A Road Less Travelled

The last post I wrote seemed sort of tired and blah. That could be because I’m feeling very tired and blah. So in the interest of me (which should be the focus of everything) I will post a poem I found somewhere. I really liked it and it made me feel not quite so tired for a minute.

No Children! By Edgar Guest

No children in the house to play —

It must be hard to live that way!

I wonder what the people do

When night comes on and the work is through,

With no glad little folks to shout,

No eager feet to race about,

No youthful tongues to chatter on

About the joy that’s been and gone?

The house might be a castle fine,

But what a lonely place to dine!

No children in the house at all,

No fingermarks upon the wall,

No corner where the toys are piled —

Sure indication of a child.

No little lips to breathe the prayer

That God shall keep you in His care,

No glad caress and welcome sweet

When night returns you to your street;

No little lips a kiss to give —

Oh, what a lonely way to live!

No children in the house! I fear

We could not stand it half a year.

What would we talk about at night,

Plan for and work with all our might,

Hold common dreams about and find

True union of heart and mind,

If we two had no greater care

Than what we both should eat and wear?

We never knew love’s brightest flame

Until the day the baby came.

And now we could not get along

Without their laughter and their song.

Joy is not bottled on a shelf,

It cannot feed upon itself,

And even love, if it shall wear,

Must find its happiness in care;

Dull we’d become of mind and speech

Had we no little ones to teach.

No children in the house to play!

Oh, we could never live that way!

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(I read this after I wrote it and it didn’t really come out how I wanted. I wonder if it is more honest than what I had in mind. “Questions.” “I don’t have answers.”) Last night I rewatched The Last Samurai and I finished the last Louis L’Amour book about the Sacketts I have in the house (the horror, the horror). I closed the book and thought about honor. Why do I like the Sacketts? Because they are honorable men in a day with no honor. They are men who live honestly outside the law. I then asked myself why I like The Last Samurai so very much. Because it is about a man pursuing honor when it will cost him all he has, I answered myself. Hmm, I said, Maybe these two things are connected. Honor. To many of us it is just a word. It is a throwback to a time when things were simpler. Or at least when things were more violent. It is easy to see honor when everyone lives by the sword or the gun. We’ve violence in our day, but not violence nice people are involved in. The violence is contained to *those* people and *those* places. We have a different need for honor than the samurai or the gunslinger. I don’t think I could put it into words without making it sound truly boring. Honor is something I would like someone to see in me, but what does honor look like in my life? What must I pursue to pursue honor? A Sackett would never shoot a man in the back unless he was provoked. Okay, I won’t shoot a man in the back unless it was a matter of self-defense. That doesn’t make me honorable. A samurai was wholly devoted to his liege lord. If his lord asked for his death a samurai would gladly take his own life. Okay, if God ever asked me to kill myself I would. That doesn’t make me honorable. There is more to honor that just the trappings. But what does honor look like for me? Anything I can think just sound boring. In the old West and in the old Japan honor was a matter of life or death. Death feels so very distant to us here in America. And ours deaths will probably be very impersonal. A car accident, a bee sting, old age, disease. These are some of the deaths we have to look forward to. Where is the honor in those deaths? What does honor look like for us? A samurai wanted above all things to be loyal to his lord and to have a good death. What does a good death look like for a Christian? I have all these questions and very few answers that don’t sound pat and dull. Or maybe I’m looking for the wrong thing. Am I looking for something exciting? Do I think any values I hold to in the life I lead will look boring and plain? What do I want? What answers am I looking for? Do I know the answers and I just don’t want to say them because they sound blase? What does honor look like for me?

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I would have told myself not to be nervous, but that would have defeated the purpose. It just would have reminded me that I could be nervous. So I put it out of my mind. Almost. I didn’t know what questions they would ask, but I knew it would probably start with a general testimony. I also knew that it would go much better if I had an idea what to say beforehand. I figured out something along the lines of “Yep, I’ve always been a Christian.” Then I put it out of my mind. Pastor Henninger started with a very general question about my spiritual life and history, pretty much opening it up to whatever I wanted to say. For one desperate moment before I latched onto my previous thoughts I looked at him and thought, “Boundaries. I need boundaries.” But the moment passed, and I actually managed to talk. This surprises me a little. I talked. Not effusively by any means, but I answered questions of the type that make any answer feel dumb, because there’s no right answer. There’s just, “What is a week of your life like?” (Do you have any idea how boring and repetitive it would be to detail an entire week of my life?) “What talents do you have you can use to serve the church?” (Yes, I should know the answer to this. I can just see Seth smacking me upside the head for not saying something about writing. But I’m still back at “You mean someone might actually want to read this?” and I don’t automatically think “This is a talent that might be useful.”) The interview must have gone well because I am now a member of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. I take my membership vows next week. Next Sunday for the first time I will stand up to take membership vows without my parents standing beside me. During the interview one thing I mentioned was that I’d never had a membership interview by myself before. Afterwards I discovered that I’d done it. By myself. In a sense it’s only now that I’ve really moved here, now that I have covenantal ties to a church body here. The process of growing up isn’t over yet, but in God’s timing this membership transfer was delayed until this point when I see it clearly as the first big step I take as a grownup. I’m excited about what’s coming next. I can see opportunities ahead, and I know there are more I won’t find until later. But at the same time something’s changing. Or perhaps I am acknowledging a change that already happened. I don’t like changes. This point in my life is a doorway. Soon enough I will find out what’s on the other side. So I stop to take one last look back before I settle my shoulders and reach for the doorknob…

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Okay, I shouldn’t say that life here is strange because that would be repetitive and redundant. Life here has been stranger than usual. There’s a new baby in the house and Samuel has whooping cough. The combination here is dangerous. If Justice gets whooping cough it could kill him. So Justice is being secluded up in Seth and Crystal’s room and Crystal is up there with him. When Samuel has had 48 hours of antibiotics she will come out and when he has had five days of antibiotics Justice will come out. Last week was really hard. This week is shaping up to be tricky. Life is insane. Have I ever told you about when I lived with my father? It was just me and him and a college student. Neither of them threw up on me or near me. They both got dressed by themselves, were completely potty trained and could feed themselves breakfast and lunch. Ah, those were the days…

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…that maple syrup is the concentrated flavor of a tree?

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I should preface this by saying it hasn’t been a bad day. But why does everything that happens have to packed into fifteen minutes where I need to do everything at once? Theresa left to go to the library so we have some books and DVDs for the children while they’re quarantined. She’ll be gone for about an hour. That’s fine, I’ll just finish my blog post, cook some rice for lunch, and unload the dishwasher. The blog post takes a little longer than I think it will so I need to put the rice on first. Only by the time I get to the kitchen I forget the proper order. It’s noon before I realize that I need to put the rice on now and there are no clean pots. As I’m scrubbing out a pot Toby comes to running into the kitchen to inform me that Moriah coughed so hard she threw up. So now I’m prioritizing lunch and vomit. Toss in for good measure a sick child who probably needs some comforting which I’m not really good at, and another child who turns nearly every simple reminder into a more complicated discussion of having a respectful attitude. Now someone tell me I need to go read the last two sentences of my last post again…

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Take Gabrielle’s recent post, add a sermon on civil obedience, let it sit overnight, and voila! A ready made blog post. Add in Crystal’s thirty-six hour labour, a new baby, and now possible whooping cough going around, and we have a delayed blog post. But I’m finally writing it. There was something about the predicted y2k disaster that appealed to me. I don’t say I wanted it happen: it sounded hard and harsh and frightening. But it also sounded like a chance for an evil society to fall apart, and for us to build a better society from the ground up. I could deal with a diet of beans and rice supplemented with homegrown vegetables. I didn’t want to deal with the government restricting OTC access to vitamin supplements. I could deal with rampant dog packs as long as I had a firearm of sufficient caliber. But I didn’t want to face the chance of someday losing my children to a government agency. At midnight Jan 1, 2000 the lights didn’t go off. The television didn’t even flicker as people cheered. I turned it off and on my way to bed I put away the flashlight I’d been holding ‘just in case’. I turned out the light and our nightlight still cast a glow on the room. It was different from what I’d expected. But even with horror stories I’ve heard, I know that the streets outside my door are safer than they would be in an anarchy. I know there are people alive today who would have died without easy access to our medical system, even as messed up and imperfect as that system is. Sometimes I think we got the hard job. We have to take this society and stand up against it. We have to wade into into that mess out there and change it, bit by tiny bit. But we don’t have to do this in constant fear for our lives and safety. God put us exactly where we are. It may not be easy but it is the best place for us to be.

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I was reading an article about a coming of age tradition that a family has started for their sons. They have a big feast with fireworks and then the father presents his son with a sword. The sword is usually symbolic of what the father wants his son to become. The son the article was written about had just been reading through Lord of the Rings and so his father gave him a ranger’s sword. He wanted his son to protect the weaklings and keep guard on the boundry, letting no evil in. I read this article and thought, “Wow! That is wicked cool!” and then, being self-centered, proceeded to wonder what the corollary was for daughters. A cookbook? Boy, that just sounds boring. I asked Crystal and she said a hope chest. Again, I thought that sounded boring. But then I stopped dwelling on the coolness of a sword and started asking myself what I would want for my daughter. I would want her to be mother to the whole world. When I have my own home I would love for it to be a place people can come and be cared for and mothered. The world is lacking mothers. It is also lacking fathers, but I can’t very well want my daughter to be a father. The world is begging for mothers. For someone to sit and listen to you and wipe your tears. The world needs women whose doors are open, whose cookies are yummy and whose stews are hot and hearty. It is no shame to be a mother. It is no shame to want this for your daughter and to prepare her for it when she’s young. There is a generation growing up who has little idea of what a family looks like. This generation needs a mother. It needs to be able to walk into a home. Not a place where people happen to live. A warm, loving, home complete with a homemaker. My mother was this kind of mother. We had a stream of people coming through our house at times and she was mother to them all. They would sit around our table and my mother would feed them. Many were shocked that we ate dinner together. Many were surprised at the warmth they felt from us. We were a family and we weren’t yelling at each other. We were together and we actually enjoyed it. I want my daughter to have a home like that. Why do I think that desire is somehow less worthy or noteworthy than wanting a son to protect and defend? Why would I rather be given a sword than a hope chest? You can’t really shop vegetables with a sword. I have to imagine a sword is less than useful in making cookies. If God made me female then He made me to craft a home, not to defend it. He made me to have a hopechest and not a sword.

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Howdy, folks. Recently there has been a comment conversation that got me a little hot around the collar due to the lack of courtesy I perceived in the commenter. As co-moderator of this blog I thought this would be a good time to lay some ground rules as to what is polite and acceptable in the comments section. First, as an over arching rule I look at this blog as my space. Our space, really, but it’s easier to think of it as my space. It is fine to come in and say something, but if you wouldn’t say it in my house, to my face than perhaps you should rethink what you were going to say. There are still rules of etiquette and the basic rules of polite and loving conversation apply. Second, with rule number the first in mind, if your comment is purely on the level of “You’re wrongâ€? then that is not helpful. “You’re wrong for reasons X, Y, and Z which are found in the Bibleâ€? is another matter and I welcome those comments. They are an opportunity to see matters from a view I had not previously considered or maybe real live edification could be going both ways. But a simple, “You’re wrongâ€? is not edifying and leaves no room for dialogue. If you can give me real, God-honoring reasons you think I am mistaken in my views then please share. But if what you are saying can be boiled down to “You’re wrongâ€? without any other content than please refrain from commenting. Third, if you say something have the courage to stand by it. No take backs. And please don’t phrase things in such a way that it was a backhanded insult, but you can still say you didn’t call me that. Raquel and I do not allow anonymous comments on this blog for this very reason. If you are going to say it you need to be willing to stand by and claim it at the end of the day. If you feel you need to clarify a statement or if you feel you needto explain a bit more that is one thing, but saying “I didn’t call you a smelly pile of monkey dung I just said that you were saying something that made you *sound* like a smelly pile of monkey dung” is not acceptable. Again, if you wouldn’t say it in my house to my face you shouldn’t be saying it at all. I am not trying to be mean to anyone and I don’t mean to pick on the individual who commented. On the Internet you don’t have the benefit of tone of voice to soften your choice of words. Your words can come across in a way very different from what you intended. There are people who take advantage of this and use it as an excuse. But there are rules of proper, loving behaviour and they are especially needed on the Internet because I can’t see you or talk to you face to face. Those rules tend to go out the window on the Internet and I think that is evil and it needs to stop. So I will influence the only space I have influence over. I don’t think these ground rules are anything new to most of you, but I felt the need to say them openly. I don’t know exactly who reads this blog, but there could be people who need to see how Christians talk and how Christians fight. So we need to talk and fight well to the glory of God and the building of His kingdom.

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1. Do a Google search for eggplant parmesan. Click on the first recipe you see, think “Oh, that doesn’t look to hard.” and go in the kitchen to wing it. 2. Decide to start slicing zucchini even though there’s plenty of time before supper. Bread and fry it, pausing occasionally to shoo children out of the kitchen, tell them what you’re making, and then explain that it’s “just like zucchini parmesan except we’re out of parmesan cheese, so it’s zucchini parmesan without the parmesan. See?” Make sure you also bread (but do not fry) your fingers as you bread the zucchini. 3. Take the leftover tomato paste out the refrigerator. Throw it in a pot with some water and spices. Brown and add ground beef since you went to all the trouble to defrost it quickly back when you didn’t know what you were making for supper. 4. Notice that it’s now time for supper to be served and the zucchini parmesan without the parmesan still needs to cook for twenty minutes. Preheat the oven. 5. Layer zucchini, tomato sauce, feta cheese (as a parmesan substitute), and the last of the mozzarella cheese (which isn’t nearly enough) in the pan. 6. Let it cook until you can’t stand it any longer because it’s past time for supper. Serve it, ignoring that a few of the zucchini slices aren’t quite soft. 7. Watch as Moriah, Peter, and Samuel enjoy it, Toby eats five helpings of salad, and Elsie somehow leaves clean zucchini on her plate and eats everything else off of it. Watch as the dog eats all the scraps and begs for more. The dog eats zucchini? Overall, a smashing success for zucchini parmesan without the parmesan!

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