Man Barely Able to Stand Does the Unthinkable — YouTube

I would like to know more specifics about how the yoga teacher helped him, but yes. Amazing.

h/t: Teri Peterson

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Neil deGrasse Tyson Gets Sidetracked While Singing Children’s Songs — McSweeney’s

They get his gee-whiz pegagogical voice just right:

Actually, some might call the wheels on the bus a “discovery” more than an invention, as most things in this world are a discovery of invention, rather than a fabrication out of nothing. This brings up something I want to discuss briefly here, if you will allow, because I think the misconception that a lot of people have, uh, concerning, concerning SCIENTISTS. Oooo, “Scientists.” That word. Strikes fear into the heart of some, and amazement into the heart of, well, me. And probably you, since you are here today in this planetarium, listening to me go on and on about my love for this… hang on a sec, let me… okay, so, we often find people BLAMING scientists for, for, for, these discoveries and inventions… being misused or being funded for misuse. We must remember that the discovery itself is not moral or immoral, it is the application of said discovery that is required to be held to that standard. Also, how cool are wheels on busses, right? And circles, in general. The fact that you can take a circle and divide it by its radius and you get pi, everytime, is astounding to me. Gives me chills every time.

More at the link. And for those keeping score, this is the second week in a row that I’ve featured NdGT on Friday Link Love. Why? Because he’s kind of a big deal.

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The Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen — That Organic Girl

This post offers a list of foods that are most important to buy organic (if possible) and a list of foods for which organic isn’t that critical.

I’m a pretty half-***ed consumer when it comes to organic goods—I basically get what’s available and what my kids are likely to eat. (Caroline just informed me that she no longer likes the big three: apples, oranges, or bananas. C’mon, WORK WITH ME KID.)

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Speaking of food,

The Anti-Diet — The Londoner

As I wrote on my Pinterest boards, “Best overview I’ve read on how to lose weight without dieting. Covers exercise, emotionally based eating, sustaining a discipline, the importance of enjoying food… I don’t know about the cravings piece (e.g. if you crave carbonated drinks you need more calcium) but it’s interesting.”

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Traditional Marriage: One Man, Many Women, Some Girls, Some Slaves — Religion Dispatches

Just so we’re clear:

Time to break out your Bible, Mr. Perkins! Abraham had two wives, Sarah and her handmaiden Hagar. King Solomon had 700 wives, plus 300 concubines and slaves. Jacob, the patriarch who gives Israel its name, had two wives and two concubines. In a humanist vein, Exodus 21:10 warns that when men take additional wives, they must still provide for their previous one. (Exodus 21:16 adds that if a man seduces a virgin and has sex with her, he has to marry her, too.)

But that’s not all. In biblical society, when you conquered another city, tribe, or nation, the victorious men would “win” their defeated foes’ wives as part of the spoils. It also commanded levirate marriage, the system wherein, if a man died, his younger brother would have to marry his widow and produce heirs with her who would be considered the older brother’s descendants. Now that’s traditional marriage!

More. Much more.

Last week a conservative member of my denomination told NPR, ”From the Old Testament and throughout the New Testament, the only sexual relationships that are affirmed in scripture are those in the context of marriage between one man and one woman.” To quote my friend Michael: biblical scholarship FAIL.

You want to be against gay marriage? You can do that. But the Bible doesn’t help you as much as you think it does.

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And just for fun, and to fill my quota on posts from Colossal:

Gale-Force Winds Directly to the Face — Colossal

So very entertaining and bizarre. It’s exactly what it sounds like:

Have a great weekend, all.

Really? I have to choose?

Really fun, interesting, passionate discussion going on, despite my not-very-thought-out post. You rise to the occasion, Blue Room readers.

So how do we solve the gender gap in ministry? With women outnumbering men in seminaries today, how we do break that stained glass ceiling?

Our current approach in the Presbyterian Church is to require churches, when looking for a pastor, to interview at least one female candidate. The thinking is, of the final three or four candidates, there would be a woman in the mix, and perhaps even churches with an unspoken default of pastor=male might be sufficiently moved to think outside the box. Not that every church will follow that up with a call to that woman, of course. This is mysterious Holy Spirit stuff, not to mention that there are women pastors who aren’t all that. But churches should at least look.

Do you think this helps? Have you seen this approach be helpful?

[Insert standard disclaimer about how people are complicated and are more than their gender.]

I was talking to some friends last week who were questioning this approach. And here’s the piece I found interesting. People have done studies about how we make decisions, and we do a much better job evaluating when we can compare two relatively similar things to one another. My friend told me about a study (I think I’ve got this right) in which they showed three pictures. Two pictures were of handsome/beautiful celebrities and the third was an image of one of those celebrities, but with the face badly distorted.

So for example, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and George Clooney with big jowls and an enlarged forehead.

Subjects were asked to choose the most handsome/beautiful face. The study showed that people overwhelmingly chose the face that had its own distorted image to compare it to. These images were so much better looking than their distorted image that they ended up coming out on top most of the time. So in the example, George Clooney over Brad Pitt.

OK that might be a bad example. The Clooney always beats Brad.

Anyway.

If this study is accurate, a lone woman among a final four of candidates will not get a fair look-see because there is no basis for good comparison. She becomes a non-sequitur.

So maybe we shouldn’t require churches to interview a woman candidate. Maybe we should require them to interview more than one!

What do you think?

Context: There is a stained glass ceiling in ministry. Granted it has holes in it, but the number of women who serve as heads of staff of large congregations is…small.

Context, Part the Second: This is a rant. A vent. Treat it accordingly.

Yesterday morning I posted a note on FB about having to juggle work stuff and writing stuff with James in tow—his day care provider needed the day off. Within the hour I got three responses from other pastors who were having similar issues that very day: teacher inservice + working on the sermon, well baby visit + writing a presentation, etc.

These folks are all super talented, and I found myself asking “Wow, imagine how far we’d go if we weren’t all doing 2-3 jobs at once!”

Imagine, indeed.

I don’t have to tell you the gender of all four of these pastors, do I.

DO I.

Honestly, I don’t know what I’m testy about. And it’s probably foolish to allow one’s anger to roam, free-range; it’s liable to wander into the wrong person’s yard and start pooping on stuff.

I should probably apologize right now and get it over with.

Because hey, it’s possible that there is some large cadre of clergymen out there wondering how to get the funeral meditation done in between carpool and the lacrosse practice.

But I doubt it.

It’s also possible that all of us minister-moms like our current career trajectory just fine. I certainly hope so. I like where I am, and I’m not just saying that to calm down any member of Tiny who might read this. Solo pastor ministry is fun. Varied. And yes, flexible: James and I had a great day together. I really do love being the default caregiver during the week. If life imitates the Simpsons, and we need to evacuate earth and my kids only get to choose one parent, well…sorry Robert.

But there’s no way that every woman who juggles kids and a call wants it that way. They are limited geographically. Or related, they’ve made a financial calculation that their spouse will be the primary breadwinner.

And that’s all fine. Except that in 2012 we have a gender gap in ministry at the highest levels. That’s a justice issue. An economic issue. A question of power. And our male colleagues may be sensitive new age guys, but they are only too happy to take the big positions and the big salaries while we juggle the pediatrician and PowerPoint.

Somebody talk me down here.

All the writing mojo is going into Sabbath in the Suburbs, but here is a bonus link mid-week:

Kidding Yourself is No Laughing Matter — Pacific Standard Magazine

There’s one at every comedy club: the guy sitting there stone-faced, while everyone around him is laughing. There are many possible explanations: He was dragged there by his girlfriend, doesn’t like the stand-up’s style, or is simply having a bad day.

But if his humorlessness is chronic, the underlying issue may be more basic: He just isn’t honest with himself. According to newly published research, self-deception inhibits laughter.

“Humor deals with the absurdities of life,” Rutgers University anthropologists Robert Lynch and Robert Trivers write in the journalPersonality and Individual Differences. “The less you are in tune with reality, the less likely you are to see the absurdities.”

More at the link.

I can take myself and life WAY too seriously, so one of my daily intentions is a simple one:

Laugh.

It feels good, and it turns out to be linked to self-awareness.

Have you laughed today? Share the source of your laughter in the comments.

This month, Katherine’s friends and colleagues are writing about a beautiful change they have experienced. Here is mine:

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Just so we’re clear: that’s not me.

My friend Keith Snyder, a music geek, recently tweeted a line from Brian Eno: “Analog synthesizers break in interesting ways. Digital synthesizers just break.”

Keith has made that line into a prayer:

May I continue to break in interesting ways.

That may be a strange place to start talking about a beautiful change, but stick with me.

I hit two personal milestones recently. First, I ran a 10K race. That was big for me. Until a year ago I had never run for more than a few minutes at a time. Ever. I was the smart one, you see, and the musical one, but never the athletic one. My body was the thing that carried my brain around. Aside from the occasional mountain hike while on vacation, and an intermittent practice of walking to stay in basic shape, I was a sedentary type.

But at 40, with a father who dropped dead from cardiac stuff at age 56, getting in better shape felt non-negotiable—the reasonable thing to do from an actuarial standpoint. That’s how the running started. Of course, it’s become something deeper than that.

Before I ran the 10K (6.2 miles for the metrically challenged), I’d never run farther than 5 miles in training. When I reached mile 5 at the race, I thought, This is as far as I’ve ever gone. Beyond this point, it’s all new. That’s a wonderful thing.

Indeed, my whole life feels that way in this, my fifth decade. I’m not a rookie in ministry anymore; I’m not the mother of little ones anymore; as of this fall I will be a published writer. Lauren Winner talks in her latest book about reinventing oneself every ten years. That’s happening, through my own volition and beyond it.

Among other things, running for me means embracing a blessed mediocrity. I’m not a fast runner; Robert has described my gait as “a bit loping.” I’ve never experienced a runner’s high. I like races because the crowd and the music provide a boost that my body chemistry seems unwilling to muster. I love the feeling of having run, but running itself is frequently a chore. At last month’s race, I was second to last in my age group, and way down in the bottom third overall.

Yet I do it. And there’s something liberating about doing something badly by most objective standards. I’m a perfectionist, you know. I like setting a goal and reaching for the top, and if I’m not good at something, eh…easy come, easy go. With so many luscious possibilities in this life, more than I could ever undertake, such a standard may not be the best way to discern what’s mine to do, but it’s what works.

Or has worked in the past. Something in me had to “break in an interesting way” for me to start running—to do this thing that’s never been part of my self-understanding. Something shattered in my brittle, do-it-well-or-don’t-do-it exoskeleton.

And thank heaven it did. I’m healthier than I’ve ever been, in more ways than one.

I now ask myself: What else could I do badly for the sheer satisfaction of it?

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The second health-related milestone happened a few days ago. I hit my weight-loss goal of 40 pounds.

I’m no numerologist, but there is significance in the numbers. James weighs about 40 pounds, so every time I pick up his stocky four-year-old frame I think to myself, This is the weight I carried around all the time nine months ago. It seems fitting somehow: in another year, James will be in kindergarten. There are no babies or toddlers in my house anymore. It feels right that as I move into another phase as a mother, my body would look different.

Also, it took me nine months to lose the weight. Is it an exaggeration to say that a new person has been born? Perhaps. But as with the running, something in me had to break in order for this change to occur. Caring for myself—I mean really caring, not punishing myself until I shrink down into some “acceptable” size—requires a certain vulnerability. I can do all the right things, as many people do, but there will always be aspects of our health that are beyond our control. Life is a genetic and environmental crap shoot. That’s an uncomfortable truth to face. Denial feels easier sometimes.

Another thing that had to break: a rigid expectation of what I would look like as a 40 year old with a normal BMI.

Hint: it’s not like a 20 year old.

Don’t get me wrong, I look different than I did when I was a new mother, with all my ample post-pregnancy curves. But as I’ve left 40 pounds behind on so many jogging trails and city streets, I’ve been amazed at the parts of me that haven’t been magically transformed. There is still…a thickness. A settledness. This body will never be that of a college student. Or a newlywed. Or a non-mother. As that great philosopher Indiana Jones says, “It’s not the years…it’s the mileage.”

And I’m grateful for every one of those miles.

That’s the beautiful change.

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Welcome to the Jungle — Luke Lukas

This has gotta be the best version of “Welcome to the Jungle” EVER. Who needs Axl’s sweet licks when you’ve got a kazoo!!

He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.

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Maurice Sendak — Fresh Air 

This quote from an interview with Terry Gross has been making the rounds:

There’s something eucharistic about this.

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Returning to Church, Despite My Doubts — CNN Religion Blog

Although I never experienced that dramatic reconversion moment, I did come to peace with two slow-growing realizations.

First: My doubt belonged in church.

People who know my story ask what I would have changed about my spiritual journey. Nothing. I had to leave the church to find the church. And when I came back, the return wasn’t clean or conclusive. Since then, I’ve come to believe that my doubts belong inside the space of the sanctuary. My questions belong on the altar as my only offering to God.

With all its faults, I still associate the church with the pursuit of truth and justice, with community and shared humanity. It’s a place to ask the unanswerable questions and a place to be on sojourn. No other institution has given me what the church has: a space to search for God.

Read on for her other realization, and more. Amen.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson on Agnosticism/Atheism — The Big Think

Neil deGrasse Tyson identifies as an agnostic:
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

This video has sparked some serious, and in some cases virulent, debate about what it means to be an atheist. But I think I get what he’s going for. For one thing, he doesn’t want to part of a movement, partly because some aspects of that movement are, well, mean. But I also think he doesn’t want to be claimed by the atheists because belief in God, and disbelief in God, are just not the questions that animate him.

I think Tyson’s saying, God isn’t a part of the picture, not even as the thing I reject. Unless and until evidence comes to light that proves or disproves God, the idea of God is completely irrelevant to my life. 

Claiming Tyson as an atheist is like someone claiming me as a fan of their favorite cricket team.

I’ve often thought we have a language problem here. Atheism is defined in negative terms: disbelief in God. Maybe it would be more helpful in terms of building understanding if there was a word that explained what people are for rather than what they disbelieve.

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Is Evolution a Lousy Story? — Science and Religion Today

Polls show that fewer than half of Americans accept evolution. Most of us still don’t buy it. As the comedian Louis C.K. asked in a bit about people who insist that they can’t possibly be related to monkeys: “Why are you fighting this?”

Dan McAdams offers one possible, rarely discussed reason: Maybe evolution is a lousy story. Actually, McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University, doesn’t think evolution is a story at all. There is no protagonist, no motivation, no purpose—all crucial elements in a narrative, whether it’s Frog and Toad Are Friends or Fifty Shades of Grey.

He mentioned this idea recently during a presentation at the Consilience Conference,which also drew researchers from biology, economics, and literary studies. Afterward, a seemingly annoyed audience member questioned McAdams’s apparent criticism of evolution, countering that it’s in fact a wonderful, elegant explanation of life. McAdams agreed that it’s wonderful and elegant. He just doesn’t think it’s a story.

I found this intriguing, partly because “creationists are idiots” just doesn’t give you much to go on. And, I love thinking in terms of story.

A new site for me, but one I now follow on Google Reader.

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10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You – WSJ

“Some of your worst days lie ahead,” and other uncomfortable truths.

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Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret – LifeHacker

It’s very simple: Don’t break the chain.

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Crush the “I’m Not Creative” Barrier – Harvard Business Review

The bad news is that if you don’t think you’re creative, our survey data say that you probably are not. But there is good news: You can actually become more creative by changing your mind-set. Anyone can innovate, if they choose to. Disruptive innovators do it by choice, not chance. Their everyday actions swap out an “I’m not creative” mind-set for an “I am creative” one. And then magical (not mystical) things unfold.

Oh, those hippy-dippy flakes at the… Harvard Business Review. What do they know?

An interesting article, and not just because they love on Evernote, the software that makes my life better every day.

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Have an excellent weekend.

I have a friend who, when her kids were small, managed to convince them that the truck that came tinkling down her street every night during the warm months was a “music truck,” with no other purpose than to spread off-key joy to the neighborhood.

I totally support her blatant lie.

My kids are inveterate whiners and shameless panhandlers when it comes to the ice cream truck. We barely get through two bars of “The Entertainer” before they are wild-eyed and shrieking and doing a confused dance in which they’re not sure whether to rifle through mommy’s purse first, or to sprint down the street and stop the man before he drives away because oh my God the lack of overpriced Good Humor treats would be a summertime tragedy!!!!!

Can you tell I am Not A Fan of the ice cream guy?

This year I am trying a new approach. Sitting on a shelf in the Blue Room are three envelopes with my kids’ names on them, each containing $10. They know that this is their money to spend on Batman- and Dora-shaped popsicles with gross bubblegum eyeballs or whatever else they want. When the money is gone, it’s gone.

I will report back in late September on this latest experiment in parenting parkour.

It also makes me cringe since I hate watching myself on video.

A few folks have countered that there are places in which the church is not pregnant, but really and truly dying. I agree. One person rightly pointed out that the symptoms for pregnancy that I named are not unlike the symptoms of a cancer patient. Also true. As I’ve said, this video/post offers a metaphor. To the extent that the metaphor helps, great. If it gets in the way of the hard work of dying that must take place in many specific places, disregard.

May my words be faithful or may they slip harmlessly away.

The inimitable Jan Edmiston riffed on the metaphor in a wonderful way today. The church is graying. So what is our responsibility as grandparents to this new church that is coming into being?

It occurs to me that those in my and older generations need to keep something in the forefront of our minds as the church we love is pregnant:

The Next Church Will Not Be Our Baby.

We will have great ideas for how to care for it and treasure it.  We might even be able to help pay for its nurture and its future.  But it’s not our baby.

 This is not to say we will not be ideal grandparents.  But it’s possible that we could overstep our bounds.  We could chuckle at the disciplines the younger generations have chosen to follow. We might want to talk incessantly about the way we did it.  But let’s not.

She ends by saying that the church of the future will be a lot browner than it is now. That’s also true. And yet the Presbyterian Church is very white. So what’s going on there? Adoption is another metaphor that might help us. I wonder if there’s someone out there that might riff on that in some creative ways. Susan? Alex?

Let’s all keep dreaming and spinning generative metaphors.

———-

Nothing like tackling a controversial issue on the second day of a new blog!

I’m not going to say much about Judge Walker’s decision declaring California’s gay-marriage ban unconstitutional. But I am thinking about a few things today.

I remember seven years ago this summer, going to the Fairfax County Courthouse to get authorized to perform weddings in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In accordance with Virginia law, I had to fill out a form, get a letter from my presbytery saying I was a minister in good standing, pay $30, and take an oath. I remember walking out of the courthouse afterwards, calling Robert and laughing: “Hey! I’ve got the ‘power vested in me’ now!”

Something about that whole transaction felt very, very strange to me at the time. It seemed quite odd that I, a minister called by God and ordained to serve a local congregation, was now in effect performing a service on behalf of the state… that a couple whose wedding I officiated would not be legally married until I signed the license and sent it back to the county.

I remember when Robert and I went to get our marriage license (sixteen years ago!), the clerk asked us a long list of questions that we had to answer with “I do” and the like. As bureaucratic processes go, it was unexpectedly moving. Almost… liturgical? We left, and one of us said to the other, Did we just get married? Because it kinda feels like we did. Hey, if only we’d kissed afterwards, we could have saved everyone a lot of time and money…

This was in Texas, where I’ve also performed weddings, but unlike Virginia, there were no legal hoops to jump through beforehand. I’ve often wondered why Texas doesn’t vet its clergy like Virginia does. Could it be that Texas’s requirements and processes for getting a marriage license are more stringent, making the credentials of the officiant less relevant? I haven’t gotten a marriage license in Virginia so I have no idea. I hope one of my smart readers has some info about this.

The point is this, however: seven years ago, when I got ordained, I had not given much thought to the nuances of how gay marriage could or would be enacted from a policy perspective. But it seems clear to me now, as many others have said, that we need to separate the religious service of marriage from its civil aspects. I believe it is the only way forward, and it also gets clergy out of this agent-of-the-state weirdness. Even some of the opponents to gay marriage acknowledge that the legal rights of partnership should not be denied to same-sex couples.

I’m thinking about a couple whose wedding I recently officiated. I woke up the morning of their wedding rehearsal with a start, realizing that I hadn’t said anything to them in our premarital counseling about getting a marriage license. It isn’t my job to remind them, but usually it comes up, and I tell them to bring their paperwork to the service, if not the rehearsal, so I can sign it.

At the rehearsal I mention this to the groom and he says, “Oh, we’re actually not planning to get a marriage license. We really don’t care what our status is with the government. What matters to us is that our union be blessed by God.”

Now, inside I’m thinking, This is a really, really bad idea. This couple already has children together, and let’s face it, there are tangible benefits to being “officially” married… which of course is a big part of why gay persons are fighting for this civil right. And I told some friends afterward about this and several suggested that they probably already were married and either didn’t want their family to know, or wanted the imprimatur of the church on their union. I also felt a little put out: then what am I doing here? Play-acting? Fake marrying?

Later I realized: they cared more about the liturgical and sacramental aspects of marriage than the legal ones. Isn’t that something? What I was doing there was not play-acting, but what I as a clergyperson am supposed to do: to ask God’s blessing on the union between two people, to pray for their welfare, and to support them as they pledge their lives to one another.

And whatever legal/contractual arrangement they have with one another, as important and beneficial as that is, is a separate issue entirely.

What do you think?

Yesterday I got the edits back from the publisher, and I’m hoping to turn them around in the next week. So I’ll be a blogging a little less than usual.

But first, I wanted to pass along three wise paragraphs about bucketlists. Bucketlists, of course, are those laundry lists of “exotic sensations of one kind or another (“Skydive”; “Shower in a waterfall”; “Eat jellied eels from a stall in London”).”

I am all for experiences that take us out of the everyday, but I resonated with the author’s critique of bucketlists:

Really? This is the best we can do? This is what it’s all about? These are the things that make our lives worth living? When I think about what really makes me happy, what I really crave, I come up with a very different list: concentrated, purposeful work, especially creative work; being with people I love; feeling like I’m part of something larger. Meaning, connectedness, doing strenuously what you do well: not sights, not thrills, and not even pleasures, as welcome as they are. Not passivity, not letting the world come in and tickle you, but creativity, curiosity, altruism, engagement, craft. Raising children, or teaching students, or hanging out with friends. Playing music, not listening to it. Making things, or making them happen. Thinking hard and feeling deeply.

At their best, religious communities are places that call forth these moments of purposeful work and connectedness. They are not the only places that do this, of course.

This essay resonates with me, since I’m not in a very Dive the Great Barrier Reef kind of place. This week, I’ll be seeking satisfaction in simple things: this week’s muffins. Welcoming Robert home from his trip to New York. Moderating a session meeting. Trying to make James laugh.

And trying to put words together in a way that matters.

h/t: Andrew Sullivan