For the most part fruit salad, smoothies etc make up our sweets.  Still, occasionally a person craves a baked item and if you are grain free you have a challenge on your hands. I have been experimenting with some alternative 'flours' lately and am finally getting the hang of it.  

Our second was home for a very brief visit last weekend to the delight of his brothers and sisters. College seems to be treating him well.  He did take me aside to break me the news that he got a tatoo.  He prefaced that by explaining the background – his fascination with ancient Rome growing up and the weighty meaning behind the quote. (it is a short quote) I believe it roughly translates into "Put Your Mother Into Labor"….   Boys. Another reason my hair is graying. ; ) 

Speaking of our babies.  It is nearly time for this one. Ready or not!  You would think 'ready' would come easier by this time. Some things are just daunting however.  Labor being one of them. Still, I am so ready to hold her.  Soon. 

If you visited the Classroom Clutter post I forgot to link up to Mrs. Newingham’s classroom when mentioning the book baskets. Check it out and let me know if any of you have any insight about them (ie where to purchase, what kind etc)

Anna Anna Bo Banna Banana Fanna Fo Fanna Fee Fi Fo Fanna

Word games can be really funny.

Or not.

A group of friends recently discussed a news report one of us had seen siting a study that those who don’t watch much tv are more prone to extremist views than others. Apparently some things don’t bother you as much the more you see them. (they don’t call it programming for nothing…) After a while the shock value goes way down and you just say, “That is the way it is.” That is, unless you find tv rather mind-numbingly boring and predictable, have a stack of books waiting to be read, a larger stack of projects to finish, spend an abundance of time outdoors, and generally are hesitant to spend precious free time in front of canned entertainment.

If you are one of the latter and you occasionally turn on the tube you might just go, “Whoa Nelly!” You might wonder when the heck it stopped being disrespectful for kids to roll their eyes at parents and started being uproariously funny. You might wonder when frank discussions of all manner of abhorrent behavior became common ‘over-coffee’ chatter. You might find it really odd that some folks consider viewing scene after scene of their fellow man being sliced and diced relaxing. You might wonder how the seven deadly sins became an accepted mode of entertainment. You might just be “extreme”. I might almost give them that. With one important qualifier – extreme in comparison. Those two words are critical to the debate.

Increasingly today those who do not “get with the program” are viewed with suspicion, if not outright disgust. The message expressed is that if you do not enthusiastically support what amounts to a radical change in culture (change in terms of centuries, not decades) you must be the one with the problem.

Growing up, few of us escaped the rhetorical question, “If all your friends were jumping off a cliff, would you?” It was rhetorical because there was only one right answer – no. We were expected to think for ourselves and make sound decisions, despite the folly of the majority. That was considered a virtue, not a vice. My, how things change. Should you find yourself at the edge of the abyss today, and venture to suggest that perhaps turning back might be a valid option, you are extreme. What is your problem anyway? You must not like jumpers. You probably think you are better than the jumpers, don’t you? Since it is commonly accepted that group think is more reliable than independent thought you are automatically suspect.

This poses a problem when the whims of the majority are based on personal opinion versus on truth. Truth is another tricky word. I imagine many heads shake at the mention of it, much like Pilate’s did. Truth, schmuth. What is that anyway? It is generally accepted that there isn’t any ONE truth. Truth is whatever you believe…. unless you believe something currently not in vogue. Then you are – you know this one – extreme.

There is a verse in Jeremiah which advises us to “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.”

This always seemed wise to me. By nature I am a rather cautious person. I am especially skeptical of novelty, which so rarely passes the test of time. I like to have a pretty decent chance of success and a restful soul is appealing to me. Increasingly I believe an old path is more likely to lead to that good way. I haven’t seen a lot of truly peaceful souls going down the other roads. Still the old paths are nearly abandoned now. Jeremiah saw this coming when he reported the response of the people. They didn’t jump for joy and thank him profoundly for his prudent direction. Instead they said, “We will not walk in it”

I bet they thought Jeremiah was extreme too.

We are standing at crossroads today as well. There are many voices competing for our attention. It is as if there are neon signs flashing, “This way!” Despite the earnest, sometimes insistent voices, we, like every generation before us, must “consider our path.” We face a unique challenge because for the first time since Constantine the old roads are likely to be scorned as never before. You may be trotting along in much the same way your ancestors did. If so, you can expect to be told you represent a radical departure from the norm – and you might be that because, hey, normal is pretty variable just now. It is subject to ongoing interpretation and adjustment.

Just remember you are not making a radical departure from time tested living. You are staying the course, though the effect is much like sitting at an intersection next to a car slowly inching forward. It can appear that YOU are the one moving backward. It is actually the cultural pendulum that has swung wildly and flung folks far down paths that have not always led to a good way. However, reality is that standing steadfastly in the midst of that chaos may be interpreted as rigidity and even regression. The words have changed and it’s not a game anymore. What was once a virtue is now a vice.

While showing all due respect towards those who are enthusiastically heading down a different direction, we must make our own choices at the crossroads, if at all possible based on timeless truth. Contrary to popular belief we cannot have it all. Choosing rightly can make all the difference.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

– Robert Frost

The thought manifests as the word
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character.

So watch the thought and its ways with care,
and let it spring from love

– Buddhist quote

“Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Character is everything.”

– Emerson

I found a ton of articles by Kim Brenneman here. For the record we employ the very same routines in our home and have found them to be highly successful when done consistently. She has many convicting things to say…

On computers:

We need fellowship with other believers but often we exchange relationships with real people in our physical community for relationships with people in a narrow little band of online people that believe every little thing exactly like we do. The Proverbs 31 lady was in her community, her husband was honored at the city gates because of her renown, she extended her hand to the poor, and more.

Online communities can be a venue of encouragement and relation to others, but spend more time getting to know your neighbours. Be salt and light!

Computer rabbit trails also steal time from our first priorities. Be careful, be wise, make a plan for the time you spend online and use a timer.

On planning:

When we try to do everything we do nothing well. Focus on your first priorities and then carefully, thoughtfully, and prayerfully refine them before adding to them.

On fellowship:

Don’t be an idler, gossip, or busybody going about from house to house via the telephone, email, IM, or visiting. Save your talk time and be meaningful with it.

On chores:

Don’t be a drill sergeant, be an encourager. Say things like you would want to hear it from your mom. Sing while you work, make up a silly song to go along with the work. Work quickly and efficiently.

On toddlers:

Assign a day of the week for each toddler activity to be done while the rest of the crew cleans. i.e. Monday-playdough; Tuesday-washing dishes (water play); Wednesday-chunky puzzles; Thursday-coloring; Friday-finger paint.

Note: this REALLY works well. Little ones don’t need their entire day full of alternating activities,books, songs etc. You would be amazed how well they respond to a set “table time” or “tray time” daily. While most articles encourage you to do this first thing, we have also found it is best to do it while the others are cleaning. Makes for happy littles and more productive chore time.

On beauty in the home:

Try to create a harmony of favorite things expressing all of the senses. What fabrics do you like to feel, what do you like under your feet, what do you want to wrap up in while you sit and peruse a new magazine? When you want a peaceful setting what do you want to hear? Guitar music, ocean waves, the breeze in the trees outside, or silence? What do you want to smell? A favorite flower, a mug of hot chocolate, the night air drifting in? What do you want to see? Blank walls, art, photography, wallpaper? Lots of drapes and luscious fabric or simple, straight lines? Dark or light? Warm or cool? Simple, elaborate, or somewhere in between? Think about these things.

I will stop here but there is so much to glean. I have her articles printed and in my Home Mgt Binder. We all have periods where the routines slip a bit or we are under the weather but returning to these happy habits makes for a delightful home life.

I read this awesome bk last month called Take Your Time by Eknath Easwaran. I decided to buy it because I had dog eared every other page to quote and realized the author had ONLY written substantial words and refrained from any filler fluff. It was all quotable and noteworthy – which ended up being part of the overall message.

Mr Easwaran is a college professor originally from India. He grew up in the Buddhist tradition though he does not write with the intention of converting his audience. His whole gist is about slowing down and paying way better attention to each person and activity you find yourself face to face with. Those are his driving principles. If you can’t slow down enough to pay attention to everything you do, say, and hear then you are doing too much and need to cull. He feels that the reason we are forgetful is that we didnt really give our full attention the first time around. Thats why we cant recall if we unplugged the iron or locked the car etc. We were spacing out when we did those things versus being truly present and having our heads ‘in the game’ so to speak. He maintains you can eliminate unnecessary stress by focusing your attention on whatever tasks – big or small – are at hand. This echoes the Sue Bender Amish experience book‘s lesson about the source that community’s contentment with their daily work. That whole intentional living again.

He had many examples of how applied application impacted our lives – from daily tasks to career to personal relationships. Bottom line was HOW. How do we achieve that level of attentiveness that assures a focused life and optimal functioning? He said that when our attention wanders we shouldn’t fret but rather just call it back to the task at hand cheerfully like it was a puppy. No need to berate ourselves nor overanalyze our distractedness. As long we keep calling back our attention then we will eventually get mastery over it.

I got another book this week called Buddhism and Motherhood by Sarah Napthali. Now of course I am totally not a Buddhist any more than I am Amish. Rather, I saw it on the Soulemama reading list and picked it up being intrigued by the subtitle: A Calm Approach to Caring for Yourself and Your Children. I won’t go into a theological treatise, just suffice it to say while I disagree with to whom and what the authors attribute truth still I found common threads in all of these messages and with Fr Lovasik’s wonderful Power of Kindness. The motherhood author said we need to be gentle, patient, and persistent with ourselves in calling our attention back. It occurred to me that this applies to our child training too. Children’s attention WILL wander and get off track. We need to be gentle, patient, yet persistent in calling them back to the present – to the task at hand. If we can just cheerfully persist they will eventually master themselves and their responsibilities and so will we.

All three attributes need to be in place to be effective however – the persistence AND the gentle patience. Gentleness because scripture tells us “a kind word turns away wrath”. Gentleness is a fruit of the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition, one of the signs that we are in step with the Lord. We are to “clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, gentleness and patience”. We are also told not to lose heart when we are exhorted to “watching thereunto with all perseverance” and to not “weary in doing well” – whether we have done so once or twice or seventy times seven times. Our demeanor ought to be the same the first and last times – one tall order in an age of instant gratification.

Therefore, it is necessary to really commit ourselves to the challenge. We also need to realize that this kind of progress comes slowly after a LOT of repeating gently and patiently. Persistence pays off though. If we just don’t quit we can’t lose in the end. We just have to promise ourselves we aren’t going to give up. How could we fail if just refused to stop persisting cheerfully? The game isn’t over til someone throws in the towel. Let’s not let it be us.

Please join us in welcoming Genevieve’s baby girls to the world. They were born this morning and at last word all was well. We are so happy for you Gen!

Do visit Lady Lydia if you haven’t been there in a while. She too is musing about ‘the changes’ and how they affected her family. She tells the story of her Grandmother’s diary entries and photographs and says there were times people would say:

“Don’t you want to make a lot of money and do better than your parents?” I think it is very hard to do better than parents who had a lasting marriage and raised children and kept a home place. We always hope the younger generation will make a better pie, though…”

Of course these aren’t the only aspirations they had for their progeny. Better time management, better health, and more sincere spiritual walks made the list too. I just had to smile at the pie is all. That was in fact a sincere hope for my Grandmother’s relatives. As she used to say, “We were a pie-eating family.” Meaning, we don’t do cake.

Anyway, it is sweet and sad and you want to read it all.

It often happens like this. When I get a day – or a few of them strung together like this past weekend- images and ideas that have been floating in the ether, half-formed, suddenly settle and come together. I am not sure I can articulate them well but will give it a shot.

I mentioned earlier that the nasty exchange at The Old Schoolhouse disturbed me to no end. It was not because of the school choice issue but the basic misunderstanding of women’s choice, my choices specifically. This heated discussion intersected with another article which brought back intense memories. I hesitate to link, hesitate even more to comment. However a private email the other day showed me that the author’s story or at least similar versions of it, was reality for many of us. That reality tremendously impacted many of our early marriage and mothering experiences and we carry those images and messages with us forever. This story, then, is not about an expose of one popular figure but rather a story that could be retold with variations by countless of my generation. So I share it.

Rebecca Walker was raised to believe that motherhood is a form of servitude and that children (and men) enslave women. This assertion was not unique when we were growing up. However while the rhetoric has toned down a bit the basic belief remains, even if not articulated as such. Family is limiting. It narrows your options. It eats into your personal time. All dangerously bad things according to mental health experts. You know, like Oprah…. These voices allow that you can dabble, but don’t surrender yourself to this calling. Hold back, be careful.

Ms. Walker’s take on ‘sisterhood’ vs ‘motherhood’ is particularly insightful. It more than anything explains so much of what happened. The emphasis for some decades now has been on horizontal relationships vs. vertical, which left many girls with ‘friends’ where a mother, in the truest sense of the word, would have been so welcome. It is indicative of the desire to meet one’s needs versus the willingness to meet the needs of others. Ultimately we can never really ‘meet our own needs’. Focusing upon them feeds them and they mutate into a hunger that is never completely satisfied. That is a lesson that is often hard-learned however and many are caught up in the futile quest for self-preservation, often laying waste to those around them. It left us collectively with a plethora of sisters and a dearth of mothers.

Alice Walker figured prominently into my own early adulthood. I graduated from high school early and attended a large state university that year. Since I had tested out of first year English and was registering late I had just a handful of course options from which to choose. I ended up in Women’s Lit and spent the next five months immersed in stories and discussion of goddess theology, matriarchy, incest (considered rampant), violence against women, and feminine potential which was universally tied to leaving the men and children in one’s life and embracing other women either figuratively or literally. That was considered the only ‘safe place’ a woman had in this world and her self-actualization was only possible to the extent that she accepted this.

To be sure, this was the not the first I had heard of any of it. I was well-versed in alternative theology and alternative family composition by that point having grown up in a home with shelves lined with similar titles. I had been raised to question authority and to never trust men. This continuing education left me with troubling images and furthered the wariness I left home with. Having never actually lived in a traditional family nor with any males I had nothing to counter these arguments. What did I know? I entered marriage and motherhood with many conflicting feelings and few concrete skills.

Like Rebecca, my baby announcement was met with horror. Granted I was much, much younger than she. However the real problem was that it seemed there would be no college degree nor career and that prospect was appalling to the women in my family. It was hard for them to envision happiness without that.

Like Rebecca, I became so caught up in the bliss that carrying new life was that these negative responses didn’t sway me much. In fact it was hard to give my attention to much else besides the life growing inside me and the life my husband and I were building – imperfectly but determinedly. We made innumerable mistakes. Many of them could be directly traced to those messages ingrained in me when I entered this union. They colored my feelings about housekeeping, discipline (always bad), and unity between men and women (equated with fantasy). It was an uphill battle to reconcile the teaching of my past with my new reality which contradicted all I had expected.

The distinction that I finally articulated to myself was between slavery and service. The one is enforced, demanded, required, while the other is chosen, given freely, a gift. In a world where choice is supposed to be empowering it is seemingly impossible for some to believe that others would make a choice contrary to their own. When that happens the dissenter is rarely left to agree to disagree. They are considered unwise at best and unsafe at worst. This is arrogance to an extreme – to assume that those who do not concur must be deluded or entrapped. Is it not possible they have, instead, chosen the road less travelled. Perhaps by their giving without reserve it is they who have been given the gift?

Ann’s reflections about Choice overlapped with these others. She reminds us that

“with each loss, staggering or common, so the choice comes: gratitude or resentment.”

In fact this choice is always ours, not just with loss but every time life changes. Every decision necessarily closes other doors. We cannot do it all, or least not well. So yes, committing to a man, to children, to a vocation necessarily means there are now many other paths no longer open to us. We have a choice – bitterness or joy, carefully metered out affection or total self-donation. We are not victims. Those emotions come from inside of us, they are not inflicted upon us. We choose. That truth is most liberating. It is not about coercion. It is about laying down one’s life freely. This is true empowerment.

I wish I could have known that before I began this journey. I am not sure words could have ever spoken as compellingly as the grasp of a newborn’s tiny hand around my finger. They could never have explained the ‘safe place’ that was the embrace of a man who loves you. It hasn’t been without trial. It has been messy at times, as life usually is. Still it is a beautiful mess. It is a gift. Given and received.

I thank God I did not miss it.

*note – If you were inclined to think these voices belong to another era, think again. Just yesterday a friend forwarded me her son’s high school English summer assignment list. It was populated by just such authors. She was justifiably alarmed as they have begun to work their way through the list. : /