Out of the Mouths of Babes

My six year old daughter has been keeping my family and friends howling with laughter for most of her verbal (and even non-verbal) life.

Recently, she has developed a severe case of religious imagination, and in some instances has taken up evangelism with a vengeance.

She has a thing for the popes, which has caused her lapsed Catholic dad a lot of consternation -- what did he, a good and religious atheist, do to deserve a daughter who plasters her walls with pictures of old men in white robes and tall white hats? Good question.

A few months ago, she was outside on the porch by herself and my husband went by the screen door and was able to witness the following: she was looking up at the sky and saying "God? Where are you? Are you there? God? Gawd? Where are you?"

One time, she and her dad were having a conversation about Joseph -- who he was. Her dad said he was Jesus' father, and A said no, that God was Jesus father. So her dad said Joseph was the earthly father. And A said no God was that too. Then she said to him: You don't know these things, Daddy. You don't know Jesus. You did as a child, but you don't know him now.

About a week or so ago, I got after her about some behaviour, and told her that was naughty and not at all nice, that it was hurtful to one of her friends (I think she had laughed about one of the little boys in her class because he'd not made it to the bathroom and pooed in his pants.) A broke down in tears, and sobbed that she couldn't help being like this, because God had made her like this, and how could she go against what God made. I explained to her about freedom and human will, and about choices to commit either sin or goodness. She was unconvinced as she continued to sob out her excuses.

Another time recently, she asked (on the way to church) why Daddy didn't go to church, and when I said it's because he doesn't believe in God, she was shocked. "Whaaaat? He doesn't believe in God? How could you NOT believe in God?!?! He's EVERYWHERE!!!! He's in the car, beside me, he's outside, he's on the sidewalk, in the trees, in heaven,........"

What ensued was a lengthy conversation about the nature of belief, with A saying that Daddy couldn't believe in God because he didn't see Him, and that was very hard for him. She also said that sometimes some people will not believe anything unless they see it.

When we got home later she asked her dad point-blank why he didn't believe in God. (He couldn't answer.) And she struck up the same hue and cry she gave me in the car.

It says that a little child shall lead them, and I fervently hope and pray that in my husband's case this is true, because I've failed miserably. Perhaps Anna will do better.

A Rose by any other Name

Tis true that a person is still that same person no matter what their name. But I was reminded again, on Sunday, of the weight placed on names in the Bible. One of the readings involved Nathanael, who saw Jesus and knew who He was. My son's middle name is Nathanael, given to him in hopes that he, like the young man in the Bible story, would grow up to see and recognize Christ.

While names are just words, it's good to remember that words also contain meaning, and moreover, memory. Whenever I hear that Bible story I am called anew to make sure my son grows in wisdom and stature so that he'll be able to know Jesus.

My daughter's name was likewise given to her so that she, like the old prophetess who greeted Mary and Joseph and the Babe arriving at the Temple in Jerusalem.

In times such as these, it's good to remember that words can act as symbols, secrets almost, the meaning only apparent to those who have ears to hear or eyes to see.

Haute Cuisine

Oh I really must protest today! Whatever happened to the butter knife? Or even the dinner and luncheon knife? Why does one never see these around anymore? As most women will attest, it's a rare thing to see a man holding a knife at the dinner table anymore, unless he's about to stab a side of beast.

Well, I'll tell you what's happened to the lowly knife. It's been replaced by a peanut butter and jam spreader.

Yes, I saw it this morning and will paste it here if you don't believe me. I saw it, of course, in the Globe and Mail's Style Counsel, which starts off the sales job with this line:

Sometimes it's nice to own things you don't actually need.

Judging by the state of the landfill sites, we all own way TOO much of what we don't actually need. (Dinner knives notwithstanding.)

The Style Counsel goes on to say:

It doesn't, for instance, take much to make a classic PB&J sandwich: the two namesake ingredients, some bread (sliced diagonally, crusts on) and a utensil to do the smearing. But Cuisipro, the Canadian maker of kitchen gadgets for every purpose imaginable, has designed a Peanut Butter and Jelly Spreader that is too adorable to resist.

And just in case you don't know how to use it, unlike, say, the regular garden-variety kitchen knife, they explain:
It looks like a distant cousin to a kayak paddle, with rubbery silicone ends colour-coded to remind you not to cross-contaminate.

Isn't cross-contamination the whole point of PB&J?

The ad goes on and on -- after all how much can one say about a PB&J spreader and still fulfil the word count necessary for advertising this item?

They say it's packaged with "all the necessary ingredients" -- what more does one need? -- and "it's a deconstructed housewarming gift that's far more creative than towels."

I say, bring on the towels!!!!

Why Buy the Milk when You Can Have the Cow

As I sat at my desk last night, filling out my son's milk form for school, I remembered the milk cartons when I was a kid (now they come in bags with a straw attached). But my memories of school lunches and milk cartons are only seen from the perspective of an outsider. Because everyone else but me got milk. That's because we had our own lovely cow at home -- Brownie, who was either a Jersey or a Guernsey, I can never remember which.

And Brownie faithfully gave thick yellowy milk with lovely big globules of fat every day of her life. And my dad would sit hunched over the ten-quart sterilizing machine as he poured the milk in and stuck a pitcher under for the cleansed liquid. Not that it was much different from the unclean milk. It still had globs of yellowy fat floating in it. And most of the time it was still lukewarm. I'm not sure if that was because it was so fresh it still had the warmth of the cow on it. Or if our refrigerator was not operating at top speed. Likely the latter.

I never could stand milk, until I was much older and it was much colder.

I do vaguely remember the cow as well. She was large. And brown. I also remember how frustrated my dad would get with her when she would break off her rope (probably in search of greener pastures north of the house, and into Moorelands). She'd go trotting off, and my father would bring her back, usually attached by a rope to the back of the car.

One time, as he told me many years later, he was so mad he chased her until she broke into a run, and jumped over several fences. Apparently she couldn't have calves after that.

One of my first memories was being squirted in the eye by milk from an upturned teat squeezed in my dad's big hand (I used to follow him around the farm all day).

The Circle of Life at Church

Last night I was musing about all the new babies at church, thinking about their scrunchy little faces opening up over their first few months, like blossoms forming from buds, changing from newborn to chubby pink or olive or brown cherubs. And from there started to think about their parents, sleep-deprived for sure, but drawn into the circle of the church in a way that they hadn't been previously, when they were teens, young 20s, newly married.

There's something about babies, and the having of them, that draws a couple deeper into the fold of the church, especially by the female participants -- those moms with older kids, or the middle-aged women with their teen children, or the old women with middle aged children. It's definitely a rite of passage.

I'm thinking particularly of Heather, who is shy, pretty in an understated way, and her 2-month old baby. Before his birth, she was a member on the periphery, partly because of her -- and her husband's -- shyness. But now this baby, which gets taken from her at coffee hour and passed around, has become the focus. It's drawn her out and into the bosom of the women of the church. She will go through the whole process as we all did -- being a part of the Sunday School, getting to know the other mothers, maybe teaching Sunday School as well, fretting about our teenagers lives in the current cultural whirlpool, watching as they get married, have their own babies, then sliding into old age.

The fact that children create a thread of continuity in parish life is a good thing, but it also brings painfully to mind that ignored part of our church, those who have no children. What to do about those who remain at the edge of the community, how to draw them in? It is true a community needs focus in order to be such, and there are subsets at every church that have their focus -- missions, Sunday School, parish dinner organizers, etc.

I have no answers for this one.

Who Among us Lives in Dogville

Finally saw Dogville last night. Didn’t sleep. Tossing and turning, gripped by its incredible power, and yet wondering exactly, what’s it all about.

Has anyone been in those kids’ playgrounds where all the imitation leather bags hang down, and you have to run around bumping into them, and finding the other kids in the maze of it all? The movie felt a bit like that – I kept brushing against pleather strips redolent of gospel stories, especially parable, feeling their sensation on my arms, prickling the skin, and yet the meaning eluding me because it is not obvious, and like parables it does not hit you over the head with the moral. We either have eyes to see and ears to hear, or we do not.

But it is also universally human – how do we act, sinful human that we are, when grace comes among us? Do we choose to embrace it and be changed by it, or do we say no to it? Everyone in Dogville is at once drawn to Grace’s purity, mercy, forgiving nature, and yet they come to despise her for it. Her beauty, both physical (which often signals inner beauty) and spiritual, shows their (and our) ugliness all the more.

Grace’s intrusion also shatters the cocoon of Dogville because it exposes them (and us) to something much bigger. Dogville, for all intents and purposes, is a “city” on a hill, and its residents are gripped in a grim puritanical existence, left to scratch like chickens in the earth. There is no joy, not much celebration, except when Grace first arrives. It believes itself impervious to the outside world, and yet it can be invaded, both by gangsters and thugs, and by Grace.

Her innocence, forgiveness, light and softness is there for all to partake of, and the townspeople of Dogville do just that. For the first few days they become changed, enlightened and cheered, on the verge of becoming an authentically caring community. And then something happens; mistrust sets in, they feel threatened by her, because they are afraid of the letter of the law. Instead of being transformed by Grace, they sink lower into their slum of the soul, end up attacking grace because they cannot view her as the spirit of the law.

(Some critics have accused Triers of hating women, but I don’t agree. Rape illumines the depths of degradation to which we can sink, that is to distort love by the use of force and power is the worst distortion of love possible.)

For most of the movie, I expected Grace was another “holy fool” like Bess in Breaking the Waves, and I struggled a lot with the ending where she diverges from that. The big difference between the movies, though, is Bess was driven by love, for her husband, and for his healing. Grace, on the other hand, may have such a driving force at first but not toward the end because what she thought was love, was only self-interest (Tom Edison wants to think and feel in order to write about it, but not to live it).

This morning, my bible reading was Luke, chapter 6. It was unbelievably apropos. How the crowd sought to touch Jesus for power that came out of him, and how those who were sick and filled with unclean spirits were healed; How the Pharisees were “filled with fury” when Jesus did something good on the Sabbath; this is also the chapter that deals with loving those who hate you, giving to those who beg from you, and blessing those who curse you, all of which Grace does. It’s also the chapter that talks about no good tree bearing bad fruit, nor a bad tree bearing good fruit.

There is an overriding sense of the gospels in this movie, though it’s impossible to pin down, and say this symbol stands for this, and so on. But Grace must make a choice at the end, as God did when Abraham begged him to save Sodom and Gomorrah; God agrees, providing there are ten good men, then three, then one in the city. When none can be found, the city is destroyed.

While Grace does make a beautiful and impassioned plea at the end about mercy and forgiveness, she must decide if this town is worth mercy. (By the way, Nicole Kidman is remarkable in this role.) Thomas Edison, Grace’s amour in the movie, who might possibly have been that one good man, turns out to be just as selfish and sinful as the rest of them, as distorted by life in Dogville. I’m not sure if Triers is also saying that culture will rub off on you (probably he is – after all Lot and Abraham made very different choices when they took up their land outside of Sodom and Gomorrah, with Lot choosing to be close to the city of sin, and Abraham preferring to reside a little outside its reach.)

But I do think he is saying a lot about the choices we make, particularly about whether we choose to accept grace or not.

More Narnia

Just when it looked as though I'd finally stop going on about this Narnia movie, the review I did for the Anglican Planet has come out.

Here's the link:
http://www.anglicanplanet.net/TAPBook0601.html

And if anyone out there is reading this blog, I'd love to hear your comments on it.