Thanksgiving

In a nutshell...

1. Grandma's Thanksgiving dinner. Mmmmmm. Best ever. She made my favorite cheese potatoes AND mashed potatoes. And turkey and noodles. My stomach was so happy and already looking forward to leftovers tomorrow.

2. Dinner conversation. My favorite quote: "Man, you googled the hell outta that, Grandma!"--my cousin, after my grandma disappeared for 15 seconds and came back with the answer to what years JFK was in office.

3. Nap time. Dozing on the living room floor, barely conscious enough to hear the Patriots come back to win over the Lions in the 4th quarter. Boo. Also occasionally interrupted by my brother and cousin talking football and/or pelting me with pillows.

4. Dominoes. The game, not pizza. 9 family members, occasional trash talk, competitive sides surfacing. Made it through 5 rounds with everyone still speaking, we quit while we were ahead. Grandma wins, I got 2nd.

One of my favorite Thanksgivings ever I think. :)

4s&5s and Abraham

Tomorrow morning I am back in the beloved 4 & 5 yr olds class at ECC after a summer-long stint in the 2 yr olds room. Have I mentioned how much I love the 4 and 5 yr olds? I love them. I love all kids, but particularly the 4 and 5 yr olds. They're at the age where they're just starting to figure things out and ask questions that stump you and say profound and funny and sincere things like thanking God for butterflies and dolphins during prayer and yelling "YAY GOD!" after hearing the story of the parting of the Red Sea. (Both unprompted, true stories from our own ECC kiddos). I love them.

I was just reading through the lesson plan for tomorrow since I'm on schedule to teach. I love The Jesus Storybook Bible that we use in the 4s & 5s. So much so that I bought my own copy and I wrote a post about it. We're talking about Abraham this week and God's promise to make his family a HUGE blessing to all nations.

In the lesson plans it also mentions singing songs. Most of the time I don't do this with them because I can usually only get a few of the kids to actually do it. [this puzzles me. i always loved the song portion of kids' church growing up.] But this week Father Abraham is listed as a possibility. What 4 yr old doesn't love Father Abraham?! And I realized that it only has two chords in it so I'm totally taking my guitar. I figure participation odds are better with a guitar. :)

So I'm a tad bit excited for tomorrow morning with the 4s & 5s. Can you tell? :)

Why do I bother

I just need to stop. I feel this obligation to educate people on viruses and vaccines, but I just need to stop. Because at the end of the day, I just end up frustrated and they still think that the government is out to get them, media always speaks the truth, and vaccines are going to turn their kids into zombies.

So, I'm going to go home,

make PW's pasta with tomato cream sauce,

paint my nails some fabulous fall color,

watch a disney channel movie,

and forget my frustration with all of the "well they say..." misinformation out there.
(And who is "they" anyway? are "they" qualified to comment on this subject?)

And really, it will all work out in the end. Someday while my kids are out playing soccer and going to the movies, their kids will be at home with the measles because they wouldn't vaccinate them.

Summer garden

I'm garden-sitting again for the next couple weeks. Delight of delights. Check out yesterday's haul. Including TEN cucumbers. Count them. 10. I am up to my ears in cucumbers and there are more coming... if you want some let me know.

Unfortunately, the red raspberry patch is pretty much done for now. But what's that? You'd settle for a couple quarts of fat, juicy, sun-ripened blackberries straight off the vine? Yeah, me too. :)

An evening in the garden

Almost every summer that I've been in Bloomington, I get the chance to take care of the garden of one of my professors while he and his wife go on vacation. They have a rather large garden for living smack dab in the middle of town and I love getting the chance to putter around in it. It's full of flowers in the front and vegetable and berry patches towards the back. It's always a bit (ok, a lot) overgrown and has a fair amount of weeds growing amongst the crops, but that doesn't seem to bother them.

For the past week and a half, I've been caring for the garden. Mostly watering it when the weather's dry and picking my share of fresh leaf lettuce. That's another one of the perks of garden-sitting: all the fresh produce I can eat! It's been 10 days of delicious salads. Today while I was out picking lettuce and broccoli and snap beans, I happened to turn towards the berry patch. And this is what I saw:
:) I wasn't expecting it, but the first batch of red raspberries had ripened. I picked about a quart and ate some along the way. So good!

After taking care of the garden, I decided to mow the their yard. They hadn't asked me to, but it was in dire need and I knew where they kept their lawn mower. It's a push mower... and by 'push' I mean that the only power you've got to work with is the pushing you put into it! And what followed is an hour and a half of the most satisfying manual labor that I've done in awhile. I ended up with grease and a matching set of blisters on my hands, and I loved every minute of it. There's no good way to describe the joy I got from it. It seriously made me want to offer to come mow their yard more often!

Donald Miller on Theology

A few weeks ago we were looking at theology (among other things) as an idol during the "Chasing after Religion" portion of our Yellow House study on idolatry. We talked a bit about how theology and religion could simply become a search for knowledge instead of experiencing a relationship with Christ. And beyond that, how arguing about issues in theology instead of discussing them reasonably and with respect and love for the other party will only serve to push others away, not to mention causing unnecessary divisions in the Body of Christ. All this resulting in us idolizing our own understanding of theology instead of maintaining our focus on God.

Donald Miller posted a blog post along the same lines today. It's from the new introduction to his re-released book "Searching for God Knows What" (which now I want to go read again.) Here are a couple excerpts from the post.

"You might think I am saying truth should be thrown out, that theology doesn’t matter. But this is not what I’m saying at all. What I’m intending to illustrate is our drive to define God with a mathematical theology has become a false God rather than an arrow that points to the real God. Theology can become an idol, but it is more useful as guardrails on a road to the true God. Theology is very important, but it is not God, and knowing facts about God is not the same as knowing God."

"What I came to understand, then, is Christian conversion is relational. It is not theological or intellectual any more than marriage is theological or intellectual."

"Can a person have bad theology and be a Christian?

Has your theology ever been corrected, and were you really a Christian before?

Is your theology all worked out now so you have no more reason to study, and if not, are you a Christian?

If you believe a person’s theology has to be right to be qualified for Christian conversion, then you are saying a person comes to know God, in part, because he has right ideas, and I respectfully disagree. Do I think right theology is important? Absolutely, but I do not believe it has any agency to convert anymore than directions to the doctor’s office have the power to heal.

I have a friend who countered, adamantly, that unless a person understood and agreed with the theological idea of total depravity, he could not be a Christian. I asked my friend when it was that he understood the idea himself, and he answered his sophomore year in seminary. I asked him, then, when he had become a Christian, and he told me when he was in the third grade. His reasoning was obviously insane, and I don’t think he is alone."

"What I’m saying, though, is that God doesn’t exclude someone from his saving grace because they don’t have the correct theological checklist. And for those of us who judge and condemn them, why would we stand in opposition when the God we love and serve is himself so adamant about being in relationship with them just as He is with us?"

A Bible for all ages

A book I ordered from Amazon came in the mail for me this week and I'm pretty excited about it: The Jesus Storybook Bible (written by Sally Lloyd-Jones.) That's right, I ordered a children's Bible. As an avid reader growing up who had at least 3 children's picture Bibles that I can remember, I have to say that this one is better than all of them. We've been using it all year long in teaching the 4 & 5 yr old class at ECC and I've fallen in love with it's method of storytelling--it connects every story back to Jesus. Also, its illustrations are pretty great too. Here, let me show you just a bit of why I really like it. This is from the introduction:

Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn't do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn't mainly about you and what you should be doing. It's about God and what he has done.

Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you'll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren't heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose). They get afraid and run away. At times they are downright mean.

No, the Bible isn't a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It's an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his long treasure. It's a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne--everything--to rescue the one he loves. It's like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life!

You see, the best thing about this Story is -- it's true!
There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling one Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

I just had to get it, because as much as I love reading it, it's best when shared with some kiddos. And at some point I'm banking on the fact that I'll have some to read it to, whether they're my own or cousins or nieces and nephews or neighbor kids or whoever.

Born to be Ren

Dear Zac Efron,

I realize you don't want to be pigeon-holed into the singing, dancing guy who turns things around and learns/encourages other characters to go against the status quo, but you were really made to play Ren McCormack. I don't know Kevin Bacon, but I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that I think he'd give you his blessing to play the 21st century version of Ren. I mean, between "Scream" and "Bet On It" you really wouldn't even have to learn any new choreography. You could squeeze Footloose into your crazy schedule.

Still sad that you turned the part down.



[And yes, I realize that this is my second post in a row that concerns both Zac Efron and High School Musical. Acknowledgment, but no apologies.]

The Derby Stallion High School Musical

Starring Zac Efron as Patrick McCardle Troy Bolton

Fifteen-year-old Patrick Troy doesn't know what to do with his life, and the pressure put on him by his dad isn't helping. But then he meets a misunderstood horse trainer math geek who convinces him to train audition for the Derby Cup school musical. Can Patrick Troy convince his parents to let him compete perform, beat out the rich town bully musical snobs, Sharpey and Ryan?--and find the champion musician that lies within?

Hmmm... this back-of-the-dvd blurb sounds familiar...

There's also a new girl who just moved into town and encourages him to ride horses instead of play baseball which is his dad's dream.

This movie is so bad that it's good... at least good in the sense that Beth and I died laughing all the way through it. One thing it's got going for it: New girl never calls him "wildcat."

The only productive thing I've done all day

Gilmore Girls enneagram types [EDIT: 2/8/11]
Lorelai Gilmore 7
Rory Gilmore 9w1
Luke Danes 6w5
Logan Huntzberger 7
Dean Forester 6w7
Jess Mariano 4 or 5?
Lane Kim 4
Mrs. Kim 1
Paris Geller 8
Sookie St James 4 or 2?
Jackson Belleville 9?
Michel Gerard 1?
Emily Gilmore 3w2
Richard Gilmore 9
Miss Patty 4
Kirk Gleason 6?