More Thoughts on "Fall To Grace"

From the introduction to the co-author's notes at the end Fall to Grace is one of those books I simply could not put down. I read into the wee hours of the morning as the snow fell and piled high (for Tennessee) outside the windows. Using the book of Galatians as his backdrop and sprinkling first person testimonies called "Grace Notes" between the sections of his text Jay Bakker issues a call to a hurting world and an all too often legalistic bullying church/political culture to understand the revolution that is God's Grace.

As I read others reviews of this book I was shocked to see all kinds of things that in my opinion the reviewer had to read into the text. One such review claimed that this is a gospel of Universalism, one that denies the need for the individual to accept God's grace and in so doing denies the core of the Christian faith. I am baffled as to where this reviewer got that idea. In the first sentence of Chapter 4 he states "At the core of Paul's idea of Grace is the belief that man is freed from religious law and reconciled with God through Jesus' life, death and sacrifice." Seems pretty orthodox to me.

I suspect that those who take issue with Jay Bakker's message do so for one of two reasons. The first being that he is the son of disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker and the second being that like his late mother, Tammy Faye Bakker, Jay is LGBTQ affirming and accepting, arguing for full equality including the right of same gender couples to marry. Regardless of your position on the LGBT issue "Fall to Grace" is a thought provoking biblically sound message and one that many who have been hurt by the church need desperately to hear. I highly recommend it.

Next On The Reading List

 

http://www.girlgeniusbooks.com/

I've been reading Girl Genius online for a couple of years starting from the beginning and catching up to the current page in a weekend and then reading on Monday, Wednesday and Friday regularly. I can't wait to get my hands on the new novel and I'll be checking the bookstores for it tomorrow!

Fall To Grace - Jay Bakker

We got snow this week so I have had more time to read than usual. On Sunday, before the predicted "Snowmaggedon" hit our area, I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up Jay Bakker's new book "Fall to Grace" 

I got to know Jay Bakker a bit over a month ago now. Some of my readers may know the name, he's the son of Jim and the late Tammy Faye Bakker of PTL fame. He's also one of the most genuine people I know. I'm going to pick up his first book, "Son of a Preacher Man" from the library as soon as I can get out from the snow. I won't even begin to go into Jay's story, he tells it much better than I could and if you're doing the 52 in 52 you can add it to your list and read it for yourself. "Fall to Grace" is an exploration of what Grace is really all about. It draws on the book of Galatians and on Jay's life experience and on the stories of others, "Grace Notes" inserted between the sections, to build a beautiful case for grace. 

Jay's writing style is natural and easy to read. As the mother of a dyslexic child I find it profoundly comforting to read the work of a profoundly dyslexic author. He does use a co-writer, Martin Edlund, but the voice in the book is clearly Jay's. I found the book encouraging on so many levels. It is a perfect match to Jonathan Brink's book, which I am still reading and pondering over. 

Jay will be doing book signings in several parts of the country. If you're in any of these areas you need to check him out: 

Fall to Grace, Book signing tour dates!

by Jay Bakker on Friday, January 7, 2011 at 2:04pm

·         January 14 at 7:30pm – Book Signing at Spoonbill & Sugartown, 218 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211
·         January 17 at 7:00pm – Book Signing at Borders, 7836 Rea Road, Charlotte, NC 28277
·         January 19 at 7:00pm – Book Signing at Borders, 650 Ponce de Leon, Ste. 500, Atlanta, GA 30308
·         January 22 at 7:00pm – Book Signing at BookPeople, 603 North Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78703
·         January 24 at 7:00pm – Book Signing at Borders, 400 Post Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

I'm 82 Pages and 4 Chapters In

This is presenting a fascinating paradigm...starting with the creation story a case is being made that the problem created in the garden when we (humanity) chose to eat of the tree of knowledge of good/evil is that we lost our capacity to see ourselves in the truth of how God sees us (he proclaimed humanity at creation to be "very good") and that it is not God or Satan who must be appeased at the Cross but rather humanity's own demands based on our flawed judgment of what happened in the Garden. It is a fascinating premise. I'm curious to see how it develops.

How This Is Going To Work

So I'm thinking that I won't be reading a book a week necessarily...some weeks I may read more than one and some books may take more than a week to read. My goal is 52 in 52 not a book a week. This week's book is by my outlaw preacher friend Jonathan Brink. I got it from him at OP10 - the Outlaw Preacher's (re)Union last month and haven't gotten started on it yet. His breakout session on it was very thought provoking and I'm looking forward to reading it. I expect this one to take more than one week.

Discovering the God Imagination: Jonathan Brink 

I am excited about engaging with this book. The concept he is exploring here is not one I'm sure I agree with but the little bit we talked about in the group session has me wanting to dig more deeply into scripture to see if its possible that we've gotten a whole lot of things all tangled up by not understanding what happened in Eden.

This Poor Blog

I'm sure it must suffer from an identity crisis. Over the years of its existence it has been:

1. A place for my random thoughts
2. A geocaching blog 
3. A bento cooking blog 
4. A homeschooling mama blog 

And now the blog for keeping track of what I'm reading for the 52 books in 52 weeks 2011 challenge.

Jessica and I are embarking on a challenge to read 52 books in 52 weeks. She's dyslexic so it may be much more a challenge to her than to me. We shall see. Her blog can be found at this link so please check in and encourage her as the year goes along. At any rate this old blog is getting a new purpose and a new look for the New Year. Happy Reading!

Today I Told DB

Today I finally talked to DB and I think I can finally lay the issue to rest. Each one of the friends that you brought into my life, the ones I feared I had lost in losing you, know my truth. It is enough. I did not ask any of them to pick between us. I know the heart is large enough to love us both. Yet to be honest, to be real in my relationships with them, I couldn't pretend that this great gaping hole wasn't blown out of my life history. Whatever happens to those relationships from here forward is no longer about you. It is about me. It is about my relationship with that person outside the context of you.

So much of my adult life was in the context of you. Too much of it. I didn't see that until you were gone and I finally saw how enmeshed we had been. Learning to live in this new reality hasn't been a smooth process and it has taken me nearly two years to finally gather the courage and make the decision to speak my truth to DB. He apologized to me on your behalf. How sad is that? He filled in a few gaps for me. There is a girl. I hope and pray she is the one and that the two of you are beautifully happy together. I hope you have the courage to be honest with her about where you have fallen and the places you are weak so that she can help you up and help you to be strong. I wish you joy. Despite everything. I wish you joy.

Life Interrupted

I started back writing in this blog a bit last March with the intent of making doing so a regular thing but life got rather dramatically interrupted shortly after that post and remains so to this day. We are among the many victims of the May floods of 2010 that hit much of Tennessee. I am sitting on the landing between the living room and the dining room, both remain emptied of furniture and stripped to the bare concrete/asbestos tile floors. The living room is virtually empty. A vacuum cleaner, a broom, a fan and a work light are the only items there. The dining room is less organized. A blanket covered in kitchen items to be kept and another covered in kitchen items to be donated, a drying rack where several pieces of delicate laundry are drying, a step stool that acts as the desk for my notebook computer, a tv tray where I cook much of our food, a large trash can and the various blinking electronic devices that connect me still to the internet world. It is like living in a really poorly equipped college dormitory. At least we are back home. It was three weeks before I could be inside the house at all due to the dampness and the mold. It was another three weeks before the last of the soggy, damaged parquet hardwood gave up its hold on the concrete sub-floors and was finally removed from the house. Four weeks of air-conditioner problems in one of the hottest Memphis summers in decades kept us out at the last. After that was resolved there was nothing that would keep us from moving back home.

I understand now the doggedness of the survivors of Katrina. The seemingly irrational drive to save what to someone on the outside looking in would seem much wiser to simply walk away from. This is HOME. This is the house where our daughter was conceived and to which we brought her home from the hospital. It is the only home she has ever known. This is the house where a dozen church kids looked beyond the mess and disorder and saw welcome anyway. This is the house that we invested our own blood, sweat and tears in when we moved in, still newlyweds, 16 and a half years ago. This is the home we never intended to make our forever home but that somehow became that while we were busy building our lives. So even though the loans we are taking to put it back together will result in us being hopelessly upside down, walking away and letting the bank take her isn't an option. It just isn't.

Life has been interrupted for sure but we will find our way somehow back home.

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day

Top is what the dough looks like when you take it from the fridge and have cut one loaf's worth off to bake. The second photo is what the one loaf looks like as it is resting before baking. Note the cornmeal on the cutting board to keep the dough from sticking. This will become important later. Photo three is what the loaf looks like after having cooked, upside down because it flipped instead of sliding off the board, just before being removed from the oven. Photo four is the finished product, cornmeal topped crust and self created steam vent are due to said flip from photo three. The oven may be just a little bit on the hot side but the finished product tastes amazingly good all things considered

It's Been Almost A Year

since I posted here last. I had thought about simply letting this blog fade away since I am committed to blogging daily over at my med blog but I think there is still a purpose for a place for me to blog things that really don't fit over there and so here I am again.

I don't know how often I'll write or what even this blog is going to be about. The good news is that fits the subtitle. The random musings of a homeschool mom and geocacher...and artist...and churchmom and woman of many other roles.

I am still learning daily who I am. This last year has been one where everything except the foundations has been shaken. Yet I am still standing. God is still in control. Life is still good.

I am finding new interests and reviving old ones. Meeting new pieces of myself and reclaiming ones that had been trusted to people who were not worthy of that trust. I am bruised and cautious but starting now I am beginning to move toward hope and healing.

It is well with my soul.

This needs to be my prayer...Often.

“My failure to be true even to my own accepted standards:

My self-deception in face of temptation:

My choosing of the worse when I know the better: O Lord, forgive.

My failure to apply to myself the standard of conduct I demand of others:

My complacence towards wrongs that do not touch my own case and my over-sensitiveness to those that do:

My slowness to see the good in my fellows and the see the evil in myself:

My hardness of heart towards my neighbours faults and my readiness to make allowance for my own… O Lord, forgive.” A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie

 

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Missing Christmas and Other Ponderings

This year we didn’t celebrate Advent in the way we have typically done in the past and I think that contributed heavily to feeling as though somehow we “missed” Christmas. Advent began and ended with the deaths of two of my mentors and I think that contributed to the melancholy that settled on me and overshadowed much of the holiday season. I didn’t begin to feel like it was truly Christmas until after the day itself had passed. What turned the season around for me was the time spent with friends in this period between Christmas and Epiphany known as “The Twelve Days of Christmas”. I will be much more intentional about celebrating this part of the season in years to come. I will also be much more intentional about not skipping over Advent. I need that time to focus and get my mind out of the fog of responsibilities and obligations that come with preparing for the Christmas season.

 

Things that stick out in my mind as sweet moments from this time:

 

Clinging Matthew’s hand and singing together for the first time in at least twenty years as we celebrated the life of a woman who had been a mentor to us both

 

A group of 5 or 6 of us, huddled together in our grief, as they took her from the building for the last time…friends still, supporting each other as she taught us

 

Watching Taylor and the pure joy he sees the world with

 

Watching Ben and Taylor interact and seeing brotherly love

 

Doing a puzzle with my crazy family and laughing until it hurt

 

Seeing Cherri and Lil Dave even though they were at work so it had to be all too brief

 

Meeting for the 7^th year in a row with another group of friends from my high school days and enjoying the annual bonding

 

Seeing John for the first time in decades and being able to throw my arms around his neck and give him the hug that I wanted to when he returned safely from Gulf War I

 

Watching Dave with his children and getting to see a side of him that we rarely ever see

 

Holding Rory

 

Brunch with Stephanie and Brian, Mama Katherine and the kids

 

Meeting Debba’s new beau and seeing the difference in how he treats her and how she interacts with him and knowing that it is likely that this is “the one”

 

Finally choosing to make a phone call and ask a question I should have asked months ago the answer makes me feel foolish for waiting so long and sorry I missed seeing Mack based on misinformation

 

Visiting Mrs. A with Amy and Samantha and Jessica and knowing that for a few hours we eased the pain of missing Murray for all of us.

 

Spending the evening at Incredible Pizza with the tech kids laughter is such a healing gift.

 

New Years Afternoon at the Range with Aubree, Jason, Harold and David

 

New Years Eve watching old episodes of Buck Rogers with Jason, David, Jess and Harold

 

The last several days since New Years I have spent being very introspective and working on changes I’d like to make in my life to create space for more moments like these. For too long I’ve hidden behind my chaotic house and my even more chaotic schedule and avoided spending time with the people I care about. No more. I don’t want to look back and see missed opportunities to be with those I love. I may have “missed Christmas” but somehow I “got the message” anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows


I am not, in general, a fan of Focus on the Family. I don't believe that spanking is "Godly" discipline and I don't agree with most of what Dobson has to say on most things. So imagine my chagrin to find myself on the same side of a political issue as Dobson. I'm talking about the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the insidious danger it poses to the rights of parents in this country and around the world.

It has, for much of human history, been understood that parents are the right and proper authority when it comes to making decisions for their children. It has been understood that the family is the basic unit of society and that government must err on the side of least disruption of the family unit. Along comes the UNCRC which threatens to turn that entire assumption on its head.

Simply put, if we as a nation don't codify current Supreme Court doctrine protecting parental rights into the explicit text of the Constitution we face a situation where this treaty, if ratified, becomes the supreme law of the land. On the face of it the treaty looks benign but as you look at recent rulings in the countries which have already ratified it as well as recent rulings in this country that are based on its principles and a very concerning picture emerges.

I invite you to go to http://parentalrights.org and educate yourself on the issue. If you feel led after you've heard what they have to say on the matter then please sign the petition and lets get the ball rolling to protect the rights of parents as they have traditionally been understood in this country and the world. Our elected officials need to know that "we the people" don't intend to have our rights superseded by this treaty. Lets send the message.

First Two Weeks

We have now completed our first two weeks of school. Yes, week two was sewing camp...BUT I can't imagine anything that she would have learned more from in a 5 day period. She made: 1-purse, 2-tissue holders, 1-skirt and an entire dress...WITH applique! This week she has three more days of sewing camp and she's making a pillow case and a pair of pajama pants. She is pleased enough with her dress that she plans to wear it to church tomorrow. I haven't seen the skirt on her yet but its cute on the hanger. The purse and tissue holders are adorable.

As far as "real school work" she has started working on both History and copywork exercises and a corresponding piece of literature. We will be adding Math, Science and Spelling at the beginning of week 4. Her copywork consists of copying her history narration once she has dictated it to me. She isn't aware of it yet but I already see her handwriting improving. Practice. Just gotta keep up with the practice.

Her fine motor skills have had a marked improvement. This year she can cut straight lines. Last year not so much. We have had an ongoing issue with this since she was in preschool and I'm glad to see she's finally maturing out of it.

As for me I'm working on creating a healthier lifestyle for us as a family. This week's action items include menu planning, finding a place for us to exercise regularly and getting an appointment with my counselor for a "tune-up" to deal with some issues that have surfaced in my own personal growth and recovery. I have high hopes that if I continue to be proactive about this situation I will see results that will make both me and my doctor happy.

I'm going to Jackson...

*hums a Johnny Cash tune in her head*

Ok...enough with the musical interlude...but I am going to Jackson TN tomorrow with two of my homeschool mom friends to their conference and curriculum fair. I'm excited. Road trip with friends, sans kids, to shop homeschool stuff. What's not to love about that?

I have almost all the pieces in place for DD's homeschool year that starts on Monday. I still need to buy "Spelling Power" and I'm hoping that the Jackson fair will have it. I didn't really get to shop our fair because I was working. I am the Administrative Assistant for MHEA and I was on the clock all weekend running our informational booth at our fair.

This will be a new adventure for us. With DD going into middle school this year we've mutually decided that she needs a bit more structure. Some folks would say that no longer makes me an unschooler. I disagree. If the decision for more structure is mutual I think it absolutely fits in with the idea of child led learning. Her desire for this more structured environment comes in part from her hopes of being a CSI when she grows up. Forensic science fascinates her at the moment and she knows that she is weak in some areas like math that she needs to focus on more intentionally for awhile. I'm excited but apprehensive. I'm not sure that my dominant random learning style will be able to sustain the structure. We shall have to see.

*breaks into song again* I'm going to Jackson, turn alooose of my coat, I'm going to Jackson, good-bye that's all she wrote....

One week until the 2008/2009 School Year Begins

I have selected July 14th as our starting date this year. We've been in the office for a bit over 6 weeks by then and the transition to that new routine is fairly solid so its time to make it into what it will be for the remainder of the "school year". I'm also tentatively working on a co-op plan for History/Science with some friends of similarly aged children that I hope goes well. I'm calling it Friday Funschool and I'm very excited about the potential.

I've got Story of the World by Bauer and Ancient Science by Jim Wiese that will be the spine around which we build the rest of our year. Math-U-See is also in the blend as is English from the Roots up. For Bible we'll study the stories that fit chronologically into the ancient history timeline. Speaking of timelines. I bought the complete timeline figures CD from homeschool in the woods along with the amazingly beautiful timeline book from Mystery of History and we'll be doing a ton of stuff with those resorces. Jess is pretty excited about having art as a formal part of school. I bought her a set of 36 colored pencils and 36 watercolor paints that are specifically restricted to her school stuff. No playing around with these and losing them. She has plenty of others to do that kind of thing with.

This probably sounds odd coming from an unschooler but I'm a complete curriculum addict. The difference is the way we approach the curriculum. They are resources. Starting points. Nothing more. No "complete the book" mentality here. We are very excited about the ancients because this is a favorite time period for Jess and there are unfinished projects (a trojan horse model for one) that are begging to be finished that we get to "count for school". LOL! I'm planning a visit to the Egyptology Institute at the local university as well as a weekend field trip to the Parthenon in Nashville in conjunction with this year's studies. A life mask project and the making of a chicken mummy just sound WAY cool to my little budding forensic scientist.

It should be an excellent year.

I can't decide...year end field trip or next year kick off trip?

Saturday we leave for Washington DC. I am absurdly excited. I get to be the tour guide as none of the rest of my family has ever been to our nation's capital before. I spent a week or so there in high school on a 4-H trip (Citizenship Washington Focus) and a brief weekend in the early 90's when my BFF got married and I was her maid-of-honor. I remember so much of the 4-H trip. It is one I hope my daughter makes when she is old enough. We will see many of the same sights this trip but I know it will have a different meaning to her at 10 than it will at 16/17 as it will have a different meaning to me at 40 than it did a lifetime ago. I'm just not sure what to call this trip.

I could call it a year end field trip and let it be the closing event of 4th grade or I could call it the beginning field trip of her 5th grade year. It really doesn't matter one way or another. Just trying to figure out how to caption the scrapbook.

I always have this deliemma this time of year. Since we have always unschooled year round it is difficult for me to decide when one "grade" ends and another "grade" begins. Usually I use VBS in June as the official beginning of a new school year because that is the only place in our life where what "grade" she is "in" has any real bearing. With that in mind I suppose this is her 4th grade trip.

Since next year we are starting Ancient History in our second cycle through the chronological history of the world making this the final trip of 4th grade (where we have studied the modern era) might "fit" more neatly. Since the school year at Veritas ended Tuesday it makes sense on those terms as well. The last time we will be chained to someone else's school calendar.

When I return I will be starting that desk job I mentioned last month. We are both excited about the prospect. How long that will last when she realizes we have to be at work "early" 3 days a week rather than one is anyone's guess, but the situation we have at the office will be so much better for us both. We have office schooled before, the last half of her kindergarten year, and it was one of my favorite times of homeschooling her. Being in the office, away from the distractions of TV and toys, we were able to accomplish more in those short days than we ever have since.

I hope that she comes home excited about what she has seen and done in DC and Williamsburg. I hope that she will be willing to do some projects with me that tie in with what she will have seen and learned. I hope that we stick with the exercise plan we have devised and begin seeing results in terms of better health for both of us. Yes, when we return it will be a good time for a new beginning and thus a new school year so this trip is the final field trip of 4th grade...5th grade starts July 14th. That will give us about 6 weeks to process DC and then be ready to move back into the Ancients. Sounds like a plan.

Getting the itch

Spring is springing up all over and the geocaching bug is biting hard. If the stupid trees will stop spitting pollen everywhere so I can breathe again I'll be heading out into the field again soon.

We've got a lot of travel planned this spring and I need to get my geocaching premium membership activated again so I can search along our route as we go. Its that time of year again.

In other life news...

I am quitting my teaching job at Veritas. I decided that teaching in a schoolish environment was too at odds with my unschooling philosophy and I am counting the days until freedom. Three more weeks. Just three. The end is in sight and while I will miss my kids I am SO very ready for it to be over. Ever since my decision was made, my heart just hasn't been in it.

I may be taking a part time desk job to make up the income we'll be losing but its with an organization I am passionate about and my daughter will be able to come along and actually have my attention while I'm working. I think she'll learn some valuable office skills as well. I hope that comes to fruition but if it doesn't there is some reason I'm supposed to not be working right now. It would sure give us more time to geocache. :)

I LOVE THE FALL!

Because the poison ivy is beginning to die, the snakes are back in their holes for the most part and the ticks are back wherever ticks go when it gets cold. It was SO good to get back out today! The weather was perfect and the company made up for the fact that we only had a couple of finds.

We also stumbled on our first letterbox today! It was cool. I may throw a stamp in the cache bag for future occasions.

Today we went out to Shelby Farms looking for caches. We started with one of cgeek's "evil micros" out at the Farmer's market. I got the find on that one. It wasn't as evil as some of hers are known to be and I'm getting more familiar with how she thinks. :) We headed back to the picnic table and chowed down on the chicken salad I'd made and brought along. After lunch we went after "Calibration Station" but we only found the 1st stage. I'm not 100% sure how to log that actually. The second stage is on my to do list for very soon. Maybe even next weekend. I've got to figure out how to see where a given group of caches are. I thought I had picked Shelby Farms caches but none of the ones I picked seemed to be in the boundaries of the park itself. I think maybe the google maps feature will help me with that.

We tried for "Nothing to Cheer About" but we DNF'd that one. There was a lot of muggle activity at the nearby BMX track and I wonder if it has perhaps been geomuggled...either that or maybe it was somewhere in the muck we were wading around in.

We decided to head back over toward the farmer's market area and go after "Wetlands Sometimes" which is where we found the letterbox. We also found the cache and were able to swap some swag.

We had a brand new cacher with us today so she got to experience 1) a micro, 2) a stage of a multi, 3) a DNF and 4) a full sized cache with swag to swap and as a bonus 5) A letterbox. Pretty good variety for a newbie.

It was a perfect day for caching...and man have I missed it!

CITO Imagine what we could do...together.

Yesterday J-bear97 and I stopped and found "Pine Row" on the way home from work. I always carry wal-mart/kroger bags in my cache pack so we can CITO any cache areas we visit. To my dismay yesterday we encountered such a mess of trash that we didn't have sufficient bags or other equipment to carry it out. What bothered me so much about it is that this cache site is over the back of the "privacy fences" of an adjoining neighborhood and it honestly appeared that the folks that live over there are in the habit of just chucking stuff over the back fence. Maybe that's not the case, maybe this stuff was dumped by others or blown there by the wind (not likely as it is not an area that should get much foot traffic and its at the top of a hill) but still. We carried out what we could and disposed of it properly and we're planning to go back and clean up more with the proper equipment (gloves, big trash bags, those poky sticks) probably next week.

The ideal/habit of of CITO could be one of the best "selling points" for geocaching if all of us that play the game would do it consistently. Imagine. Imagine what it would look like if we picked up the cans and plastic bottles and bags in the parking lots when we were seeking LPCs. Imagine what we could do for our city parks, especially those where our logs consistently say "I'd never have known about this place if it weren't for this cache if we would just CITO everywhere we go. Heck, imagine the places we could find to put caches if we stopped and CITO'd places we noticed were trashed. Not to mention, picking up trash provides ideal "stealth" when muggles are about.

This is the month for CITO events...and those are wonderful. But what I'm talking about is the impact of the entire area's geocachers picking up the habit of carrying a trashbag on the hunt and CITO'ing each site we search. I remember hearing when Memphis used to get awards for being one of the nation's most beautiful cities. This scene brought home for me why we don't anymore. There are hundreds, if not thousands of caches in the greater Memphis area. If we CITO'd each of them...imagine the impact we could have...just imagine...