Friday, June 30, 2006
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Juneteenth
Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.
From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond.
Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. Its growing popularity signifies a level of maturity and dignity in America long over due. In cities across the country, people of all races, nationalities and religions are joining hands to truthfully acknowledge a period in our history that shaped and continues to influence our society today. Sensitized to the conditions and experiences of others, only then can we make significant and lasting improvements in our society.
http:\\www.juneteenth.com
From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond.
Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. Its growing popularity signifies a level of maturity and dignity in America long over due. In cities across the country, people of all races, nationalities and religions are joining hands to truthfully acknowledge a period in our history that shaped and continues to influence our society today. Sensitized to the conditions and experiences of others, only then can we make significant and lasting improvements in our society.
http:\\www.juneteenth.com
Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States.
From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond.
Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. Its growing popularity signifies a level of maturity and dignity in America long over due. In cities across the country, people of all races, nationalities and religions are joining hands to truthfully acknowledge a period in our history that shaped and continues to influence our society today. Sensitized to the conditions and experiences of others, only then can we make significant and lasting improvements in our society.
http:\\www.juneteenth.com
From its Galveston, Texas origin in 1865, the observance of June 19th as the African American Emancipation Day has spread across the United States and beyond.
Today Juneteenth commemorates African American freedom and emphasizes education and achievement. It is a day, a week, and in some areas a month marked with celebrations, guest speakers, picnics and family gatherings. It is a time for reflection and rejoicing. It is a time for assessment, self-improvement and for planning the future. Its growing popularity signifies a level of maturity and dignity in America long over due. In cities across the country, people of all races, nationalities and religions are joining hands to truthfully acknowledge a period in our history that shaped and continues to influence our society today. Sensitized to the conditions and experiences of others, only then can we make significant and lasting improvements in our society.
http:\\www.juneteenth.com
Same Difference
So everyone always talks about how people are all the same. How we all feel hurt and love and sadness and hope and this human condition is what makes us all humanity and how we are all sinners and all in need of love. But I think that's a lie. I mean, it's true we all feel emotions and we've given those similar names, but I don't think we are at all the same. I think we are so massively different our difference could stun a team of oxen in its tracks. Our differences are as wide as oceans and our disagreements are as deep as canyons.
I remember these self-esteem classes they had at my elementary school (one of 3 elementary schools I went to) and they talked about our feelings and how we all have the same feelings and they were constantly telling us how special we were. I remember how special they told me I was because at the end of the "course" we got a certificate with a teddy bear and a heart on it that had our name in big letters and it said, "I'm Very Special". I've kept it all these years in case one day I forget that I'm special. And that certificate comes to mind for me a lot, probably because I've never met anyone other than the kids in that class who has a certificate confirming their specialness or who would remember if they'd received a certificate like that. But I think about it all the time. And in defense of my claim that we are incredibly different from each other, that we might possibly never have another thought similar to another person, I think of this certificate and how absolutely no one I know could produce from a box of grade school archives a certificate proving their specialness. I think of a friend of mine who has brothers and how her entire life she grew up knowing that her family was safe and intact, and I never thought that. It wasn't perfect for her, nothing ever is, but she never wondered if her mom and dad would come home at the end of the day. They were committed and she never wondered if one day they might get tired of the struggle and give up. The only act of building that ever happened in my family of origin was my father remarrying and even that I doubted would last, although it has. All other actions were toward entropy, the moving apart of particles whose chemistry just wouldn't resolve together even by force. And I think of our difference in how I can read someone's supposed heart on a page and think, I have no idea how someone can think that. I don't speak their language. I don't speak their heart. And I wonder in fear sometimes when this happens if everyone else can see their meaning, that possibly everyone else speaks one language that I never learned. I don't truly fear not knowing the code, because I know my own codes and my life is extraordinary because of it. I have had extraordinary love and extraordinary loss, and for all the days I wish for a serving of ordinariness, I choose my life.
I choose its awkwardness, its anxiety and its pain over any inkling toward sinking down in a hole of mediocrity. I choose fierce grace over meddling judgmental pinpricks. I choose the freedom to be myself and know my own weaknesses. I choose having the freedom to examine myself and find myself acceptable without anyone else's input.
All I have to do to confirm for myself that we are so vastly different is walk into a bookstore. Where on one side of the aisle, I see Billy Graham books and on the other is Nostradamus's guide to the apocalypse. Every single moment in each person's life shapes them into a specific being. A specific mixture of good and evil, hope and despair, music and light, fatness and thinness, thoughtfulness and superficiality, richness and poverty, truth and lies, authenticating and falsifying gestures of self. (Kevin would call this presenting masks or our real selves.)
Gestures of self. Those gestures that are symbols of our selves that we offer to others to accept. The drive to be known and remain a mystery keeps us constantly moving and shifting our identities and choices and affiliations and preferences so even the specific things that would keep us canyons away from others are continually changing. And for others, their specific assortment of identities is a concoction that can scarcely be nailed down. Yes, oh yes we are different. We are not the same. We are not all blessed with intelligence, nor all with talent or charisma or athelticism or skill or charm. Some of us have ideas and some of us don't. Some of us strive and some rest. We go along with the crowd, but he or she thinks outside the norms. They keep their heads down and plink along in life, but I must ponder the whys of every action. Our group must find a reason and for others the common reason is enough.
We are not the same. The only thing that is even remotely the same is that we all have noses, and even that is not categorically true. We are different. We are far, far away from each other in thought, word and deed. Our plans are a vast myriad and our dreams are an ocean of options.
We are individual creations and individual minds. We are identities being molded more to the likeness of Christ and souls being shaped to our own specific blueprint. We are only the same in our uniqueness.
I remember these self-esteem classes they had at my elementary school (one of 3 elementary schools I went to) and they talked about our feelings and how we all have the same feelings and they were constantly telling us how special we were. I remember how special they told me I was because at the end of the "course" we got a certificate with a teddy bear and a heart on it that had our name in big letters and it said, "I'm Very Special". I've kept it all these years in case one day I forget that I'm special. And that certificate comes to mind for me a lot, probably because I've never met anyone other than the kids in that class who has a certificate confirming their specialness or who would remember if they'd received a certificate like that. But I think about it all the time. And in defense of my claim that we are incredibly different from each other, that we might possibly never have another thought similar to another person, I think of this certificate and how absolutely no one I know could produce from a box of grade school archives a certificate proving their specialness. I think of a friend of mine who has brothers and how her entire life she grew up knowing that her family was safe and intact, and I never thought that. It wasn't perfect for her, nothing ever is, but she never wondered if her mom and dad would come home at the end of the day. They were committed and she never wondered if one day they might get tired of the struggle and give up. The only act of building that ever happened in my family of origin was my father remarrying and even that I doubted would last, although it has. All other actions were toward entropy, the moving apart of particles whose chemistry just wouldn't resolve together even by force. And I think of our difference in how I can read someone's supposed heart on a page and think, I have no idea how someone can think that. I don't speak their language. I don't speak their heart. And I wonder in fear sometimes when this happens if everyone else can see their meaning, that possibly everyone else speaks one language that I never learned. I don't truly fear not knowing the code, because I know my own codes and my life is extraordinary because of it. I have had extraordinary love and extraordinary loss, and for all the days I wish for a serving of ordinariness, I choose my life.
I choose its awkwardness, its anxiety and its pain over any inkling toward sinking down in a hole of mediocrity. I choose fierce grace over meddling judgmental pinpricks. I choose the freedom to be myself and know my own weaknesses. I choose having the freedom to examine myself and find myself acceptable without anyone else's input.
All I have to do to confirm for myself that we are so vastly different is walk into a bookstore. Where on one side of the aisle, I see Billy Graham books and on the other is Nostradamus's guide to the apocalypse. Every single moment in each person's life shapes them into a specific being. A specific mixture of good and evil, hope and despair, music and light, fatness and thinness, thoughtfulness and superficiality, richness and poverty, truth and lies, authenticating and falsifying gestures of self. (Kevin would call this presenting masks or our real selves.)
Gestures of self. Those gestures that are symbols of our selves that we offer to others to accept. The drive to be known and remain a mystery keeps us constantly moving and shifting our identities and choices and affiliations and preferences so even the specific things that would keep us canyons away from others are continually changing. And for others, their specific assortment of identities is a concoction that can scarcely be nailed down. Yes, oh yes we are different. We are not the same. We are not all blessed with intelligence, nor all with talent or charisma or athelticism or skill or charm. Some of us have ideas and some of us don't. Some of us strive and some rest. We go along with the crowd, but he or she thinks outside the norms. They keep their heads down and plink along in life, but I must ponder the whys of every action. Our group must find a reason and for others the common reason is enough.
We are not the same. The only thing that is even remotely the same is that we all have noses, and even that is not categorically true. We are different. We are far, far away from each other in thought, word and deed. Our plans are a vast myriad and our dreams are an ocean of options.
We are individual creations and individual minds. We are identities being molded more to the likeness of Christ and souls being shaped to our own specific blueprint. We are only the same in our uniqueness.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
9 Reasons I'm Not and Will Never Be Captivated by 'Captivating'
1. No knight is coming for me. Just a sinful human guy who forgets to change the toilet paper roll. (Well, at least I hope he's coming. Either way, Jesus already did.) And yes, he should stand up for me and protect me, but if I can't already do that for myself as a single person, then why would he respect me enough to pursue me?
2. God is not "longing" for me. He does not "need" me to fill a role he is unable to fill.
3. God's master plan for my life is not to "romance" me. Contrary to popular belief and those annoying t-shirts: It's NOT all about ME. God's plan is to prosper me and sustain me through a fallen world so I can serve Him, magnify HIM and go to heaven and rest.
4. I am not the crest of creation. God's fingerprint is in me, but it is also in trees, flowers, turtles and MEN. We are all equally beautiful in God's eyes and humans are especially precious having been made in His image, but one gender is not more beautiful than the other. Hasn't this author ever seen Michelangelo's David? That's beauty...
5. The central question of my life is not: Do you see me? Am I lovely? The central question of my life is: Lord, how can I serve you on earth and glorify you eternally? (You'll note here that the central question is not about ME. It is about magnifying GOD.)
6. We never glorify God by trying to magnify ourselves. We never fill ourselves up by trying to fill ourselves up. We fill ourselves up by giving to others and serving others.
7. Examples of godly womanliness are not found in movies and love songs on the radio. They are found in Scripture. (It's interesting to note that the woman, Jan, in the book who is held up as a model of a 'captivating' woman probably has never heard of most of the 38 pop songs and movies mentioned in the book and this probably contributes to her godly, womanly, self-assured, loving character.)
8. If the only thing that speaks to my husband's heart is sex, it's not my job to spend innumerable hours seducing him, but to pray for him and go to some counseling.
9. A lot of words sound flowery and nice, but you have to actually listen to the words someone is saying to assess their value. Not all things have value and not all things have the same value. If more dating couples used this advice, there'd be a lot less divorce. If more readers used this advice, the Eldredges' would have sold a lot less books.
For a more detailed critique: http://www.ccwonline.org/captivated.html
2. God is not "longing" for me. He does not "need" me to fill a role he is unable to fill.
3. God's master plan for my life is not to "romance" me. Contrary to popular belief and those annoying t-shirts: It's NOT all about ME. God's plan is to prosper me and sustain me through a fallen world so I can serve Him, magnify HIM and go to heaven and rest.
4. I am not the crest of creation. God's fingerprint is in me, but it is also in trees, flowers, turtles and MEN. We are all equally beautiful in God's eyes and humans are especially precious having been made in His image, but one gender is not more beautiful than the other. Hasn't this author ever seen Michelangelo's David? That's beauty...
5. The central question of my life is not: Do you see me? Am I lovely? The central question of my life is: Lord, how can I serve you on earth and glorify you eternally? (You'll note here that the central question is not about ME. It is about magnifying GOD.)
6. We never glorify God by trying to magnify ourselves. We never fill ourselves up by trying to fill ourselves up. We fill ourselves up by giving to others and serving others.
7. Examples of godly womanliness are not found in movies and love songs on the radio. They are found in Scripture. (It's interesting to note that the woman, Jan, in the book who is held up as a model of a 'captivating' woman probably has never heard of most of the 38 pop songs and movies mentioned in the book and this probably contributes to her godly, womanly, self-assured, loving character.)
8. If the only thing that speaks to my husband's heart is sex, it's not my job to spend innumerable hours seducing him, but to pray for him and go to some counseling.
9. A lot of words sound flowery and nice, but you have to actually listen to the words someone is saying to assess their value. Not all things have value and not all things have the same value. If more dating couples used this advice, there'd be a lot less divorce. If more readers used this advice, the Eldredges' would have sold a lot less books.
For a more detailed critique: http://www.ccwonline.org/captivated.html
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Hot pockets and aborigines
Welcome to Delta Dawn...if you're new tonight, then here is a special welcome for you. In reading back over my last month's posts, I realized that a lot of this may not make sense to an unsuspecting reader (note to unsuspecting readers: you should be suspecting something). For instance, I wrote an entire ode to a Ford Focus and I don't even own a Focus. And then I noticed that people don't even bother to ask when something clearly has no discernible meaning or it is largely unexplained in the post. Have we really gotten this apathetic? Well, if you have, you're a sinner (big shock) and I just want to say that you're not alone. I am too. But I know the story behind trying to explain hot pockets to aborigines and it's great. So ask me if things don't make sense to you...this is supposed to be a dialogue. All I will say for now is...it all started when I was asked to go down in the basement of Social Sciences Tower at UCI...
...and if you want the rest, you'll have to ask me.
So on to the current day. Tonight I headed down to San Clemente with Julie to continue our 24 marathon with Cathy. Her new place is great and right by the ocean. We made it all the way through six episodes and bonus of bonuses, Cathy and Julie are up for going to Hawaii with me on vacation!! Plans all remain to be hammered out, but I'm just so happy that I've found people 1) who don't make me puke, 2) who can afford it, 3) who are fun and like to have fun, 4) who want to go play in Hawaii.
In other news, I am on my way towards establishing my tank and I should be able to get a fish in the next two weeks; it's going to be my birthday present to myself.
Happy Friday!
And on that note, here is your official reminder: Only 16 shopping days left! I'm turning the corner at the quarter-centennial, so don't miss out!
...and if you want the rest, you'll have to ask me.
So on to the current day. Tonight I headed down to San Clemente with Julie to continue our 24 marathon with Cathy. Her new place is great and right by the ocean. We made it all the way through six episodes and bonus of bonuses, Cathy and Julie are up for going to Hawaii with me on vacation!! Plans all remain to be hammered out, but I'm just so happy that I've found people 1) who don't make me puke, 2) who can afford it, 3) who are fun and like to have fun, 4) who want to go play in Hawaii.
In other news, I am on my way towards establishing my tank and I should be able to get a fish in the next two weeks; it's going to be my birthday present to myself.
Happy Friday!
And on that note, here is your official reminder: Only 16 shopping days left! I'm turning the corner at the quarter-centennial, so don't miss out!
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