in de-cluttering. Each day I am getting rid of TEN items (even one piece of paper is one object) in each room of the house. I vaguely remember this idea from FlyLady, which I tried a few years ago but quit when I was inundated by emails. (She suggests the 27 fling boogie.) I usually put away or throw out more stuff than just ten, but the small minimum helps me get started.

• I am excited that the General Conference of the Episcopal Church passed Resolution C056 (http://gc2009.org/ViewLegislation/view_leg_detail.aspx?id=898&type=Current). "This resolution allows for a ‘generous pastoral response’ to the needs of same gender couples. What that actually means will vary from diocese to diocese, depending on how the Bishop discerns the needs of the people and the movement of the Spirit. In some places it’ll mean church weddings, in others something very private and discreet, and in some places there will be nothing at all." (from here) However, I fear the south TX Bishops did not vote in favor of this resolution and so effects may not be seen in this area of the country.

• Susan Russell is the current president of Integrity USA. Her blog is An Inch at a Time, which will tell you much more about the 2009 General Conference in Anaheim.
  

Gift Idea

For the second time this month, I have given a Kiva gift certificate as a birthday present for friends. I would love to receive such a gift and so I hope that the recipients like this, too.

This is how Kiva works:

Choose an Entrepreneur, Lend, Get Repaid

The below diagram shows briefly how money gets from you to an entrepreneur, and back.

1) Lenders like you browse profiles of entrepreneurs in need, and choose someone to lend to. When they lend, using PayPal or their credit cards, Kiva collects the funds and then passes them along to one of our microfinance partners worldwide.

2) Kiva's microfinance partners distribute the loan funds to the selected entrepreneur. Often, our partners also provide training and other assistance to maximize the entrepreneur's chances of success.

3) Over time, the entrepreneur repays their loan. Repayment and other updates are posted on Kiva and emailed to lenders who wish to receive them.

4) When lenders get their money back, they can re-lend to someone else in need, donate their funds to Kiva (to cover operational expenses), or withdraw their funds.

Please Pray for Dennis

On May 25, I asked for you to pray for Dennis.

I ask you to renew your prayers for Dennis, as on Friday, July 24, he will have major surgery on his liver at the University of Washington Hospital in Seattle, WA. This is very serious; the operation will last 4-8 hours or longer.

Husband CB and I are going to fly there to be with Dennis and his wife Terry.

July 14, 2009

"To live in hearts we leave behind

is not to die."

~~Thomas Campbell

Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg

My daughters AE and KA in Seattle sent me this beautiful bouquet of flowers, which arrived just a little while ago from FedEx. I was so surprised when I saw the box on my doorstep! They sweetly thought of me today as it is the 17th anniversary of my mother's death. How my mother would love them and their thoughtfulness, just as I do.

Hungersite

The World Health Organization estimates that over two-thirds of the world's population is either under-fed or starving. It's a positively staggering statistic, but one that speaks to the importance of your daily visits to The Hunger Site. By simply clicking on the yellow button, you are helping feed people in need worldwide. In the first six month of 2009 alone, daily clicks have funded nearly 30.2 million cups of food. Every day you click at The Hunger Site helps put a small dent into that humbling statistic. Visit The Hunger Site as part of your daily dose of Web browsing and make that one click heard around the world.

Sign up to get daily email reminders to click.

Current books

Thanks to a blogger I do not recall, I read The Book Thief while coming back from Calgary a week or so ago. It was such a good book that I immediately loaned it to daughter MJ. I keep thinking about the ways ordinary Germans were criticized for any kindness given to Jews at the beginning of Nazi-dominated Germany. The narrator of the book is Death, who gives oddly poignant observations at times. This is a very good book.

The book I am currently reading is Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, a book that I bought used last November. I finally picked it up to read and am glad I did. It was published in 2001, and so its suppositions about the effects of computers, internet, and cell phones are minimal. However, I am finding the observations and extensive graphs and statistics interesting as I look at the changes from the 20th century to the present.

With the high drop out rate in Corpus Christi, it was interesting to read about the increase in high school graduates as compared to the number graduated in 1960:

"Although it is widely recognized that Americans today are better educated than our parents and grandparents, it is less often appreciated how massively and rapidly this trend transformed the educational composition of the adult population. As recently as 1960, only 41% of American adults had graduated from high school; in 1998, 82% had. In 1960, only 8% of American adults had a college degree; in 1998, 24% had. Between 1972 and 1998 the proportion of all adults with fewer than 12 years of education was cut in half, falling from 40% to 18%, while the proportion with more than 12 years doubled, rising from 28% to 50%, as the generation of Americans educated around the dawn of the 20th century (most of whom did not finish high school) passed from the scene and were replaced by the baby boomers and their successors (most of whom attended college)."

Putnam, Robert D. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks: NY, 2000.186-187.

At the same time, I am reading a book by an author recommended by Father Kelly Nemeck at the "Demystifyng Mysticism" conference: The Marriage of All and Nothing: Selected Writings of Barbara Dent. She writes of her personal experiences of the dark night of the soul, while still emphasizing that the resurrection is an integral part of spiritual development.

Bedtime

see more Funny Graphs

The EGR Rule of Life

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation is committed to:

- direct the Church's attention to alleviating the extreme poverty of the world. (Matthew 25:31-46);

- make explicit the Christ-centeredness of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), believing that for Christians today following Jesus involves commitment to the MDGs, and commitment to the MDGs involves commitment to Jesus (John 10:10);

- turn life around (conversion) at the individual, congregational, diocesan, national, and global level for the sake of the poor and suffering of the world. (Luke 18:18-23).

EGR invites individuals, congregations, dioceses, and other institutions of The Episcopal Church to enter into this Rule of Life as a way of living out these commitments.

The Rule is as simple as it is radical in that it reflects the heart of the Gospel and calls for a comprehensive personal and institutional response.

Click here to commit yourself, your congregation or your institution to the Rule.

The individual, congregation, diocese or other institution of the Episcopal Church pledges to:

Pray: Regularly hold before God the Millennium Development Goals and pray with an unrelenting intention for the poor.

Study: Undertake regular education on issues and faithful responses related to global poverty.

Give: Make sacrificial and regular financial contributions to help achieve the MDGs, including annual support to Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation to build the movement.

Act: Direct one’s life and activities by agreeing to:

*Connect:Seek to engage in real and tangible ways with the impoverished and others committed to the achievement of the MDGs;

*Witness: Speak, write, create, and make life choices that advance God’s mission of global reconciliation through the MDGs;

*Advocate: Bring before secular and church bodies your personal and institutional commitment to meet the MDGs.

EGR

May God Bless You

May God bless you with anger
at injustice, oppression and exploitation of people
so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.

May God bless you with tears
to shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
and turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness
to believe that you can make a difference in the world
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

– Franciscan Benediction

Friday Five: Exercise

Sophia wrote for RevGalBlogPals:

I just got back from an 8 mile bike ride down the beach boardwalk near our home, and was struck with the number of people out enjoying physical activity. Runners, other cyclists, surfers, swimmers, dogwalkers, little kids on scooters....

It's easy to lose track of my physical self-care in the midst of flurried preparation for a final on-campus interview Monday for a college teaching position in the Midwest (prayers welcome!) and the family move that would accompany it. But each day that I do make time to walk or ride my bike it is such a stress reliever that it is well worth the time invested!

So how about you and your beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit?

1. What was your favorite sport or outdoor activity as a child?
Swimming, as there was always an Olympic size pool on the military bases where my dad was stationed.

2. P.E. class--heaven or the other place?
I didn't love it, but also didn't hate it.

3. What is your favorite form of exercise now?
Walking.

As the cartoon indicates I am needing to get in a more regular exercise program.

4. Do you like to work out solo or with a partner?
Usually alone.

5. Inside or outside?
Outside in the winter in TX, but definitely inside at this time of year.

Bonus: Post a poem, scripture passage, quotation, song, etc. regarding the body or exercise.

"We do not stop exercising because we grow old - we grow old because we stop exercising."

Dr. Kenneth Cooper, Cooper Institute

My cousin Margaret

This is my cousin Margaret at her daughter's wedding reception in Banff on July 1. I love this picture, even though she is not smiling. I can see my mother in her. This is precious to me because my mother died in 1992. Margaret's sister-in-law told me that night that she could see the resemblance between Margaret and me, which pleased me greatly.

I had to leave the reception early, because I had to pack and get ready to leave on an early morning shuttle to the Calgary airport. Margaret walked me down to the front door of the hotel. I cried in saying good-by to her; Margaret told me she used to do that when she left her parents (in BC when she returned to Alberta) because she wondered if she would see them again. That was a truth I did not realize until she spoke it.

This is the only picture taken of Margaret and me together.

Links to greater awareness

I get a daily message from Zen Habits, which remind me to be more aware. One email had a list of various past articles, which I put here for your perusal:

1. How to Doggedly Pursue Your Dreams in the Face of Naysayers
2. 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It
3. The Magical Power of Focus
4. Autopilot Achievement: How to Turn Your Goals Into Habits
5. Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox
6. How to NOT do everything on your to-do list
7. Handbook for Life: 52 Tips for Happiness and Productivity
8. How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List: or, Why Writing It Down Doesn’t Actually Get It Done
9. Haiku Productivity: Limit Your Work Week
10. Unproductivity: 8 Fantabulous Ways to Make the Most of Your Laziest Days
11. 5 Amazing Mac Apps for Getting Things Done (Plus a Custom-Rigged Setup)
12. Lazy Productivity: 10 Simple Ways to Do Only Three Things Today
13. The Art of Doing Nothing
14. What is truly necessary? A guide to living frugal
15. 20 Ways to Get Free or Cheap Books, and Give Away Your Old Ones
16. How to Find Peace Living With a Packrat
17. 15 Ways to Create an Hour a Day of Extra Time … for Solitude
18. The Zen of Running, and 10 Ways to Make It Work for You
19. 21 Tips on Keeping a Simple Home with Kids
20. A Guide to Creating a Minimalist Home

And more “Best of Zen Habits” posts on different topics:

1. Everything You Wanted to Know About Simplifying Your Life, and Way More
2. The Unsurpassable Productivity List: A Handy Guide to Getting Important Things Done
3. All The Best Tips on Getting In Shape, In One Handy List
4. The Golden Money List: Hundreds of Tips for Turning Your Financial Life Around
5. The Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits

To subscribe to Zen Habits, go here.

Pictures of Banff, Canada

The city of Banff

The wedding

In Banff as I walked back to the hotel after the wedding reception.

Jan before the wedding

What kind of reader are you?

From Choral Girl:

Newsweek has published their Top 100 Books: the Meta-List, derived via “number crunching” from various top-10 books lists. The purpose of this note is to gather a bit more information about your experience with the books on their list. I’ve started the process using the following key. If you’re interested in participating, please copy the list and replace my numbers with your own, and tag me. Please note that more than one number may be used per book. More information available on each book by clicking the link at the beginning of the post.

1 = read it

2 = saw the movie

3 = in my “to read” stack at home

4 = someday I’ll read it

5 = have made at least one attempt to read it, but didn’t finish

6 = no interest in reading it

(1) War and Peace—Tolstoy

(1) 1984—Orwell

(5) Ulysses—Joyce

(6) Lolita—Nabokov

(4) The Sound and the Fury—Faulkner

(1) Invisible Man—Ellison

(6) To the Lighthouse—Woolf

(5) The Iliad and The Odyssey—Homer

(1/2) Pride and Prejudice—Austen

(1) Divine Comedy—Alighieri

(1) Canterbury Tales—Chaucer

(5) Gulliver’s Travels—Swift

(5) Middlemarch—Eliot

(4) Things Fall Apart—Achebe

(1) The Catcher in the Rye—Salinger

(1/2) Gone with the Wind—Mitchell

(3/4) One Hundred Years of Solitude—Marquez

(1/2) The Great Gatsby—Fitzgerald

(1/2) Catch-22—Heller

(4) Beloved—Morrison

(1/2) The Grapes of Wrath—Steinbeck

(6) Midnight’s Children—Rushdie

(1) Brave New World—Huxley

(6) Mrs. Dalloway—Woolf

(4) Native Son—Wright

(4) Democracy in America—de Tocqueville

(6) On the Origin of Species—Darwin

(6) The Histories—Herodotus

(6) The Social Contract—Rousseau

(6) Das Kapital—Marx

(1) The Prince—Machiavelli

(5/4) Confessions—St. Augustine

(6) Leviathan—Hobbes

(6) The History of the Peloponnesian War—Thucydides

(1/2) The Lord of the Rings—Tolkien

(1/2) Winnie-the-Pooh—Milne

(1/2) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe—Lewis

(2) A Passage to India—Forster

(6) On the Road—Kerouac

(1/2) To Kill a Mockingbird—Lee

(1/2) The Holy Bible (RSV)

(6) A Clockwork Orange—Burgess

(4) Light in August—Faulkner

(4) The Souls of Black Folk—Du Bois

(4) Wide Sargasso Sea—Rhys

(4) Madame Bovary—Flaubert

(6) Paradise Lost—Milton

(1/2) Anna Karenina—Tolstoy

(1) Hamlet—Shakespeare

(1) King Lear—Shakespeare

(1/2) Othello—Shakespeare

(5) Sonnets—Shakespeare

(1) Leaves of Grass—Whitman

(1) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—Twain

(4) Kim—Kipling

(4) Frankenstein—Shelley

(5) Song of Solomon—Morrison

(1/2) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—Kesey

(1) For Whom the Bell Tolls—Hemingway

(1) Slaughterhouse-Five—Vonnegut

(1) Animal Farm—Orwell

(1) Lord of the Flies—Golding

(1) In Cold Blood—Capote

(6) The Golden Notebook—Lessing

(6) Remembrance of Things Past—Proust

(6) The Big Sleep—Chandler

(4) As I Lay Dying—Faulkner

(4) The Sun Also Rises—Hemingway

(5) I, Claudius—Graves

(1) The Heart is a Lonely Hunter—McCullers

(1) Sons and Lovers—Lawrence

(6) All the King’s Men—Warren

(1) Go Tell It on the Mountain—Baldwin

(1/2) Charlotte’s Web—White

(6) Heart of Darkness—Conrad

(3) Night—Wiesel

(5) Rabbit, Run—Updike

(6) The Age of Innocence—Wharton

(1) Portnoy’s Complaint—Roth

(1) An American Tragedy—Dreiser

(4) The Day of the Locust—West

(4) Tropic of Cancer—Miller

(5) The Maltese Falcon—Hammett

(1) His Dark Materials—Pullman

(3/5) Death Comes for the Archbishop—Cather

(6) The Interpretation of Dreams—Freud

(6) The Education of Henry Adams—Adams

(6) Quotations from Chairman Mao—Mao

(4) The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature—James

(5) Brideshead Revisited—Waugh

(1) Silent Spring—Carson

(6) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money—Keynes

(2) Lord Jim—Conrad

(6) Goodbye to All That—Graves

(4) The Affluent Society—Galbraith

(1) The Wind in the Willows—Grahame

(6) The Autobiography of Malcolm X—Haley/Malcolm X

(6) Eminent Victorians—Strachey

(5) The Color Purple—Walker

(6) The Second World War (6-volume set)—Churchill

Total read: 39

Additional questions:

What would you cut from the list?

I did not like “The Great Gatsby”or "Portnoy's Complaint."

What would you add?

• "The Chosen" by Chaim Potock
• If there was a religious section, I would add "Celebration of Discipline" by Richard Foster because that made such a major impact upon my spiritual life in directing me to practices and authors to read.
• Picturebooks would have to include "Miss Rumphius" by Barbara Clooney and any of the Robert McCloskey books and "Ferdinand" by Munro Leaf.
  

When you look back at the list as a whole, do you draw any conclusions about yourself as a reader?

• I read the classics as an undergraduate English major and need to re-read them.
• I have not read classics of history, anthropology, and culture.
• 
  

30 years ago

Newborn DC and dad CB on July 6, 1979

Today is our oldest son's birthday. It is hard to believe that he is 30 years old.

Happy 4th of July!

Go to The Star-Bangled Banner to learn about the preservation and restoration of the flag raised at Baltimore’s Fort McHenry to celebrate a crucial victory over British forces during the War of 1812 on September 14, 1814.

Quick facts about the flag are here.

Peace

Psalm 122

I rejoiced when I heard them announce,
“The time of warfare is past.
No more will brother hate brother
or violence have its way.
No more will they drown out God’s silence
and shut their hearts to his song.”

Pray for peace in the cities
and harmony among the races.
May peace come to live on our streets
and justice within our walls.
With all my heart I will pray
that peace comes to live among us.
For the sake of all earth’s people,
I will do my utmost for peace.

(The Psalms, trans. by Stephen Mitchell)

To subscribe to Panhala for such poems, send a blank email to
Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Friday Five: It's all about the look!

I got back from Calgary very late last night, and so it is fun to reconnect with a Friday Five, which is looking at one of my weaknesses of hoarding and not cleaning out!

Sally writes for RevGalBlogPals: "In readiness for my move in 6 weeks time I spent almost all of yesterday morning sorting through my wardrobe ( closet, I am so British :-) marvelling at how I had accumulated so much stuff! The result is three large sacks full of clothes to be given away. Some came into the category of " what was I thinking", some too big now ( at last), and others I will never shrink into again. Some are going simply because I want to streamline my wardrobe."

So how about you:


1. Are you a hoarder, or are you good at sorting and clearing?
I am definitely a hoarder, as I have written about on various occasions. Coming home from Canada just last night makes me see my house with new eyes that are not covered with "house blindness". My closets are especially crammed with clothes I wore in various sizes of thin-ness; since I'll never be a 6-8 again (as I was when I was clinically depressed). I need to get rid of those clothes. (Confession time here)

2. What is the oddest garment you possess and why?
I still have the brown wool coat my mother bought me before I got married in 1971, having always thought that one of my daughters would like it. . . .in hot Corpus Christi, TX??

3. Do you have a favourite look/ colour?
For the past few years, I have liked linen shirts and crop pants. For the wedding I just went to, I was happy "looking like myself"--in a long brown crinkle skirt with gold sequins and a boxy bright green jacket from Chico's on top, plus the wedding shoes.

4. Thrift/ Charity shops, love them or hate them?
I love them so I can donate clothing to them, which is what I plan to do this summer. I shopped in them when I was younger.

5. Money is no object, what one item would you buy?
If I could find them, some comfortable and elegant shoes!