tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-116321172024-03-07T11:36:07.454-08:00BigBlondeBlogShe's big, she's blonde, she's blogging... bits and pieces, reactions, thoughts. I am passionate about serious Christianity and what it takes to walk the walk more than talking the talk.Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.comBlogger53125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-37836881790585918212016-05-28T00:56:00.000-07:002016-05-28T00:56:35.709-07:00Does God Know Best?<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct <b>Facile Nation</b>, 8/24/2009)</i><br>
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There’s a <a href="http://www.laweekly.com/news/mike-penner-christine-daniels-a-tragic-love-story-2166467">fascinating and heartbreaking article in the current L.A. Weekly</a>, written by Steve Friess; I’m writing in reaction to the article so I suggest you read it first and then come back here.<br>
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Friess hits the area of my focus right away: <br>
<blockquote>
In many ways, Penner’s path was standard-issue for those born male who have an inexplicable yet ultimately undeniable desire to be female. He would sneak into his mother’s closet in their Anaheim home to try on shoes and dabble with her makeup, then scrub it off shamefully before vowing never to do it again. Then, of course, he would do it again, a new helping of guilt raining down on his Catholic soul.
</blockquote>
Why would Mike Penner feel guilty? And what does it have to do with his Catholicism?<br>
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Well, I can’t address all the alleged Catholic hang-ups about sex but almost anyone raised with a Bible-based religious core would struggle with a sense of “this is wrong” because, in fact, the Bible says it is wrong (<a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb/deu/22/5/s_175005">Deuteronomy 22:5</a>), that the person who cross-dresses is an abomination before the LORD. Note, however, that it’s not a stoning offense, as are adultery, male homosexuality, and bestiality (as I read it, the Hebrew scriptures don’t address female homosexuality, although Paul does in <a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb/rom/1/25/s_1047025">Romans 1:25-27</a>), but it’s clearly an offense against God. Please note, I am writing from the perspective of one who is convinced that the Bible is indeed “God-breathed” and, while no translation is perfect, that God is capable of defending His word and the document evidence for the integrity of scripture is so strong I am convinced we can trust it, as God’s word. So arguments based on “the Bible is wrong” are simply not arguments I’m addressing; that’s someone else’s purview.<br>
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There’s a really interesting statement that Jesus makes in Matthew 19; He’s been explaining God’s design for human sexuality to some Pharisees who ask Him, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” (this very liberal approach to divorce was the current practice in ancient Judea). When Jesus tells them that the only legitimate reason for sundering a marriage is adultery, they are horrified: His <i>disciples</i> say to Him, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.” And He responds:<br>
<blockquote>
“Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”
</blockquote>
Right there we have evidence that Jesus (God in human flesh) knows that human sexuality doesn’t work perfectly. It this one of the multitude of results due to the fall of humanity? I suspect it is, coupled with an active enemy who preys on our more base nature and encourages us to exalt it.
So I don’t see the argument that a person might be “born” with certain sex-related proclivities as bearing on what is the good and righteous exercise of our sexuality. Jesus gives us God’s perfect way and acknowledges that there are people who will not be able to accept it. He doesn’t damn them, He doesn’t advocate stoning them (that era had drawn to a close), He doesn’t even say, “If you don’t agree you have no part in Me.” He simply says, “This is how it is; accept it if you can.”<br>
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In this very sad story of Mike Penner we read of a man who is encouraged by sizable portions of society to embrace the temptation that caused him shame — and to reject the shame. I don’t know anything about the kind of psycho-therapy Mike Penner received before deciding to become Christine Daniels but I am quite confident that a significant portion of it would have denied shame and worked to make him feel “better” about his desire to cross-dress and encourage his fantasy of being a woman.<br>
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A “compassionate” world encouraged a man to make choices that separated him inexorably from his wife, who could not tolerate the essential change in identity which he embraced: she married a man, he repudiated being a man, she divorced the person who now identified as a woman.<br>
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I’m sure there are those who think that Penner’s wife is one of the villains in the piece, that if only she’d been willing to love Christine Daniels as she loved Mike Penner then everything would have been fine. There are certainly those who think society’s hang-ups (read: Bible-believers who persist in clinging to the values taught by the Bible) are the cause of Mike Penner’s misery.<br>
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The truth is there will always be differences of opinion and reaction; we cannot make society “perfect” — the longing for “utopia” is ultimately harmful because it interferes with the real work of improving the society in which we do live and minimizes the possibility of appreciating and enjoying reality.<br>
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So, in the real world, there will always be people who won’t support the fantasy: Mike Penner may have been happier ‘in his skin’ when he dressed and behaved like a woman* but he couldn’t get people in general to tell him he was attractive as a woman (this reminds me of the scene in <a href="http://amzn.to/1sDDSOb">Junior</a> when an earnest Judy Collins tries to tell cross-dressing Arnold Schwarzenegger, the pregnant man, that he is beautiful); one of the realities that women experience on a daily basis is that we are not all equally beautiful, sexy, and attractive. A sex-change operation wasn’t going to make Christine into a beautiful woman; a certain amount of plastic surgery could have made her a more attractive woman but how acceptable is that, within the transgender community? Does the transgender community demand that society stop responding to beauty? Shades of early feminism demanding that men accept unshaved legs and stop preferring smooth ones, in high heels and nylons….<br>
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Ultimately Christine and Mike both were faced with the reality that life isn’t perfect and it isn’t “fair” and you can’t expect to get all the benefits and none of the liabilities. Chances are that, somewhere in there, somebody told Mike that if his wife <i>really</i> loved him, she would still love him as Christine, that the essential person hadn’t changed. While that might sound good and true in a greeting card kind of world, it’s just not reality. Mike’s wife wasn’t a lesbian and she wasn’t interested in having a wife; for her there was a huge loss, essentially a death: her husband was no more and, worse, he was choosing to be no more, to instead become female. Apparently Mike believed that, as he became Christine, that he could bring his wife around — but that was a fantasy, delusional.<br>
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Well-meaning souls who encouraged Mike/Christine in this delusion did him/her irreparable damage— good intentions simply do not change outcomes.<br>
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So what would the outcome be, if Mike had instead wrestled with God and the prohibition in Deuteronomy? Mike may well have continued to intermittently and secretly cross-dress and play with make-up and indulge the fantasy of being a woman in his head. And he would have felt ashamed and he would have resolved not to do it again. And he would be alive. He would not have had that heady year of transgender celebrity, the swirl, the attention, the fun. But the possibility of continuing to grapple with it, to reconcile himself to God, to try and figure out why he had to keep such a tight lid on “Mike”, to uncover and recognize the lies he had believed about himself, about what it is to be a man and what it is to be a woman, to recognize and mourn the reality that we live in a fallen world and some people are “born eunuchs” and what did Jesus mean by that, anyway? He would have had the possibility of continuing in a marriage with a woman he clearly loved.<br>
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Which is the better outcome? Is the repudiation of Biblical morality and shame really more compassionate?<br>
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Footnote:
*this raises a really interesting question: why did Mike think that as a man he couldn’t be gregarious and friendly? What if Mike had worked on bringing the qualities of Christine into Mike rather than changing the body of Mike to conform with Christine? <br>
<br> Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-15970672722610955092016-05-28T00:45:00.000-07:002016-05-28T00:45:19.210-07:00Our Unsentimental God<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 12/30/2009)</i><br>
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For the Niños Christmas book, 2009<br>
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I heard Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine, on the radio the other day. He was well-spoken and self-effacing and quite likable, but his thought processes revealed a series of devastating assumptions rooted in the human tendency to anthropomorphize things; in this case, God.<br>
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“How can God be jealous?” he asked and, because he conceptualized God as some kind of big human, he dismissed the possibility of God and can only conceive of God as an invention or projection of humanity. Jealousy is a bad thing, God says in scripture that He is jealous, therefore this whole God-idea falls apart — at least for Michael Shermer and other vocal atheists I’ve heard in the last few years.<br>
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But if we take a step backward and consider Exodus 20 where the word “jealous” first appears in scripture, we find another picture altogether: God is establishing the right boundary with His people Israel: <br>
<blockquote>
Then God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing lovingkindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” (Exodus 20:1-6)
</blockquote>
When God is jealous, He is outraged because that which is rightly His has been given to another. All of creation is rightly His and He may do with it as He pleases because it belongs to Him in the most profound way imaginable. The idolater makes an alliance with a rebel. How do we feel if we’ve gone to great lengths to make a sacrificial gift for someone and that someone proceeds to ignore us while gushing all over a third party, giving the third party all the thanks, credit, and appreciation for our effort.<br>
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Michael Shermer reveals his simplistic view of ‘jealousy’ — a little girl jealous because her friend is also friends with someone else, a man jealous because a coworker was promoted while he was not. But isn’t Shermer jealous of his wife? If his wife gives her body and her love to another man, isn’t Shermer appropriately jealous? So even within the context of human emotions, ‘jealousy’ can be right.<br>
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Going a step further, the Hebrew word used (<a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H7067&t=KJV">qanna’</a>) refers only to God; a different word is translated ‘jealous’ when it refers to human emotions.<br>
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I wish that Dr Shermer was a rarity in this kind of projection or that it was relegated to atheists and agnostics but I see an equally dangerous variant embraced by many Christians: anthropomorphizing God’s emotions in a sentimental way. I’ve seen some people read, “'As I live!' declares the Lord GOD, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked,’” and completely ignore the rest of the verse: “'but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways! Why then will you die, O house of Israel?'” (Ezekiel 33:11). They are tempted into universalism by God’s statement that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, as if that means God would prefer to tolerate wickedness rather than do justice if He cannot take pleasure in every aspect of it.<br>
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Think about the kind of deity we would have, if God were sentimental: Mary wouldn’t give birth to Jesus because what kind of God would put an innocent young woman through the trauma of giving birth as a virgin, alone with a husband in a crude barn, no midwife, no mother, aunt, or family present to assist or comfort? Rumors swirling around, her virtue impugned, “a sword will pierce your heart” — no, a sentimental God would never put a favored daughter through all that.<br>
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Sentimental Father-God would never ask God-the-Son to take on human flesh and pain and sin on the cross (and think how it would traumatize the disciples! No, that will never do). Sentimental Jesus, if such a Being could exist, would not say, “Get behind me, Satan!” to Peter when he stopped listening to the Holy Spirit and started listening to the enemy – no, that might bruise his self-esteem and how can Peter go on to be pope if his self-esteem is damaged?<br>
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Maybe the best argument against sentimental God is the existence of free will: sentimental God wouldn’t allow Adam & Eve to fall, taking the species and creation with them. Sentimental God would have been amenable to Lucifer sharing His glory – He’s got enough to spare, right? No skin off God’s nose…<br>
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As much as I struggle to grasp our Very Big God, I am so grateful that He isn’t sentimental, that He is jealous and holy, just and righteous and merciful. Jesus, fully God and fully man, laying down His life on the cross for the sake of all those willing to enter into relationship with Him — what a marvel! What a miracle.<br>
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Glory to God in the highest and, on earth, peace among men and women and children with whom He is pleased.<br>
<br> Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-52836952666193079892016-05-28T00:38:00.000-07:002016-05-28T00:38:34.874-07:00Dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb…<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 10/9/2009)</i><br>
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I heard some small nattering about this several months back but recently a couple of bloggers I enjoy have addressed it (The Anchoress for one and Ed Morrissey at <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2009/10/06/do-conservatives-need-their-own-bible-translation/">Hot Air</a>) so something is clearly in the air…<br>
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And what is that smell? The smell of stupid. Or maybe presumption. A special new Bible for conservatives– <i>sheesh!</i><br>
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Now I understand the impulse. There are times when I hear some agenda-driven bizarre fruit loop translation and I cringe and think, “God help ‘em, they don’t know what they’re doing. And please protect naive people from being taken in.” But I’m sorry, one doesn’t counter error by compounding the error. God is big, we are small, none of us grasp Him fully.<br>
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Others have referenced Jesus rebuking Peter (“Get thee behind me, Satan!” <a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb/mat/16/21/s_945021">Matthew 16:21-26</a>, particularly interesting as it immediately follows Peter’s great confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God,” when Jesus affirms that Peter has heard directly from the Holy Spirit) as an example of well-meaning humanity attempting to impose a human agenda upon God. But <a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb/jos/5/13/s_192001">Joshua 5</a> springs to mind for me. Let me set the scene:<br>
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Moses (along with all the rebellious & unbelieving generation he so faithfully lead) has died in the wilderness and Joshua has just crossed over the river Jordan with this new generation, raised in the wilderness and accustomed to living by faith. Joshua is walking near Jericho on the eve of that famous event and he runs into an impressive man with a drawn sword and Joshua asks, “are you for us or for our enemies?”<br>
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I think this is a Christophany (because, if this isn’t God in human form, there’s a real problem with verse 5:15) and when you consider that God Himself selected Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to be the patriarchs of His (chosen, set apart, holy, peculiar) people Israel, that God Himself pushed Moses into returning to Egypt, confronting Pharaoh, leading the former-family-now-nation into the wilderness and gave him the Torah – well, can there be any doubt? Of course God is on the side of Israel!<br>
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But wait– what does this mighty warrior say in response to the question, “are you for us or for our enemies?”<br>
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The answer is, “Neither. But as captain (ruler, chief, general) of the host of the LORD I have come—”<br>
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In other words, “it’s not MY place to be on <i>your</i> side but your place to be on MY side.”<br>
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And Joshua falls on his face (because he recognizes Power and Authority when it stares him in the face) and asks, “what does my Lord wish to say to Your servant?” — as complete a reversal as you’re ever likely to see.<br>
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I’m pretty aware of this and I still find I have to regularly stop and repent for presuming that Jesus will line up with me and then ask for help from Him, that I might drop my agenda and line up with His word and will. So the idea of going through the Bible, which I believe is God-breathed, and cherry picking concepts to spin one way or another literally terrifies me. It strikes me as presumptuous, dangerous, and very very dumb.<br>
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Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-72690308930123841112016-05-28T00:04:00.001-07:002016-05-28T00:04:38.412-07:00Sometimes You Can’t Believe Your Eyes<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct <b>Facile Nation</b>, 9/30/2009)</i><br>
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A liberal friend of mine posted a video on her Facebook page that gathered a lot of outraged comments: it was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qsr4rG2fWAY">this video</a> of President Obama’s proffered hand being refused while every person shook President Medvedev’s hand as he followed behind. A tremendous sense of outrage was expressed over the rude and racist reaction of these Russians. Out of a couple of dozen comments, one person said, “that’s not what’s happening, take a closer look, Obama is introducing these people to Medvedev.” <br>
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Hmmm. I was bothered by the video because it’s looks terrible and the expression on President Obama’s face isn’t happy but somewhat resigned – but I was also intrigued by the one comment expressing another point of view. So I went seeking source material and found the original video (linked above) on YouTube rather than the Facebook page where I first saw it. And then I started looking for larger, longer versions of this meeting between world leaders. And I discovered a video referencing “the snub that wasn’t” but I was put off by the goofy soundtrack so I dug a little further and found the video without added music. Those folks who refused to shake the President’s hand? They weren’t Russians and they really hadn’t refused to shake hands: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLk9K5zmJoQ">take a look</a>. You can see that first President Medvedev introduces the American President and the Russians shake President Obama’s hand and *not* Medvedev’s. Then President Obama introduces his people to the Russian leader and they shake Medvedev’s hand.<br>
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The confusion arises from President Obama using his right hand to indicate an individual, extending it partly across his body, rather than his left hand, and the angle of the camera foreshortens the distance between President Obama and the person(s) he introduces.<br>
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So I posted a response which linked the second video and asked if the person who said, “that’s not what’s happening” might be right. A bunch more people comment about how awful & racist those (Russians) are and I figured that most of them didn’t read the comments which preceded their own. Another woman posts a link to Snopes which explains the confusion in detail and presents both videos as well (I felt vindicated; the materials I found were the same ones that Snopes referenced). But even after the clarification, some people refused to believe that their President was NOT suffering a racially-based snub at the hands of the Russians.<br>
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Happily my friend put up the link to Snopes and said, “I’ve been had!” and apologized for not doing her own research to confirm what was going on; she also took down the original video and the long comment thread (which I wish she’d left up; it was instructive). But I don’t think she did anything wrong in the first place: she saw a video and took it at face value – then, when she had more information, she posted a correction – what more could one possibly ask? Not everyone has the time or inclination to go sleuthing before posting; what’s important is the willingness to let go of the error and embrace reality.<br>
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But don’t you just love those guards who open the doors at the beginning of the second video?!<br>
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<i>note: original you-tube links are no longer working but <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzp1n4w9fBk">here is a similar video</a> of news coverage from Canada</i>.
Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-17786514137715671272016-05-27T23:47:00.002-07:002016-05-27T23:49:38.679-07:00We Got More Numbers Than You, Neener, neener!<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 9/19/2009)</i><br>
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There’s a political jockeying over numbers of participants at rallies & events – who knew?! *I* didn’t know (stop laughing at me; it’s not nice) (actually, go right a head and laugh, I’m laughing myself) until a friend posted a link on Facebook and I responded with a link and she countered with better data. So in poked around and found out it really was better data and that lead me to learning a whole bunch of interesting stuff about demonstrations and rallies and events held in Washington D.C.<br>
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First, the National Park Service <i>used</i> to provide official crowd estimates but no longer, not since Louis Farrakhan threatened to sue them over their estimate of 400,000 attendees at his <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Man_March">Million Man March</a>. This lead Farrakhan to approach Dr. Farouk El-Baz of Boston University* to provide a more favorable estimate: 837,000 +/- 20% (20% seems like a large margin of error but maybe that’s standard; remains to be seen). Check out <a href="http://www.bu.edu/remotesensing/research/completed/million-man-march/">Boston University’s account</a>.<br>
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Second, there were lots of excited estimates of how many people would attend the inauguration of President Obama during the last few months of 2008. These ranged from 2 million to 5 million persons. The early estimate of the size of the crowd on January 20, 2009, was 1.8 million which was later halved <i>(no longer online)</i>.<br>
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Third, Jane’s (the intel source) does IHS satellite analysis of such crowds and they estimated the <a href="http://press.ihs.com/press-release/aerospace-defense-security/ihs-janes-and-geoeye-estimate-inauguration-crowd-gathered-w">PBHO inauguration crowd</a> as 1.031 million and 1.411 million people present (not including the 240,000 ticket holders presumed present – why they aren’t included in the visual count, I don’t know). There’s an interesting article from a St. Louis newspaper <i>(no longer online)</i> which cites the L.A. Times article linked above <i>(no longer online)</i> as well as other sources.<br>
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Fourth, people use these estimates to support their position or discredit the opposing position. That’s the part that hadn’t occurred to me. Actually, the fact that estimates have such massive fluctuations hadn’t occurred to me, either. It would be instructive to notice when various media outlets consistently use low-ball estimates for one group and higher estimates for another.<br>
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That’s actually the part that’s most weird to me: I can’t understand wanting bad data or being comforted by bad data. I have no problem that we have different views and opinions — that goes with being human and it’s always helpful to me to hear a different POV — it makes me consider my position: is this a position I hold out of habit? Have the facts on the ground changed? Is my philosophical underpinning sound?<br>
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So I don’t understand why <i>anyone</i> would keep bad data (e.g. the “Dan Barna of NPS” quotes re: 9/12 protest march which actually referred to the PBHO inauguration) up on their website without updating it or correcting it as soon as reasonably possible. To me, that impacts the credibility of the source because either they don’t care about the real facts, wherever the bad data originated, or they’re not responding to challenges or they’re not sufficiently connected with what’s “out there” (in which case, what kind of source are they?!). I dig around a little but almost everything I find is on the first or second page of my searches; I’ll refine my searches when I discover that I’ve aimed badly (!!) but I’m not searching by ideology. <a href="https://pjmedia.com/blog/more-912-crowd-data-yeah-it-was-big/">Here’s a blog which reports a lot of varying data, appropriately linked, and I appreciate that</a> (check out the <a href="http://www.gormogons.com/index.php/2009/09/how-many-people-were-at-big-912-tea/">Gormogons link</a>; it’s very entertaining, especially after the UPDATE).<br>
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Sometimes it’s really hard to tell what’s going on in real time and I think it’s inappropriate to accuse folks of lying when in fact they may simply be passing along reportage “in the moment” which later changes. Websites change, stories get updated, numbers are adjusted one way or the other. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_gfmUi24oY">MSNBC made a pretty good on-site report</a> and their local folks estimated hundreds of thousands.<br>
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Perhaps the whole “mine’s bigger than yours” contest should be seen as essentially adolescent in nature – and yet in a democratic society, numbers do matter. If you can marginalize the “other side” by dismissing their events as fringe, well…<br>
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And I presume goodwill on the part of others, at least until I discover someone is playing fast & loose or holds a very different view regarding the importance of accuracy in data. So – thanks for being my friend! And thanks for not laughing <i>too</i> loud.<br>
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You can stop sniggering now…<br>
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*Throughout his career, Dr. El-Baz has succeeded in conveying the excitement of scientific research and the importance of using advanced technology. One of his efforts resolved the 1995 controversy about the crowd size in Washington DC’s “Million Man March”. He estimated the number of participants in the march using the same computer techniques applied to counting sand dunes in the desert. From <a href="http://www.bu.edu/remotesensing/faculty/el-baz/">Boston University’s webpage on Dr. El-Baz Farouk</a>.<br>
<br>Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-41868622414462334462016-05-27T23:17:00.001-07:002016-05-27T23:22:56.364-07:00Memorial Day<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct <b>Facile Nation</b>, 5/25/2009)</i><br>
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I published the poem below at BigBlondeBlog more than a year ago but it’s appropriate to remember my father and honor him as a veteran of World War II – he was the radio operator on a B-24; they were the lead crew, flying bombing missions over Germany. Happily he survived the war, unlike so many of his generation.<br>
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He didn’t talk about his war experience much when we were kids. I suppose children aren’t a good audience for war reminiscences: they lack subtlety and don’t understand ambivalence. But in the last decade or so of his life he started to open up more. I remember watching The Tuskegee Airmen with him and he told me about his good ol’ southern boy pilot and their bomb run over Berlin, how the Tuskegee Airmen were their air support, going up against the first jets, and his pilot just shut up because –racist or not– he could appreciate that the Tuskegee Airmen never lost a bomber!<br>
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After VE Day they did a number of photographic missions; their regular pilot wasn’t available so a fighter pilot was assigned – and what a wild ride that was! An unladen B-24 has an awful lot of power and this pilot flew like he was still in a dogfight. When they landed back in England there were branches stuck in the bomb bay doors…<br>
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<b>A Poem for My Father–</b><br>
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Shortly before Thanksgiving in 2007, while working with my organizer lady, I had a profound emotional experience; the next day I read in Diana Glyer’s <a href="http://amzn.to/1NTFaPe">The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community</a> about Owen Barfield writing a poem for C.S. Lewis on the first anniversary of his death and it struck me that I should write about what happened the day before. Here is the result:<br>
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<b>Yesterday<br>
in sorting, shifting house<br>
I came upon my dead father’s watch, a wristwatch<br>
with large face and metal band<br>
that marked it as of a certain time<br>
in marking time<br>
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In my throat there caught and formed a swelling egg of grief, of loss<br>
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Brushing lightly across the well of tears<br>
I staved them off<br>
suppressed them as inconvenient<br>
for I was working and not alone<br>
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Please, I pray, do not let this be a final dismissal<br>
of his import or my gratitude<br>
<br>
He was as large as life: expansive and wise<br>
fixed and blindered<br>
quick to laugh and quick to glare<br>
too smart by half and always giving credit where perhaps little credit was due<br>
<br>
I am his true child<br>
<br>
I will miss him until Heaven.</b> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjESaqWSe6w15wOfqqtAn9WS0_b65dxNkOtN6EA1C6xhHIcYatfe1For_9dSt1TilvQlpWMYP1Wg1KyEtoj7L_fjS_43_Pzpb7NFUMs8f_z-Ja0mj_HMapFE1deNo9fnWpdF43/s1600/ca1965_wristwatch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjESaqWSe6w15wOfqqtAn9WS0_b65dxNkOtN6EA1C6xhHIcYatfe1For_9dSt1TilvQlpWMYP1Wg1KyEtoj7L_fjS_43_Pzpb7NFUMs8f_z-Ja0mj_HMapFE1deNo9fnWpdF43/s200/ca1965_wristwatch.jpg" /></a></div>
<br>
<br>
<i>November 15, 2007 © Lynn Maudlin, all rights reserved</i>Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-83901222878463075362016-05-27T23:11:00.003-07:002016-05-27T23:48:24.084-07:00To Bail and Succeed<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct <b>Facile Nation</b>, 12/11/2008)</i><br>
<br>
I understand the dilemma for people who normally would say to GM and Chrysler (and kudos to Ford for not actually being in this equation), “sink or swim – if you’re not competitive, you’ve no one to blame but yourselves and your contracts and your choices.” But in late 2008, considering the global economic crisis, many of those market-driven folks think that America just can’t take the additional hit that these two companies would deliver, in total collapse.<br>
<br>
But I respectfully point out that a <i>bailout</i> is only a bailout if it succeeds in turning these companies around. Without teeth to renegotiate the elaborate UAW contracts, all this money can do is delay the inevitable – or, worse, become the initial trickle in a massive ongoing stream of tax-payer funding to enable GM, Chrysler, and the UAW to continue “business as usual.”<br>
<br>
Face it, the legitimate sense of outrage from the American people regarding the AIG bailout is that they did, indeed, carry on with business as usual. Junkets, salaries, bonuses – no. A company receiving a tax-payer bailout must immediately begin to operate in a different reality. Radical reduction in salaries, particularly at the top, from which the failure stems. Bonuses come back into the bail-out fund to help other companies, as needed.<br>
<br>
Taking federal assistance needs to be <i>painful</i> to a company; they need to be motivated to look for every other possible alternative to dependence upon the American taxpayers because dependence on us is going to so radically change the way they do business.<br>
<br>
Otherwise how do we succeed? How does anything turn around if we subsidize failure?<br>
<br>
Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-67468477102207792662016-05-27T23:09:00.000-07:002016-05-27T23:09:29.838-07:00Rights and Sacraments<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct <b>Facile Nation</b>, 11/7/2008)</i><br>
<br>
I’ve been rather amazed to watch the post-election hysteria of the pro same-sex marriage crowd, holding rallies (<i>a little late, guys</i>) and demonstrations against the hapless Mormon church in West Hollywood.<br>
<br>
Their view, as presented, is that a basic human right has been taken from them.<br>
<br>
I don’t think so. Marriage between any two humans has never been a ‘right’ anywhere. They claim that two humans who love each other should be allowed to marry, forgetting entirely that marriage based upon mutual love is quite a recent phenomenon. Even in Ancient Greece where homosexuality was about as normative as it’s ever been anywhere, <i>marriage</i> was something that took place between a man and a woman for the purpose of raising up the next generation, for the stability of the nation itself.<br>
<br>
But even without focusing on the historical facts, marriage is not a ‘right’ — it is a sacrament. When Caligula ‘married’ his horse, that wasn’t a marriage, it was mockery of a sacrament.<br>
<br>
The line gets blurred for modern humanity because 1) by and large we have so little understanding of the sacramental and 2) traditionally society has accorded certain rights and privileges to the married state (these same rights and privileges are available, at least here in California and many other states, to domestic partners). The encouragement for people to take part in the sacrament of marriage benefits the state and brings stability to the nation. In a time when women at least were mostly celibate outside marriage, a man might be motivated to marry in order to have access to his own woman, to a woman he believed would be a suitable mother to his heirs.<br>
<br>
A right is something we have inherently: we have the right to breathe, we have to right to sleep. In America we believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (the <i>pursuit</i> of happiness and not happiness itself—). We have these rights: freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to keep and bear arms, freedom to vote, etc. None of these are absolute rights: we cannot yell “Fire!” in a crowded auditorium; we may need to obtain a permit in order to stage a demonstration; we now require the person buying a gun to be licensed and we limit the kinds of arms a person can bear; one must be an adult citizen (and generally not a felon) in order to vote.<br>
<br>
Marriage is not in the bill of rights. Neither is driving. The state says that you must be of a certain age and prove a certain ability, which may include the taking of courses, in order to hold a driver’s license. Throughout all of human history the state (kingdom, etc.) has said that marriage is between a man and a woman and that they must be willing participants <i>or their parents</i> give consent in the case of early betrothals. With extremely rare exceptions, a man cannot capture a woman and impose marriage upon her; if he captures a woman and imposes himself upon her sexually it is rape and if he keeps her it is a form of slavery.<br>
<br>
All of these are ways of looking at marriage and seeing how it is different from a right – but why do I say that it is a sacrament? As a Christian that’s easy: Genesis 2:24, echoed by Jesus Christ when challenged on the matter of divorce in Matthew 19:4<br>
<blockquote>
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.
</blockquote>
Marriage is the first sacrament (well, one could argue that keeping the Sabbath is the first sacrament because God did it in Genesis 2:2) and its terms are established by our Creator: one male and female, each old enough to live without parents.<br>
<br>
Throughout scripture God uses the example of marriage to illustrate aspects of His relationship with Israel and the relationship of Christ with the Church — <i>marriage</i> is unique among human institutions because of its use as an exemplar or type. He also uses <i>father</i> as a type to describe His relationship with His people (not <i>all</i> people but His people) — and we don’t try to redefine ‘father’ as ‘parent who disciplines’ or ‘legally responsible parent.’ No, ‘father’ isn’t even simply the sperm donor; ‘father’ is so much more than all that.<br>
<br>
In fact, it is <i>because</i> of its quality as a sacrament that the gay and lesbian community fight to have marriage rather than civil unions: marriage entails a particular kind of blessing which is, by nature, sacramental.<br>
<br>
But when a man ‘marries’ a man or a woman ‘marries’ a woman, it is like Caligula and his horse – it is a mockery of the sacrament and not the sacrament itself. We are created in the image of God; male and female together reflect the image of God; in order to reflect God both male and female are required. Two people of the same sex can have a legal partnership, a civil union, a committed and loving relationship; in some places they can even get a marriage license and ‘marry’ — but that doesn’t make it a marriage in reality. I can tie my shoe to my head and call it a hat but it’s still a shoe.<br>
<br>
In California in particular we have a problem because the people of the state voted years ago to legally define marriage as “between one man and one woman” and then four California State Supreme Court judges decided that the people collectively have their heads up their asses, threw it out as unconstitutional and refused to hold off on granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples until after the November election. So this current legal brouhaha is entirely the fault of those four judges and the people who pushed the same-sex marriage agenda.<br>
<br>
I am not without compassion; I understand the desire to be approved, to be accepted, to be “the same as” – but when I used to hang out with a group of lesbian musicians, I was not the same. They would joke with me and laugh with me and sometimes exert a little pressure on me – but it didn’t make me a lesbian. I finally stopped going out with them socially when they were amused by lesbian sexual harassment against me instead of outraged and protective. They proved they were not ‘safe’ people and their values were inherently different from mine when it came to dealing with unwanted sexual attention; there was a double standard.<br>
<br>
I understand that the shoe pinches if you read the Bible and it says that ‘man lying with man as man lies with woman’ is a stoning offense (Leviticus 20:13) or it describes lesbian activity as a degrading passion (Romans 1:24); I understand because the shoe pinched me when I was living with my boyfriend, 30-some years ago. And the choice I had was to either agree with God and continue trying to follow Him, or to do what I damn well pleased. I knew I couldn’t do what I damn well pleased and <i>pretend</i> I was following God, once I knew it wasn’t okay for me to indulge in sexual activity outside of the sacrament of marriage. And my boyfriend didn’t want to marry me (<i>—the fool!</i>).<br>
<br>
I did not, however, stage a political movement against the Church and the plain reading and historic understanding of the scripture passages which convicted me of ungodly behavior. My choice was continue my ungodly behavior because it was what I wanted to do (and it was very much what I wanted to do) or give up the ungodly behavior (repent) and attempt to live a godly life because that was more important than the desires of my flesh.<br>
<br>
But the GLBT movement, without by and large embracing Judaism or Christianity, demands that Judaism and Christianity change to accommodate the desires of their flesh. This is not something the faithful can do, no matter how much they love GLBT family members and friends – because the choice is between God and man and those who desire to live righteous know that God must win primacy in our hearts.<br>
<br>
What I don’t understand is this: <i>why do you care what a bunch of Jews or Christians think?</i> If you believe your behavior is acceptable to God, why do you care whether I agree or not?<br>
<br>
Now I’ve heard the argument that the scriptural bias encourages hate crimes against the GLBT community. That makes no sense because those very crimes are forbidden by scripture itself. You cannot blame bad behavior on scripture when scripture condemns that behavior, too.<br>
<br>
Anyone who thinks that GLBT individuals should be stoned (killed, abused, harassed) hasn’t read and understood the context of the scripture: that was the Law as given to ancient Israel, for ancient Israel. Israel was not supposed to impose their God-given Law upon the other nations but aliens living within Israel were held to the Law. Even in first century Judea that law wasn’t being enforced because the Jewish people had lost the power of capital punishment (this is why the Romans crucified Jesus, instead of the Sanhedrin stoning Jesus). The Law is valuable to us today because it shows us something of God’s heart, God’s direction for His people. The vast majority of the Law is detailed “live like this” instruction; a very small portion of the Law details stoning offenses — we should pay attention to stoning offenses because God apparently viewed them as destructive to the nation in a particular way, a contagious way.<br>
<br>
We can argue with the Law, we can come up with all sorts of reasons God was wrong and we are right but we can’t legitimately equate mixing two different fibers with homosexual behavior because God didn’t equate them in the Law.<br>
<br>
The relevant instruction, in this day and age, are the two great laws: <a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb/luk/10/27/s_983027">'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind' and 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'</a> The GLBT community asks people of faith to love their neighbor (the GLBT community) more than the faithful love God; that we cannot do, we dare not.<br>
<br>
The other relevant direction comes from <a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb/jer/29/7/s_774001">Jeremiah 29</a>, God’s direction to His people when they are living in exile: ‘Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.’<br>
<br>
We do not live in Ancient Israel under the Torah nor do we yet live in the Millennial Kingdom under Messiah: we are living in exile. People of faith are called to embrace their faith and live their faith and put God first <i>at the same time</i> that we live in an ungodly world, secular communities, a nation which demands separation between church and state. But when the state steps in and tries to redefine a God-defined sacrament, we must stand up and hold fast. Happily we live in a nation which still accords us that freedom; it may not always and <i>then</i> it becomes more challenging.<br>
<br>
In the meantime we cannot disagree with God in order to agree with the GLBT community; we must resist the temptation to fall into sentimentality or to bless that which God does not bless. We are told, "Don't judge!" but making a judgment includes <i>approval</i>, not only disapproval — in order not to judge, we must avoid approving of these changes, too. And the GLBT community may become very angry at us because of it. That makes me sad; I still have lots of friends who define as GLBT and I don’t like it when my friends are angry with me. But I would rather endure the wrath of my friends than the wrath of God.<br>
<br>Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-60811397120269864522016-05-27T22:31:00.002-07:002016-05-27T22:31:39.867-07:00Mythcon 39 in New Britain, Connecticut<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 7/9/2008)</i><br>
<br>
August 15-18, a very affordable <a href="http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-39.htm">Mythcon</a>, as such things go. I’ve just started prodding local press, hoping to get some awareness - a challenge, because the committee is primarily located in NYC (and Boston–), so our site liaison is local and none other.<br>
<br>
Still, a really quick and gratifying response from Richard Kamins in his Hartford Courant arts & entertainment blog. The man obviously ‘gets it’ when it comes to the MythSoc and puns!<br>
<br>
On the more grim side of things, this first week in July has been dreadful for the SF community - a devastating traffic accident on the way to Westercon in Las Vegas killed Roberta Carlson, the driver, and injured the other passengers and, on the other side of the country, the very talented Thomas M. Disch committed suicide. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/books/08disch.html">The New York Times article</a> gives an overview. Following Mike Glyer’s coverage in his <a href="http://file770.com/?p=282">File 770</a> blog and the blossoming links is pretty powerful. Disch’s own <a href="http://tomsdisch.livejournal.com/201360.html">Is Thomas Disch the Right God for You?</a> LiveJournal entry on June 24th is sad and ironic and the world is so full of pain.<br>
<br>
Personally, a good friend’s father also died. Grab someone you love and give ‘em a hug - we’ve got to appreciate each other while we can.<br>
<br>
Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-46392898720377455072016-05-27T22:05:00.001-07:002016-05-27T22:06:27.294-07:00Cannot Go Home Anymore<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct Facile Nation, 6/12/2008)</i><br>
<br>
<b>Cannot Go Home Anymore</b><br>
<blockquote>
Feeling awkward and clumsy<br>
and fallen from grace<br>
the doors and the windows are closed in my face<br>
I feel displaced<br>
all the locks have been changed<br>
and we cannot go home anymore<br>
<br>
The woman is awkward<br>
the child is wise<br>
so look at this placed through those innocent eyes<br>
they don’t see the lies<br>
that live in the woodwork<br>
and we cannot go home anymore<br>
<br>
I wish that I could do without it<br>
sing and laugh and shout about it<br>
wish I could see through the walls<br>
and the curtain calls<br>
that put on this show<br>
but no–<br>
The lighting is different<br>
you can see that at a glance<br>
and, standing divided, we’re trying to dance<br>
they’ve sealed the past<br>
revealed at last<br>
that we cannot go home anymore<br>
<br>
<i>written by Lynn Maudlin; © Moonbird Music Co. 1974, all rights reserved</i><br>
</blockquote>
When I was 22 my parents moved from Los Angeles to San Diego, selling the house I grew up in. I have faint, fleeting memories, only flashes really, of the house we lived in the first scant two years of my life so, for practical purposes, I’d lived my whole childhood in this house. I literally got married in this house, at the tender green age of 17 to my high school boyfriend; a friend of the family played <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaA2WiyqO">the love theme from Romeo and Juliet</a> on the baby grand piano in the living room; later we all sat down to a dinner of cornish game hens.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://lynnmaudlin.com/2315.htm">It was a terrific house</a>: five bedrooms, seven bathrooms (well, five full baths and two half baths) on a corner lot in Los Feliz. Summer evening traffic was a pain because we were on the Greek Theatre route but we knew how to drive to avoid the worst of it. It was lovely to be able to walk up the hill to attend most of the <b>Crosby, Stills & Nash</b> concerts (Neil Young was added between the booking and the gigs), either by an employee-friend letting us in, or patrons leaving after hearing <b>Joni Mitchell</b> (yes, she opened for the boys), or in the trees if need be…<br>
<br>
It had a large lot with plenty of room for a swimming pool but my parents weren’t interested. In fact, there had been a pool in the house when first built, a therapeutic pool for a wheel-chair bound owner, in the middle of the patio. We called it “the patio” in accordance with the American Heritage Dictionary’s definition:<br>
<blockquote>
The Spanish word patio refers to the roofless inner courtyard that forms the center of the house in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world. In English, however, the word has come to have a broader meaning and can also refer to paved spaces that adjoin a house. Patio first appears in English in the 1700s in descriptions of houses in the Spanish-speaking world.<br>
</blockquote>
My parents remodeled the kitchen and dining room, adding a sliding glass door from kitchen to patio as well as a wet counter with a pass-through window, making it very easy to have outdoor buffets; after that we often ate outdoors at a small table round table, even breakfast throughout much of the year.<br>
<br>
It was a great space for parties. I remember my dad inviting many people from his work at the Naval Ordinance Test Station to watch Neil Armstrong step onto the moon on July 20th of 1969. My dad and older brother managed to lug the massive color television set up onto the roof, facing the patio, and we set up chairs and folding chairs and maybe even borrowed chairs so we could all watch that incredible event. I was already pregnant, although no one knew and I wouldn’t be sure for another few weeks.<br>
<br>
After Pete and I got married we moved into the “rumpus room” - it was a massive room with a separate entrance and bath (–of course!); the single-story house was situated on a gentle slope so this room was on the downside at the back of the house, about two feet below ground level at its entrance and probably 6 feet below ground level at the deepest point. This made it a naturally cool room, very pleasant in the summer. My folks had a 21-foot travel trailer parked behind the house, about 15 feet from the rumpus room door and we used its little kitchen. We lived there for eight or nine months while we both graduated from high school (I skipped ahead to graduate in February, seven months pregnant, and Pete graduated, president of the senior class, in June. I brought our son to the graduation ceremony; we were a big hit). I remember timing my labor in that room, finally waking Pete at midnight on a school night (!!) to say, “I think you’d better drive me to the hospital now.” Seven hours later our son was born.<br>
<br>
My grandparents had moved out from Iowa about 6 years earlier and bought a house a mile or so away, a “triplex” - a three bedroom house on the bottom and two one bedroom apartments upstairs; when one of their tenants moved out, we were offered the vacant apartment at no increase of rent, I don’t remember if it was $75 or $80 per month. We took it gratefully and that’s where we were living when the big Sylmar Earthquake hit in February of 1971.<br>
<br>
I remember the sound of the timber tearing, a soft roaring sound, and of course the insistent rattling of the windows. Every aftershock brought that window-rattling and for days my adrenaline would punch skyhigh; this was my first fear-of-death experience, the first time I really believed I might die - and I had absolutely no control over it.<br>
<br>
I couldn’t stand being in the apartment so we bundled into the car and drove up to my folks’ house, my old home. It just felt more solid (well, it was more solid) and I was there when a Navy operator managed to get through the jammed phone lines, checking on our well-being for Dad, who was on one of his frequent business trips back to D.C.<br>
<br>
Some eighteen months later, I moved back into that house with my son and lived there for a school year (August or September to June of 1973). My folks did an admirable job of letting me have some autonomy without entirely compromising their boundaries and standards; looking back at it I’m very impressed, although I didn’t have the maturity to appreciate it at the time. I made a close friend at L.A.C.C. and we rented a bizarre little apartment together: it was the upstairs of four garages with a stairway up the middle, two large rooms on either side in the front, a small bedroom, a bathroom with no door and the kitchen on the backside. Beth took the northern front room and I took the southern front room and my son took the little bedroom; I painted a concentric rainbow on his ceiling and stippled the color gradations - it was really beautiful.<br>
<br>
We had a wild and woolly time for a bit more than a year, as I recall, and then that same upstairs apartment in my grandparents house became available again; I moved back.<br>
<br>
My parents owned a lot with two houses on it, maybe a mile and a quarter from their home; the long-term tenants moved out of the front house concurrent with some friends looking for a rental property so Beth’s older brother and his wife and my son and I moved into this three bedroom house and I was living there when my folks decided to move to San Diego.<br>
<br>
It wasn’t entirely their choice; the Navy Lab in Pasadena was closing and relocating to Point Loma and it wasn’t thinkable for my dad not to go; after all, he had all those computers to move and a couple of hundred people working for him at this point. The housing market had boomed in San Diego and was soft in L.A. - it took them more than a year to sell the Los Feliz home; I remember my dad getting nervous about the possibility of not selling it within the window for the rollover capital gains exclusion (that would have been disastrous).<br>
<br>
<blockquote></blockquote>
During this time I did some of the care of the property. My former roommate Beth’s other older brother moved into the small front bedroom of my old home and kept the lawn mowed and the house occupied while real estate agents brought clients in and out and tried to sell the place.<br>
<br>
Somewhere early in that window I wrote this song, Cannot Go Home Anymore, with apologies to <b>Thomas Wolfe</b> whose novel <i>You Cannot Go Home Again</i> was published posthumously in 1940. Writing the song was the way I processed the loss of this massive, solid, amazing house that I’d lived in for nearly 18 years of my life and around whose gravitational pull I’d orbited in every successive and intervening move. There were nine moves in less than eight years, all but one in the same zip code.<br>
<br>Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-20009838162454889582016-05-27T21:45:00.005-07:002016-05-27T21:45:58.533-07:00Real Love in C.S. Lewis<i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct <b>Facile Nation</b>, 5/27/2008)</i><br>
<br>
<b>or Pullman be damned!</b><br>
<br>
My friend Diana wrote a fabulous blog entry called <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20120712030126/http://booksbycslewis.blogspot.com/2008/05/lewis-lover.html">Lewis the Lover</a> at <i>C.S. Lewis: Original works on and about C.S. Lewis</i>, a blog sponsored by HarperOne.<br>
<br>
I am in fact joking about Philip Pullman; I genuinely hope he isn’t damned. I just find his angry vehemence against C.S. Lewis and Narnia to be weird and poisonous; anyone who proclaims himself the anti-CSL isn’t going to have much appeal for me personally.<br>
<br>
Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-79876375097958406332016-05-27T16:37:00.000-07:002016-05-27T16:37:06.375-07:00God's Dilemma <i>(re-post from my other blog, the now-defunct <b>Facile Nation</b>, 5/15/2008)</i><br>
<blockquote>
<i>Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel, saying, “I regret that I have made Saul king, for he has turned back from following Me and has not carried out My commands.”</i> 1 Samuel 15:10-11
</blockquote>
How can God regret doing something?<br>
<br>
This isn’t the first time we see God express regret; the first time is Genesis 6:6-7 which says <i>The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them.”</i> This is problematic, if one believes God (as I do) when He says, <i>“I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’.”</i> Isaiah 46:9-10<br>
<br>
If God knows the end from the beginning, being Creator God outside the constraints of the time domain, why would He do anything He would regret? Would He not foresee His regret? Perhaps God doesn’t foresee His own emotional responses or, more likely, His emotional reactions are not the basis on which He makes decisions (what a thought— would that we all had that capacity).<br>
<br>
Maybe ‘regret’ (<a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/lexicon/lexicon.cfm?Strongs=H5162&t=NASB">nacham</a>) doesn’t fully encompass His thinking, His emotions – or at least doesn’t for us. Certainly Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us that God’s thoughts and ways are not our thoughts and ways; perhaps this post is simply folly because I’m pondering things that I cannot know. At the same time, God invites us to know Him better, to enter in, to strive to come into agreement with Him.<br>
<br>
But I think it may be related to the fact that God values freewill; He lets us make our choices even when they hurt us. He tells us what is good, what is the way of life and blessing versus the way of death and cursing, and He exhorts us to <a href="https://www.blueletterbible.org/nasb/deu/30/19/s_183019">“choose life that you might live”</a> but He doesn’t impose that choice upon us.<br>
<br>
So, despite the fact that God sees the end from the beginning, God lets us go through the experience. He doesn’t sit at the beginning and judge humanity, choosing some and damning some based upon His foreknowledge. If He did, we would of course cry out, “That’s not fair! I haven’t <i>done</i> anything!” We go through the painful and joyful reality of life and freedom to make stupid and glorious choices.<br>
<br>
This is always a poignant and delicate area for me: I married at 25 under the firm conviction that God told me to marry this man. This man wasn’t my ‘type’, this man didn’t make my heart catch in my throat or my stomach drop out from under me (those indicators I sought in the past, looking for chemistry) – but this man was a professing Christian, a virtuous man, a man who ardently pursued me (warts and all, divorced with child and all), an intelligent man, a funny man, an excellent musician with whom I enjoyed playing and performing and attending concerts. This man asked God to give me to him for a wife – and God granted that request.<br>
<br>
Now this man might look at it and think, “why did I ever ask such a thing?” – if this man does any self-examination at all, which I suspect is not the case. But that would be his blog, not mine. I look at it and ask, “God, why did you tell me (invite me, anyway) to marry this man <i>knowing</i> that he would blindside me 17 years later, that he would blow up the marriage in as destructive a way as he could manage?”<br>
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And maybe, just maybe, it relates to this Saul thing– that God, rejected by Israel from being King over them, gave them Saul because they wanted a king (and Saul appeared to be kingly; he was an imposing figure) – so Samuel anoints Saul and prophesies to him and concludes with, <i>“Then the Spirit of the LORD will come upon you mightily, and you shall prophesy with them and be changed into another man.”</i> 1 Samuel 10:6<br>
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Saul was given the opportunity to be a godly king over Israel; God put His Spirit upon him and changed him into another kind of man, but Saul continually made choices inconsistent with God’s clear direction (via Samuel) and will (evident in the Torah) – so at a certain point God removed His Spirit from Saul (<i>Now the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD terrorized him.</i> 1 Samuel 16:14 — a truly terrifying thought) and He removed His blessing from Saul as the anointed king of Israel.<br>
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A year or so into the long, grievous divorce process God showed me that our marriage had the opportunity to be a good thing, He had a vision for our marriage – but we weren’t faithful to that vision and finally He redeemed out of the marriage that which was willing to be redeemed. Thus far that’s me. I hope one day it will include my ex – but it hasn’t yet; God has shown me specific things that will mark that redemption. Not things I’m looking forward to, btw, except in the sense that they’re signs of that redemption.<br>
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<i>Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death; for Samuel grieved over Saul. And the LORD regretted that He had made Saul king over Israel.</i> (1 Samuel 15:35 to end of the chapter).</blockquote>
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Tags: Bible questions, divorce, freewill, marriage, ponderingLynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-31098745640912443552013-02-11T14:26:00.000-08:002013-02-11T14:26:54.243-08:00The Immorality of Narcissism: Christopher DornerI've been tracking this story since before we knew Christopher Dorner was the suspected killer; the first victim, Monica Quan (with her fiance Keith Lawrence), was the daughter of a fellow high-school student and our alumni community was horrified by the tremendous loss. It has only become more painful as Dorner's 'manifesto' has come out and made clear that he was targeting Randal Quan by killing his daughter.
I don't want to focus on Dorner except as an exemplar of horrific morality: the morality of self-exaltation. The first example I see is from Genesis 4:23-24.
<blockquote>Lamech said to his wives, "Adah and Zillah, listen to my voice, you wives of Lamech, give heed to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me; and a boy for striking me; if Cain is avenged sevenfold, then Lamech seventy-sevenfold." </blockquote>
This Lamech (there are several in the Bible) has exalted himself above everyone else: a man wounded him, so he killed the man; a boy hit him, so he killed the boy <i>and he feels justified in doing it</i> because he is of more value than anyone else.<br>
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Narcissism is our natural state; we are born narcissists and must learn that our wants and needs are not the only wants and needs. People often talk about babies as born "good" but I don't believe that-- babies are born <i>innocent,</i> not "good." We must be taught what "goodness" is and we must be willing to let go of some of our complete self-absorption in order to become "good."<br>
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This immediately raises the question: who is the arbiter of "good"? Or "just" or "fair" or "right"? This murderer, like Lamech, believes that he was right to murder the daughter (and her fiance) of a man who disappointed him and let him down. He sees himself as a victim in all this. I don't believe any thinking American can agree with Dorner that it's appropriate to murder the child of a man who he blames for losing his job with the LAPD because, if it <i>is</i> justified for him to take vengeance against an innocent party because she is related to someone he hates, then none of us are safe from such summary judgments, nor are our children.<br>
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Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?" I remember the first time I read that scripture and took it personally. I was in my early 20s and I rejected it completely: "not MY heart!" It took the better part of two decades to recognize the truth God speaks in that passage: our hearts are deceitful and self-serving, Dorner's heart is deceitful and self-serving-- he has habitually viewed the world as unfair to him and thus whatever he does to get back at the world is fair and killing the child of the man he blames for losing his job is right.<br>
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So, if we cannot trust our own hearts to guide us in what is right and wrong, what can we trust? What higher authority is there, beyond our hearts?<br>
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I've often heard people speak disparagingly of God's mandate-- "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" (Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:20)-- as brutal and barbaric but, in the light of Lamech's narcissism, it is a law of balance: no, you may not kill a man for injuring you, you may not kill a boy for hitting you, you may not murder the daughter of the man who disappointed you in an administration hearing. And by God's law, Dorner would die for committing murder. I hope he does. I hope he meets his Maker, having repented of his self-absorption and all his sins; I don't wish he goes to hell, although he may well. It strikes me as ironic that our society is so reluctant to judge criminals, that we're so quick to listen to excuses ("bad childhood," "abuse," "psychological damage") and act like we have more mercy than God (<i>!!</i>) but, at the same time, we're so fast to tell people to go to hell. Better we should judge rightly here and allow God to determine the ultimate disposition of the soul.<br>
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Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-12236523746026141422011-10-10T18:21:00.000-07:002011-10-10T21:50:42.642-07:00Mormons To Christians To JewsThis is an update on a blog I wrote in March, 2009, about why John McCain became, by default, the Republican candidate for President rather than the very impressive Mitt Romney. Some folks are still angry with Mike Huckabee, an evangelical Christian, for asking (disingenuous? I really don’t know, perhaps he was genuinely ignorant) questions about what Mormons believe.<br />
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Let me say at the outset, I don't vote based on theology and I'd be surprised if many people do. At the same time, if Mitt Romney becomes the Republican candidate in 2012, there will be a huge media storm about the LDS church and my opinion is that Mormon candidates for office would be better served by being upfront about the differences rather than pretending they don't exist.<br />
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For a lot of people, this is a ridiculous debate: “Of course Mormons are Christians! They believe in Jesus!”<br />
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But for people who pay attention to theology it’s not about the word “Jesus” or even believing that a person lived and died and rose again about 2,000 years ago – it’s about who you think that person was and what you think he did. So the meaning of the word is the critical part, not the word itself.<br />
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Traditional Christianity has embraced and taught from the beginning that God is a Triune Being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – and the Three together comprise God. This is one of the places that Christianity separates from its Jewish roots: Deuteronomy 6:4 says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD” and understands it to mean the Triune God but Jews focus on “one” and say, “No, God can’t be a Trinity.” Obviously, as a Christian, I believe the two can be reconciled – but that discussion isn’t the topic of this post.<br />
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The LDS don’t believe in the Trinity; they don’t believe in eternal unchanging God; the Mormons believe that God was once a man and that a perfectly realized Mormon man has the potential to become god in his own future creation. This is radically different from either the Christian or Jewish view of God’s eternal and unchanging nature, “Who Was and Is and Is To Come.”<br />
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Normative (“orthodox” with a little “o”) Christianity believes that Jesus is the second Person of the Trinity, that He has been God and with God from eternity past to eternity future, always and forever. John says it beautifully in the first chapter of his gospel:<br />
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<blockquote>"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." (John 1:1-4)</blockquote><br />
Obviously that is not the Jewish view of Jesus or God and, fair enough, they’re not Christians, of course they don’t believe what Christianity teaches. But it’s not the Mormon view, either. According to LDS theology, Jesus and Lucifer are both spirit sons of God the father (who was once a man), and each came up with a plan to reconcile fallen humanity with God, and God preferred the plan of his son Jesus over the plan of his son Lucifer, who took offense.<br />
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Now I don’t know much about what Mormons believe happened to Lucifer, after God rejected his plan, and it’s not relevant to my point. The fact that Mormon theology believes Jesus and Lucifer are equal beings prior to the incarnation makes the Mormon Jesus very, very different from the normative Christian Jesus. The fact that the Mormon Jesus wasn’t with God from the beginning makes him very, very different from the normative Christian Jesus.<br />
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Details regarding the conception of Jesus, the scope of the forgiveness Jesus achieved on the cross, and the Person of the Holy Spirit all show a significant difference between Mormon beliefs and orthodox Christian beliefs.<br />
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Simply using the name “Jesus” while pointing to the historical figure and saying, “we believe in THAT guy,” doesn’t mean we believe the same things about “that guy.” Christianity believes that Jesus is Creator and Lucifer is part of the created order; they have never been equal or equivalent beings. In and of itself, the different understandings of God and Jesus, who they are, their history and their relationship, are sufficient to mark a vast gulf between the two religions.<br />
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My analogy is that the Mormon faith is to Christianity as Christianity is to Judaism. Christians embrace the Hebrew scriptures (although, to be fair, many Christians are greatly ignorant of the Hebrew scriptures and some suffer confusion about the very nature of the “old testament God” – but those are personal limitations and not reflected by normative Christian theology) and then <i>add</i> the new testament, the gospels and epistles. Likewise the Mormons embrace the Christian bible (old and new testament) and <i>add</i> another gospel and additional books that form specific Mormon theology. I am told by Mormon friends that they are discouraged from reading the Bible, that it is considered inferior to the LDS scriptures. Joseph Smith was told by his angelic source that none of the churches were rightly following Jesus and he needed to form a new one. So he did.<br />
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I think the LDS and Mitt Romney in particular would be better served to acknowledge that they are Mormon and, while the religion has similarities with normative Christianity, it is significantly different. In my opinion Christians shouldn’t try to pass themselves off as Jews and Mormons shouldn’t try to pass themselves off as Christians, at least not as unqualified Christians – it looks deceptive to people who know something about the two theologies.<br />
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It’s a truth-in-advertising, accuracy-in-labeling question. And inadvertent misrepresentation could explode the candidacy of a Mormon.<br />
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Now, does any of this theology have any bearing on the suitability of Mitt Romney to be President? No, of course not. We're not voting for "Theologian in Chief," we're voting for "Commander in Chief." Would Romney's LDS beliefs have any bearing on his ability to do a good job as President? No (and, arguably, they could have a positive bearing: Mormon males are under a lot of pressure to live excellent and exemplary lives; there is no "cheap grace" in LDS theology). Would religious holidays in the White House take on a different flavor? Sure.<br />
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So what? This is the United States of America and we very purposefully chose not to establish a state religion. One of the consequences of that (wise) decision is that we've had Presidents from a variety of Christian traditions. And, in the larger sense, being Mormon certainly grows up out of the Christian <i>tradition</i> even while it is not traditional Christianity.<br />
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Are there religions which would prevent me from voting for a candidate? Yes, if the religion embraced a different set of values. I don't know that I could vote for a Muslim because the religion is inherently political; Islam doesn't see a separation between mosque and state. I wouldn't vote for a satanist. Would I vote for an atheist? If their values were solid and I believed they were the best person for the job, yes. If Mitt Romney is the conservative nominee most likely to win the general election, he should be the candidate.Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-39697211276785989202011-02-15T15:51:00.000-08:002011-02-15T16:29:11.385-08:00The Stone the Builders Rejected<b>Yet Another in the Collection of the Obvious which Lynn Has Heretofore Missed :\</b><br /><br />Psalm 118:22-23 says, "The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner. This is the LORD'S doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." This scripture is understood to be about the Messiah (at least by Christians!) and Jesus quotes it in reference to Himself (Matthew 21, Mark 12, <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/tools/printerFriendly.cfm?b=Luk&c=20&t=NASB">Luke 20</a>) in the culmination of a confrontation with the chief priests and elders in the temple, about His authority to teach.<br /><br />I've always thought of dressed stones and wondered why one suitable to be the cornerstone would be reject but as I read the verse today it struck me that <i>a stone which is rejected is a stone which refuses to be any shape but its own</i>.<br /><br />This is most assuredly the case when it comes to Jesus: the Jewish people in the first century were (very understandably) looking for the Messiah to come as a conquering king to throw off the yoke of Rome - most of the previous 600 years were spent as a conquered or vassal state: first to Babylon then the Medes & Persians, then the Greeks and now the Romans. And there are lots of Messianic prophecies in the Hebrew scriptures which reference Him as conquering king; these have not yet been fulfilled. Instead Jesus came as the Lamb of God, the suffering servant, God in human flesh paying for human sin as the passover lamb, in order that death will no longer have authority over those who come into agreement with Him.<br /><br />So, right there, you have 'builders' with an idea of the shape of the stone for which they are looking, an opinion about what shape the chief cornerstone should be. And, in the natural, the builders and the architect are in agreement about the dimensions of the cornerstone. But in the spiritual realm, the Architect is God and He is the one Who says, "<i>This</i> is the chief cornerstone," and thereby establishes the shape of the entire building. And we builders, straddling the natural and the spiritual, look at this entirely self-possessed cornerstone and cry, "but I can't <i>DO</i> anything with that!" That Stone is entirely Itself and It does not change shape to accommodate anyone; instead we must come into agreement with the Stone.<br /><br />This makes me think of <a href="http://www.blueletterbible.org/tools/printerFriendly.cfm?b=Jos&c=5&v=1&t=NASB">Joshua 5:13-15</a>, this powerful and mysterious interaction before the battle of Jericho: Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, "Are you for us or for our adversaries?" He said, "No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the LORD." And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down, and said to him, "What has my lord to say to his servant?" The captain of the LORD'S host said to Joshua, "Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy." And Joshua did so.<br /><br />Personally, I read this as a Christophany - an appearance of pre-incarnate Jesus in scripture - because an angel of God will not receive worship (in both Revelation 19 and 22 John tells of falling at the feet of a glorious being and he is told, "See that you do it not! I am your fellow servant - worship God!") and this Person not only receives worship, He commands it ("take off your sandals; this is holy ground").<br /><br />So, if this is Jesus appearing to Joshua, why in the world doesn't He say, "of course I'm on your side! You are my chosen people!" ???<br /><br />Because it is not for this Being, commanding the army of the LORD, to be on the side of Joshua - rather it is for Joshua to be on the side of the LORD. Likewise, it is not for the stone to accommodate itself to the builders but rather for the builders to accept the Stone provided by the divine Architect.<br /><br />I wrote a song we use sometimes at church which says, "Help me line up with You, line up with You, line up with You, my Lord--" and that's my ongoing prayer, as God is doing the work of shaping me to fit His purposes and I resist the temptation to try and shape Him to fit <i>my</i> purposes!<br /><br />God is big and unpredictable (to us, at least - Aslan is not a tame lion!); we know He is good and we know something about where He is taking us but the path is often circuitous - it's certainly not the way <i>we</i> would go, left to our own devices. And so we start questioning, doubting - maybe God hasn't taken everything into consideration? Maybe there's something we know which He hasn't noticed yet? (!! - I know it sounds silly, but how often do we pray as if we were instructing God on the shape of our lives? "Lord, I'm having this problem with XYZ..." "Really? Wow, Lynn, somehow I'd missed that--") And it's not a big step from there to thinking we have vending-machine god or portable god that fits in our pockets. We persist in trying to downsize God because, face it, He's too big for us to see in His entirety. I'm sure it's awesome and amazing to travel in the space shuttle or live in the space station, to look out the window and see the earth and the moon - but if you really want the whole picture, you have to leave the station or do an extra-vehicular activity. And even then, you're seeing through the limitations of your helmet....<br /><br /><i>"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." </i>(1 Corinthians 13:12)Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-62841258039517427282009-01-18T22:23:00.000-08:002015-06-16T18:06:31.979-07:00The Fabulous Doctor Glyer<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBGv1BokHsVLQchjRIuVIVgpVHD5FEwFch13zevHXzDIdaGZtZM_hKkfKWQUrk5-IErOaAEnXNOX-F3TRvyuyJgY7plngneK_qRuKyNHI-TzFrTSS1zum69E4Tx0LjOMd-3c0u/s1600/225px-Diana_Glyer_239_319.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292890836313450018" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBGv1BokHsVLQchjRIuVIVgpVHD5FEwFch13zevHXzDIdaGZtZM_hKkfKWQUrk5-IErOaAEnXNOX-F3TRvyuyJgY7plngneK_qRuKyNHI-TzFrTSS1zum69E4Tx0LjOMd-3c0u/s320/225px-Diana_Glyer_239_319.jpg" style="display: block; height: 300px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left; width: 225px;" /></a><br />
Have I told you lately about how fabulous Dr Glyer is? My pal, Diana, brilliant scholar, woman of God, delightful and entertaining human being.<br />
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Have I mentioned that her award-winning book, <a href="http://amzn.to/1HR4Tm5"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community</span></span></a>, is now available in paperback? Or that there's now a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Glyer">Wikipedia page on her</a>?<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ATZtqmgV300VCEaBLIftfqzr0_S62JHWmy6dfYSbIrggvf7SFfUoiUCyWhO_TN7Ki0KU11obouXcaW9KVzk1J-Zq5-VQlJ3_cWm32OAAcFBm61LO1iAgLSF-mJEL3fuSGkzL/s1600-h/180px-The_Company_They_Keep_pb_209_320.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Diana Glyer" border="0" height="320" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5292889935825267890" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ATZtqmgV300VCEaBLIftfqzr0_S62JHWmy6dfYSbIrggvf7SFfUoiUCyWhO_TN7Ki0KU11obouXcaW9KVzk1J-Zq5-VQlJ3_cWm32OAAcFBm61LO1iAgLSF-mJEL3fuSGkzL/s320/180px-The_Company_They_Keep_pb_209_320.jpg" style="float: right; height: 276px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; width: 180px;" width="208" /></a><br />
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Then I've been remiss. She also has a book out on spiritual formation, <i><b><a href="http://amzn.to/1Bhonze">Clay in the Potter's Hands</a></b>,</i> and it is now available from Amazon in both paper and Kindle formats. Other eBook formats are available from <a href="http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/71798">Smashwords</a>.<br />
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<i>This post updated Fall 2011.</i><br />
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Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-59494495226134457482008-11-11T17:59:00.000-08:002008-11-11T18:01:22.530-08:00Transitions and AmbivalenceThis year I've been reading the history books of the Bible interspersed with the prophets who lived and prophesied at the same time. One of the things that leapt out this reading, especially in the context of the Northern Kingdom, were violent transitions. How grateful I am that our system of government allows for a smooth transition of power from one presidency to another! We are not a coup-friendly nation, and I am profoundly thankful for that.<br /><br />Obama wasn't my candidate. McCain wasn't either, but he had my vote because his ideology and values are closer to my own and I believed he would do a better job of leading this nation. But now Barack Obama is my president (elect) and while there is disappointment and concern. I am also intensely moved by the significance of his election.<br /><br />It struck me most profoundly when I heard a radio reporter mention watching Jesse Jackson weeping on television (as a TV-free zone I rely on radio for real-time descriptions of events). It's powerful for me that we have elected a self-identified black man to the highest office in the land - but I'm a middle-aged white woman who grew up in a racially diverse part of Los Angeles and the truth is, I have no idea what full-on racial prejudice feels like.<br /><br />So hearing this reporter describe with a sense of awe that Jesse Jackson wept continually, wept like a young child, I realized how extraordinary this election is for the black community-- something they felt was out of their reach as a race has been grasped resoundingly, and not only by blacks but by all races. The Presidency is not a referendum on race but Obama's win required the support of myriads of white voters - and I hope that fact serves as a balm to the weary and torn souls who've been encouraged to view all of life through the lens of racism.<br /><br />I pray that Obama will be a great and wise President; I pray that he is not a man of the Chicago machine but proves to be his own man and a man with a true heart for the Lord.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"> <i>The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; He directs it<br />like a watercourse wherever He pleases.</i><br /><br /> <span style="font-size:85%;">Proverbs 21:1</span></div>Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-56220975800276234382008-10-30T14:38:00.000-07:002008-10-30T15:38:48.480-07:00The Redistribution of Peanut Butter Sandwiches...Much has been made lately of Barack Obama's "spread the wealth around" philosophy, taking from Joe-the-plumber to give to the guys "behind him," to give them an equal chance to succeed as well as Joe has. But don't they already have an equal chance? Aren't the variables found in our individual gifts, abilities, vision, and work ethic? Or do we aspire to realize the nightmare of Kirk Vonnegut's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron">Harrison Bergeron</a> short story? yikes--<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG54PkWMJXXyRPsosWab4K1I_BEmOd0rknWAzuxqHDlrtZ3s4qQKf-iTYVx4BDxZm_9Ws_TeI_dkpsILOs-3V2EiENvUtveOBMgU8Z5aLUZLA1_HIxCOOQNoAdOGrrDyqIPXJ3/s1600-h/peanut-butter-jelly.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG54PkWMJXXyRPsosWab4K1I_BEmOd0rknWAzuxqHDlrtZ3s4qQKf-iTYVx4BDxZm_9Ws_TeI_dkpsILOs-3V2EiENvUtveOBMgU8Z5aLUZLA1_HIxCOOQNoAdOGrrDyqIPXJ3/s200/peanut-butter-jelly.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5263079939473872642" /></a><br /><br />When I indulge my indolent self, I accomplish much less than when I deliver a pep-talk to my go-getter self-- it's kind of the "two dogs at war within me" scenario.*<br /><br />Being a television-free zone, I haven't been over-exposed to television ads or last night's Obama infomercial (<I>caveat emptor:</I> there is no money-back guarantee on this purchase and no 'do-over.' Bearing that in mind I've been fascinated by Obama's strong encouragement that people vote early instead of waiting until Election Day; it sounds so much like, "Vote for me <I>now</I> before you learn something that might change your mind--") but I've heard several references to Obama sharing his peanut butter and jelly sandwich in elementary school and his apparent comparison of that experience with his desire to redistribute wealth or, in his own words, "spread the wealth around."<br /><br />I don't think so. <br /><br />In fact, children sharing and trading lunches and sandwiches in elementary school is much more a 'free market' economy than a government redistribution economy. Remember? How often could you trade your liverwurst sandwich to another kid? I liked liverwurst but even I didn't want <I>someone else's</I> liverwurst sandwich; I liked the way my mom made them.<br /><br />What Obama wants is for the teacher to collect all the lunches, pick out her favorite things, and then hand them back out the way she sees fit, so that it's 'fair' according to her own agenda. Guess who is 'the teacher' in Obama's left-leaning utopia? <br /><br />But what if she cuts everything into pieces and divides it up, passes it back? She's still going to 'take her cut' of the pieces. In a classroom of 40 students (which was routine for my generation), she'd cut everything up into 45 pieces and she'd keep those extra 5 pieces. Maybe she'd cut it up in to 50 pieces and keep 10% and, as in the first scenario, some of those goodies are never going to be 'redistributed' back down to the classroom.<br /><br />That nice piece of chocolate cake? Gone.<br /><br />Now, for the kid whose mother is a drunk and who routinely gets margarine sandwiches, this is hopeful. But in your standard schoolyard economy, some kids are going to notice that he rarely gets a decent lunch and share - at least, that's what we did in the early 60s and I can't believe that my generation, the self-obsessed generation, was more inherently generous than the generations which follow.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><I>*A man observed there were two dogs at war within him: one that does good and the other does evil. When asked which dog wins, he replied: "The one I feed the most."</I>Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-50951145122060361322008-05-19T23:43:00.000-07:002015-06-16T18:00:24.958-07:00Aslan is not a stuffed LionLike so many fans of <a href="http://www.mythsoc.org/inklings/">the Inklings and mythopoeia</a>, <a href="http://www.tolkiensociety.org/">J.R.R. Tolkien</a> and <a href="http://cslewis.drzeus.net/">C.S. Lewis</a> and <a href="http://www.geocities.com/charles_wms_soc/">Charles Williams</a>, fantasy and yes, even Harry Potter, I went to see the new Narnia movie <a href="http://amzn.to/1LfCVPN"><em>Prince Caspian</em></a>.<br />
<br />
What a disappointment.<br />
<br />
I went with my son & daughter-in-law and grandkids; I wore my C.S. Lewis Centenary Celebration t-shirt, the one with Nancy-Lou Patterson's great illustration of Bacchus' wild girls, from the spectacular <a href="http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon29.html">Mythopoeic conference</a> in Wheaton in 1998.<br />
<br />
Spoilers follow, so if you don't know the book and you wish to remain in blissful ignorance until you've seen the film, cease and desist reading now.<br />
<br />
<strong>The Peter Jacksonification of Narnia</strong>:<br />
<br />
It's not fair to blame Peter Jackson, horror-film director made rich and famous by turning Tolkien's<em> The Lord of the Rings</em> into an action-driven horror-fest in place of a character-driven epic of high fantasy. Someone, somewhere, must have thought, "ah, these films are popular because of the really impressive battle sequences!" and Walden Media, God bless their pointed little heads, thought, "ah, we must do really impressive battle sequences in <em><a href="http://amzn.to/1BhoV8h">The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe</a></em> - we can even film in New Zealand!"<br />
<br />
I was disappointed in the first film, particularly in the characterization of Peter as whiny and bossy and troubled. This invented characterization has grown larger and more putrid in <em>Prince Caspian</em>, which starts with him fighting *yet again* with school mates. Where is High King Peter, where is illustration of the point, repeated over and over again by Lewis, that the children start to reacquire the maturity and skills they developed in their first stay in Narnia?<br />
<br />
Now, fine, if a person thinks there's an interesting psychological story, to look at the impact of the 'Kings & Queens grown up in Narnia, back to childhood in England' experience, tell that story independently - <em>but it's not the story Lewis told</em> -- it's not <em>Prince Caspian</em>. These are children's books, children's magical fantasy stories, rich with spiritual meaning and interesting questions. The Walden Media people ignore most of the interesting questions and contort the spiritual content.<br />
<br />
My son's lovely wife never read the Narnia books in childhood so she came to the film without expectations to be dashed; she came away very confused. "You know at the end, when Aslan says Peter and Susan won't be returning to Narnia because they learned the lessons they were supposed to learn? <em>What</em> did they learn?" Good question. Perhaps they were meant to learn you don't rely on your own understanding but you follow Aslan even when it doesn't appear to make sense - in which case, they didn't learn it.<br />
<br />
<em>Every</em> question she had was related to the inventions of the filmmakers: "why did they attack the castle? Why did Caspian try to attack the Old Narnians? Why didn't Peter kill Miraz if it was a challenge to the death? What was Lucy doing? Why did she leave and ride through the forest?"<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07oZf6iSgORHg72GfuZYH6Tk7ViWhfz4UsYb08N54MBob7faRqVgeQqoRDhGSf9aYte8xvPdCFF4Nyjn7gEOUsh84sLzV7fQdP41dbHUbAw9OnkxD42kBq3ZoyA7-CBTaiWFC/s1600/stuffed-lion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07oZf6iSgORHg72GfuZYH6Tk7ViWhfz4UsYb08N54MBob7faRqVgeQqoRDhGSf9aYte8xvPdCFF4Nyjn7gEOUsh84sLzV7fQdP41dbHUbAw9OnkxD42kBq3ZoyA7-CBTaiWFC/s200/stuffed-lion.jpg" width="200" /></a>Yes-- most egregious of all. Aslan, who is not a <em>tame</em> lion, turns out to be a stuffed lion; Lucy has to return to the place she last saw him in order to fetch him.<br />
<br />
Give me a break!<br />
<br />
So, to recap the confusion: these are <em>children's books</em> so the battles can't have any blood (swords drawn out without gore) <em>BUT</em> they're Peter Jacksonified so we need more battles; these are books written by a man who enjoyed a smoke and a pint <em>BUT</em> that would confuse American evangelicals (apparently believed to be incapable of handling the rich, full humanity of Clive Staples Lewis) so we'll delete all the festivities with Bacchus and Pan and the wild girls (--<em>so much for my t-shirt</em>--); for entirely unclear reasons we change the two conniving Telmarine lords into a conniving lord and a reluctant victim lord and instead of having them initiate the accusation of treachery during the challenge when Peter steps back to allow Miraz to regain his feet, the filmmakers invent a sequence where High King Peter refuses to kill his opponent during a 'fight-to-the-death' challenge, passes the task off to Caspian (who also declines, showing himself weak), and thus make for a very clumsy accusation of treachery (using one of <em>Susan's arrows</em>, of all things).Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-90757932020825313732008-03-20T02:10:00.000-07:002015-06-16T18:04:31.010-07:00Sad Realities and Doomsday BookWe all lived through the Millennium without the power grid collapsing or the internet imploding or turning into cannibals. And after the initial shock and horror of the terrorist attacks on the east coast on 9/11/01 and months, perhaps even a year, of expecting another assault but none came, we've fallen back into our sense of safety and dismissal. I fear we've become a little smug.<br /><br />Still, I couldn't help think of Connie Willis' brilliant novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553562738?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0553562738">Doomsday Book</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0553562738" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> when a Ship of Fools <a href="http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=004185;p=1#000000">hell thread</a> started about a deadly flu outbreak in Hong Kong.<br /><br />
<a href="http://www.betterscreenplays.com/">Paula DiSante</a> and I optioned <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0553562738?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0553562738"><B><I>Doomsday Book</I></B></a> from Connie back in the mid-90s and spent three years trying to get the puppy greenlit (not sufficient Hollywood juice ~ <I>sigh</I>). Paula's adaptation was brilliant, even Connie liked it and authors never like the truncated script version of their baby (too much like taking someone's lithe, leggy dream teen and handing them back a dwarf and saying, "well, of course we had to make it shorter..."). But this is one time I'd be very happy for one of my favorite SF writers not to be prescient-- <I>*whimper*</I> --I'm not looking for a modern Tyhpoid Mary <I>à la</I> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007PALZ2?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0007PALZ2">12 Monkeys</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B0007PALZ2" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> by Terry Gilliam; we've already demonstrated our hubris in that we're unwilling to call for quarantines.<br /><br />Still, if you haven't read it, do--<br /><br />
Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-45814676425027606422008-02-26T00:50:00.002-08:002009-05-25T01:41:53.287-07:00A Poem for My Father--<span style="font-style:italic;">Shortly before Thanksgiving, while working with my organizer lady, I had a profound emotional experience; the next day I read in Diana Glyer’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873389913?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0873389913">The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0873389913" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> about Owen Barfield writing a poem for C.S. Lewis on the first anniversary of his death and it struck me that I should write about what happened the day before. This is the result:</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">Yesterday <br />in sorting, shifting house<br />I came upon my dead father's watch, a wristwatch<br />with large face and metal band<br />that marked it as of a certain time<br />in marking time<br /><br />In my throat there caught and formed a swelling egg of grief, of loss<br /><br />Brushing lightly across the well of tears<br />I staved them off<br />suppressed them as inconvenient<br />for I was working and not alone<br /><br />Please, I pray, do not let this be a final dismissal<br />of his import or my gratitude<br /><br />He was as large as life: expansive and wise<br />fixed and blindered<br />quick to laugh and quick to glare<br />too smart by half and always giving credit where perhaps little credit was due<br /><br />I am his true child<br /><br />I will miss him until Heaven.</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRS-NpNIGlkt72KGFFNVLpQkLopAIFyrqp5a6QKbdzM9USDM9r5vFOZFw8h1tcGBpl0k0JFy8sNrQYAms7OSTV8VtIA9fx7CpX69bIja8jfYBPzOrfcEoZ9_iqs_nXhkTUasrp/s1600-h/ca1965_wristwatch.jpg"><img style="float:center; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRS-NpNIGlkt72KGFFNVLpQkLopAIFyrqp5a6QKbdzM9USDM9r5vFOZFw8h1tcGBpl0k0JFy8sNrQYAms7OSTV8VtIA9fx7CpX69bIja8jfYBPzOrfcEoZ9_iqs_nXhkTUasrp/s320/ca1965_wristwatch.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5171209564235054578" /></a><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">November 15, 2007 © Lynn Maudlin, all rights reserved<br /></span>Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-73249984497815069692007-12-03T23:02:00.000-08:002011-02-15T16:16:41.377-08:00Oliver Sacks' Brain<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWKSHKNfqHBFoRGsrtPF7JXogB7OxIVMMRuU829rzfPpPQh1jc0bo-NCns6K_4-NS7XIOcOSeTlH8JYVI05rUN6i684jlI1jEvWJaGxoTal5K6r_HbmllVyRMOe2tgJIK29ItS/s1600-h/Brain_on_Drugs.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWKSHKNfqHBFoRGsrtPF7JXogB7OxIVMMRuU829rzfPpPQh1jc0bo-NCns6K_4-NS7XIOcOSeTlH8JYVI05rUN6i684jlI1jEvWJaGxoTal5K6r_HbmllVyRMOe2tgJIK29ItS/s200/Brain_on_Drugs.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5158568039652664114" /></a>One of the most amazing stories from Oliver Sacks' book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679756973?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0679756973">An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales,</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0679756973" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> is "To See And Not See" and it gives us a glimpse into the remarkable miracle of ordinary, garden variety, everyday sight. Couple that with Dr. Paul Brand's observations from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310221447?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0310221447"><b>The Gift of Pain</b></a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0310221447" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> (essentially a re-release of <b>Pain, The Gift Nobody Wants</b>) and you suddenly realize that virtually everything you know --or think you know-- is processed by an organ without any senses of its own, encased in a dark box. And, if you think about it too long, it really freaks you out a bit... <br /> <br />Part of the fun of working with Jeremy in mixing the live <a href="http://www.lynnmaudlin.com/ruth.htm"><b><i>House of Bread</i></b></a> recordings was growing to recognize all the more how differently we process sound and memory, memory of music and intervals. An example: Rowena from our church just died unexpectedly but, all things considered, mercifully-- her daughters and some friends came to church on Sunday and instead of a sermon Fr. C gave us the opportunity to stand up and share (including memories from a week earlier when she was in church and had a word about someone feeling "sad - but <i>not</i> depressed") and as we drew to a close he announced, "Lynn is going to sing a song she wrote and then we'll continue with the creed." Happily Jeremy & Buzz stood up with me because this was a complete surprise and while I was fairly sure I'd remember the lyrics (and did), I was also pretty sure I didn't remember the chords (!!! - stop laughing. I've written about 400 songs and play 10 songs every Sunday w/the worship team; I try <i>not</i> to memorize them) - happily Jeremy remembers the intervals and he filled in where I fell apart.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/FemaleBrain2.gif"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://ldc.upenn.edu/myl/llog/FemaleBrain2.gif" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />Better yet, I think only the three of us were aware, not the family and congregation. So I can't begin to explain how I memorize (mostly repetition, I think) versus how Jeremy simply remembers. He <i>hears</i> the tempering of instruments and therefore recognizes the key in which a piece is played; I transposed one of my songs one Sunday morning and he said, "ah, that's good, it sounds better in A." I simply can't imagine hearing that way; the only way I know if someone has changed the key on something I'm singing is if it moves it out of my range.<br /><br />Next: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767920104?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0767920104">The Female Brain</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0767920104" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /><br /><br />Note: The very cool brain image at the top of this entry is by <a href="http://www.sgeier.net/fractals/index02.php">Sven Geier</a>; he works for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and creates cool fractal art. Thanks, Sven!Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-1829991536218257352007-11-26T19:07:00.000-08:002008-12-10T20:17:59.483-08:00Loscon Weekend Enchilada<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm_UJMAu-e8oTQkDiGpRuEIdirHWlHYf2NEUvoR9zoCe5inRVHlT2amTDZDkBZbO8cx4igTmvt3UMZRgHgY2bXUqy2ARJ5Ay1geys_NiOMHooioMIUnaAhkAzfRVGSsJOyInQc/s1600-h/3DaysNever.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm_UJMAu-e8oTQkDiGpRuEIdirHWlHYf2NEUvoR9zoCe5inRVHlT2amTDZDkBZbO8cx4igTmvt3UMZRgHgY2bXUqy2ARJ5Ay1geys_NiOMHooioMIUnaAhkAzfRVGSsJOyInQc/s320/3DaysNever.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5158567004565545762" /></a><p align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000O17D1E?ie=UTF8&tag=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000O17D1E"><B>Three Days to Never</B>: A Novel</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=wwwlynnmaudlc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000O17D1E" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> </p> The day after Thanksgiving for Los Angeles science fiction and fantasy fans means <a href="http://www.loscon.org/34/index.html">Loscon</a> and a lovely holiday tradition it is, too, although it does get in the way of any plans for out-of-town Thanksgiving events. I got to enjoy my annual dinner with <B>Tim and Serena Powers</B> (blatant link to most recent novel, above) on Friday night which was really delightful. We have conversations that run in about 14 disparate directions and we never quite finish any of them, so there's always more to talk about. I love these guys: smart, funny, and always thought-provoking. I gave Tim a copy of Diana's book <a href="http://bigblondeblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/comany-wed-like-to-keep.html"><I><B>The Company They Keep</B></i></a> which he proceeded to stay up late reading - I know because I was sitting in the Green Room with Diana the next day when Tim walked in and said, "I was reading your book last night, I'm about a third of the way through--"<br /><br />Diana was delighted ("Tim Powers is reading my book!") but I knew he would really enjoy it: good scholarship, solid connections, well-written, engaging - and it's about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Williams (and the other 16 Inklings, too) - what's not to like?!<br /><br />Karen Willson came in and joined us during the break between the end of the Inklings panel (Diana Glyer, David Bratman, Tim Powers, Mark Ferrari, and another author (and librarian!) whose name I have blanked on; really excellent) and my concert. I was looking through my folder of "Songs Not Inappropriate for SF Concerts" and trying to decide what I would sing and she said, "sing to me! Pick songs you'd like me to hear," which made for an interesting selection. Started with "I Gotta Kill My Clone," which people really enjoy (<I>"I caught her dating my boyfriend - I think he may prefer to be with her..."</I>), then "High Frontier" - the song I wrote a week after the Columbia shuttle tragedy. If I'm remembering right I then sang "Difficult Drinks" and "The Fire Says Yes" which I consider sort of a "graying of fandom" song (<I>"In the still of the night I curl up with a book but I'd rather be curled up with you--"</I>) and then "Come In, Houston," "Left Turn Love," and closing with "Emotional Junkie."<br /><br />It was really fun for me that Dr. James Robinson, the musical guest of honor, did a combination concert/explanation performance following mine. I didn't know him or his work and he's delightful and <I>very</I> funny!<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://theband.hiof.no/band_pictures/the_whole_enchilada_front_big.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px;" src="http://theband.hiof.no/band_pictures/the_whole_enchilada_front_big.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br />I didn't get to as much programming as I'd like and I drove home Saturday night so I could be at church Sunday a.m., thereby missing John Hertz and Tom Veal's infamous PrimeTime Party (starts at 1:00 a.m. and runs until 7:00 a.m.; it's a lot of fun) - but perhaps next year I'll make my excuses at church and stay for the whole enchilada.Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-4876639455104411542007-11-16T02:33:00.000-08:002007-11-16T02:55:35.237-08:00More Engineering, from the Artist side...What prompted me to write this post (and the previous) was the degree of satisfaction I got from doing the hands-on mix of a rather complicated song. This particular singer was more oriented toward performing in the room rather than remembering we were capturing the performance via the microphones (funny, because he's very good at being on-mike in the worship team setting). So he dropped in and out in funny ways related to when he turned his face toward another 'character' - these things need to be corrected, or at least minimized, in the mixing process. This particular song also had an internal narration and a choral section, so at some point in the song every microphone needed to be turned up to specific levels, which would change and shift throughout the song, but because of the pedal clunk of the live piano sound (see previous entry) I couldn't leave the microphones on through the whole song or there was too much bleed-through.<br /><br />And it's really fun for me to figure out what I need to do and create a mental road map of the work and then do it all in live time - very exciting! And I really don't know <I>why</I> it's exciting to me. Hmmmmm.<br /><br />Now the challenge is learning to be content with the reality of its massive imperfections because live performance standards are quite different from studio performance standards, and understandably so: there's so much energy in live performance that a clunker of pitch goes by and is quickly forgotten - but you capture a recording of the moment and you can listen to it over and over and over again... <I>*sigh*</I>.<br /><br />This is definitely "live" and I need to be okay with that...Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11632117.post-22611225212536821122007-11-10T13:43:00.001-08:002007-11-10T16:49:27.781-08:00Engineer Lynn - or SoundmixingAs a singer/songwriter, I've spent a fair amount of time in professional recording studios and I've watched a lot of mixing go down. Twenty-four tracks, flying faders, amazing punches - shoot, we even did a genuine reverse cymbal crash on <a href="http://www.lynnmaudlin.com/music.htm">my album</a> (nowadays I suppose it would all be done digitally; can you tell I'm practicing to get crotchedty? Give me another 30 years and I'll have it down--). But I've not done much mixing myself.<br /><br />I've been working with Jeremy (young brilliant musician and computer wiz, on the worship team together) on mixing the live sound from the performance of <a href="http://www.lynnmaudlin.com/ruth.htm">House of Bread</a> so that we can have a reasonably good sound recording (I don't anticipate a wide release but at least for the folks involved and other churches interested in it, etc.). We're working with the little eight-track hard drive recorder that Jeremy used to capture the performance.<br /><br />First fun part: the grand piano had a problem with the sustain pedal; this wasn't particularly noticeable in the room and the dynamics of performance are such that folks don't really notice it - they're more caught up in the story and the singers and the faces and the moment rather than an occasional soft <I>*clunk*</i>. But despite our best efforts on the day to minimize the clunking sound, the recorded track is full of it. And, being the sustain pedal, it's not even "in time" with the music (!!). So I re-recorded all the piano. This wouldn't be so hard in a studio setting but with a live performance where I was "accompanying" singers (allowing them to shift timings, etc., rather than driving the songs and forcing them to fit with the piano) it was a bit of a challenge.<br /><br />Complicated by the fact we had 7 open mikes picking up room sound. Fine, we shut down the mikes we don't need at any given moment but it still leaves <I>the singer's</I> microphone with the original piano track audible in the background. This means I have to try and play the replacement keyboard pretty much the same way I played it live. Ha! Actually, that wasn't nearly so hard as I expected - Jeremy would give me the sound of the (new) keyboard and the original tracks and sometimes I needed more vocal and sometimes I needed more of the original piano. A few of the tracks were particularly "floaty" but even those I was able to re-record with surprisingly little difficulty.Lynnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18011571798292504296noreply@blogger.com1