7 Quick Takes (vol. 6)

--- 1 ---

I am trying to love Halloween. I really, really am. It's traditionally been a favorite holiday. But every time I think about wrassling a four-year-old, two-year-old, and a one-year-old into scratchy costumes (that will invariably not be appropriate for the weather because it always turns freezing cold or sweltering hot around here right on Halloween and I never guess correctly which one it's going to be ahead of time) and think about dragging them around the neighborhood during the precise window of "after nap but before the pre-dinner-scream-fest" and getting a bunch of candy which will make me tired and fat but I'll eat anyway and coming home to surly trick-or-treaters dressed up as Bratz dolls who say things like "Is that all? We don't like your candy!" before rolling their eyes and running off...I want to go collapse somewhere.

Also...I would tell you about my costume decision/expense woes but I get tired just thinking about it. You don't know how tempted I was to just cut some holes in burlap sacks and announce that all the kids would be St. Francis this year.

--- 2 ---

I keep re-reading this post about how a family of six paid off their mortgage on an income of $29,000 per year (via a comment from Sandy), and I think my jaw drops a little further each time. I've always known that frugality is an area that I need to work on, but now I feel like I have all the humble prudence of P.Diddy when it comes to spending money. All I can say is: Wow.

--- 3 ---

I realized recently that I do not know how to fold towels. I go to friend's houses and see their towels folded into perfect, fluffy squares stacked neatly in their linen closets. Despite my best efforts to achieve this look, mine look like drunk rectangles. This might be difficult to explain in writing, but how do you make towels turn into nice, neat squares? I perceive towel folding to be a secret, mysterious art known only to a select few.

--- 4 ---

I have this weird love/hate relationship with the idea of Kindle. I actually watched Oprah the other day because I heard she was going to be talking about it. On the one hand, the whole idea depresses me. Maybe it's because I only read non-fiction, but I always write notes all over my books, underline compelling passages, and refer back to them over and over again after I've read them. Also, it brings me such joy to see my bookshelves packed with fascinating reads, ready to lend to friends, use as a reference or peruse again myself. And, oh, the sounds and smells of cracking open a brand new book that I'm all ready to delve into! I just can't imagine my "library" consisting of a bunch of electrons on a gadget I can fit into my purse; that my husband and I wouldn't walk guests over to our bookshelves to talk about books as we peruse the worn, multi-colored volumes on the shelves, but instead fire up an electronic device and press buttons on a screen.

All that said...after watching the Oprah episode I have this vague feeling of wanting a Kindle.

--- 5 ---

On Monday I hosted a playdate with two friends who also have lots of little ones, and together we had 10 kids, all under age 5 (with one on the way). The wide-eyed pizza man asked if it was a daycare.

--- 6 ---

Speaking of which, it's been funny to see my son's reaction to the new pregnancy. He's our oldest, and he seems to think it's all totally routine. His impression is that every year or so mommy and daddy go to the hospital and bring home a baby girl, and that that's just how the world works. He seems to think it's some kind of annual tradition (which I guess it sort of is).

--- 7 ---

Book update: So, writing a book is a lot harder than I thought it would be. If any of you have written books yourselves, whether they're published or unpublished, I just have to say: KUDOS TO YOU. It's hard.

That said, I'm happy with the way it's turning out. I'm on Chapter 7 and expect to be done with a first draft in late February. It's not Hemmingway, but I think it does explain clearly what it was like to grow up in an atheist family and then become a Christian, as well as explicitly giving the reasons behind my decision to convert. There's also some good news in the probability-of-it-being-published department, which I'll mention if/when it's finalized.

-----

That's all I got for today. Have a lovely Thursday night!

Consumption leads to more consumption

Wow, so many interesting comments to yesterday's post! Follow-up posts are undoubtedly forthcoming. This is obviously a topic very much on my mind these days.

I was thinking about all the interesting thoughts you guys had as I cleaned up from lunch today, and it seemed like it was taking forever to take care of my part of the table. I made myself a cheeseburger leftover from last night, and it seemed like there were endless items to clear from the table: wrapping from the cheese slice, jar of mayo, knife, bread crumbs, ketchup, plate, empty milk glass -- the list goes on.

It reminded me of something that happened a few months ago during Lent.

I mentioned that I came across an idea that made me see fasting in a whole new light, and that that was a subject that was on my mind a lot leading up to Easter. One Friday I skipped lunch as a fast, and after the kids ate I went on auto-pilot to clear the table. I was stopped in my tracks when I turned around to my place: it was perfectly clean. No wrappers, no smears, no crumb-covered plates. Just the sleek glass, still sparkling from when my husband Windexed it the night before.

That was the first time that it really clicked for me that the more I eat, the more I consume in other ways as well: there's the money needed to buy it; the wrappings from any packaged food; the dishes that require heated water to clean; the chemicals and towels needed to clean the table; the time taken from my day to prepare, eat and clean up after the meal; and so on.

Shortly after that incident I saw the stunning movie Into Great Silence, and one thing that stood out to me was that all the Carthusian monks' meals were very simple. No crumbly appetizers requiring separate plates, no gooey desserts dripping on the table; just simple, unadorned foods that could fit in one bowl (the picture to the right is a shot from the movie). My first thought was, "That would be so easy to clean up!" I consume so much more food than those monks, and in doing so I don't just use more resources in terms of the food ingested itself, but in the resources needed to buy prepare, serve, store and clean up after it as well.

While I was cleaning up after my little cheeseburger extravaganza this afternoon, it occurred to me that this exponential consumption principle is true for all consumption, and not just food.

I thought of the post I recently mentioned on my links blog which asks: how much of your mortgage is going to clutter storage? When we consume anything at all, whether it's clothes or decorations or food or furniture or whatever, there's always more consumption that results from it. We need to dispose of the packaging, make room in the house for it, keep it clean, use our time to purchase and then store it, etc. Once again I thought of the lives of the monks in Into Great Silence, and how clean and sleek and simple their living quarters are, mainly because they just don't have that much stuff.

I'm not trying to suggest here that I think it's necessary for everyone to live at that level of asceticism -- the liturgical year includes feast days for a reason, and certainly those of us living in the world need at least a few more possessions than cloistered monks. But this has been an important thought exercise for me in that it's made me realize that consumption is always exponential; whether it's in terms of time spent, money spent, space used, resources needed to prepare or clean it, or all of the above, I'm always consuming more than just the object at hand.


I feel like God has drawn me to think hard about all this, particularly in terms of food, though I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do about it. Obviously I'm not supposed to give away the entire contents of my house and start cooking from the Carthusian monk cookbook (boy, those would be some quick recipes! "Br. Paul's Raw Apple Delight: Take an apple. Cut it in half. Eat it.")

This might be part of the answer to my recent prayers about how we can cut back our spending. Rather than look at our currently lifestyle and ask, "Is there anything I could cut?" maybe I'm supposed to take it from a radically different angle, starting with the example of the great ascetics like the Carthusians, and, starting with nothing, ask, "What do I really need?"

I don't really know, but I just thought I'd tell you guys what I was thinking about as I cleaned up from lunch this afternoon, in case y'all have some great insights (as you usually do). Meanwhile, I just had to share this trailer from Into Great Silence. Aaah, what a great movie:



photo: stock.xchng

Rethinking standard of living

Though I read the Two-Income Trap a couple years ago, I find myself thinking about it frequently given the current conditions of the economy. Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren wrote it in 2000, but the topics she covers are very relevant to what's going on now. Re-reading the book the other day, I found that it left me with a ton of thoughts about not only my own financial situation but some of the trends going on in the overall economy today. I was going to just mention the book in a book chat post, but thought I'd share a bit more at length since I find it so interesting and since this is a topic on many people's minds right now.

We live in a treacherous financial climate

The materialism and overconsumption that plagues our culture is an interesting topic that other books have explored in depth (and that I'll probably do another post about as well). But this book takes a much-needed look at the other side of the coin: the disturbing practices of the lending industry that became widespread after a change in laws in the late 70's incentivized states to cooperate with banks to allow them to charge exorbitant interest rates and thus drastically increase their profits. Warren offers a good analogy when she writes:

My father used to talk about Herring Hardware, a farm supply store that my grandfather had run in rural Oklahoma beginning back in 1904. When the Dust Bowl hit in the 1930's and families could no longer scratch a living out of their modest farms, many packed up and headed west...Some of those families never forgot the debts they left behind. Twenty years later, my grandfather would still get an occasional envelope with a few twenty-dollar bills...My father would lean back at the end of one of those stories and remark that these were "good people, good people who followed through on what they owed...Folks just aren't like that anymore."

But my father overlooks one very important fact: Borrowers aren't the only ones who changed. Lenders changed too, and far more than the people to whom they were lending...When a borrower makes a partial payment, when he misses a bill, and when his credit ratings drop, he actually gets more offers for credit...He has joined the ranks of an elite group -- The Lending Industry's Most Profitable Customers.

Warren then goes on to recount a story of when she gave a presentation to Citibank where she pointed out that if they stopped lending to people in financial trouble, Citibank could cut their bankruptcy-related losses by 50%. The room got quiet and an executive said, "We appreciate your presentation. We really do. But we have no interest in cutting back our lending to these people. They are the ones who provide most of our profits."

She goes on to make this analogy from her grandfather's hardware store:

The strategy used by today's lenders exactly reverses the approach bankers used a generation ago when their main goal was to be repaid on time...Herring Hardware may have collected most of its debts but its lending policies were radically different from those embraced by today's major lenders. Unlike today's megabanks, Herring Hardware stopped making loans when a family got in trouble. Grandfather Herring would never have dreamed of sending a flyer in the mail cheerfully suggesting, "Fred, you're behind on your payments for the fertilizer. Can we lend you the money for a new cookstove?" Nor would the local bank have suggested a second mortgage to the family that had just missed a payment on its first mortgage.

What I took away from this part of the book was that, yes, people need to be responsible for their own financial decisions and be cautious not to get themselves into trouble. However, in this new lending climate our fallen natures are up against big banks who are throwing all their weight behind getting people into debt; the average person today has to be far more savvy and able to resist temptation than the average person 30+ years ago.


It's time to rethink standard of living

Here is probably the biggest takeaway I got from the book: it's time for us ("us" meaning "me") to rethink standard of living. People didn't used to have to be quite as cautious about getting overloaded on fixed expenses; for example, banks would probably only offer you a loan for a house if you could put 20% down and if the monthly payments would be no more than 50% of your monthly income. No so today. We are constantly tempted to live a little (or a lot) higher on the hog than we really should.

There are definitely people out there who use modern banks' questionable lending practices to get the biggest McMansion on the block out of sheer greed, signing up for mortgages that are blatantly unreasonable given their incomes. However, I think there are plenty of others out there who get in over their heads mostly out of ignorance about what a reasonable mortgage should look like. My husband and I made that mistake once.

Until I read this book I didn't know what the traditional ideas were about what percentage of your monthly income should go to mortgage, and back when I did the math on what the payments would be for our downtown condo it seemed reasonable enough. We'd be able to make the payments and the HOA fees with what seemed like plenty of money leftover each month. On paper, it worked out great. But life threw us some curve balls and we quickly realized that our mortgage payment was too high. Luckily it all worked out and we were able to sell the condo and do a major lifestyle downgrade, but it gave me a new sympathy for people who find themselves overextended. A lot of people end up in that position out of not having the benefit of traditional wisdom about what percentage of your income you should dedicate to your various expenses, and out of not understanding just how unrealistic society's expectations have become about standard of living.

Which brings me to the most interesting point:

Warren points out that, due to a lot of factors which she details in the book, the average family in the early 1970's spent only slightly more than 50% of their income on fixed expenses: mortgage, childcare, insurance, car, debt payments, etc. She also makes a compelling case that when those fixed expenses take up too much more than 50% of a family's monthly income, they're in a very precarious position financially.

I remember when first did the worksheet in her budgeting book, All Your Worth, and added up our fixed expenses to see what percentage of our monthly income they took up. It wasn't pretty:

Fixed Expenses = Mortgage payment + HOA fee + property taxes + basic phone + health insurance + car payment(s) + car insurance + gas + bare-bones basic food needs + other essential insurance + debt (e.g. student loan) payments

When I added all that up...let's just say it was more than 50% of our monthly income.

Even though we'd done a big lifestyle downgrade and were living in a much more reasonable house, I still marveled at how difficult it would be to get all those figures to add up to a number that we could pay with just one of my husband's two monthly paychecks. Granted, a lot of our fixed expenses are bigger than they would have been if we'd lived decades ago because of factors out of our control, like rising health insurance costs or gas prices; yet that doesn't change the fact that when fixed expenses start creeping up past the 60% range, you're overextended (we know a lot of bankruptcy lawyers, and they all emphasize this heavily). And the more overextended you are, the more likely it is that you'll face major financial problems if even minor unexpected events arise.


Overall thoughts

So this is what's been on my mind lately:

First of all, given the modern lending climate, I've realized that I have to be much more astute than I'd realized to avoid getting in over my head, and that this is something I need to emphasize with my children as they grow up as well.

Secondly, I think our family might need to re-think what a reasonable standard of living is for us. I can't directly change the fact that our health insurance is extremely expensive, that our property taxes are too high or that gas and food prices are crazy these days. However, I can drastically re-set my expectations in terms of what sort of house we should be living in, what kind of car we can really afford to drive (shoot, for that matter, whether we can really afford two cars), what constitutes "basic food needs," etc. I could admit that for too long I've been categorizing all sorts of luxuries as "needs," not really putting much effort into drastic cutbacks on the grounds that I "need" all sorts of things that are really not necessary for survival (or even a modestly comfortable lifestyle) at all.

I'd had it in my head that if/when my husband's salary increases we'd get a slightly bigger house since at that point we'd have four children, and we'd "need" a bigger house since ours is only three bedrooms and less than 2,000 sq. ft; I figured we might get a minivan with less than 120,000 miles on it (maybe even one that has a door handle that actually works!); I thought we'd get back to buying fancy cheeses and sushi at the grocery store every now and then. But now I see that, if and when his salary does increase, if we don't increase our expenses by one penny we might get to the point that, as is, we are truly living within our means.


So those are my thoughts! This subject easily lends itself to a discussion of topics like sacrifice, gratitude and worldly detachment as well, but I'll save that for another post. Sorry for the long post -- as you can tell, I've been thinking about this subject a lot lately. Anyone else have any thoughts?


UPDATE: A while back Meredith at Like Merchant Ships posted an excellent, interesting video by Elizabeth Warren that tackles the question: "If American families are working so hard, why are we still in debt?" The ensuing discussion in her combox, as well as the discussion to the follow-up post, are great as well.

"Did they see something I don't?"

This post is part of the Flashback Series featuring posts from the site archives. It was originally published on February 16, 2007. Though it was not particularly well received at the time, as you can see from the comments to the original, I often catch myself thinking about this when I read stuff by the "new atheists."


I just got back from a trip to Barnes and Noble which was, with two young children, an advanced exercise in the art of multitasking. On the way out I paused for a moment to check out the display table of featured books, and I came across Victor J. Stenger's latest book where he denounces the concept of God, called God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist. I believe it's part of his series called I Don't Believe in God. Seriously! I SO Don't! I'm Going to Write Another Book About It.

Since I had my own personal circus in tow I wasn't able to spend much time flipping through it, but I did read through the reviews on the back cover (spoiler alert: Richard Dawkins loved it), which were as follows:

Darwin chased God out of his old haunts in biology, and he scurried for safety down the rabbit hole of physics. The laws and constants of the universe, we were told, are too good to be true: a set-up, carefully tuned to allow the eventual evolution of life. It needed a good physicist to show us the fallacy, and Victor Stenger lucidly does so. The faithful won't change their minds, of course (that is what faith means) but Victor Stenger drives a pack of energetic ferrets down the last major bolt hole and God is running out of refuges in which to hide. I learned an enormous amount from this splendid book.

~ Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion

Marshalling converging arguments from physics, astronomy, biology, and philosophy, Stenger has delivered a masterful blow in defense of reason. God: The Failed Hypothesis is a potent, readable, and well-timed assault upon religious delusion. It should be widely read.

~ Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation

Richard Dawkins is contractually obligated to make derisive jabs at "the faithful" in every statement he makes, so that one wasn't too remarkable. But what did strike me is Sam Harris' quote (which echoes many Dawkins quotes), and his reference to "religious delusion."

Obviously, these guys don't speak for everyone who does not believe in God. But they are representative of certain types of atheists who are making their voices heard more and more, the kind who heap scorn upon the mere concept of belief in a higher power, often referring to people of faith as delusional, irrational, ignorant, and even stupid.

I can't call them out too much since I used to be one of these people. But what jumps out to me about these sorts of statements now is the lack of wonder and curiosity about what made such a large percentage of the great minds of history believe in God or some sort of other spiritual realm.

Socrates, Plato, Newton, Copernicus, Galileo, Michelangelo, Einstein, and all the other brilliant minds who believed in the soul, in God or gods, in a designed universe: these people were not idiots. They also don't strike me as delusional, irrational, or the type of people to unquestioningly swallow fairy tales just because it was their culture or the way they were raised. And though they didn't have electron microscopes or the Hubble telescope, they had good heads on their shoulders when it came to understanding the world and weren't timid wallflowers who feared questioning things. I really doubt that any of these men believed in a "God of the gaps," where they decided that God must exist simply because they didn't know where the stars came from. Many of them are the founders of the modern sciences that we prize so highly today. I can't picture any one of them reading The God Delusion or God: The Failed Hypothesis and renouncing their beliefs after being dizzied by the intellects of Dawkins and Stenger.

This, of course, does not mean that God does exist. It doesn't prove anything either way. It just seems that this new crowd of book-writing atheists is glossing over a lot of human history and insulting the forefathers of their fields to denounce all believers as irrational or foolish. It seems like they've never taken the time to sit back on a dark, starry night and gaze at the heavens, thinking for a moment of the great minds of science who came before them and wondering, "Did they see something I don't?"

A tour of my purse!

There are two types of people in the world: people who think that, if they pondered the subject for a thousand years, they could not possibly come up with a more inane, boring topic for a blog post than a photo inventory of someone's purse; and those who think it might be kind of interesting. I apologize to those in the former group. I was cleaning out my purse yesterday and got this idea in my head, and couldn't stop myself.


This is my purse. Notice the straps that are long enough to go across your chest -- I believe that that's a must-have purse feature for moms of little ones. I also love the front compartment that keeps my wallet away from the rest of my junk for easy access. (You might be able to guess that the white couch in the background was a pre-kid purchase.)


Here's what I keep in the front pocket. I use a man-style wallet to minimize clutter. Notice my dwindling monthly spending money cash inside. (My driver's license photo is still from back when I dyed my hair blonde -- I get some double-takes on that one.) And a few styles of lipstick are a must since I never leave the house without at least a little gloss.


My cell phone and car key (with the broken clicker) stay in the unzipped side pocket for easy access.


I specifically bought a purse big enough to hold books; I cannot bear the thought of finding myself bookless when unexpected free time arises, so I always have books on hand. Pictured here is the lovely We and Our Children (sent to me by a generous reader!); a guide I use to walk through an examination of conscience when I go to Confession; Strunk and White's famous Elements of Style; and a notepad to write down any musings that come to mind (which I also use it to take notes during meetings with my spiritual director).


My mom works for an eye care company, so I always have multiple pairs of sunglasses floating around in my purse. [The black ones were a casualty of this photo shoot, broken by my one-year-old while I was fiddling with the camera.]


I don't carry a diaper bag; instead I just keep two diapers and a small thing of wipes in a ziplock bag in my purse, leaving the bulky diaper bag in the minivan for emergency access. Also pictured are various house keys, including a clicker from the downtown building we haven't lived in since 2005 (I don't update my keys much). I also have an emergency snack on-hand to keep sleepy kids from ruining their naps by dozing in the car.


And in the front zipper pocket are church donation envelopes and a pen.

[Not pictured are wads of gum wrappers, dried up wipes, loose change, and nasty crumbs.]

Now you know all about the contents of my purse as well as my purse organization philosophy! (Those of you who haven't fallen off your chairs from acute boredom, anyway.)

Even if readers didn't enjoy it, a certain little person just loved the idea of me taking everything out of my purse and scattering it on the couch:


For the record, I'm one of the people who thinks that a glimpse into other people's purses would be pretty interesting. If anyone else is up for it, let me know so that I can check out yours too!

The danger of being overloaded

While out and about on Tuesday morning, I found myself furious at another driver. I was sitting at a light that just turned green, and the dented minivan in front of me wasn't moving. I got frustrated and was muttering insults under my breath, reaching for the horn just when it finally moved. When I passed the car I glanced over to see a very weary-looking woman, rubbing her temples as if something troubling was on her mind. I felt so rude for almost honking. If she looked in her rearview mirror earlier she undoubtedly saw my aggravated expressions, clearly spelling out something like "You are an idiot and you're annoying me!" in road-rage sign language.

Why was I acting like such a jerk? Because I was in a hurry.

I had just dropped the kids off at Mother's Day Out and had scheduled about 10 hours worth of work to be done in the two hours I actually had, not to mention that I'd agreed to go to lunch with my mom even though I didn't feel like I had time for it. I felt overwhelmed, like I was already so far behind that the extra eight seconds at that light could very well derail my entire life.

On the way home, imagining how I might have made that poor woman's day worse with honking and obnoxious gesticulations over a stop light, I recalled an important lesson I learned a while back but had forgotten: I am always more tempted to sin when I'm overbooked.

When I lose my temper with the kids, more than half the time it's because we're late for something and I'm in a hurry; when I rush through my day without a thought of gratitude for the blessings that surround me, it's usually because I'm just too busy to stop and take a breath; even just this morning I used a snippy tone with my husband when telling him about the ten whole minutes it took me to find something he'd misplaced...my exasperation because I felt like I just didn't have that ten minutes to spare. I need to get this through my head:

Growing in holiness is a whole lot easier when you have some buffer in your life.

It looks like once again I need to take a hard look at all that I try to get done each week, and make the necessary (if painful) cuts to give myself some more room in the schedule so that I'm not tempted by anger when unexpected events cost me a little time. I have to do this every few months, I've noticed, as I slowly let little additions to my schedule and to-do list creep up to my ears and threaten to drown me.

This is a lesson I've learned before, like when I realized that I just might have a lot in common with the priest and the Levite from the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and when a wise priest gave me some of the most counterintuitive advice on being overbooked that I've ever heard. As with so many other important lessons, though, knowing it (and writing about it) is one thing...making the sacrifices needed to actually live it is another.

The Twitter verdict

I'm in.

Last week I listed my hesitations about getting a Twitter account. So far only #4 has been proven to be a legitimate concern. Here's why I like it:

It's the ultimate water well
Every time I log on to Twitter I think of that great discussion we had back in March about how the internet can function as a sort of village water well for those of us who are out of the workforce and live in areas where high mobility means a lack of cohesive communities (if you haven't read the comments to that post and the follow-up, you really should -- very interesting discussion).

I love being able to see what's going on with everyone I follow on a minute-to-minute basis, and to "overhear" conversations by seeing people's replies to one another. I'm surprised at how much I enjoy the updates about even the most mundane matters, like "Heading out to a dentist appointment," or "Gotta go start dinner -- veggie lasagna tonight!" It's interesting how much you can miss little things like that when you live in isolated circumstances. Back in my career days I would have coworkers stop by my cubicle and make passing comments about those same things -- dentist appointments, what they're cooking for dinner tonight -- and I didn't realize until now how much those little glimpses into other people's lives were a source of comfort for me.

In the morning there's a lot of buzz about how everyone slept last night (especially from moms of little ones!), in the afternoon there's talk of appointments and lunches and naps, in the evening I get to see what other families are having for dinner, and at night people mention plans for tomorrow before logging off for the day. It's not fascinating, but it's oddly comforting.

It's good writing practice
I love the challenge of trying to fit stories about my day into just 140 characters. This article makes a great point:

Twitter imposes a 140-character limit on posts (including spaces and punctuation). Nearly every user I've spoken to about using Twitter admits to constantly revising each post to squeeze it into 140 characters. The habit and skill of revising for brevity and clarity is one of the secrets to good writing.

Like professionally written and edited material, Twitter posts are harder on the writer and easier on the reader. And that's why Twitter's popularity is growing. It's one of the few places online where people on the brink of information overload can get a break from long-winded blather and read something concise for a change.

I think it's good practice for writers to use Twitter.

It doesn't take much time
Even with revising posts to make them fit the 140-character limit, it doesn't take that long to post. I probably spend an average of 30 seconds on each update. For the same reason, it doesn't take long to scan updates. A quick glance through new posts takes just a minute -- time well spent to see what's going on with a bunch of other people today.


So those are my thoughts on Twitter. If you want to see what I'm doing right now, you can find me at twitter.com/conversiondiary.

7 Quick Takes (vol. 5)

--- 1 ---

The other day the kids were watching Barney and he started bouncing around and singing Pop Goes the Weasel with his goofy-voiced dinosaur friends. You know the economy's bad that I interpreted it to be a mournful dirge. Recalling something I heard once that "popping" the "weasel" was some reference to pawning a valuable items when times get tough, I nodded bitterly as I heard:

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle,
that's the way the money goes!
Pop, goes the weasel.

Truer words, Barney. Truer words.

--- 2 ---

Neat story: there's an oral tradition in my family -- told to me by my 94-year-old grandfather, who heard it from his grandmother -- that one night there was a great meteor shower that was so intense that everyone thought the world was ending, and our family members were scared.

I Googled around and found that this story almost certainly refers to "The Night The Stars Fell," the famous Leonid meteor shower in November 1833. I thought that was so neat to know about a historical event from family oral tradition alone! Also, here are a lot of interesting stories that came of it that I found in my research: here's a first-hand account (scroll down), and here's a story about what slaveholders did when they thought it was Judgment Day.

--- 3 ---

Thank you for all the great comments about how to make your own yogurt. Unfortunately, I will not be doing this. Not in my house, anyway.

When I told my germ phobe husband about the great techniques I learned that will help us save money by making our own yogurt, I watched his face contort into various expressions of horror as I said things like "...while you let the milk sit out overnight..." and "...then you keep it warm so that the bacteria can incubate and grow..." He abruptly announced that he chooses to believe that yogurt comes from yogurt fairies who fill the jars at the store with magic wands, and that he does not want anything to happen in this house that would shatter that image for him.

--- 4 ---

I was going through old emails and came across this one from my dad about his experiences with Ramadan while living in Abu Dhabi (more about that here). I thought I'd share in case anyone else finds it interesting:

I have some mixed memories of Ramadan. I remember how impress I was that they could do it. One day I ate breakfast before sunrise and, because of meetings, didn't eat again until 2:00 PM. I thought I was about the die. The Muslims still had about four hours to go.

I learned not to drive on the roads or streets in the last half hour before sunset. The people heading home to eat are almost panic stricken and their driving showed it. I only did it one time because I didn't think about it. I was running an errand after work and was wondering what the heck was going on. It was so crazy it was unbelievable!

In the Middle East the official word that Ramadan has started comes, of course, from Mecca. I pictured some Holy men in the top of the minaret at the Grand Mosque looking for the new moon. NOT! They went up in a corporate jet. THAT surprised me.

One day I went to the mall across from my apartment to grocery shop right before sunset. I had to cross one of the widest, busiest streets in Abu Dhabi. While I was shopping I heard the sunset prayer. When I came out, that street was completely empty.

I thought it was interesting, particularly how many people observe these long fasting periods.

--- 5 ---

To the commenter named Sara who just left a comment to this post: as you may know from perusing the extensive scorpions category on this site, I have made a certain peace with living in a scorpion-infested house. However. When you have scorpions FALLING INTO THE BATH WHILE YOU BATH YOUR BABY and ON YOUR KITCHEN TABLE, it is time to move. I hear that Barrow, Alaska is lovely.

--- 6 ---

I'm sorry about #5. There's something about the topic of scorpions that makes me UNABLE TO TYPE WITHOUT USING THE CAPS LOCK KEY.

--- 7 ---

Back when I did my own post about using Magnart, I had to laugh when I compared my post to Dooce's original, where mom Heather Armstrong wrote of the artwork she used her Magnart to hang:

It's the red version of a silkscreen print from Wayne Pate of Good Shape Design. I bought it the first time I saw it because it matches the Flor tiles in our living room perfectly.

Ah, yes. I should have mentioned to my readers that I was hanging the limited edition print "Red Blob on Construction Paper" that I chose because it offered an interesting contrast to the permanent marker stains mixed with crushed raisins on the living room carpet.

------

Have a great Tuesday night, everyone!

A quick Adoration story

I don't have much time to write this afternoon, so I thought I'd share a quick story about going to Adoration this weekend...

I've been trying to making it to Adoration once a week, which means that in practice I go once a month. I continue to be blown away by the powerful prayer experiences I have there, in particular when I just open my mind, sit in silence, and let myself be guided (longtime readers will remember the Adoration List debacle).

When I say "powerful experience" I don't necessarily mean big emotions or feeling God's presence in some palpable way, thought that does occasionally happen. I mainly mean that I get a sense that my thoughts are being firmly, obviously guided by Something outside of myself; for example, I'll walk out of the Adoration chapel with incredibly insightful answers to questions that I didn't even ask.

This weekend was such an occasion.

My husband and I went to Adoration yesterday as part of our anniversary weekend celebration and, as usual, I couldn't help but go in with a laundry list of things I needed to cover. Yet I forced myself to just be still, not think too much, and say only a prayer asking God to lead me where I needed to go (this is surprisingly hard for control freaks like me).

I waited to be guided to clarity on all the important issues that needed addressing, like those writing deadlines that are causing me some stress, my continued slacking in the prayer department, my lack of trust in God, my constant complaining, etc...But it didn't happen. Out of the blue, I felt a strong pull to think about something that I hadn't even considered:

I need to put serious thought into what I eat on a daily basis.

Weird, huh? Of all the seemingly more important problems I brought to the table, I was overcome by an unshakable sense that to address this issue was my main marching order.

At first it seemed like a totally random, bizarre thing to think about. I wondered if I'd even understood what I'd "heard" correctly. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is actually a critical issue, and one that could have far-reaching effects into every area of my life. I won't bore you with all the details, but the short version is: I've known for a long time that I have some mild insulin issues, and that when I eat certain carbs it wreaks havoc on my system and can have a major impact on my energy levels. Even though I know this, I'd kind of blown off the seriousness of it and have been pretty careless about what I eat, particularly at lunch time -- not a smart move for someone who's exhausted all the time anyway. If I were to make a major push to eat foods that don't send me into an insulin downward spiral (which is pretty much everything I crave around lunch time), avoid the other foods to which I seem to have minor sensitivities, and add some good supplements to my diet, the impact could be huge.

The more I think about it, the more I can see that this is exactly what I should be putting at the top of my list of things to deal with. Managing what I eat more carefully could end up being the foundation to having the energy and stamina to properly deal with all my other concerns. It's a brilliant insight, really.

So that's my little Adoration story: I went in to get all sorts of major issues worked out, and ended up getting the message to drop everything and think about carb and protein ratios! As someone who is still new to prayer, I just love little moments like this. It's neat to experience God "speaking" so clearly; not in words, but by guiding my course with a firm but gentle hand.


UPDATED TO NOTE: I started writing this in the morning, and am finishing it in the afternoon. At lunch I didn't want to waste some delicious leftover pizza (a known "danger" food for me), so I decided that just this once I'd go ahead and eat it and hope for the best, despite the whole VOICE OF GOD TELLING ME NOT TO thing. And now I feel utterly miserable, like I'm about to slip into a coma. Hmm, it's almost like God knows what he's talking about! Anyway, you can see that I am better at listening to the Lord's guidance than acting on it.

A Week in the Life

I'm too shocked by what I'm reading in the comments to the last post (are you guys serious?!) and distracted by Twitter to write anything coherent today, so it's time for a photo post.

I've been wanting to do a Week in the Life series ever since I got the idea from Elizabeth Esther, and I happen to have taken a lot of pictures this week, so here we go! (I should note that the title is a bit misleading though. It is a "week in the life" in the sense that the photos were taken this week and it is, umm, my life, but this is not a typical week for us.)


Family Reunion

As I mentioned, this past weekend we drove way out into the country to go to Yaya's family reunion. The town has a population of less than 500, and is one of those places where everything closes on Sunday and you never know when any stores will be open anyway because sometimes the owners just don't feel like workin' that day.

As soon as we set our stuff down after we arrived, we had to get back in the car to drive 45 minutes to make it to a vigil Mass. After a stirring service as St. Thomas the Apostle in Huntsville (thanks, Masstimes.org!) we went back to find the reunion dinner well under way, everyone serving themselves spicy chili made with fresh-smoked meat out of huge vats. Also, I'd forgotten how dark country nights are!


You could tell the hosts were good Texans because they had an entire facility on their property dedicated to grilling and smoking meat:


I didn't get a picture of this, but they had a great idea for raising money for next year's reunion: everyone brought garage sale type items to donate, and they held an auction. (The clever host scheduled the auction for before we were allowed to get in line for the delicious potluck food, so that motivated everyone to bid with reckless abandon as the peach cobblers and apple pies steamed on the banquet table next to us.)

Anyway, here's the lovely country home of the family members who were kind enough to let us stay with them:



Wine Tasting

I've mentioned before that after our conversion my husband and I did lose some friends from the "old days" who didn't seem as comfortable hanging out with us anymore. Interestingly, one group of friends we've remained close to is our gay friends. (I wrote more about that here.)

On Tuesday we went to an event that was slated as a "GLB Alumni Wine Tasting" for a certain university. We got put on the invite list since we knew so many people who were going to be there, and decided to get my mom to babysit for a night so that we could swing by. I didn't bring my camera to that one, but I found these pictures from the J. Crew catalog that pretty much cover it:


Just picture these dudes holding wine glasses and sitting around an outdoor table at a trendy wine bar and you're all set.

My loud jokes about this not being an inclusive event since it was not a "GLBT" gathering were underappreciated, I thought. But other than that it was a great time. One of our friends confided that his business is in deep trouble with the recent financial crisis and he seemed pretty upset about it, so I was glad we could be there for him.


Movie Night

How cool is this: a family we know hosted an outdoor screening of The Princess Bride at the grounds of their house.

Notice the amazing two-story treehouse on the right:


I thought my son would never leave. Here's a shot of setting up the massive movie screen, rented from a local movie theater (who knew they did that?):


And of course you simply cannot have a proper movie night without a popcorn and candy stand:


Let the show begin!


I think we also firmly established ourselves as the token Catholic family: I was the only pregnant woman; we were the only ones with so many little kids; LM was the only baby; and when the screen showed the scene of Princess Buttercup walking out in her white robes to the throngs of adoring subjects, my two-year-old daughter startled everyone by shouting excitedly, "Look! It's Mary!" (pronounced "Mahw-wy").


Those are my pictures from this week. If I do a Week in the Life next week it will all be shots taking within a 15-foot radius of our living room, I'm sure. Have a great weekend, everyone!

Some questions for morning people

This could not be more of a tangent from the usual subject matter of this blog, but I had to post it...

I got up early this morning, as I usually do to get some quiet time before the kids wake up. I am a night owl to the core, and though I get up early out of necessity it is not something I enjoy at all. As I did my zombie walk around the kitchen to put some coffee on, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a morning person, to just want to get up early because...because you like getting up early or something. After a while of pondering this I realized that I don't believe that morning people actually exist. It's too hard for me to imagine. Even in seasons of my life where I had to get up early every day and regularly got uninterrupted sleep, I still loathed it.

I ended up recalling evidence like college roommates being horrifyingly perky at 7:00am and friends at sleepovers laughing and generally acting like they weren't hating life at breakfast time, so I decided that morning people might actually exist. That left me with a bunch of questions about this phenomenon. I know this makes me weird, but I am such a hardwired night owl that getting these insights from morning people would be quite interesting and exotic for me.

If anyone would care to indulge me, here is what I'm yearning to know:

Questions for Morning People

1. If you didn't have any obligations, what time would you go to bed at night?
   
   
2. Assuming the bedtime from #1, if you didn't set an alarm, what time would you naturally wake up in the morning?
   
   
3. If you have gotten a good amount of sleep the night before, how long does it take you to feel energized and ready to go after you wake up? Or do you just feel like jumping out of bed as soon as you open your eyes?
   
   
4. If you have not gotten a good amount of sleep the night before, do you still feel peppy in the morning? If you do feel tired upon waking, how long until you feel more fully awake?
   
   
5. Have you ever in your life felt alert and fully ready to get up as soon as you awoke?
   
   
6. Do you like being a morning person? Don't you ever look out your window and think, "Aaah, this is awful, I'm awake and the sun is barely up! Why aren't I asleep?!"
   

I'd be delighted to be enlightened about this. I'll leave my answers in the comments for contrast.

7 Quick Takes (vol. 4)

--- 1 ---

A neat little backstory about the wedding DJ whom I briefly mentioned in the post about our five year anniversary:

Back when I was in elementary school my mom was often in charge of organizing the office Christmas party for her company. I used to tag along to help out, and was always blown away by the spectacular DJ named Baron Bacon who had a gift for getting the crowd moving and making sure that everyone had a rip-roaring good time throughout the event. One time when I was 11 years old I went up to him as he was packing up his equipment after the event and said, "Mr. Bacon, if I ever get married would you be the DJ at my wedding reception?" He laughed and patted me on the head and said yes.

I never forgot him, and the first thing I did when I started planning our reception was to Google his name. And, sure enough, 15 years after that night I asked him about it, he was the DJ at my wedding reception.

--- 2 ---

How great is this little video of the Litany of the Saints?

Litany of the Saints


I often find myself singing it around the house (especially on rough days). And I'll just go ahead and admit that I usually get teary-eyed when I watch the video. Just seeing the pictures of some of my favorite saints (Juan Diego, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Francis de Sales) gets me choked up every time.

--- 3 ---

You know you're about to have a bad day when you realize you don't know where your one-year-old is, and it simultaneously registers that you've been hearing giggling and splashing coming from the half bathroom for a while.

Do they make antibacterial firehoses for when you find babies elbow-deep in toilet water?

--- 4 ---

I promised I'd update about trying to make Sunday a day of rest. Here's the update: it's harder than I thought it would be.

What this experiment has revealed is that I have more on my plate than I could realistically do in seven days, so to try to take out a day throws everything into chaos. In order to really have a day of rest I'm going to have to make some serious cuts in what I try to get done each week...which is tough. Will update more later.

--- 5 ---

To add to the list of Things I've Learned the Hard Way: It's a dangerous combination to have spell checker auto-check your emails before sending if you frequently write while distracted and in a hurry. I barely caught an email to my friend Arpita that, after I hastily accepted a suggested change from spell check, began, "Hey Armpit, good to hear from you!" And I lamented to my husband yesterday that "I feel like a schema" for forgetting someone's birthday, when actually I felt like a schmo.

--- 6 ---

Yesterday while waiting to pick the kids up from Mother's Day Out I saw a mom with a one-year-old, waiting to pick up her child. I overheard her mention to a friend that she needs recipe ideas for a dinner party she's hosting as part of a dinner club she and her friends do -- every month they get together and have a family dinner party, rotating houses each time.

Taking the opportunity to make a grand, unfounded assumption in order to indulge in needless self-pity and validate my own laziness, I thought, "I'd love to do something like that, but [dramatic sigh] there's no way. But I'd be all over it if I only had two kids like she does!"

I ended up striking up a conversation with her and found out that she had pregnancies at almost the exact same times I did, only one of them was twins. So when her youngest was born last year she had four under three. Consider me humbled.

--- 7 ---

I actually never intended for every post like this to have exactly seven tidbits. It's just so happened to work out that way every time so far.

A week of Twitter

Shannon has convinced me to try Twitter. It's amazing that it's taken me this long to try it since I have used pretty much all the other "putting every single thought that crosses your mind on the internet"-related programs in existence. What sold me on it was Shannon's assurance that it's a great way to keep up with people and can actually be used efficiently to save time, as long as you limit yourself and don't let it become a distraction. The first part sounds great. But not limiting myself and letting it become a distraction is sort of the story of my relationship with the internet, so we'll how it goes.

Because of my sneaking suspicion that I might end up letting this allow me to procrastinate more than I already do, I'm going to just do a week trial period for now. Next Wednesday I'll reevaluate and decide if I'm going to stick with it.

Knowing me, I probably won't be able to handle it. If I had to guess, I'd say the five likeliest reasons that I'll have to discontinue Twitter use are:

1. 90% of the posts will begin with "I'm supposed to be using this time to work on my book, but..."
   
   
2. I'll be talking to someone and forget it's not private and end up saying something inappropriate / offensive / incriminating.
   
   
3. As I have a bad tendency to do with most web stats, I'll interpret the "followers" number to represent my value as a human being.
   
   
4. I will reveal to the world how disturbingly little I leave the house by the number and frequency of updates.
   
   
5. My husband will come home to the kids painting the walls with toxic chemicals from a cabinet they raided, toys will strewn across the living room, dinner boiling over on the stove, and if he tries to ask me about it I'll say without looking up from my laptop, "Can't talk. Busy Twittering. If you have something to say, text me on Twitter @conversiondiary."
   

All that said, I'm looking forward to trying it. You can find me at twitter.com/conversiondiary.

On being tired

It occurred to me recently that I spend a large percentage of my time being tired -- often really, really tired. These past few months have been worse than usual, this pregnancy bringing with it a crushing exhaustion that I haven't been able to shake. Even before this pregnancy, though, long stretches of feeling well rested have been few and far between ever since my first child was born. A certain amount of weariness just comes with the territory of building a family.

The other day I had one of those all-too-frequent moments of wondering how I would get through the rest of the day. I leaned against the wall before I headed upstairs to get my two littlest ones up from nap, pausing to take a deep breath and look at all those stairs that loomed in front of me. If I'd had any other options, it would have been easy to tell myself that I "couldn't" do it. It seemed impossible that I could muster up the energy to haul myself up those stairs and then lift a wiggly 24-pound baby and a wigglier 28-pound toddler out of their cribs, change diapers, listen to the inevitable post-nap whining and crying, help my other toddler with whatever he needs, and be on-call for two more hours until my husband got home.

As I leaned against the wall, I thought it was interesting that this is the life I want for my children.

I thought about how counterintuitive it is to say, "Hey, kids, I'm really freaking tired all the time because of the duties of my vocation, and I pray that in twenty or so years this will be your life, too!" I can see why so many of the Baby Boomers and their parents adopted the mentality that the best life you could give your kids is one of physical ease and personal freedom to do whatever you feel like doing -- after all, that's a whole lot more comfortable. Surely a "good" life would involve more relaxation than work, more pleasure than sacrifice, more amusement than perseverance.

Yet it only takes a glance through the Self-Help section of any bookstore to see that there is a silent undercurrent of angst raging through our society; that the "good life" isn't as good as it seemed it would be; that something is missing in the lives of many people, and it's something big.

When people start searching for the meaning of life, they often picture that once they find it it will involve sitting in the lotus position on a Tibetan mountaintop, or sipping Chianti in a Tuscan villa, or perhaps posing in a photo shoot for the cover of a major magazine. Those visions of discovering the meaning of life and reaching the pinnacle of the human experience almost never involve images of sitting in a foul-smelling nursing home room holding the hand of an abandoned Alzheimer's patient, or kneeling in prayer in a nondescript church, or running to the grocery store to buy an economy-sized jug of generic brand detergent to get through yet another mountain of laundry.

That's why it's so easy to miss the truth when you hear it. It was for me, anyway.

When I heard the Catholic notion that each of us has a vocation, and that it's not about what you'll do but whom you'll serve, it sounded outrageous. Insane, even. In this worldview, living for yourself is not a valid option -- regularly taking time for yourself, yes; but structuring your life around selfish pursuits, no. It went against everything I believed. It seemed to even go against common sense.

But, as I've also said many times before, when I tried it, the proof was in the pudding. The way years of underlying angst melted away, how all areas of my life suddenly had so much more order and clarity, that feeling of peace I'd always yearned for but had never experienced (and wasn't even sure it was possible to experience) -- there was no doubt in my mind that Christianity had a lock on the answer to the meaning of life. Through a life centered around agape, self-giving love, I found He who is Agape itself; I found what every human who's ever lived desires most, whether they know it or not: God.

So as I leaned there against the wall, my eyes drowsy as I mustered up my last few ounces of energy to get to the top of the stairs, I thought of how very much I want this life for my children. Not necessarily my exact circumstances -- some of them may be called to the priesthood, religious life, or another vocation other than married life -- but whatever it is it will revolve around living for God and others. It won't be the easiest or most comfortable life, it will come with many challenges, and they probably won't get as much sleep as they'd like. They will have their own moments of leaning against the wall, weary from the service of others. But they will have the peace of Christ, an invaluable peace found only in the practice of agape that I missed out on for 27 years while I was trapped in a self-focused prison.

What I will tell them is what I would tell myself if I could travel back in time and deliver a message to the younger me. I imagine walking up to a twenty-year-old girl who's a little too thin and wears a little too much black eyeliner, catching her in mid-daydream about discovering life's secrets through mountaintop meditations or strolls down sunset-soaked beaches, and leaning over to whisper in her ear, "Pssst. When you discover the meaning of life, it just might involve being a little tired."

Book Chat: Memoirs about conversion, crazy childhoods and OCD

I hit my writing deadline this morning, so I thought I'd use the kids' nap/quiet time to treat myself to a gratuitous post about books. Here's some of what I've been reading lately (not surprisingly, a lot of it is memoir):


Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner

Y'all. Y'all. We need to talk.

Never have I had such a big disconnect with, well, everyone about a book. This memoir about Winner's conversion from Orthodox Judaism to Christianity came highly recommended by many people with whom I generally have the same taste in books. Almost everyone I know who read it liked it; most people loved it. So I realize that the problem is probably with me when I say: I couldn't even finish it.

Part of it might be the flowery style of writing that wanders back and forth from subject to subject, although she definitely has a talent for it and I've noticed that that's par for the course with memoirs. It's not my thing, but I could have probably gotten past that. A bigger issue was that it wasn't clear why she converted. There was a lot of talk about what she liked and what felt good, along with notes that conversion is complicated, but I felt like overall the substance-to-style ratio on that matter was disappointingly low. (Though, again, I didn't get to the end so she might have clarified a lot in the final chapters.)

But here's the real reason I couldn't finish it: the author's tone was really off-putting. Here's an example from a visit to her boyfriend's parents' house, where she notes that her boyfriend's mother didn't seem to like her:

I was some outlander from a state far away in the South...and, worse of all, I was not a virgin, a detail Dov chose to divulge to [his mother] in what I...later understood was an intentional barb, a strangely passive way to rebel against his mother, whom he adored but who, I'm sure, suffocated him with her hugs and hamentashen. When I visited, I often talked to her about recipes, and Dov eventually said she felt I was talking down to her and it was one of the few times I exploded at him. "What does she want?" I snapped. "She's a housewife and a superb cook. Am I supposed to talk to her about Hegel's theory of civil society?"

(Ironically, just two pages before this egregious insult to housewives she referred to herself as a feminist and talked about how some Orthodox Jewish attitudes about women being less mentally capable made her feel bad when they were directed at her.) Anyway, this excerpt is a good example of why I was uncomfortable with the book: there were a lot of uncharitable takes towards other people combined with a cumbersome awareness of her own intelligence that permeated every chapter. On the plus side, it was well written and I enjoyed the insights into Jewish holidays and customs.

If you read this book and liked it, I'd be interested to hear why you did. Maybe I was looking at it from the wrong perspective? Do I need to give it another shot?


The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

All I can say is: wow. Wow. What a story. In this memoir Walls chronicles her wild childhood with loving but pathologically neglectful parents, sharing stories that make you think with every page, "I can't believe that I believe this is true...but I do." She writes vividly and with an amazing detachment, describing her parents in all their complexity rather than portraying them as cardboard caricatures of unfit parents.

Each chapter is short and packs a punch, sharing tales of everything from regular middle-of-the-night moves when they ran out of money to her parents' surprising erudition given their borderline-homeless lifestyle to their utter lack of concern for following the rules of society (like when her dad snuck her out of the hospital where she was being treated for severe burns). Some of the stories are hard to read, but all are gripping and poignant.

The only thing I didn't like was that I wished the author had spent more time in the end talking about how she's made peace with her childhood (if at all), or discussed its larger meaning...or something. Maybe that's not even possible, but after going on such a wild and often traumatic ride with the author, I was hoping that she would help me as the reader make sense of it all or somehow get some closure along with her. Other than that, though, it was a really powerful page-turner of a book.


Devil in the Details by Jennifer Traig

My poor husband. I woke him up more than once from shaking the bed with laugher as I read this book, a humor memoir about Traig's childhood with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Not only is she a gifted writer with a talent for comedic timing (think: female David Sedaris), but her tales of how her OCD verged into religious fanaticism when she began to explore Orthodox Judaism were both interesting and hilarious. In the part where she talks about her compulsion toward following traditional Jewish prayer practices, she writes:

On Saturday the prayers were doubled and tripled. Because there wasn't a synagogue service within walking distance, I conducted my own. Because I did not know what a service consisted of, I made one up. From nine o'clock until half past noon I sat primly in my room, reading my Bible and my Junior Jewish Encyclopedia, line by line, not moving to a new line until I was sure I'd understood the last one completely. When that portion of the service concluded, I read the "Torah Thoughts" feature in the Jewish newspaper, followed by the wedding announcements. Then I got on my knees and did back exercises. I was fairly certain this wasn't part of the traditional Shabbat service, but I thought it was a nice closer. [...]

"Let me get this straight," my father puzzled. "You're telling me you're acting this way because the Torah commands you to? That's the reason? Are you sure you're not sniffing paint? You sure you're not just drunk?" My parents knew what to do with grain alcohol. But what were they to do with grain offerings?

The book is chock-full of little vignettes like this one, and I thought it was a great read. There were a couple chapters toward the end that lagged a bit, but overall I would put this high on the list of memoirs I've read in terms of entertainment value. Also, I should add a caveat that this is a humor book and not a spiritual memoir, so get it as a fun weekend read, not to gain deep insights Jewish spirituality.


So that's what I've been reading lately. If you have any thoughts on any of these books, I'd love to hear from you! I could talk about books all day.

You first

I'm back from our exhausting whirlwind family reunion weekend and behind on a writing deadline, so I'm going to take this opportunity to run another post in the Flashback Series. This one was originally posted on June 19, 2007.


When I think about my conversion and how very drastically my life and my views changed in the process, I often try to pinpoint what the key experiences were that kept me on track. I had so many doubts, went through so many spiritual dry spells, had so few emotionally powerful experiences -- I sometimes wonder why I didn't throw in the towel and go back to the comfort of atheism that I'd known all my life.

One big reason is simply that, on a purely intellectual level, I came to believe that God exists and that what the Catholic Church teaches is true. (The details of that are the subject of a different, much longer post.) Though this was a critical factor, it wasn't the biggest reason I stayed on the path to God. The lure of a worldly life and the comfort of selfishness would probably have led me to slip back into functional atheism at some point.

The biggest reason I never gave up is simply because I began to have faith. Rather suddenly, I began to feel God's presence in my life and the world all around me. What I thought to be true on an intellectual level I now knew to be true from the bottom of my heart. I had prayed and prayed and suffered one long spiritual dry spell after another for more than two years and then, seemingly out of the blue, my doubts faded away and I was aware of Christ's presence in a subtle but important way -- like being aware of the beating of my heart (to borrow from John C. Wright's phrase).

So what did it? How did I finally come to believe in my heart after so long of believing only in my mind? I've thought a lot about this lately, and I think I finally have the answer:

I dusted off the mirror.

After I re-designed the site and was going through the archives to add categories, I came across this post. Little did I know at the time, this would be one of the key turning points in my conversion. When I wrote the post I had recently come across this quote from C.S. Lewis, which would change my life:

When you come to know God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others -- not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.

When I read that I realized that I was asking the all-good God to come into my heart...yet it was a heart where envy, resentment, anger, selfishness, and all sorts of other nasty sentiments lived. My philosophy up until then had been to hold off on doing the "hard stuff" that comes with Christianity (like forgiving those who've hurt me, serving others selflessly, not indulging in my feelings of wanting to launch a bazooka on cars who cut me off in traffic, etc.) until God showed himself to me.

I was basically telling God, "You first." Prove yourself to me and fill my heart with your presence, and then I'll start worrying about all that forgiveness and selflessness stuff. Until then, where's that Eminem CD I was listening to...?

What I totally missed, however, was that this would be like holding up a dirty mirror to the sun, and telling the light, "You first." The sun cannot reflect off of a mirror caked in dirt, just as the Source of all that is pure and good cannot fill a heart that is already jam packed with self and the world.

When I realized this, I admit that it was a painful process to start living as if I were some devout Christian when I was really very dry spiritually and still had plenty of doubts. (At the time my family was involved in a passive-aggressive suburban version of a Romeo and Juliet type drama involving some neighbors and our Home Owner's Association. As I said a prayer for the writer of our third threatening certified letter instead of bitterly cursing his name as was my custom, I recall gritting my teeth and thinking, "This Christianity stuff better be true!")

After a while, an interesting thing started to happen. A sort of snowball effect was put into action, where the more room I made in my heart for God (however reluctantly at first), the more I understood his pure love and goodness, the more I genuinely desired not to sin, the more I felt remorse for those sins that I did commit (even the "little" ones), and the end of this process always left me closer to God than I had been before.

One day I woke up and realized that I had faith. I believed. Not just on a vague intellectual level, but in my heart and soul. And it all started with taking that first step to make just a little bit of room in my heart for God, dusting off the mirror of my soul so that it could reflect even just a small fraction of his light. You only need to experience that once. I may have bad days and dry spells and doubts in the future, but I know that I'll always know God is there on a deep, fundamental level. Because once you experience his presence -- even if it's only in the small way of a barely repentant lifelong atheist -- you know there's no going back.

7 Quick Takes (vol. 3)

--- 1 ---

I had an 18-week ultrasound today, and it's a GIRL! For those of you who need a refresher, my four-year-old is a boy, and the two- and one-year-olds are girls. So we'll have our third girl in three years! I also saw her suck her thumb in the ultrasound, which was too precious.

--- 2 ---

We have weekend plans that I think of as a celebration of everything I'm bad at: it's a last-minute schedule-destroying trip with all three kids to stay with people we've never met in a house we've never seen to go to Yaya's family reunion to meet a bunch of people whom I don't know.

Also, Yaya keeps calling me to emphasize that, "JENNIFER, these people are very country. You have to understand, this is a rural area. They are very country." When Yaya, who grew up in a poor farming family without fancy things like indoor plumbing or toilet paper, refers to a group of people as "very country," this is a weighty statement.

--- 3 ---

Heading out to Yaya's event reminds me of my own experience with "country" relatives. Our version of a family reunion is an annual Cemetery Homecoming, where the five or six extended families who have relatives buried in the old county cemetery gather together for potluck brunch and barbecue on the cemetery grounds. It consists mostly of very rural, farming families, where the women bake up their best cobblers and the men put on their dress cowboy hats and boots for the occasion. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do in my childhood, though based on the reactions I've gotten I take it that cemetery homecomings are not a common practice in other parts of the country ("Who comes home?!" being a common response).

--- 4 ---

For those of you who were concerned about the reader whose front doorstep I was about to show up at to assure her that I didn't think she was an internet stalker (#6 here), I thought I'd let you know that she saw that post and I did hear from her! ...Although I'm not sure if she got my reply. But it seems like we have a nice little system going on where she emails me and I post to the blog about it, which is a big step up from the uncertainty of before.

--- 5 ---

Do yogurt makers work?

I'm going through tons of plain yogurt at $3 per jar from the grocery store and am thinking about buying one. Anyone have any experience with this?

--- 6 ---

The comments to my last post are fantastic. Thank you all for your thoughts (and if you haven't read through them, you should!)

--- 7 ---

I will probably be offline for Saturday and Sunday. Since the town we'll be staying in has a population of less than 500 and is evidently "very country," I'm going to assume that I won't have great wireless access out there. Honestly, I'll be relieved if we have toilets from the way it's been described to me.

So if it takes me a while to approve comments this weekend, that's why.

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Have a great weekend!