The Growlery

Toronto Goodness

2011-04-17T20:33:00.000-07:00

When I had first arrived in Toronto, I had rather a hard time of it what with not knowing a single person in the city and having my backpack (with a lot of important things in it) stolen within the first couple months of arriving. I was experiencing a bit of culture shock (mostly the anti-Americanism that was particularly obvious during the US presidential primary) and so I wrote a rather annoyed blog post about Canadians. Although I still agree with the main thrust of my argument, I've since come to appreciate some things about Toronto, things that I will really miss when my grad school years come to an end. So in penance for my earlier anti-Canadian sentiment and to remind myself to be thankful for the many good gifts, I present the following list.

Things I love about Toronto
-watching the snow fall outside
-when the colors of the fall leaves are lit up by nearby streetlights at night
-when you can see the patterns of the snowflakes
-the amazing tulips and daffodils in the spring
-the lilacs and irises in the summer
-being able to buy ingredients for Ethiopian food (injera)
-being able to try all sorts of international foods (my first time to try Caribbean, Korean, Thai, Sushi = in Toronto).
-old buildings, particularly the U of T buildings, and particularly when transformed by snow
-Gerstein and Graham Libraries--both old buildings that have been renovated while retaining their old charm. My favorite places to study.
-Kensington Market--in particular the fruit market where I buy my fruit and veggies
-Toronto Brickworks and surrounding trails
-flowershops--especially the smell them when you walk by
-used bookstores, especially Balfour Books
-Bulk Barn (okay, I've only ever been to one in Guelph but I love the concept)
-E.D. Smith jam--apparently a Canadian brand, since 1883--the raspberry and apricot are delicious!
-buskers, especially the old man who plays strange but beautiful Asian instruments I don't recognize in the Spadina subway
-the cool houses on Palmerston Boulevard, especially their amazing brickwork.
-old oak trees, especially the ones in the neighborhood near Casa Loma. Cool houses there too.
-the sound of the wind rustling the leaves of the trees in the city--so peaceful!
-All the people on the subway (and my students) from such a wide range of cultures. Such beautiful, interesting faces, such a variety of dress.
-The Royal Ontario Museum
-cardinals--I love their song and their color and we don't have them in southern CA.
-watching and listening to little kids play games for P.E. in the field near my house as I walk by-- always some kids hanging out near the fence, rather than participating, so cute!
-watching the boys passionately playing hockey/ball hockey at the nearby park as I pass, only to realize they are all grown men in their 40s--oh Canadians, you amuse me!
-Guildwood Park and its amazing statuary
-also the Scarborough Bluffs
-iceskating--all those outdoor rinks
-Porter Airline--the way the flying experience should be! (and best mascot ever!)
-streetcars--they're pretty! and I pretend I'm on an amusement park ride when we go though tunnels. I like seeing the world from a bit higher off the ground.
-all the funny city animals--pigeons, squirrels, raccoons, sparrows. It's not like I would like to cuddle with them, but they enrich my life in their scruffy way.
-My street. Especially the way the old fashioned brick houses are sort of pastel colors, and when they are lit up at night remind me of dollhouses or decorative lanterns.
-My favorite Victorian house in the neighborhood, complete with gingerbread, turret, canary and African violets in the windows and adorable old couple.
-My church (meaning the people, obviously, although the building is nice too).

Postscript: To-Do While in Toronto
-Go to Niagara Falls (still haven't been!)
-Go to Toronto Islands (ditto!)
-Go to a ballet (was so annoyed that I missed this one)
-Go to another play or two (have been to 1 Shakespeare and 1 Stoppard so far)
-Go to the ROM more often (It's free to York students on Tuesdays)
-Go ice skating more
-Learn to play hockey
-Try snowshoeing
-Visit St. Anne's Anglican Church
-Go camping somewhere in Northern Ontario with friends
-Visit Montreal, Ottawa, and Prince Edward Island

Look, here are some other people collecting Toronto goodness! Mmmm...lovely!
Occasional Toronto
Blog TO
Daily Dose of Imagery

Interesting Faces

2011-04-03T16:03:00.000-07:00

My sister and I collect what we call 'interesting faces'. We point out people that we see at events or on the street to each other: "Did you see that girl's face?" "Yup, I saw. So awesome." Recently during intermission at a concert I waited, craning, for several minutes for a gangly teen boy whose face Krista had proclaimed interesting to turn around. I never did get more than a glimpse.

Amazingly, Krista and I have a high rate of agreement despite never having laid out rules or guidelines about what constitutes an interesting face. Instead we seem to have an intuitive recognition of such faces. For example, while watching the Band of Brothers miniseries, we were both entranced by the face of a young soldier in the opening credits.

It wasn't until several episodes into Band of Brothers that one of us mentioned 'the soldier with the interesting face', and we both knew exactly who was meant, to the astonishment of the rest of the family. You can see him in the foreground at ~1:49-1:52. As you can see there are a whole lot of soldiers in the intro, most of whom have very pleasing, interesting faces, including, in the background of the very same shot, Damien Lewis, the actor playing the main (awesome) character Lt. Winters.

In fact, I think Lewis also fits into 'interesting face' category, and that most really good movies have a wealth of actors with interesting faces, but but more on that later. What I want to know is how exactly is it that Krista and I both identified the same anonymous young soldier as having an interesting face? What exactly constitutes an interesting face?

Let's take a look at a couple examples of actors and actresses whose faces Krista and I agree are interesting and see if there are any commonalities.

Honeysuckle Weeks

Rosamund Pike

Stephen Campbell Moore

Joanne Froggatt

James McAvoy

Romola Garai

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Leelee Sobieski

Anthony Howell

Anne-Marie Duff

Simon Wood

Claire Foy

I notice a couple commonalities here. Deep set 'squinty' eyes are common. The men tend to have good strong noses, and the women to have wider cheekbones or rounder faces than are typically considered the ideal. But that doesn't get us very far.

Being actors and actresses they are of course a good looking bunch, with nice symmetrical, regular features. In fact, you might reasonably ask if Krista and I don't have a taste for people with interesting faces, so much as we have a taste for people with beautiful faces (which although totally natural is not particularly worth investigating).

However, consider the many beautiful people who don't make the interesting faces cut: actresses like Keira Knightly, Megan Fox, Penelope Cruz, Julia Roberts, Scarlett Johansson, Jennifer Lopez, Natalie Portman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, or actors like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, George Clooney, James Franco, Matthew McConaughey, Patrick Dempsey, Jude Law, and Jake Gyllenhaal.* Conventionally good looking I'll grant you (for most of them); interesting faces, not so much. Women in this sample tend to have thin oval faces with pronounced cheekbones and large eyes. The men vary a bit more but all seem to have some 'rugged' features such as a craggy brow and the traditionally strong jaw expected of a leading man. For an exemplar for these types consider Jon Hamm and January Jones of Mad Men fame.

See what I mean? Rugged good looks for Jon and a thin oval face with cheekbones for January. Given that they were cast to exemplify 1950s male and female beauty, I'd say that they do a pretty amazing job demonstrating the beauty ideals of today. But these ideals are rather boring if you ask me, so perhaps what we mean by beautiful faces is that they are beautiful faces that don't fit the cultural standard of beauty: too angular a face, too prominent a nose, too light of eyebrows, too round a face.

So Theory 1 for the existence of our 'interesting' categorization is reaction. Krista and I are reacting against the dominant and rather unimaginative standard of beauty, attempting to broaden the definition. For example our affection for rounder faces might be a reaction to the widespread favoritism for women with oval faces. If you need proof of this trend just check out this Justin Beiber music video -- they cast a girl with a thin, oval face as Justin's love interest in spite of the fact that the girl's sidekick has a way more interesting round face. You can catch glimpses of this girl (wearing white) at second 13, 16, 20 (and throughout the video, but I assume that you don't want to watch any more of it than you have to). Another piece of evidence in favor of this theory is the fact that many of the actors and actresses we consider interesting come from foreign films or period dramas--two venues that are also relatively reactive to the dominant culture's trends and beauty standards.

Or perhaps it's not that intentional, perhaps Krista and I, in our small community, have simply developed a consistent taste for a particular look.

If so, we wouldn't be the first. Take a look at the above photo of Sam, Milner and Foyle from Foyle's War (that is to say Honeysuckle Weeks, Anthony Howell and Michael Kitchen). Note that they all have similar faces, in particular, deep set 'squinty' eyes. Foyle's War is another prime location for finding interesting faces, but the actors often share have these similar eyes, including Foyle's son Andrew, not pictured here. But the three pictured above are not supposed to be related to each other, so I think what has happened here is that the director or casting agent (or both) has developed a taste for people with squinty eyes. So Theory 2 is a the development of a local aesthetic.

Or, Theory 3, perhaps we imprinted on people with round faces with squinty eyes.

Take a look at this picture of Krista and me, and you can probably spot a motive for wanting to elevate the squinty eyed, round face beauty ideal. Perhaps in finding these interesting faces we've actually been seeing and being attracted to resemblances to ourselves and our family.

But I tend to favor Theory 4, that we're really on to something here and have had the luck to stumble upon the Platonic form of the beautiful.

----
*All very unscientifically selected from various 'hottest' and 'sexiest' lists floating around the Internet.

Prayer for Libya, Pakistan, and Toronto

2011-03-06T16:21:00.000-08:00

I led the intercessory prayer at my church this evening. Seems like it might be of general interest, so here's what I prayed:

Dear Lord, we thank you that you call us your family and that you care about our needs, great or small.

Please hear our prayers this evening as we pray for our world, our city, and our community.

O Lord, our hearts are heavy when we think about all the places in the world where the results of sin are clear and your peace seems very far away.

We pray specifically tonight for Libya where conflict between the government and protesters is resulting in violence, death and suffering. We pray for the people of Libya in this time of turmoil and uncertainty, that you would protect them and be near to them. We pray that your justice and your peace might prevail in Libya.

We pray for the other places in the Middle East where protests are taking place. God, we know that you hate evil and love the poor and oppressed, so we pray for your justice to come to the tyrants and for your mercy to the powerless. Above all, God, work through these events for their good, for the ultimate good of the people of the Middle East, most of whom do not know you. Sweep away the lies and the oppression and open their eyes to your truth.

We also pray for Pakistan where Shabahz Bhatti, a Christian politician who was recently assassinated because of his stand against the blasphemy laws used to persecute religious minorities. We pray for his family and for his fellow Pakistani Christians who are now fearful for their lives. Comfort them and give them courage in this terrible loss. Lord, thank you for the life of Shabahz Bhatti, who before he was killed said he knew the meaning of the Cross, and he was willing to follow the example of Jesus, to lay down his life for truth, for the sake of the marginalized people in Pakistan.

What a humbling witness! Lord, would you work on our hearts to bring about such a sacrificial attitude, and would you raise up many such Christian leaders in Pakistan and in the Muslim world willing to fight the good fight despite the terrible cost.

Lord, we can hardly imagine the lives of those for whom being a Christian means persecution and perhaps martyrdom. Nonetheless we pray for our brothers and sisters who suffer for your sake. Sustain them, protect them, and encourage them. We know that they are precious to you—let them feel your love despite their trials. May their lives bear much fruit as others witness their love for you.

We pray for the city of Toronto—so far from such scenes of persecution and yet still home to injustice and lies. May your justice prevail here too. We pray for our leaders, that they would care for the needy and oppressed of the city. That they would consider the needs of the poor and homeless more important than playing politics; speaking hard truths more important than twisting the facts for political gain. Lord, somehow this seems a harder thing to ask than peace in the Middle East—it too needs the miraculous influence of your spirit to accomplish it. But we ask it anyway, in faith.

Lord, we pray also for your spirit to come upon those in this city who do not know you. God, so many people here live their lives totally unconscious of any sort of larger purpose or meaning, unaware that you are real and that you love them. Lord this too seems impossible, but we pray for the salvation of Toronto. Please, work in the hearts of the people of this city, drawing them to yourself. Be the hound of heaven in their lives, pursue them like a lover. We know that you are the Great Fisherman, that you can catch a man "with an unseen hook and an invisible line long enough to let him wander to the ends of the world, and still bring him back with a twitch upon the thread."* Use this power, we pray.

Finally, Lord, we bring before you the needs of this community.

We pray for the search committee, that you would give them wisdom in their task, and for the Knox leadership that you would strengthen and encourage as they serve. Lord, I pray for a spirit of unity at Knox and for growth in this time of transition.

We pray for the health needs of our community. We pray for Andresa and for Pattra. We thank you for the good news that they received, and we pray for their continued healing.

Lord, would you give strength to students struggling with their workload and healing to those dealing with strained or broken relationships. Lord, in all of the trials of our life, will you be with us, helping us to have the right attitude, to act rightly towards our neighbors and to you? May our lives please you.

O Christ, we long for the day when you come again and all things will be made right. Along with creation we groan at the wrong in the world, and eagerly await your salvation.

Come soon, Lord Jesus.

Amen.

---
*A slightly modified quote from G. K. Chesteron's Father Brown story The Queer Feet, also referenced in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited.

Happy End of Term!

2010-12-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

This (by far the best comic that I have yet seen in the York newspaper--usually they're just terrible) is in honor of my poor history of psychology students who probably felt this way about their final. Tomorrow morning bright and early I'm off to torture...I mean proctor a make-up exam for those who missed a exam at some point in the semester, and from there back downtown to the Toronto bus station to take the Greyhound to Buffalo, and from there I fly to Chicago, and from there to LA, and from there home. Yup, I sure know how to take the direct route home. At least I'm not backtracking all the way to Boston this time!*

The upside to being a grad student is that you don't usually have scary end of semester exams--it's all papers and presentations. But the downside is that you aren't done when you finish your own work, you still have to do grading for the class you TA. So I'm heading home with 84 student papers to grade (or mark, as they call it here in Canada) as well as several unfinished projects of my own. Luckily the papers were electronically submitted, so they only take up space on my laptop, not in my luggage! At least it is an interesting paper topic: students are supposed to choose two women from the Feminist Voices website, one from the Women Past section which covers women from psychology's past and one from the Feminist Presence section, which profiles modern feminist psychologists and then write a fictional conversation between the two women about psychology, their research, their experience of being a woman in academia, or whatever! So it should be fun to see what the students have come up with. Some of the titles I've seen are quite clever (like "Hard Times at Harvard" or "Fierce Spirits Within").

If you have a couple minutes you should check out the profiles on the website. Each woman has photographs and a brief biography on their profile page, and some even have videos associated, like Psyche Cattell* (who not only has a video, but who also has the most awesome picture of her climbing a tree in full Victorian garb). Eleanor Gibson and Milicent Shinn also have profiles on the site, which I wrote. Did I mention that this website is the project of my advisor and that I've been responsible for adding most of the 'Women Past' profiles to the website? No? Ah, this must be one of the things I meant to blog about and didn't. Well, it debuted this summer at several conferences, and in the spring my colleagues will present on how to use the site in the classroom at a couple of psychology conferences. So marking the student papers is actually a meaningful task--I'll be looking to see if they understood the instructions, noting any consistent problems across papers that suggest we ought to modify the assignment in the future. But I had better get back to packing--despite the fact that I'm not carrying any student papers, I'm still having trouble closing my suitcase!

---

* True story. It was cheaper. Not recommended.

* If you're marveling about the odds of a psychologist named Psyche you should know that Psyche's father was James McKeen Cattell who was an early psychologist. But he didn't think she ought to be a psychologist--for a bit more of the story, see Psyche's profile!

Chapter 7: In which Elissa gets her M.A.

2010-04-30T14:57:00.000-07:00

It has been brought to my attention that I’ve been remiss in updating my adoring public on important life events. I hereby repent in dust and ashes and officially announce that I have completed my M.A.!

I successfully defended my master’s thesis in December and was most gratified by the positive reception I received from my thesis committee—they approved it with no revisions and even nominated it for a university thesis award! As far as statistics go, the thesis is called Eleanor Gibson and the Visual Cliff Myth: The Biography of a Scientific Object, is 151 pages long, and has 166 separate references. Whew! I don’t think it’s my best writing ever, and so don’t feel the fierce pride that I often do for my writing, however it represents a huge expenditure of time and effort. As you can imagine, I’m quite relieved and happy to have it finally finished.

What’s next for me? Well, as it turns out completing the thesis doesn’t portend huge life changes: I will stay on at York and complete my Ph.D., so about 3-4 years more. I’m happy about this, as I have gotten established in the program, have a church that I love, and feel at home in Toronto now. As for what’s next in terms of academic projects (i.e., for my dissertation.), I’m thinking I will probably leave Eleanor Gibson and her visual cliff behind and write on Milicent Shinn.

_____________

Eleanor J. Gibson _____________________Milicent Shinn

(1910-2002) _______________________ (1858-1940)

Milicent Shinn was a psychologist from California who published The Biography of a Baby in 1900, the first systematic observation of a baby’s early years conducted in America. Like my thesis, this (potential) dissertation project focuses on a woman psychologist who did developmental psychology, but I expect that, also like my thesis, Shinn’s biographical details will provide an interesting point of departure for investigating larger psychological and historical questions.

I am somewhat bemused to be choosing another developmental psychology topic, since I did rather poorly in my undergraduate developmental psychology class, and didn’t particularly like the subject matter (these two tend to go together in my experience). But it seems to have grown on me, and then again, who doesn’t like babies? If you need convincing of the charm of babies, just watch this trailer:

Eleanor Gibson photo credit: Dr. James Maas, Cornell University.

Christ the Companion

2010-03-01T07:57:00.000-08:00

Time for another poem from Sayers' Catholic Tales and Christian Songs!

When I've thrown my books aside, being petulant and weary,
And have turned down the gas, and the firelight has sufficed,
When my brain's too stiff for prayer, and too indolent for theory,
Will You come and play with me, big Brother Christ?

Will You slip behind the book-case? Will you stir the window-curtain,
Peeping from the shadow with Your eyes like flame?
Set me staring at the alcove where the flicker's so uncertain,
Then suddenly, at my elbow, leap up, catch me, call my name?

Or take the great arm-chair, help me set the chestnuts roasting,
And tell me quiet stories, while the brown skins pop,
Of wayfarers and merchantmen and tramp of Roman hosting,
And how Joseph dwelt with Mary in the carpenter's shop?

When I drift away in dozing, will You softly light the candles
And touch the piano with Your kind, strong fingers,
Set stern fugues of Bach and stately themes of Handel's
Stalking through the corners where the last disquiet lingers?

And when we say good-night, and You kiss me on the landing,
Will You promise faithfully and make a solemn tryst:
You'll be just at hand if wanted, close by here where we are standing,
And be down in time for breakfast, big Brother Christ?

----

I am always hesitant to add explanations to poems, feeling that they can and ought to stand on their own. However, since it's just possible that you won't recognize the brilliance of the poem on your own, I will be less cryptic than is my wont.

This poem has long been a favorite of mine, but at the moment I find it particularly consoling. Amidst the loneliness and vicissitudes of grad school, it is good to remember that I have an older brother, my companion on the journey, who just happens to also be the firstborn over all creation. I could wax psychological about the burden I often feel being the oldest child and how comforting I find the idea of someone else having all the responsibilities of the firstborn, but I think what I really mean is something like this:

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:14-16

But then again, this passage makes it sound more serious than I mean. These verses capture the 'solemn tryst' element, but not the playful, humorous Christ, who comes along when we are most fretful and cheers us.

It's this side of Christ that I think Sayers captures so well. I've been reading her passion plays 'The Man Born to be King' aloud with some friends and so I recognize this Jesus, the one who teases his disciples, laughs at his enemies and greets all of creation with a childlike joy. It's this temperament I desire; the ability to shrug off my cares and just play with Christ. I think the Hebrews passage gives a hint of why this is possible--we can delight in the pleasures of life because of the confidence that we have that Christ, our brother, has already won. We can be joyful and jubilant because he is. He has made it so that there is time for play and rest.

Image credit: Flickr

Back to School Reminder

2009-08-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

Just rediscovered this old quote from The Practice of the Presence of God. I read the book way back in my sophomore year of college, (thanks, Mindy!), but I keep coming back to the quote--I think it's just the right proportion challenging and consoling.

"However, we must always continue to labor, since in the life of the spirit, not to advance is to fall back. But those who have the wind of the Holy Spirit sail even while they sleep. If the skiff of our soul is battered by winds or tempests, let us awaken the Lord who is resting there. He will soon calm the sea."
--Brother Lawrence

Image credit: The Agora

What I did on my summer vacation

2009-06-19T23:48:00.001-07:00

I've gone far too long without boring you all with my master's thesis topic. I'm spending this summer writing my thesis on the visual cliff experiment, a famous psychology study. However, I'm feeling too burnt out on the subject to write a good summary just now. I would direct you to Wikipedia's summary of the experiment, or its profile of Eleanor Gibson, but unfortunately they are both a tad inaccurate and incomplete and I haven't yet gotten around to editing them. Instead why don't you watch this footage of babies on the visual cliff.

Sadly, it's only two minutes long and so doesn't show rats and chickens and goats being tested on the visual cliff like the complete version does, but at least you can get an idea what the apparatus looks like. If you really want to know how more about Eleanor Gibson or the visual cliff here's a fairly informative obituary and an online reprint of the original 1960 Scientific American article which first publicized the results of the study. Oh, and you can also look at some funny pictures of pigs and babies and goats on the cliff which were taken for an article in Life Magazine (click on any of the 'Related Images' to see the other pictures).

30 Years of Faithfulness

2009-06-16T23:10:00.001-07:00

Today my parents celebrated thirty years of marriage. We dug out their wedding pictures, laughed at the '70s fashions, and marveled at how ridiculously young and good looking they were. Thirty years is an awfully long time to be with the same person in our culture, and I'm so thankful for the attitude my parents have toward their marriage. I remember being wonderfully comforted as a child when my mom told me (prefaced with a "just in case you've ever worried about this...") that I didn't have to be afraid that they would ever get divorced; that divorce wasn't something they would ever consider.

The anomaly of my parents' long lasting marriage reminded me of my own counter-cultural lifestyle. After years of Christian schooling, having secular friends who don't really understand the motivation behind the whole waiting 'til marriage thing, or worse, ask me to explain the vagaries of the Christian dating scene, have made me particularly aware of just how weird it is. And sometimes it seems strange to me too: waiting for the right guy, or in the words of the Facebook group, "Saving Myself For Wild, Passionate, Awkward Honeymoon Sex" just isn't all it's cracked up to be. That's why I found writing 'Musings on Love' for ReZound, my church's arts event I helped plan, to be such a helpful exercise. My friend Erika and I wrote the Musings to give the event a theological focus, but also found the writing process to be an encouraging reminder of the theological basis for our sacrifices. Speaking of ReZound, you can see some pictures from that love-themed ReZound here (I'm in there somewhere, reading the Goforth's story), and hear one of the songs that was played here ('Peace for Today' should start playing automatically).

It's a bit long, but I thought that in honor of my parent's anniversary I would reproduce the scripture and Musings that were read at ReZound. They are broken up into three parts, which corresponded to the tripartite organization of the event: Creation, Fall, Redemption. For my Christian friends the Musings are meant as encouragement to continue in the sacrificial love we're called to. And to my to my dear non-Christian friends, please consider the following a first stab at explaining what I believe about love and why it has subversive (and at times uncomfortable) results.

Part I: Creation

Genesis 2:18-25

The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."
Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib. The man said,

"This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man."

For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

We were made for community. We need others. God made us in his image, male and female, with a potential for intimacy and relationship modeled on the community of his trinity. And it was good. We were able to be honest, naked, in perfect communion with God and each other.

But with this need for community came the potential for loneliness. God recognized this in his creation of Adam—being alone was not good for his human creature. Then came the fall. In the fall all relationships were fundamentally broken. Not only were we alienated from our creator, but we were alienated from our fellow creatures.

And so we are lonely. We crave intimacy; we want someone to truly know us; we want to be as vulnerable as in the Garden and feel full, shining, unconditional love. The fact is, we are not as good alone. Two are better than one, scripture says. A pair gets a better return for a day's work, has someone to help them recover from a fall, someone to keep them warm at night, someone who will help defend against a hostile world. A cord of three strands is not easily broken.

Part II: The Fall

Song of Solomon, 3:1-5

All night long on my bed
I looked for the one my heart loves;
I looked for him but did not find him.

I will get up now and go about the city,
through its streets and squares;
I will search for the one my heart loves.
So I looked for him but did not find him.

The watchmen found me
as they made their rounds in the city.
"Have you seen the one my heart loves?"

Scarcely had I passed them
when I found the one my heart loves.
I held him and would not let him go
till I had brought him to my mother's house,
to the room of the one who conceived me.

Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you
by the gazelles and by the does of the field:
Do not arouse or awaken love
until it so desires.

The brokenness of human relationships takes many forms. We are selfish in our loving, pursuing our own feelings rather than seeking the other’s best. We make love an idol. Love comes too early or too late. There is enmity between men and women; we envy each other, we fight. Sometimes even our best efforts at reaching out to each other are frustrated. One act of unkindness can lead to broken relationship. One broken relationship can divide a family, a church, or a nation.

God tolerates this brokenness, giving us instructions for dealing with the ugly consequences of our sin, like divorce and adultery. But Christ calls us to a radical new way: “You have heard it was said…but I tell you…” In this unexpected turn of events hateful thoughts and lustful fantasies are on par with murder and adultery! But the most difficult part of the new calling is the complete death to self modeled by Jesus. “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Our attitude is to be the same as the one "who being very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant." Impossible! Yet God promises his perfect love to sustain us as we struggle to approach relationships with humility and selflessness, ready to sacrifice.

Part III: Redemption

Ephesians 5:25-27
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

Revelation 21: 1-4
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

God promises a time when the trials of bad relationships will be washed away and we will stand in perfect relationship to him. This perfect knowing is foreshadowed in the good relationships on earth. Good marriages, families, and friendships offer us a taste of the joy of community in that awaits us in heaven, when the Lamb is united with his bride.

Meanwhile, we can act rightly in relationships, imitating Christ’s perfect agape towards his bride. Like Christ we want to die to self in our service of each other, while we wait patiently for the end of time when all things will be made right. Somehow through this self-death God is making us perfect: the filthy rags which are our acts of righteousness are transformed, clothing the Bride of Christ in clean linen. The time is coming when, with all of heaven and earth, we will say: "Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready."

----
The illustrations are Marc Chagall's version of the Ruth love story (Naomi and her daughter-in-laws; Ruth and Boaz on the threshing floor; Ruth and Boaz at the end of the story), which I found while looking for ReZound Powerpoint images. I just love how Chagall's depiction of the threshing floor scene communicates the complete awkwardness of that situation. See? Weird and counter-cultural even then! (Although I'm not advocating this!)

Pro-life Feminism

2009-03-01T09:24:00.000-08:00

This fall I led a short presentation and discussion on Pro-life feminism in the feminist research group I'm a part of in grad school. Needless to say, I was in the minority in my pro-life views, however the group was gracious and didn't kill me on the spot. I learned some interesting things about the debate in our discussion, and the topic certainly deserves further coverage in my blog. At the moment however, I thought I would simply share some of the best resources I found in my research for the presentation. Check out these links--they are all well worth it.

ProWomanProLife
This Canadian blog is a good representative of the modern pro-life movement: focused on changing society's attitudes towards abortion, rather than more punitive or inflammatory approaches. Taken as a whole, the blog articulately makes the case that being pro-life is a legitimate feminist view. The nine female contributors (all with very different personalities and reasons for being pro-life), combined with the blog format, allows for a flexible, multifaceted take on various women and abortion related issues. This also means that the posts are occasionally off-topic and humorous , which I think serves to bust some stereotypes about pro-lifer's seriousness and humorlessness.

Better Homes and Children
A fascinating article from a Christian perspective which analyzes the advertising in the '50s for their cleanliness, health and progress narratives, and argues that we've internalized these in our thinking about children and mothering. Amy Laura Hall shows how this thinking has contributed to a devaluing of life-- buying into the myth of the perfect child, the perfect family, has resulted in treating children as commodities, the creation of designer babies, and the rise of abortion. People choose to kill their own child rather than suffer imperfection (either imperfect timing which might disrupt their notion of a perfect life or an imperfect child). Hall describes the societal pressure that leads to this: "Legal, efficient forms of controlling birth changed parenthood from a probable given in marriage to a task that must be chosen responsibly and performed well. Aspiring young couples today often speak about parenthood as if each potential child, each possible life, must be justified—each conception brought about only under the best timing and after obviously adequate preparation." Hall doesn't spare the church, however, and her recent book, Conceiving Parenthood, chronicles the rise of this attitude in her own denomination--Methodist. Both the book and the article make extensive use of popular culture artifacts-- advertising, photographs, church publications, etc. making them engaging reading. (Unfortunately the online version of the article doesn't include the pictures--to see the pictures, find a print version of Books and Culture)

John Piper
John Piper has preached more than his share of sermons on abortion in the course of his ministry. I found one sermon by Piper, Abortion: Shall We Listen to Men or God?, particularly relevant and encouraging. I know it must be difficult to preach on this subject as a modern pastor, and I think Piper sets an excellent example for courage in speaking out.

Life Network
This doesn't exactly qualify as a resource, but Life Network is my local crisis pregnancy center, and so is what I'm generally thinking about when I talk about pro-life action. Over the years they're really done an excellent loving and caring for both mothers and their babies. You may recognize some familiar faces in this promotional video--Jasmin and Silvia with Jasmin's two kids, telling how Life Network was there for them.

Flipsyde--Happy Birthday
Also not really a resource, but a rap song on Youtube about the effects of abortion. Enough said.

Two Love Stories

2009-03-01T07:42:00.000-08:00

I read the following at an arts event at my church focused on the topic of Love.

They met on a ferry returning to Toronto from Niagara. Jonathan had just been to a Bible conference at Niagara-on-the-Lake; Rosalind been on a picnic with friends. A mutual friend introduced them. Rosalind was initially unimpressed by Jonathan’s rather shabby appearance, but intrigued by his enthusiasm. He was a student at Knox College involved in ministries all over Toronto; she was a talented artist in the final year of an art program.

They met again at Toronto Mission Union, where Jonathan regularly preached, one evening when Rosalind agreed to serve as the accompanist for a service. Rosalind took this opportunity to check out Jonathan’s Bible, which he had left on a chair near her. Finding the book marked all the way through and worn nearly to shreds, she immediately decided that Jonathan was the man she wanted to marry. Apparently Jonathan had similar feelings for Rosalind, since he asked her to marry him some months later. But there was a problem. Jonathan felt strongly that God had called him to China, but Rosalind had promised her late father, a famous artist, that no matter what, she would continue her artistic training in England. She decided marry Jonathan and go to China, but it meant family disapproval: her mother kicked her out of the house upon learning her plans.

And there would be other sacrifices. Shortly after their engagement Jonathan asked Rosalind if she would mind if he didn’t buy her an engagement ring—he had just bought a hundred more missionary booklets on the spiritual needs of China and he needed the money for postage to send them to churches all over Canada. Rosalind, whose family was quite well off, gulped, but agreed to forgo a ring.

They were married that fall and spent their first months together preparing to leave for China. On January 19, 1888, at Knox Presbyterian Church in Toronto, Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth dedicated their lives to God’s service in China. The huge church which could seat over one thousand (not this building, but the old Queen Street Knox building) couldn’t contain all the people who showed up for the service—Jonathan’s professors, fellow students, and the many poor people touched by his years of ministry in the East End Slums.

After a long train ride across Canada followed by a horribly rough voyage, the Goforths arrived in Shanghai, China. Rosalind, who was now pregnant, had brought several precious items with her: a self-portrait of her father and her mother’s china set, and set about making their small rented house comfortable. One night their dinner was interrupted by noise outside. Jonathan went to investigate and found that the roof of their house was on fire! After getting Rosalind to safety, Jonathan ran back into the house to see what he could save. He grabbed his study Bible, their money jar, her sewing machine and his language study notes. Rosalind’s paintings, china and their wedding gifts all burned.

This incident was echoed six years later, just before the Goforths were about to leave for home on their first furlough. A nearby river rose, covering the mission house with eight feet of water. The Goforths and their children could do nothing but wait on the roof. The only thing salvageable was their organ.

Perhaps it was just as well that they learned early to hold loosely to possessions, for one of Jonathan’s favorite evangelistic methods took a heavy toll on the family’s worldly goods. After several years of living in Chinese-style houses with dirt floors and smoky interiors, the Goforths decided to build a Western-style house. Taking advantage of the neighbors’ curiosity, the Goforths offered tours of their home, which were preceded by a sermon by Jonathan and a punctuated by a hymn played on the organ by Rosalind. As they escorted groups of 20 through the house, the tourists would inevitably take souvenirs of their visit: cutlery, pictures, combs, the children’s clothing, anything that wasn’t hidden away. For years Rosalind found herself unable to keep a pair of scissors in the house. For an extended period leading the tours took up their entire day. At the peak of this activity the Goforths counted and found that they had given tours to 1,800 men and 500 women in a single day! But it was worthwhile: their hospitality meant open doors in villages for miles around, and there were several new believers as a result of their work.

But there were more difficult things to cope with than lost scissors. Soon after their arrival in China, their first child, Gertrude, died of dysentery. She was less than a year old. Gertrude was not the only child they would bury in China. Their second born, Donald, died as the result of a fall. Florence, from meningitis, Grace from malaria and Constance from typhoid. In all, the Goforths lost five out of their eleven children in China.

And it was not only their children’s lives that were endangered by their service in China. In June of 1900, they received a letter from the American consul, telling them to flee for their lives—it was the Boxer Rebellion and Westerners all over the country were being killed. Unfortunately the letter had taken three weeks to arrive, and the escape route that the consul recommended was now cut off. The Goforths and the eight other local missionaries bid farewell to their tearful converts (who were themselves in danger of being killed), loaded their belongings into hired oxcarts, and set out west, praying that the route they had chosen was still open.

However, a week into their journey, at village where they stopped for the night an angry crowd surrounded the inn, pelting its gates with rocks. After waiting several hours for the mob to disperse, they had no choice by to move on, so, after a prayer, they loaded up the oxcarts and set out into the crowd. Rosalind held a pillow over six-month-old Wallace, attempting to protect him from the rocks showering down on them. When the crowd began to shoot the oxen, Jonathan jumped from the cart shouting “Take everything, but don’t kill!” In response he received a blow from a sword to his neck, which somehow did not decapitate him, followed by a deep cut to the back of the head that penetrated his scull. When Jonathan raised his arms to protect ward off the blows, the man with the sword stabbed him repeatedly in the forearm. Bleeding profusely, Jonathan lost consciousness.

When he regained consciousness, Jonathan saw that Rosalind and the children were still safe in the cart—the crowds had been momentarily distracted as they fought each other to loot the carts. In spite of the fact that Rosalind had lost track of three year old Ruth, at Jonathan’s insistence she quickly abandoned the cart and they fled towards a nearby village with their remaining children. Pursued by members of the mob who were still pelting them with stones, Rosalind shoved the baby into Jonathan’s arms and turned to face their attackers, saying “Kill me, but spare the children.” Taken aback by her grasp of Chinese, the men hesitated. Taking a look at Jonathan, who was covered in blood and barely able to stand, the leader of the group said “We’ve killed her husband, let her go” and they returned to robbing the carts. The Goforths were taken in by the nearby Muslim villagers, and able to recover enough to continue on their journey.

This is not nearly the end of the story of their escape from China. As they continued on they found Ruth, lost track of Paul, their 9 year old, for several days, found Paul and experienced God’s miraculous provision of a bottle of antiseptic, which was able to save Jonathan from gangrene. Several times they were stopped by angry mobs, but since all their possessions had already been stolen, they were allowed to go on their way. In one case, a group of bandits who had intended to rob them provided them with protection instead. Their story was not typical: the Boxer Rebellion killed more than 32,000 Chinese Christians and several hundred foreign missionaries, including many children.

Although the Goforths left for Canada with nothing but the clothes on their back, they returned to China as soon as the rebellion died down and continued work there for many years, converting many Chinese and sparking one of the biggest revivals in history. Finally, when Jonathan’s sight failed him and Rosalind’s ill health began to be too much for her, they returned to Canada, looking more or less as you see them here—radiant, white haired saints, glowing in the assurance of the good work well done and still burning with zeal for China. Jonathan spoke in churches around Canada, and Rosalind wrote his biography, chronicling their adventures, which is how we come to know so much about their story.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the Goforth’s love story, to be perfectly honest. The struggles of their life show up in their writings veiled by an enthusiastic pietism that saw life as a series of answered prayers and lessons from God. Yet I know from my grandparents’ experience on the mission field the drastic, destructive impact that these trials can have on a family, and on a couple. The Goforth’s cute, chick flick-worthy love story was interrupted by God’s calling. And yet he didn’t spare them danger or sorrow, seeming more than willing to destroy his servants in fulfilling his purpose. There is something very wrong about the death of their five children, and I don’t like the ways in which Jonathan prioritized ministry above Rosalind, even though I suppose she had fair warning, since before they married, he asked her to promise that she would always allow him to put God and his work first, even above her.

Yet there is also something very right about how Jonathan and Rosalind were caught up in a greater love story, and their small love story made more glorious as a result. The story of God’s desperate love for the nameless Chinese peasant with no chance of hearing the gospel is no less beautiful than the Goforth’s love for each other, even if it is harder for us to grasp. The lives of Jonathan and Rosalind Goforth, for whom this hall is named, offer us a glimpse of the strange and wonderful consequences of the collision of human and divine love.
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Photos:
1) A typical ferry of the time.
2) Icon dedicated to the Chinese Christians killed in the Boxer rebellion.
3) The Goforths circa 1935. Courtesy Wheaton College.

Bibliographical Sources:
Benge, Janet & Geoff. (2001). Jonathan Goforth: An Open Door in China. Seattle: YWAM Publishing.

Worldwide Missions Missionary Biographies. Rosalind Goforth (taken from Goforth of China)
http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/biomrsgoforth.html

Goforth, Rosalind. (1921). How I know God Answers Prayer: The Personal Testimony of One Lifetime. http://www.whatsaiththescripture.com/Promises/I_Know_God_Answers.html

Lully, Lulla...

2009-02-28T20:48:00.001-08:00

In case there was ever any doubt that my family is cool, I offer this picture of my siblings as evidence of said coolness. That's Adelle on the

oboe, Erik on the cello, and Krista on the violin, engaging in the spontaneous playing of Christmas carols.

It was quite a musical Christmas--multiple occasions of caroling, the playing of a game with friends that required the singing of songs containing a given word ('Mary' and 'lamb' were very successful words, given our sacred music background), and of course, singing at our family New Year's Eve liturgical service that Adelle put together last year and is fast becoming a tradition.

Another conclusion from this Christmas: the Coventry Carol and All My Heart this Night Rejoices are amazing carols! That's not to say that they are my exclusive favorites, but they would fall into the category of favorite carols that my family sings. If we're talking about carols that the Choir of Kings College, Cambridge sings, well, that's another story. I don't even know that favorites are possible in that case. However, on the occasion of decorating Knox's Christmas tree and finding that almost the only ornaments available were apples (???) , my choir-loving friend and I discovered that there multiple Christmas carols involving apples: Adam Lay Ybounden and Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. Both have been sung by the King's College folks and rank high on my list of favorite carols. Check out these last two links to see some adorable and hilarious choir boys!

Congratulations, Gordon!

2008-10-01T10:53:00.001-07:00

I love Gordon College. I recently found a blog that keeps track of all the interesting projects the faculty, students and alumni are engaged in, from sculpture to service. Reading these posts always makes me fond of the place. But today I’m particularly proud of my alma matter. Yesterday was the dedication of the Ken Olsen Science Center at Gordon—a facility that has been a long time coming, and was desperately needed. I explored the building when I visited campus this summer and was quite impressed. I’m so pleased that my friend, Dr. Dorothy Boorse, will have such a great place to conduct her biology labs and research, and that all my old professors in the psychology department will have the teaching and experimental facilities they deserve.

But I’m also proud because Francis Collins spoke at the Science Center dedication. Francis Collins, the director of the Human Genome Project, has been someone that I’ve admired ever since I read this interview in National Geographic in which Collins is interviewed by an atheist. Collins is just so ridiculously smart and articulate and gracious. Take, for example, the start of his answer to a question referring to the idea of "God the semi-competent." Collins says “That's delightful—and probably blasphemous! An alternative is the notion…” Somehow in this succinct answer he manages to convey his sense of humor combined with unapologetic disagreement, which he then follows by offering of the Christian perspective for the questioner’s inspection. What a great model for apologetics! I also uncovered an interview where he pretty much kicks butt on NPR--no easy feat! Best of all, he’s a great example of a Christian taking science seriously and doing it well—he’s at the top of his field by any measure.

All that to say that I was thrilled to hear that Collins was speaking at the dedication at Gordon. If I were living anywhere close by, you can bet I would have been there like a teen girl at a Jonas Brothers concert (well, maybe not quite so hysterical) to hear him speak on Genomics and the Human Condition in person! As it was, I had to content myself with the podcast of the three talks he gave (search for Gordon College in the iTunes Store, or click here). Now that I’m done with those, I need to get me a copy of his autobiography: Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. Good stuff! Way to go, Gordon!

Sacramental Summer

2008-08-20T20:28:00.000-07:00

Ask me what I did this summer and the most honest answer is lots of child care!
Silvia's young nieces Keara and Sierra were staying with her for the summer, and so were often at our house. Though this made life hectic, it was also brought us a lot of joy. As you can see by their pictures, the girls are as cute as anything, and they are full of personality (not to say attitude!) as well.

Keara is 7, really likes crafts, and is just learning to read. She's very much a people person, and alarmingly precocious when it comes to picking up on complex family dynamics. She's a self-proclaimed tomboy and likes playing with her boy cousins and doing outdoorsy things like biking.

Sierra is 3, likes to pet our rabbits, have tea parties and loves the colors pink and purple. While she doesn't know her colors yet (except for her two favorite), she does know the names of everyone in our family, which Keara hasn't quite mastered yet (those three grown up girls are so hard to keep straight!).

Keara got to go to Noah's Half-Day Camp, our church's VBS, along with a whole batch of Cody's friends and relations. Tito, Adelle and I taught second grade boys, aka 'The Monkeys'. What a week!

The whole Noah's Crew: Lianna, Izzy, Ariel, Cody, Tito, Keara, Danny and Kayla!

Adelle teaches the creation story using Playdoh and little plastic animals and plants--the boys got to help tell the story by putting on the relevant creatures. Naturally, they were totally enthralled. Not to brag or anything, but when it comes to teaching Bible stories, Adelle + Elissa = pure genius! How many people do you know who've taught the story of the bronze snake lifted up in the wilderness--complete with prop snake and cross? Or who brought a dead frog to talk about the resurrection (don't worry, it was all formaldehyded, left over from our homeschooling days). Adelle and I have really got to coauthor a SS curriculum one of these days!

It's all about choosing the sweet OT stories (and by sweet I mean bloody) which are so neglected these days, and putting them in a form which is memorable and appealing to little boys. I have had this backfire though--my retelling of Herod's gruesome fate (you know, his brain was eaten by worms) was a great hit with the boys in my Sunday School class, but the parents were less than thrilled. But hey, in my view it's better to risk grossing out the parents to than to let the kiddos think that the Bible is boring. Which is a real danger when modern Sunday School/VBS curriculum packages seem to have a problem grasping the concept of a Bible story. The Lord's Prayer is not a story, people! There is no narrative structure to the Sermon On the Mount--same goes for the Fruit of the Spirit! [Sadly, all real-life examples]. Jael and the tent peg? Or Ehud's swordplay? Now we're talking!

The wild monkeys! The VBS theme was space, and yes, Adelle and I were sucked into the VBS decorating wars! That's why if you look closely at this picture (click to expand) you'll see a rocketship on the moon, and little monkey astronauts, complete with 3-D plastic helmets floating about. There's nothing like those huge rolls of colored paper that you only see in the church craft closet to bring out your competitive side! Yeah, I'm a little embarrassed about it now, but I know if I was teaching VBS tomorrow, I would once again be sucked into the VBS Decorating Cartel. In my defense, at least the decor did serve a purpose--the space monkeys were the prizes for memorizing the Bible verses from the week (yet again thrilling the parents). Rather than memorize several disconnected verses, Adelle and I chose to go with Colossians 1:15-17, so the boys got to memorize these kicking verses:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities;
all things were created by him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Which actually brings me back to what I meant this post to be about, which is the some of the cool things that happened this summer.

The first is that Cody got baptized! Here he is afterward, walking out of the ocean toward his mom.
Cody's been following God since he was young, but at 9 years old, felt he was ready to publicly profess his faith. He'd recently watched I Am Legend and was moved by the main character's self sacrifice, which reminded him of Jesus. We are all so proud of him!

The second is that Jasmin and Juan got married! Jasmin is one of Cody's cousins, and one of the neighborhood kids I grew up with. She has two adorable little kids, Jojo and Jackie, and Juan and she have been together for quite a while. So it was great to see them making a commitment to each other, not something encouraged by their family or culture.

The third is that near the end of the summer Keara asked my mom "Jeanne, how much does it cost to be baptizmized?" When asked why she wanted to baptized, she gave answers which demonstrated a good understanding of what it means to follow Jesus, so, with her parents' permission, she was actually baptized before heading home. Here she is with the baptismal font.

All in all it was a most sacramental summer!

Tree or Rhizome?

2008-03-13T20:48:00.001-07:00

In my theory of psychology class this term I read the following:

In philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari (1980/1987) applied the metaphor of a root in order to describe various forms of thought. Metaphysics was described as the root of a tree in which everything was derived from a single source or first cause. Modernity was characterized as favoring a fasciculate root, a system of small roots with many sources. (Teo, pg. 138)

Got it so far? I thought not. In other words, metaphysics is like a tree, where there is one main root, with smaller roots branching off, whereas modernity is like grass, which has multiple small roots.

Now, I’m not sure what exactly the justification is for saying that modernity has multiple small roots, and I don’t think that metaphysics and modernity are that distinct. If I were creating a model of thought using a tree it would go something like this: Philosophy is the root is the root of the modernist tree. Philosophy has produced a diverse body of knowledge, including the sciences and the humanities. Each of these fields of study has split into numerous specializations, however it is still possible to trace each branch back to its roots, which is ultimately metaphysics—those ancient conversations about the nature of what is. Nice, right? It’s all very neat and tidy and logical.

Teo continues:

However, postmodernity was described as a rhizome, a stem organ in which branches in the air could grow again into the soil, where old parts died out and where new branches were formed elsewhere. (pg. 138)

My response: Ugh! What a mess!

Even worse, Teo says that modern psychology may be best characterized by the rhizome, given how disunified it is. According to Teo, a postmodern approach to psychology would challenge the “logocentric” notions of cause and effect and “the idea that the person was the center of awareness, an integrated whole, and an entity that opposed other entities” (Teo, pg. 138).

Now, I’m not going to go of on a rant about postmodernism, as much as I’m tempted. I do think that it leads to a deadly epistemological chaos, as the analogy of the rhizome so perfectly illustrates, and that nothing could be worse for psychology than this sort of nonsense.

But let’s consider the tree and the rhizome for a moment, evaluating them simply on their aesthetic merits.

The tree stretches towards the sky for light, and burrows deep into the earth to find water. It has both form and flexibility, trunk and leaves. It is symmetrical. It is strong. Things can be built with its wood. It provides shade. It bears fruit. Children climb it. Birds nest in it.

The rhizome, well… its ability to grow all directions and not be killed by a single cut is pretty useful. There are a few rhizomes, like potatoes and ginger, which I would hate to give up. But in terms of aesthetics, it’s not going to win any beauty prizes. We’re talking about crabgrass here, people! Although the rhizome is certainly an apt analogy for postmodernism, it strikes me as a pretty poor mascot choice. No contest, the tree wins!

Now the only problem with this whole little exercise is that I’m not sure I really want to be chief cheerleader for modernism, or give it a monopoly on the tree. While a neat hierarchical tree is useful for describing science (or church history, for that matter), Biblical trees strike me as wilder and more symbolic. Of course there’s the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Genesis, and the Tree of Life in Revelation whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. And there's that comforting image of the wise man as a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. No, I wouldn’t trade the biblical trees for modernist tree, despite its charming simplicity.

But perhaps a premodern, medieval tree* would do the trick?

Yes, that’s more like it. Much better than a rhizome!

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Teo, T. (2005). The critique of psychology: From Kant to postcolonial theory. New York: Springer Science.

*Tree by Tolkien.

Ghosts and Grad school

2008-03-08T16:29:00.000-08:00

I rarely buy new CDs, generally sticking to my dear old favorites, which more often then not are classical, which limits somewhat the selection of new CDs that are relevant (how many interpretations of Bach do you actually need?). However, I have a new favorite CD! It’s is Ghosts and Spirits, by Phil Woodward, available for purchase here, or to see the lyrics or hear the music, see the CD site, here. It’s inspired by C.S. Lewis’ book The Great Divorce, and so each song corresponds to a different scene, sentiment or character in the book. For example:

The man who refuses “bleeding charity” because he wants his good works to count for something.
The woman who is consumed with love for her dead son, and is thus unable to accept divine love.
The man constantly fighting the lizard on his back, who, finally surrendering the battle to another, finds the monster transformed.
The artist who has forgotten his first love—why he began painting—and wants to paint heaven.
The saint who, unrecognized for her simple acts on earth, is enthroned as a glorious queen in heaven.

But summarizing these more direct correspondences to book doesn’t do justice to the originality
of the lyrics. These characters, whether ghosts or spirits, merely provide the inspiration for the songs, but then are developed further and differently than in the book. Woodward ties in other Lewis references or ideas, such as one character who says about the grey town “I know it’s not good but it’s safe”, turning Lewis’s description of Aslan on its head (“Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.”).

The song that most causes me to exclaim “How true, how like life!” (to quote E. Nesbit) is one that that is only loosely inspired by the book. I don’t have any evidence for this, but I suspect this song was influenced more by The Abolition of Man, Lewis’ comment on the state of education. It’s a recitative in positively Screwtapesque tones called Thirst for Water, Inquiry for Truth. You really have to hear the intonation to really appreciate it, but here are the lyrics:

Thank God (in an abstract sense) that we’ve
Mustered up the courage to leave
The battered ranks of the naïve.
Remember that angst, that earnestness,
That intellectual distress,
That accompanied our youthfulness?
My friends, ’tis clearly a priori
That cultures espouse a meta-story
A veritable intellectual quarry
From which they draw their sense of shame,
Their paradigmatic value claims,
And their institutes of praise and blame.
But we, the academic heroes, rise
Above their existential cries
For we need no answers to be wise:
For wisdom lies neither in value nor fact,
But in modesty, honesty, courage, and tact
And in confessing what our academies have lacked,
Their myopic, close-minded approach to thought,
All the unnecessary battles they’ve fought,
And their delightfully one-sided concept of God.
So, tirelessly toil we, on their behalf
And rejoice in the day when they give even half
Of the heart we so nobly put into our craft.
And together we’ll stand, amidst a whole host
Of trivial drivel, and raise high a toast
To the death of the things that matter the most.

I reproduce the text here because it is scarily close to the attitude that I've found to be prevalent in grad school. I don’t mean to single out any of my colleagues, but I think it’s a hazard that we in history of psychology are particularly prone to. Not only can we cast ourselves as “the academic heroes” in terms of the misguided Whig history of yesteryear, but we can also do so by comparing ourselves to modern empirical psychology, which we see as still in thrall to the positivist myth.

But while presentism (dismissing the past as ignorant and regarding modern views as the correct standard for judging the past) has been at least been recognized as a hazard in history, what most worries me about this view is its relativism. For all their faults, at least historians of the past were searching for an objective truth, valued fact and had a purpose for their inquiry. I think most of my professors would argue that truth, value and morality are all constructed, products of our meta-story, the metanarrative of our culture, or perhaps our particular sub-culture (Christianity, for me, of course). What we are to do as historians is uncover the metanarratives of the past, the meaning which people constructed for their lives; we cannot judge the past by modern standards, we are not looking for any sort of objective, universal truth. I could not disagree with this view more. While I acknowledge some of the insights of postmodernism and I agree that what sense people in the past made of their lives is essential for understanding their history, I am convinced that we must be able to make judgments about the truth and falsity of their views. Just because they believed something (that the four humors controlled health, for example) does not make it “true for them”, a category above criticism. Obviously this calls for a post in its own right, and perhaps I’ll do that sometime in the future. But meanwhile check out Ghosts and Spirits and enjoy some great music!

P.S. The first image in the post is the CD cover, but the others are Great Divorce-themed images that I found on the web. The second image is from this blog where someone posted photos they took of an art show and there are several other Great Divorce-themed works there. The third is from Flicker, and is the work of an artist who has many other really nice pieces, some of them of Narnia. Both are really worth a look!

A California Christmas

2008-01-17T18:11:00.000-08:00

We had a lovely Christmas. Numerous walks to the beach, carol singing, gingerbread house-making, and all manner of other traditional Rodkey activities. Of course, after snowy Toronto, I particularly appreciated the California sunshine.

Adelle sings the Messiah, I watch Erik carve the roast something or other, and Dad and Adelle play and sing for Christine.

Silvia, Cody and I go on a horseback ride. We could see the ocean from the mountain we rode up!

Christmas Eve Gingerbread (really Graham cracker) house building--a long and glorious tradition! This year Krista and I made an English cottage, complete with topiaries and a folly.

A rainy day walk to the beach with Cody.

On New Year's Eve we all congregated at Anne's house for a rousing game of Scrabble.

There's nothing quite like being home!

Real vs. Fictional Canadians

2007-12-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

I have recently become a fan of Due South, a TV show that ran from 1994 to 1999. Due South is a detective show, set in Chicago featuring Benton Fraser, a Canadian Mountie and Ray Vecchio, an American police detective. I initially watched the show with a British friend of mine because I thought it would be fun to laugh at some Canadian and American stereotypes together, but before I knew it I was hooked and begging the York library for Season Two (inexplicably they only have the first season!). True, it can be a bit over the top, but in general Due South doesn’t take itself seriously, and it has some great characters and dialog.

But watching Due South has created a problem for me, a problem of expectations. Or perhaps it’s just revealed my expectations about Canadians, since I think Due South is funny in large part because it taps in to some real Canadian stereotypes, most obviously in the character of Fraser. Fraser has a propensity for jumping off high drops, getting injured in heroic ways, saving damsels in distress, and generally being all around artic he-man. But what really distinguishes him from his American counterpart, (besides women constantly swooning over him, of course), is his unfailing politeness. Besides his more obvious boy scout (helping old ladies across the street) and perfect gentleman (holding doors for rude women) antics, Fraser is polite and courteous to everyone he encounters, whether little children or mafia members. His trademark “Thank you kindly” is delivered sincerely whether the audience is receptive or not.

While I didn’t expect Canadians to jump up and hold doors for me, I’ve been surprised by the level of rudeness I’ve encountered. I hope that this is, as I suspect, more characteristic of Toronto than of more rural Canada, but I’m afraid it might be more widespread. In the rush of a big city one expects all kinds of bumps but the kind of rudeness I’m talking about has more to do with anti-American sentiment, and with what appears to be a concerted effort to distance themselves from the kindly neighbor image Americans have of them.

Of course I have had the misfortune to arrive in conjunction with the American presidential race, and so Canadians are even more interested in American politics than usual. This means that I’ve been on the receiving end of more than my share of political opinion, usually accompanied by some sweeping generalizations about America (almost always negative). I find this tiresome, not least because the folks who lavish their opinion on me often appear to expect me to agree with them, and join them in bashing my country, my president, or my fellow Americans.

But what I really object to is more subtle ways in which Canadians define themselves against America. Things that in America we would call capitalism, or racism, or big box superstores, in Canada, are labeled American evils. Really, anything that’s negative can be relabeled as a distinctively American problem, making Canada out to be morally superior. Racism? That’s a product of America’s long racist history and misguided “melting pot” philosophy; here in Canada we are inclusive and multicultural, thus no racism here! The irony is that Canada’s legendary tolerance appears not to extend to Americans. Canadians would never dream of being as blatantly rude about any other nationality as they are to Americans. It generally goes something like this: “… and that’s why Americans are all so ignorant/racist/fat.” Substitute Iraqis or Indians or Italians and the offensiveness of the blanket statement becomes clear.

The really striking thing is when Canadians are anti-American even when it contradicts their own self interest. When the Canadian dollar reached parity with the American dollar this September there were several jubilant newspaper articles illustrated with variations on the theme of a Loon beating the tar out of an Eagle. Canadians rejoiced at their currency “beating” the American currency, even though the dollar’s parity and America’s economic woes will actually have a cumulatively negative outcome on the Canadian economy. If I were a Freudian, I’d diagnose a severe inferiority complex! Much of this anti-American sentiment appears to arise from some lingering insecurity about the value of Canadian culture. Defining oneself against America is an easy solution to questions of identity.

This makes me sorry (read with a Canadian pronunciation). I like patriots, whether of hometown, state or country, being one myself, on all counts. I had hoped to find people here who loved Canada for what it is, not for what it isn’t. I’ve appreciated my new Canadian friends who’ve pushed back against my negative reactions to certain aspects of Canadian culture, who’ve taught me about curling and milk in a bag, and who’ve almost convinced me that French labeling on food products is rather endearing and that one and two dollar coins makes the most sense in the world. I want to meet more people like this, who love their country and can give me good reasons to love it, too.

Thanksgiving

2007-11-30T20:11:00.000-08:00

Ah, America! That was my reaction upon arriving in Chicago for a whirlwind celebration of "American Thanksgiving" with my sisters. I don't have many emotional ties to the Midwest, yet I found myself inordinately fond of the quintessentially American small town of Wheaton, where Adelle goes to school. The train that goes through the middle of town, the small shops on the main street, the signs of patriotism, the friendly people, all these made me feel that I had come home. Even the aspects of America that one hardly considers positive, such as commercialism and chain stores I found endearing quirks upon returning to my homeland. Here I know the culture, understand the people I encounter and am not likely to be disgraced by something as simple as buying a meal--accidentally giving a quarter when I mean to give a Loonie.

The only thing tempering our joy at our reunion was a paper on Kierkegaard Krista had to write, but we still managed to fit in lots of time together. We toured Wheaton College, met Adelle's friends, saw her church, danced around outside when it snowed, and went on many walks around town. Thanksgiving Day was celebrated with Adelle's friends Liz and Brynna and their inimitable parents. Adelle and Co. had masterminded a full Thanksgiving meal for us and pulled it off with only a small apartment kitchen and utensils. There were 9 of us and 9 pies--so enough for leftovers for days to come!

Lots to be thankful for. What made me think of writing a post was that this time last year I meant to post on something I was really grateful for. Last November I had just retaken the GRE and improved 160 points--a phenomenal change for a score out of 1600! I didn't know whether that would be enough to get me into grad school, but I was so thankful for God's grace in helping me to improve that much. Today I am nearly done with my first semester of grad school--paid do something I love. Regardless of the challenges involved in academic life, now's a perfect time to remind myself of my gratitude to the giver of all good and perfect gifts.

An amazing movie

2007-10-09T18:50:00.000-07:00

One of the perks of life at York is that the library has an extensive multimedia collection -- aka movies! So far I've watched Junebug, Romeo + Juliet, Capote, The Treasure of Sierra Madre, The Queen, and The Good German. Of all of these, Junebug was the best. It's a quirky independent film which portrays the South without caricature (although be warned, it earns its R rating for sexual content).

But Junebug lost its top standing this weekend when I watched Sophie Scholl: The Final Days. This German language movie follows Sophie Scholl, a leader in the WWII youth resistance movement "The White Rose," through her arrest, interrogation, trial and execution. The script was based on survivor interviews and recently recovered court transcripts, so part of the film's fascination comes from its close correspondence to reality. The intensity of Sophie Scholl, however, comes from the clash of ideas, as Sophie spars with her Nazi interrogator. Sophie's courageous stand for, as she puts it, "decency, morals and God" is a challenge to the modern viewer. For maximum contrast (although not necessarily maximum enjoyment) I recommend watching The Good German --a sort of bad Casablanca--in close proximity to Sophie Scholl.

Thanks to Andrew Coffin of World Magazine for the reviews of both Junebug and Sophie Scholl which occasioned their inclusion on my To Watch list.

The Orphanage

2007-09-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

I promised to write about the orphanage so here it is, despite the fact that I've been back home in the states for almost two months now. Well, actually, I'm not in the US right now, I'm in Canada! But that's another story for another blog post (hopefully soon).

Mindy got connected to the orphanage by meeting the orphanage director, Almaz, at church. Almaz is an amazing woman, worth telling about in her own right. She is Ethiopian but left the country when she was young, fleeing famine with her family. She lost some family members in the arduous journey, which ended in a refugee camp in Sudan (the direction of refugees movement is exactly opposite now). From there she came to America, was educated here and eventually became a social worker. She was with an adoption agency, and was saddened by how often a child that was already promised to an adoptive couple died. As she grieved with these couples, she became interested in working on the other end, where the orphans were originating. She returned to Ethiopia to run an orphanage

We visited the orphanage every Saturday during my visit to bring treats and read books to the orphans to help them learn English. The English learning is with the very tangible goal of being able to talk with their adoptive families. The kids were already quite impressive, with some of the older kids able to sound out printed English words. What words did they know best? Down to the toddlers it was: "Father" "Mother" "Brother" and "Sister".

The orphanage functions more as holding/transition zone for orphans soon to be adopted than a traditional orphanage. This means that it is much smaller than most government orphanages (max 40 children), and very Western. In this case, Western means that there are very strict sanitary and child care rules (propping bottles is a firing offense) and that the whole place is decorated beautifully. The children's rooms look straight out of Pottery Barn Kids (and some items are!). Beautiful murals decorate the walls, coordinating with the theme in each room, even the infants' bedrooms. It's hard to appreciate how miraculous this is until you've spent some time in Ethiopia, adjusting your expectations to 3rd world decor-- dirt and mismatched, cheap furniture.

The children are dressed in nice Western clothes and could be straight from the US, if it weren't for their shorn hair (a precaution against lice when they arrive) and their slight build. Most of them look about at least two years younger than they are, but then that's true of most children in Ethiopia. The contrast wasn't clear until the 8 year old boy of a visiting American family (a prospective adoptive family) joined us for 'Duck Duck Goose.' I feared for the orphans' safety as he chased them around the circle, considerably bigger and heavier than even the 12 year olds. True, his father plays for the NFL, as I later found out, so he was probably far above average for his age, built more on the lines of a linebacker than a child. In any event, I was holding my breath, expecting every second to see an expert tackle crush a delicate orphan.

I wish I could show you pictures of the kids, they speak for themselves: heartstrings-tugging babies, chubby, grinning toddlers, beautiful, wistful older children. They had beautiful names, too, Biblical ones (Henok [Enoch], Bingiam [Benjamin], Eob [Job], Rute [Ruth], Samaraweet [Samaritan], Bethlehem, Ephriam) and names with meanings that spoke of better times, times when they belonged to someone who loved them (Bereket [blessing], Amarech [her beauty], Tarikwa [her story]). Then, of course, there is B-i-dulu (by his luck), a perfect name for an orphan who arrived at the orphanage as a four pound baby and lived "by his own luck."

It wasn't nearly so hard as I understand it would have been in a state orphanage, with babies lying in bare cribs, desperately latching on to you when you pick them up, but it was still hard to see kids without parents, period. There had been a recent influx of babies while I was there, and even though there were several workers holding babies, it seemed like we were one person short: a baby was always fussing. I played with and held as many as I could, but it was painful to set down a baby, knowing they would soon be crying. Mindy sometimes drives Almaz to pick up babies, and they had recently picked up a 3 pound baby girl from the government orphanage. The orphanage had called Almaz and asked her to come pick up this baby, knowing they didn't have the resources to keep her alive. Very good care was being taken of her, but it grieved me to know that she didn't have the best resource for growth: a mother to breastfeed her.

But what was most heartbreaking was the causes of their orphaning. Some were true AIDS orphans, tragic enough by itself. But worse was the extremely common situation where at least one parent was still alive and just not able to financially support their child. Mindy told me about a pair of brothers (a charming toddler and a radiant baby) that she had picked up with Almaz. The mother was young and healthy still, but living in a dismal room behind a pub, clearly not living a lifestyle that would keep her in good health for very much longer. Mindy said she thought that their mother had been a very good mother, because both boys were so clean and their teeth were good. It was heartbreaking to reflect on uprooting such a natural arrangement, replaced it with an unnatural situation, no matter how wonderful the adoptive family or orphanage.

In all this I could totally sympathize with Mindy's distress. She, however, has to bear it longer and it hits close to home. Just a few days before I left, Hobtom came to Mindy with a request. She had a neighbor who had three children and AIDs. He wanted to give them up. Was there room for them in Almaz's orphanage? Mindy drove the family and Hobtom over to the orphanage for an interview, and listened while the father told his story. His wife had gone on a small boat to Yemen, an illegal method of immigration to the Muslim countries where there are more jobs for servants available. The boat had capsized, killing 40 people. His wife had drowned. Left on his own, the man had contracted AIDS. Now he was willing to give up his children, even though he was currently in pretty good shape, thanks to Antiretroviral medication. He wanted to be sure they would be cared for, even if this meant he could only see them once a month in the orphanage, less than a mile away from him.

This is one of the worst things about being in the 3rd world. True, in the West you are peppered with media pleas for orphans, starving people. But, as emotional as these can be, there is nothing the bombardment of the real thing. Everyday you see women on the streets with their babies, begging. Every day you drive pass the scales on the sidewalk--there so that people who think they might be loosing a dangerous amount of weight can weigh themselves. But what can you do? You can give to beggars who you deem needy enough, you can volunteer at an NGO. But in fact, probably the best thing you can do is hire house help, and pay them a fair wage. It feels less noble, but what you are doing is preventing the family rupture from occurring in the first place. Mindy tells me that before they hired Hobtom she was planning to leave her little girl with her husband and go to the Middle East to find work. The difference between a happy home, and tragedy, it appears, can be as little as a few birr (10 cents) a day.

Going visiting

2007-07-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

Going to the slums. Doesn't that sound like a charitable chore, likely to be either heartbreaking or odious? However, when you are going to visit your dear friend and house worker Hobtomwa, then it becomes a joy.

Mindy, Erin and I drove down to the house where Hobtom's husband works as a guard, and parked there. The road going to the slums turns into a steep, muddy rock-filled slope, with water running down it, more like a creek bed than a proper road. Hobtom's brother escorted us, since it's not necessarily safe for Ferengis on their own. As we walked I wondered what to expect; the street was lined with tin and mud huts, it was hard to tell what lay behind the walls. What would Hobtom's be like?

It turned out to be a small two room house within a compound made up of several homes, so that there was what seemed like a maze of homes and courtyards to traverse before reaching Hobtom's courtyard. Their mud home had had a cheerful coat of paint around the door, along with a neatly painted house number, and there were several plants and flowers in pots in the courtyard (which Mindy says Hobtom realized she could do from seeing their yard). Hobtom greeted us warmly, and went back to work in her "kitchen" (a corner of the living room floor) making coffee and popcorn for us. She popped the corn and heated the coffee on a little portable stove, grinding the coffee by hand first by smashing a metal rod into a can full of coffee beans. Some fresh cut grass served as a trivet.

Although none of the homes in the compound had running water and many people share a neighborhood toilet, amazingly, they do have electricity and Hobtom's house boasted a TV and a CD player. The furnishings of the home were simple but reflected their values: family (photos) and their Orthodox faith (icons). But more than anything the home reflected the influence of the Beethams'. Conspicuous among the few toys proudly on display were two Barbies, gifts to Haimee from Chris's parents. Draped over the toy shelf and serving as a decoration, I spotted a party favor from Kate's birthday, a simple tulle skirt. The spoons that we used to stir in our generous helping of sugar into our coffee and even the coffee cups themselves were from the Beetham's folks. Apparently prior to their recent visit, Hobtom had only one spoon. But an even bigger change was as a result of the financial benefit of working for the Beethams: they had been able to enlarge their house from one to two rooms. Now they have one room for sleeping in, and one for entertaining and cooking in.

In between our three cups of coffee (the standard polite helping), we walked outside and met some of the neighbors. Around the back of Hobtom's house was a young woman making injeera, the traditional sourdough flat bread that Ethiopians eat nearly every meal, on a flat griddle over a Eucalyptus fire. She had the amount of batter needed for each and the speed for at which to pour the batter down to a science, her fingers so used to the heat that she could take the injeera straight off the griddle. I didn't appreciate her skill until I was given the opportunity to try pouring it myself. I was trying to be careful, but that meant that I went too slowly and the injeera rose too much and didn't spread out enough. By the time I got the middle of the griddle, I was totally out of batter, leaving a large hole, right in the middle or the bread—much to the entertainment of all of Hobtom's neighbors, who had gathered around to watch! [This picture shows what the injeera looked like when I ran out of batter, the following picture is what properly poured and baked injeera looks like.]

My final impression of the slums? A friendly neighborhood, peopled by kind, gracious women who make homes for their families in spite of their poverty.

Fun Times

2007-06-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

Although the outings we go on are the most culturally interesting, much of life here takes place within the four walls of the compound. And much of that time is spent playing with the kids, so I thought I would summarize some of the more notable things that the kids and I have done since I've been here.

I have spent the most time playing Playmobil with Kate, who really misses having lots of friends here (and many of her friends have gone back to the US for rainy season) and so really wants someone to do imaginative play with her. So I do my best, adding my own elements to storylines so that I don't go insane. This picture shows the set up for a royal wedding, to which someone was unfortunate enough to not invite a certain evil fairy, which eventually resulted in the bride getting kidnapped by the disgruntled fairy, who then made her work as her slave and who could only escape when she disenchanted the various animals in the fairy's lair, who were actually former slaves who the fairy had become angry with. I also had the great idea of turning their bedroom toy shelf into a doll house –so far it has functioned as an orphanage and Noah's Ark (inspired by one of the picture books we looked at).

Then when it has been nice out, we have playing in the yard, or on the swing set. One day when we were all hot from playing tree tag, I came up with probably my best idea so far. I borrowed a shallow wash tub and filled it with water (well, about 3 inches, actually, since water is limited), grabbed the bath toys and the water provided entertainment for a whole afternoon. The pool's function evolved throughout the afternoon. It started out as a lake for toy people and rubber duckies, with a tower for diving. The next thing we knew, a giant water snake (in the form of a stick, brought to life by Erin) was attacking the toy children and Sam's Indians (who had previously been enjoying the pool in their canoe) had to fend off the monster with their arrows. Then the pool became an actual pool with the girls in swimsuits, then a pretend bedroom or bed (depending on who was talking) and finally a pot of stew, as the girls gathered the mini pinecones embedded in the lawn (about the only foreign plant matter left there after B's diligent sweeping).

Although the girls are awfully cute and funny I get the biggest kick out of Sam's sense of humor and really appreciate the kindness he generally shows his sisters. A week or two ago I had the fun of teaching the whole family Mancala, an African game which they were very happy to learn. Even though Sam can be a little shy around me, he is always ready to challenge me to a rousing game of Mancala and to loudly rejoice at my defeat when it occurs.

Recently Chris and Mindy went out for dinner (alone!) while I watched the kids. That evening the kids wrote (or drew) letters to their friends in America. I will excerpt a typical letter of Sam's to illustrate (with the original spelling and punctuation preserved):

Dear Andrew

Are you sad with me gone? because I am. how are your family and Frends doing. In Africa there are a lot of flys in Aficia also there are a lot of black people.

From Africa to Amariaca from Sam

Servanthood

2007-06-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Imagine you have come with your husband and three small children to be a missionary in Ethiopia. You don't want to live on the missionary compound, so you go house hunting. You have two criterion: the place must have a bath tub, so you can bathe your children and a decent yard, so since you know your children will be stuck on your property most of the time (there are no safe parks and few kid-friendly places in the city and even shopping becomes an ordeal when random Ethiopians grab the kids and kiss them, which the kids do not appreciate!). You find only one house in the city that meets both requirements. You take it.

It is a 2 bedroom, 3 if you count the small enclosed porch that you use as your master bedroom and if you don't count the outbuildings that line the back wall, which you convert into a guest room, an office, a laundry room, a bike shed and housing for your guard. Yes, the house comes with a guard named Bekelah, as well as a tall fence, and a dog. All three are necessary unless you want people to wander through your yard, pee in your bushes or break in at night and rob you. You retain them all even though having a young man on your property 24/7 isn't exactly American home sweet home.

But Bekelah turns out to be invaluable, as well as being totally trustworthy, he has an incredible work ethic and keeps the yard and car spotless. True, he won't let you get your hands dirty, even though you like gardening but he does make and keep the garden beautiful. He sweeps the lawn and washes your car daily and runs to open the gate for you when you honk outside. It's a bit awkward at first, but you get used to it. You know you are helping him: he has a job and free housing (with running water!) even if it is just a one room outbuilding. He can save up money. And you are glad to help him further, too. You give him a night a week off, so he can go to night school and you pay for the costs of his first grade schooling.

Surely Bekelah is enough help, you think. After all, you will be a stay at home mom here, just as you were in the states, and your house is certainly modest enough for you to be able to handle cleaning it, as well as the inevitable laundry, meals and dishes. But no, you discover, that would be terribly selfish! By doing those things yourself you are depriving a needy woman of a job. So you hire house help – a woman named Hobtomwa to do all those tasks that you are perfectly capable of doing. She is wonderful, too—mother of a little girl named Haimee, who your girls love to play with and wife to your friend's guard. She has been well trained and works hard, and can even do a little Western cooking, although her pizza crust still leave a bit to be desired. She's an amazing, gracious person, and you enjoy her company.

But there's still more that could be done around the household, so you eventually hire another woman, Selam, to come MWF, to help Hobtomwa. Suddenly you have gone from running a home to running a household—with staff! All three of your workers eat lunch with you whenever they are working and MWF, you have injeera and wat, traditional Ethiopian foods. Every day, your lunch conversation is in Amharic. You are own longer your own, your belongings, your lifestyle and your child rearing approach are handled, scrutinized and critiqued. To them you are impossibly rich (you own a car!) though you are living a Spartan lifestyle by any Western standard.

You are uncomfortable; you reevaluate. Should you be living in a mud hut in the slums next to your workers? But no, you husband's ministry (professor at a seminary) doesn't require that, and you wouldn't last half your term on the field if you did that. So you love your workers and you try to deal with them Christianly. You are their insurance when Hobtomwa gets Typhus (multiple times!) and you are Blue Cross, deciding whether you will cover an ultrasound when Hobtomwa gets pregnant. All this on a missionary budget, making less than most teachers.

And in the midst of all this you wonder what your role is. Since your workers do your housework, it has been stripped down to only 'mother' but what happens when your kids go off to school? Sure, you try and find a ministry to plug into, and you do good as you can, visiting the orphanage and holding babies. But the fact that you have two women in your kitchen makes it harder to deal with the realities outside your gate. The beggars and lepers that line your road, the mothers with babies strapped to their back who approach you as you shop or who tap, tap, tap on your windows as you drive places, the young boys from the country, conspicuous in their colorful blankets, huddled under the pedestrian bridge at your exit. All these ugly truths, plus the sheer mass of humanity, everywhere, that you can't escape from, is harder to deal with when there are two women in your kitchen. And not being able to escape into comfortable individualism, some how makes you feel more lonely—you are so far from your family, from your friends, people who understand you and communicate the same way you do.

Yet your lunch table is merry because of your workers, laughing and teasing you in Amharic, your relationship motivating you to move beyond your language school level. And yet… and yet… you still long for the weekends when the dishes and laundry start pilling up—a sign of your sweet freedom. And the most attractive vacation plan you can come up with during rainy season is to give your workers the week off!

A Venture into the Countryside

2007-06-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

I made it to the country for the first time today. It was wonderful—open expanses of land dotted with livestock, strikingly green and red fields and fluffy white clouds moving over distant blue mountains. There were fewer people around, too. Hearing the wind moving in the Eucalyptus trees was incredibly restful, after the constant noise of the Addis Ababa. And I feel less concerned for people in the country, too—they at least belong to a family or community that knows and cares about them. Even the bare-bottomed toddler standing at the side of the road near our destination was under the watchful eye of a nearby male relative.

Enough analysis, more facts! We left in the morning for Bingham (Sam's school) to check out library books. A 30 book limit, so we will return next Wednesday for more. Our haul included the Light Princess, by George MacDonald, which I will read to princess-obsessed Kate and a Tintin comic book to tempt Sam. Then we took off for the country—a pottery shop that offers Ferengis (foreigners) or wealthy Ethiopians from Addis a place to relax, eat outside and even spend the night. It's in a young Eucalyptus forest*, the moss covered spaces between the trees kept immaculate. Pole lined paths led to the pottery shop, a tea house, a clearing for eating in, a swing and an astoundingly fairy tale-like cottage. We explored and admired the cottage, then ate a lunch at the gravel floored clearing where the attendants waited on us hand and foot, bringing us benches, tablecloths and cushions, plates and silverware. One young man was sorely disappointed that we had not brought meat along for him to BBQ, he had donned a white lace-lined smock for the occasion!

After enjoying a leisurely meal, in which my surprise treat of Skittles was a highlight, I perused the shop and bought 2 pieces of dark brown, almost black pottery. Then we enjoyed coffee in the tea house, just finishing before it started to rain. On the drive home we stopped only to barter a picture of some local children (for candy, which I keep in my camera bag for just such an occasion). It was at least as beautiful coming back as it had been while sunny, the thunder clouds rolling in above the mountains and water pouring down to make the paved road a river.

Then at home I read a whole Tintin to Kate and Sam (my poor voice!), then retreated to my room to read while the girls watched a movie. Then read the Light Princess to Kate after dinner—it's a bit over her head as far as vocab. goes, so I will have to read ahead to know which parts to skip or rephrase. Mindy was enthusiastic about the idea of me making a booklist of my childhood favorites to help them with the summer library reading, so I will plan to do that. Both Mindy and Chris thanked me separately for all the time I have spent playing with and reading to the kids so far. Mindy thanked me this morning, giving me credit for the kids' good behavior with our guests last night and Chris this evening, saying that they were blossoming under my attention and that it was great for Mindy to have a break. So those were very nice bookends to my day.

*Eucalyptus trees have been imported to Ethiopia in recent years to try and stem the rapid deforestation. Wood is still a primary source of fuel here and is also used for many items that in the West are made of plastic or steel: for example, the scaffolding around the many new buildings going up are made of disconcertingly flimsy looking Eucalyptus poles. One only hopes that the numerous ladies carrying huge loads of Eucalyptus poles and branches in to Addis is a sign that the native trees are being left in peace.

Settling In

2007-06-16T16:59:00.002-07:00

It's my fourth day in Addis and I think I may have finally beaten the rotten jetlag and adjusted to the 8,000 foot elevation. Getting used to the country itself will take considerably longer. Mindy says there are some things you just never get used to.

Most of what I've seen outside the Beetham gebi (compound) has been through the car windows as we've driven places. But even that little is difficult for me to describe. For one thing, how does one describe a place so stereotyped? Yes, there are rough roads and beggars and dirt and slums. But this brief sketch doesn't begin to capture the place's complexity, or for me, its total foreignness.

The rough roads are traversed by numerous taxi cars and vans who don't seem to follow any rules of the road that I've ever heard of. It's defensive driving to a level undreamed of in the states. The fact is, although in driver's ed you may have learned to expect the worst from other drivers, you still expect some form of logic and self-preservation. Other drivers may be aggressive, stupid or careless, but usually their actions make sense from some psychological profile. Not so here: people will drive unsafely even in ways that don't benefit them and could easily result in their death.

This situation is further complicated by the hordes of people who line the street, walking, buying, selling, and living on the curbs. Many will step right into traffic, even in front of an oncoming, fast-moving car. Mindy says this is due both to the Marxist training from an earlier regime (you are just as good as the rich people, so they should be able to wait for you) but also the vast majority have never driven a car, so they don't realize that cars can't stop instantly. Seasoned missionaries say "If you haven't hit somebody yet, you will." Did I mention the herds of donkeys, goats and cattle that vie with the cars for space on the street?

If you can get over the crazy traffic, it's fascinating to see what people have in the shops that line the streets: fruit, used clothes, dog collars and chains, gum, coal, cell phone cards, pottery, baskets, tomatoes. Yet this environment, a quaint curiosity to the tourist, can be overwhelming to the missionary here long-term, and even though I will only be here a month, I'm experiencing my share of "cultural stress." It's an inevitable result the fact that things are different in the host country, from something as huge as the language or cultural norms, to as trivial as the unfamiliar type of light switches, or the brands of food available at the market. Or the fact that I can't identify the breed of noisy, vulture-like birds that caw outside my window each morning or distinguish the Muslim and Orthodox calls to prayers.

I am not sure yet what I will ultimately learn from this visit, but so far, I am impressed by the sacrifice it is to go overseas, period. Regardless of what other challenges await on the individual mission field, the very act of leaving home, the familiar and safe, is a difficult one, which requires bravery and faith.

Arrival

2007-06-16T16:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I made it here safely and uneventfully. It's Sunday here, so we left for church shortly after I arrived and then went out to eat (Ethiopian food) with some other SIM people. I am very tired out and also suffering a bit from the altitude but getting food in me seemed to help. Right now Mindy is picking up the remains of all the goodies I brought them and all three kids are quietly reading the books that I picked out for them. I am in high demand to read to the kiddos so won't make this too long. Earlier I helped put together the Playmobile from their grandma that I had carried here. Everything was very exclaimed over but probably the Jello pudding was the universal favorite! My room is lovely and I can't wait to go to bed.

Providence

2007-06-08T14:50:00.000-07:00

Well, my trip to Ethiopia got off to a bit of a rough start. In a potent combination of bad luck and bad planning, I manged to miss my flight out Thursday. Mon, Krista, Uncle Jonathan (who was on a brief visit and was now also departing from LAX, but for Alaska) and I started for LA late and then ran into heavy traffic which further cut down on our time cushion. But the real culprit was a confusing ticket that, among other eccentricities, had me departing from two airlines. We gambled on Continental and lost. Then we were faced with the prospect of getting to the other side of the airport with my 100 lbs. of luggage, half of which was a bulky Rubbermaid tub stuffed with things for the Beethams: books, American comfort food, toys, and other miscellany that you can't get in Ethiopia. The shuttle to the other terminal was maddeningly slow, stopping several minutes at each Terminal! Then, another blow - we found we had been directed to the wrong terminal and had to race back to one we had just passed on the shuttle! However, our sprinting was in vain: by the time we reached the counter it was less than an hour before the flight and they would not let me on. The soonest flight they could reschedule was the same time the next night, so it was back to Santa Barbara for me!

After a few minutes reflection, we realized that there was a silver lining - Jonathan's flight wouldn't leave for several hours so we could spend some time visiting with him before heading home. I had been preoccupied with packing most of his visit, so the chance to hang out with my jolly uncle without time pressure was a welcome relief.

We hit the town, looking for someplace to party - that is, some place we could get food and spend enough money to feel extravagant and carefree. LA seems to be an ideal place for finding just such a locale, since we found the most magnificent neon-lighted, gaudy, escalator-ridden affair our hearts could desire not 5 miles from the airport. After confirming that it wasn't actually a casino or UFO landing side, we took in some gourmet pizza and SpiderMan 3 on the big screen.

Then this morning I was able to enjoy a leisurely walk to the beach with Krista before finishing up the few chores I'd abandoned the day before. After having another night of sleep in my own bed and the opportunity to double check I had packed everything I needed, I now feel much more fit for international travel.

But I think there was also a higher purpose in all these messy details (there generally is). The past few days I have been working to make sure something happens in my absence. I want the Hispanic kids that I have gotten to know through tutoring this past year to be able to go to Noah's, my church's VBS, which happens in the end of June. Problem: they all live in Isla Vista; the church is in Monecito (some 18 miles apart), and their parents work full-time and don't have cars. A less concrete but no less real problem was making sure they are welcomed and feel comfortable when they actually make it there. Both parties (church and kids) were interested, but my matchmaking alone wasn't enough to make sure the event actually occurred. So part of my preoccupation had been trying to round up drivers, food for lunches and folks who were willing to hang out and interact with them during lunch. I also had to figure out how to communicate with the Spanish-speaking parents when my own 1 year of the language was more than 7 years distant. My attempt at a web-translation left me dubious; I had no way to judge wither what Babelfish had spit out was at all comprehensible, not to mention what I intended to convey. However, by the time I was ready to leave yesterday I had recruited drivers and people to find food - the basics for pulling it off. But there were still many pieces still to fall into place and I wasn't going to be around to do it! But with the additional breathing room today, I was able to find someone glad to take over my role. I am amazed by all the obstacles that this project has already overcome and overwhelmed by the way in which members of the church have materialized to graciously serve. I've concluded that God must really want those kids there in order for him to have orchestrated events so dramatically this week. And I am grateful for his generous, caring heart, one that does not stint in blessing his servants with good gifts even as he uses them to accomplish his purposes.

The Getty

2006-12-30T23:04:00.000-08:00

We spent yesterday in LA, seeing Orthodox icons from Sinai, German landscape paintings and Impressionist paintings. As we don't believe in clutteirng up the place trying to take pictures of the artwork, we contented ourselves with taking pictures of the Getty's amazing architecture and ourselves.

However, to see the Icons, click here or here.

Perspectives

2006-10-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

I wrote this for my church's newsletter.

“I’m not sure how I got that one…oh, oww!” I groaned as the camp nurse probed my battered and blistered feet.

“If you can just try to stay off of them a while, that will help,” the nurse advised as she taped one of my big toes, and then grinned sheepishly as she made eye contact, clearly realizing that her advice would be impossible to follow. I already had almost two weeks of kitchen duty under my belt at the remote Alaskan bush camp my grandparents call home and my active duties were hardly likely to decrease now that kids’ camps had started.

I stared sadly at my feet as she cleaned on the deep blister on my other big toe, then smiled ironically as Romans 10:15 came to mind. “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news” certainly wasn’t literally true, at least not from a human perspective! Hours of being constantly on my feet working was what had taken such a brutal toll on my feet. I had labored alongside two ladies in their late 70s to prepare and serve food for the nearly 90 native folks who attended the Memorial Day family camp, and completely worn myself out cleaning the camp in preparation for the kids’ camps. Washing sheets and towels, scrubbing bathrooms, dragging hopelessly broken vacuums over hopelessly dirty carpets, gathering Scrabble pieces scattered to all of the buildings in camp and dusting, always dusting, in a futile attempt to cope with the dust everywhere, always arriving from the dirt from the gravel runway. As I trod the dirty clay between the cabins on my numerous errands, I thought I was getting closer to understanding the true meaning of foot washing. It wasn’t just the blisters that made me embarrassed of my feet.

I was unused to the strict gender roles that determined what tasks I was assigned, so I spent a lot of time pondering my late grandmother’s life as a missionary. How many hours had she spent washing the dishes for her family, unnoticed and unappreciated? How often had she struggled with the loneliness and claustrophobia of such a tiny, isolated place? I did mental exercises, imagining my life as a missionary in similar locations. I scared myself badly. I didn’t want that kind of life! Arguments and counter-arguments about ‘calling’ whirled through my head. I was safe. I wasn’t called to this. Was I?

My thoughts often return to this experience as I prepare to help promote a class starting this January: “Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.” It’s all about missions and God’s heart for the world; something most Christians hope they aren’t called to. We comfort ourselves that missions is an optional extreme sport for the spiritual elite and hope if we ignore missions, God might leave us alone. But while I now believe in the need for a true missionary call for long-term missions work, I still can’t see missions as peripheral to the Christian life. It’s something we are all called to.

That conviction is the reason that I’m helping bring the Perspectives class to Santa Barbara for the first time in more than 10 years. In order to understand God, we need to know more about his priorities. In shorthand, that’s missions. But it’s also so much more. And that’s precisely what I’m excited about learning in the class. Won’t you join me?

www.perspectivessantabarbara.org

First week of Camp

2006-08-26T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Friday, all the children from the first kids' camp went home. It was a wet, rainy day, but thankfully none of the villages were weathered in, so all the kids were able to fly home. Still, it was a lengthy process: 9am - 5pm with 3 pilots, flying two 4-place and one 6-place airplanes.

I had a blast with the six girls in my cabin. Three were from Russian Mission, the closest village to Kako, and three were from Stony River, about an hour and a half away. It worked out really nicely for me, as I have been to both villages and could visualize them. And having Stony River girls was particularly special, as that is the village that my mom spent the most years of her childhood, so I recognized their last names (Gusty, Bobby, Willis) and names of various relatives. I'll have to have my mom help me sort out all the complex small village relationships, but I believe the girls' parents were kids that my mom grew up with or camp counseled!

Something that might have been an issue, but wasn't, was that the Russian Mission girls were all Eskimo and the Stony River girls were mostly Indian. However, they mixed well, and we had a great time doing crafts, archery, riflery, canoeing, hiking, singing and games. My cabin really liked singing, so our devotions at night were frequently interrupted by requests for "This little light of mine" and "I'm in the Lord's Army."

The girls' Bible knowledge was minimal to nonexistent, so it was a challenge to figure out how to explain things ("Why did people do that to Jesus?") or even what stories were most important to share. They often wanted to hear the day's Bible lesson stories retold (i.e. David and Goliath), as they had never heard them before. I built off these stories and then the last night told two stories dealing with God's protection (Jesus calms the storm and the parable of the lost sheep) after they started sharing about all the times when they had been scared by drunk people. They have lots of scary things in their lives so I enjoyed teaching them a song about the armor of God and singing them to sleep with one of my favorite songs, that has a verse that goes: "The Angel of the Lord encamps round those who fear His name to save them and deliver them from harm. Though lions roar with hunger, we lack for no good thing. No wonder, then, we praise Him with our song."

Days were jammed packed full of activities and now I am pretty tuckered out. I have spent the day visiting with staff and relaxing so I can hopefully feel ready to start all over again on Monday. This time it will be junior highers, so they bring their own special challenges.

Monday is the reverse of Friday: a whole day of flying kids in, and entertaining the ones that have arrived, while waiting for everyone to get there. Then Tuesday-Thursday is camp time, and I leave for home Friday evening.

Hello from the 49th state!

2006-05-27T23:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I made it here! The only hitch in the journey was at the Santa Barbara airport where it took sometime to figure out how I could bring the arrows on the plane. Couldn't check them (too big for my bags) or carry them on (weapons, obviously). Finally the Alaska Airlines rep and I agreed that they were actually fishing gear (I promised to shoot a salmon) and so I was able to check them without extra cost.

I am now pretty settled here, and able to reflect back on my first week here. But first perhaps I should set the scene. Imagine a small frontier town (think Laura Ingalls Wilder's later stories), only a couple houses on a dirt road, all small and made with the materials available. Everything big has to be brought in by barge, so it is quite an accomplishment to have things like fooseball tables. Thus entertainment is simple (the kids spend hours on the tire swings) and life is hard.

I have been kept busy helping in the kitchen preparing, serving and cleaning up after meals for the 89 people who are here for family camp. It is tough work! I am often put to shame by my coworkers, two 75 year old ladies who persevere when I am quite willing to escape and let the dishes wash themselves. Tomorrow is Sunday, but there is no rest for the wicked...that is we cooks. People still must eat. Today we were blessed by the arrival of 4 guys from a military type EMT school from Texas who have cheerfully taken over the washing of dishes (they serenade us with funny military songs while they wash).

Earlier in the week I enjoyed a hike up the local mountain and the company of some of the resident Kako kids, Selena, Darren, Ida and Kayleen. I hope to be able to post some fun pictures of us soon. Meanwhile enjoy this one of the cabins at Kako. This is where some of the families visiting are staying, although almost as many are tucked in to every nook and cranny in the rest of the camp.

Historical pictures of Alaska

2006-05-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

These are pictures from my mom's Alaskan childhood. I was going to use these at as a part of my Alaska blog posts, but didn't, and thought you might like to see them anyway.

Dave Penz and his daughters, Valerie, Dianne and Jeanne.

My mom, Jeanne.

Playing with a dogsled.

A First Post

2006-05-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

Kako, Alaska
What I had in mind when I first created this blog was a personal Growlery, an easily editable webpage where I could collect all the writings that make me happy so that when in need of a Growlery I could come and comfort myself. And so my first post was a poem of Dorothy Sayers' that I recently discovered (from Catholic Tales and Christian Songs).

But my sister Krista took me to task. She insisted that there really are things that I feel strongly about and ought to be writing about. Even though I may not be going to exotic places or doing anything particularly glamorous, the life of the mind would supply the content. So, duly chastened, I determined to intersperse my literary posts for my own sake with more traditional blog posts for others' benefit.

Incidentally, now that I come to write, I am going somewhere exotic and have a job that is more glamorous. I leave tomorrow for Kako, Alaska, a former gold mine that my Grampa and Gramma turned into a Christian camp and retreat center. It's in the bush; there are no roads and so life is very different there. Lots of salmon, moose and bear to eat, a small number of people to interact with, and pretty much the same scenery day after day. Everything at Kako has to come in either by plane or down the river by barge, so I will be bringing some odd cargo: a bunch of arrows and pottery glaze for the kids' camps and as much California fresh produce as I can fit in a duffle. But that's nothing, last time I flew in I brought a live rabbit named Charlie!

The new job is as the lab coordinator in the Psychology department at Westmont College. I'll be doing a little teaching, keeping the lab tidy and making sure the rats stay alive. So I guess it's not all that glamorous but I am excited about it because it's in psychology, which I love and am good at. I'll say more about that later, but for now I am occupied with Alaska. I don't know how much access I will have to the internet while there, but if possible, I'll post a bit to let you all know what it's like being a camp counselor in the last frontier.

1962: My grandparents arrive in Alaska

Dave and Janette Penz

Valerie, Jeanne (my mom), and Dianne

Dad the gold miner.

1983: I go to Kako for the first time.

All sooty after taking a tumble down the stairs. Kako mine is a dangerous place for a toddler!

1992: My family and I drive to Alaska

Me, Krista, Adelle and Erik with Uncle Jonathan.

1996: I spend six weeks at Kako as kitchen help.

Charlie and me.

1998: I go on a missions trip to Mekoryuk with my youth group.

The kids of the village.

As for serious analysis of an idea, I think now is the perfect context to point you to
a short essay/blog post I wrote on what constitutes missions in response to a post of my pastor's. It's on the sacrifice that true missions entails.

A Song of Paradise

2006-02-27T15:49:00.000-08:00

By Dorothy L. Sayers

SING a song of Paradise
Far above the skies,--
Four-and-twenty Elders
And Monsters full of eyes!
Heaven's gates are opened,
They all begin to sing,
Playing ball with golden crowns
Round about the King.

The King is in His counting-house,
Counting His elect,
The Queen comes from her chamber
Royally bedecked
With chrysoprase and amethyst
And jacinth without price . . .
Now is not this a pretty song
To sing of Paradise?