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Brown’s got me down, let them eat cake

Image via the Washington Post.

So a Republican won Teddy Kennedy’s seat in the Senate last night.  This kills the Democrats’ 60 seat super majority, though it’s worth reminding people that they still have a majority, and only 51 votes are needed to pass legislation– I saw a few people claiming on Twitter last night that the Republicans now “control” the Senate, which is completely untrue.  They’re just now able to filibuster more easily, meaning it will be easier for them to waste everyone’s time keeping the Senate from voting on things.  I’d like to remind the 59 remaining Democrats that Bush got more done with less of a majority than they have now, so I expect them to get shit done anyway, even without Coakley.  Of course, knowing what spineless wretches the Democrats, particularly the Blue Dogs, are, I don’t have a whole lot of hope.  Which brings me to a wonderful post by Ezra Klein on what Teddy Kennedy would say to the Democrats.  Ezra writes:

For now, it’s worth observing that a Democratic Party that would abandon their central initiative this quickly isn’t a Democratic Party that deserves to hold power. If they don’t believe in the importance of their policies, why should anyone who’s skeptical change their mind? If they’re not interested in actually passing their agenda, why should voters who agree with Democrats on the issues work to elect them? A commitment provisional on Ted Kennedy not dying and Martha Coakley not running a terrible campaign is not much of a commitment at all.

Exactly. Continue reading “Brown’s got me down, let them eat cake”

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on Haiti and “Everything Must Change”

I’ve blogged about Brian McLaren books before, and I’ve just started reading a new one, so prepare to read about all the ways it blows my mind as I work my way through it.  Based on what I remember of my Intro to Christian Theology class I took in college, McLaren’s Everything Must Change is a book on theodicy, or the problem of evil/suffering in the world, though you’ll be pleased to know McLaren completely avoids theological jargon and, as a former English professor, is an excellent, easy-to-read writer.  In many ways, EMC is about the biggest problems in the world and what Jesus teaches us about them, and, refreshingly, to McLaren, the biggest problems are not the usual Christian hot-button issues like abortion and homosexuality.  In fact, McLaren identifies 4 major problems, the fourth of which informs the first three, and will be key to solving them.  These problems are:

  1. Environmental breakdowns caused by our unsustainable global economy, an economy that fails to respect environmental limits even as it succeeds in producing great wealth for about one-third of the world’s population.  We’ll call this the prosperity crisis.
  2. The growing gap between the ultra-rich and the extremely poor, which prompts the poor majority to envy, resent, and even hate the rich minority– which in turn elicits fear and anger in the rich.  We’ll call this the equity crisis.
  3. The danger of cataclysmic war arising from the intensifying resentment and fear among various groups at the opposite ends of the economic spectrum.  We’ll call this the security crisis.
  4. The failure of the world’s religions, especially its two largest religions, to provide a framing story capable of healing or reducing the three previous crises.  We’ll call this the spirituality crisis.  By framing story, I mean a story that give speople direction, values, vision, and inspiration by providing a framework for our lives.

As he makes clear in his other book, The Secret Message of Jesus (which I highly recommend), McLaren believes that in making the Christian message all about where you go when you die and what you intellectually assent to, we have missed the message of Jesus, which, as Jesus makes clear, is that “the Kingdom of God is at hand,” which is really that God is at work making “thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” come true. That the amazing thing is God coming here, making things new, and staying here with us forever, rather than all of us flying away.  And if we believe that the message is that the Kingdom of God is at hand, well, things will start to look really different when it comes to what we, the Church, do and say in and to the world. Continue reading “on Haiti and “Everything Must Change””

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young girls and Diary of a Young Girl

You may have heard that Miep Gies, the last surviving protector of Anne Frank and her family, died on Monday.  As a result, Anne Frank and her family’s story and the story of the people who tried to save them, has been in the news this week.  Last night, I read this piece by Monica Hesse of The Washington Post, and the first paragraph made me say out loud, “That’s ME!”  This is that paragraph:

The girls who loved Anne Frank loved her in a deep and abiding way, in a way that bordered on obsession and felt both bleak and wise. She was their first introduction to the terribleness of the world, and the beauty, and to sad endings that are also hopeful and true.

It’s sort of hard to talk about, but as an early teen, I got more than a little obsessed with Anne Frank and the holocaust. It’s a weird sort of thing to be obsessed with, particularly when you’re a Christian girl growing up without much hardship in America.  You can’t exactly tell people that you’re reading everything you can about the Holocaust and not seem a little odd, a little morbid.  And yet I related to Anne in a very deep way.  And it turns out, according to this article, this is the case for many, many women (maybe men? they weren’t mentioned, but surely this story has touched men too).  For me, looking back now at my Anne Frank years, it was that we were close to the same age.  We were both starting to realize that there was a whole lot of awful in the world.  We were both experiencing puberty and a budding interest in boys.  We were both bookish and awkward and prone to emotional outbursts and sudden tears.  We both had sometimes difficult relationships to our sisters.  We were both isolated in some ways, turning to journals to pour out our hearts rather than best friends.  In other words, it felt like we were coming of age together, and so I read her diary over and over and over. Continue reading “young girls and Diary of a Young Girl”

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Pat Robertson: bad, Frederick Douglass: good

So, something terrible happened in Haiti and supposed Christian Pat Robertson did what he always does in the case of a terrible tragedy.  He blamed the victims and suggested that God was punishing them for their sins (or their blackness, which may or may not be a sin to Pat Robertson, though I’m leaning towards “may”).  I would be all up in arms about how Pat Robertson is ruining my religion, except it should be pretty obvious that Pat Robertson and I don’t love and serve the same God.  Because the God I love and serve?  That God is on the side of the Haitians.  Even the ones who practice voodoo.  Maybe even especially the ones who practice voodoo, though I wouldn’t be so bold as to make that kind of statement.  Unlike ol Pat, I still have a healthy fear about making claims about what God says or whose side God is on.  Anyway, the God I love and serve is the God who hears the cry of the oppressed, who listens to those who suffer, who comforts those who mourn. So that’s why I’m pretty sure there’s no way Pat and I refer to the same person when we’re talking about God.

But in reading about Pat Robertson’s latest bout of hate speech, I came across this post by Adam Serwer of The American Prospect.  And I loved this quote he included by Frederick Douglass so much that I knew I had to include it here:

Between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest, possible difference–so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels.

It kind of reminds me of what Ghandi said about loving Christ but not so much Christians. It’s people like Pat Robertson that give Frederick Douglass and Ghandi reasons to say things like that.

Today, Jon and I made a donation to World Vision, through whom we sponsor two children, to go toward Haitian earthquake relief (friends not comfortable making a donation to such an expressly Christian organization might consider Partners in Health instead). Today I am praying for everyone affected by the earthquake. Today I am sorry that anyone would dare use the name of God to cause even further hurt to hurting people.

Updated to include: there is actually plenty of evidence that the “deal with the devil” Pat Robertson was referring to didn’t even happen. Or at least, it wasn’t a deal with the devil at all.

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a little black raincloud, and her silver lining

Image via Flickr user kevindooley under a Creative Commons license.

One of the things I like best about my husband is that he sees the best in people. He looks for the bright side. He points out the silver lining.  He doesn’t question motives. He gives the benefit of the doubt.  This is probably how he is able to tolerate and even find attractive my sometimes somewhat stormy personality, and I’m grateful for it.  I can spill the glass of milk and then cry over it, and he’ll still tell me it’s half full.

I need this in my life.  Probably particularly when I’m being cynical and complainy and bitching about exactly how I feel about someone, which is, unfortunately, more often than not, though I’m trying to work on my judgy judgerson ways.  So, while I may wish that he would occasionally just agree with me that someone SUCKS AT LIFE, I’m glad he doesn’t.  Now if you’ll excuse me, this little black rain cloud is off to hover under a honey tree.

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puddin’ head

Image via Flickr user Navin75 under a Creative Commons license.

The last time my mother was in town, we took her to The Hominy Grill, one of our favorite Charleston restaurants, and a media favorite too– I know Anthony Bourdain and Alton Brown are big fans.  We told her she absolutely had to try the chocolate pudding, as it was the best we’d ever had.  So thick it’s practically ganache, so rich it’s practically deadly, and so dark it bears almost no relation to the milk chocolate pudding cups most of us carried in our school lunchboxes, it’s one of the best desserts I’ve ever had.  It’s also one of Alton Brown’s picks for “Best Thing I Ever Ate,” as our waitress told us when we were there with my mother.  Alton knows his stuff.  This is pudding so good, Jon got a little embarrassing mmmmm-ing and ahhhh-ing in what was basically a chocolate pudding-gasm at the table, right there with my mother in the middle of the most polite city in America.

Today, I got a hankerin’ for some Hominy Grill chocolate pudding and thought I’d use Google to find something similar.  But it turns out it’s not a closely guarded secret, and I found a .pdf of the Hominy Grill chocolate pudding recipe from local food writer Holly Herrick (I just got her Charleston Chef’s Table cookbook and her Southern Farmers Market Cookbook, so check those out!).  It came out absolutely delicious, and a chocolate pudding-gasm definitely ensued.  Because I couldn’t find the recipe in easily linkable form, I thought I’d reproduce it here.  It seems to have been originally published Jan. 5, 2008 in the Charleston Post and Courier.

Hominy Grill Chocolate Pudding
chef Robert Stehling

  • 8 ounces dark, Belgian bittersweet chocolate, chopped
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • 6 egg yolks
  • 4 cups heavy cream
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Reserve chocolate in a large bowl.  Separately, whisk 1/4 cup sugar into egg yolks.  Mix remaining sugar with cream and vanilla in medium saucepan and bring to a boil.  Pour a little hot cream into the bowl with the egg yolks and whisk, then pour the remainder of the cream over the chopped chocolate, stirring with a spatula until smooth.  Add the egg yolk mixture and salt, and then strain into a pitcher.  Refrigerate to cool.

Pour into 2/3 cup ramekins (I have no idea how much my ramekins hold, but it ended up being 8 ramekins full), place ramekins in a shallow pan half filled with water (water bath) and cook at 300 degrees for about an hour.  Chill for at least 3 hours before serving (we ate ours after only an hour and it was still delicious), and serve with a fat dollop of fresh whipped cream.

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oh hai

Posting may be light around here for the next week or so, as I work at a university and classes are starting AND we’re opening a new building.  Any time I’ve gotten overwhelmed by the stress of it all today, one thing has calmed me down.  It’s this picture, via the Huffington Post, which should really be the #1 photo in a Google image search of “oh hai:” Feel free to bookmark this picture in case you need a quick pick me up sometime in the future.  Smiley seal says hello.

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by my own bootstraps

I’m a fan of the skinny jeans tucked into boots look.  In the summer I’m all about skirts and dresses with bare legs and ballet flats, but in the winter I don’t want even one inch of ankle to feel a bit of a chill.  (Hell, I don’t want one inch of anything to feel one bit of chill, and so you’ll see me bundled from head to toe out at the bus stop in the mornings, though that didn’t stop THREE people from honking at me this morning!)  It’s hard to find any shoes that look cute with socks, so the solution is to just wear boots over pants, preventing anyone from seeing my socks, and preventing frigid air from making its way up my pantlegs.  Not to mention, you get to show off your cute boots, and I definitely want to show off my boots if I’ve made the investment.  The problem is that the pants scootch their way up inside the boots and I end up with baggy knees and annoying bunches around my ankles.

I thought one solution might be tighter jeans, and for a minute, I contemplated some jeggings (jean leggings), but was assured by my friends that there’d be an intervention if I dared to make the purchase. Then, via Consumerist, I learned that people are making little straps for turning normal pants into stirrup pants, keeping them from riding up when tucked into boots.  However, these straps cost from $9.99 (jeanstraps) to $25 (stirrupz). (Seriously? $25? INSANE!) And I could have a whole pair of jeggings for that cost…

I mentioned my problem to my sister, and she said she uses those straps made to keep sheets on beds to keep her pants in her boots. GENIUS.  They’re only around $5, and I found a set of four in the bedding section at Target. Way cheap and no shipping.  They’re a little too long for my purposes, and if I weren’t so low class I’d probably cut and sew them properly, but instead I shortened them using folding and safety pins.  I tried out my new style tool with skinny jeans and a pair of Frye boots I scored for the unheard of price of $70 while on Christmas break, and THEY WORKED.

So there ya go kids. This durn librul is telling you to pull yourself up by your homemade bootstraps.

Edited to include: I also found these jodhpur clips (for horseback riders) for around $3 on Amazon if you can’t find the sheet straps at Target or Walmart.

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favored son

I’ve thought since the first time I brought him home that my family liked my husband more than they like me.  My mom is a feeder, loves to cook for people, and for the first time she had a BOY to feed and feed and feed.  He’s not picky, he has a ginormous appetite, and happily goes back for seconds.  And don’t even get me started on how he wowed all the women in the family by doing the dishes the first time we had him around for Thanksgiving.  And my dad? Well, much as he adores his three girls, it’s been adorable to see him with a son for the first time, geeking out about doctor stuff, playing ping pong for hours, working on projects around the house. Even my littlest sister thinks he rocks, because he’ll jump on the trampoline with her.  So you might see how I’d get the idea that he’s everyone’s favorite.  But now I have actual proof.

For Christmas this year, my Memaw gave everyone money and mittens.  My dad got $50. My mom got $50. My sister got $50. I got $50.

My husband?

He got $100.

The rest of us maintain that two $50 bills simply got stuck together, that it’s some sort of error. My husband maintains that Memaw simply likes him more than us.

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God is not enough?

One of the most exiting things for me in the past year has been that Jon and I have both been excited by and interested in some new (for us) thinking, particularly around the issues of sustainable food (mostly thanks to Michael Pollan) and the emerging church movement (mostly thanks to Rob Bell and Brian McLaren).  We’ve been reading books passed back and forth, and talking about new ideas, and bouncing thoughts off of each other, and it’s just been really fun.  Maybe that’s one of the cool things about getting to live with my best friend: we can geek out over the same things.

All of this to say that I’ve been reading Brian McLaren’s The Story We Find Ourselves In.  It’s the sequel to his book A New Kind of Christian and I highly recommend both.  They’re sort of fictionalized dialogues between characters, and through their conversations, McLaren introduces a whole lot of just mind-blowing stuff. I just wanted to share one small snippet that struck me while I was reading yesterday, made me wonder why I’d never thought of it before.

There’s one other surprising thing that the second creation story in Genesis suggests to me. It’s something shocking, maybe put best when it’s put in a way that borders on heresy: God is not enough, the story says. That has nothing to do with any deficiency in God; it has to do with the storyline God had in mind for us. God doesn’t want to be the only reality in our lives, the only relationship in our network, the only message on our screen…This is the story we find ourselves in, isn’t it? Caught between two dangers: a hyperspiritual danger that says ‘It is good enough for human beings to be alone, so all they need is God,’ and a hypersecular danger that says, ‘It is good enough for human beings to be with the other created beings; forget about the Supreme Being from whom all being and blessing flow.’ Neither of those options is good enough. The only viable option in our story is for us human beings to enjoy the company both of our Creator and of our fellow creatures: our brother sun and sister moon, our brother fox and sister fruit bat, and especially of our mates–either sexual mates or mates in the Australian sense of the term, our friends–in whom we find a lost part of ourselves restored to us again.

I’ve heard well-meaning people, even myself, say things like “God is all I need.” But even in Eden, God saw that there was something “not good” in paradise, something that needed fixing: the human being was alone. The human being NEEDED more than just God and nature. The human being needed companionship. And God creates a companion, and then everything is good.

Which brings me to something else the book pointed out that I hadn’t noticed before.  This is what my ESV Bible says in Genesis 1:26: Continue reading “God is not enough?”