Incredible Shrinking Woman Held Hostage!

(My first rant on this blog...)

I've been fighting with my iPod nano ever since I got it for my birthday two months ago. It's an amazing device, capable of providing me with so much media availability...and so much frustration. In the past month I feel I've been beaten down to a fraction of my size by the tiny turquoise rectangle, barely the size of three squares of a Hersey bar. I've also had the eerie feeling that I was somehow being held hostage by Steve Jobs from beyond the grave...

I'm an avid walker, so my husband thought that for my birthday I'd enjoy a device that would provide music for my mileage. The latest incarnation of the iPod nano had a pedometer, so a perfect gift, right? And music-wise it is – amazing sound for the rehearing of the music of my life, the white earbuds making Joni Mitchell's wide-ranging vocals dance somewhere about three inches above the top of my head. And I will die before I ever fill up the capacity – 350 songs on it and still 12+GB of room!

No, my battle with the turquoise demon has been over control of the pedometer. First time out walking, I obediently entered my height and weight as required (true weight,too!...well, within five pounds...) and walked a measured mile. The iPod was very generous, telling me that I had walked 1.1 miles. By the time I finished my walking for the day, I had walked somewhere between two and three miles. Obviously, the iPod needed some recalibration. I downloaded the iPod nano user guide, all 67 pages of it. (I believe I can tackle anything given the right user manual and enough time, which was over two months in this case.) As per instructions, I proceeded to press every button that said “calibrate” or “recalibrate” under the walking program.

I consulted the on-line community and found the frustration with the pedometer function was not mine alone. Most found the calibration confusing and the accuracy unreliable. The most positive statement that I could find went something like this: “It works O.K. sometimes, when I run, as long as I don't go up hills or vary my pace.” (“Come on, Apple!” I thought. “You can make me feel like I'm in Madison Square Garden with Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood! You can do better than this with your pedometer!”) So I spent the next two months walking over 40 miles, stopping every quarter or half mile just to recalibrate or change the settings on the pedometer function. I eventually started changing my height, thinking that my stride must be abnormal for my entered height. I was down to 4' 5” before it started to approach an accurate mile. (I'm 5' 4”.) (“Come on, Apple! You made me remember why Bridge Over Troubled Water is my favorite song of all time. Why can't you measure an accurate mile without shrinking me down to the height of an eleven-year-old?”)

So I returned to the user guide (again!) It seems that the only way to accurately calibrate the iPod is to pretend that you are a runner and not a walker (which it doesn't actually tell you anywhere). Though the walk buttons lead you to calibration buttons, only the run buttons lead you to the calibration button that really matters. And before you can get there, you are forced to choose a workout and then even forced to pick a playlist before you can walk a quarter of a mile and then, finally, be rewarded with access to the true calibration button. I can hear the ghost of Steve Jobs: “Well, you bought this wonderful product of ours, so you must fit our profile. You are probably a runner who only walks when injured, so, of course, you will check out the running program first. And since you are such a disciplined person (making enough money to buy this iPod in the first place) you will want to have a programed workout when you run. And since this is an iPod, of course you will want to choose a playlist before you begin your run. After all, you really bought this for the music.” I felt as though I had been snatched out of my simple world of high mileage walking and was being held hostage with a bunch of disciplined marathon trainees...

So one day I went to the quarter mile track at the local high school and pretended to be the pre-planned-workout-playlist-sensitive runner that I'm not and was rewarded by being given access to the coveted recalibration button, the one that actually does something. I then registered my first accurate quarter mile...then my first accurate half mile. I spent the next hour walking different distances, recalibrating, all on the running function. When I returned to the walking function of the pedometer, I could see that the Great and Powerful iPod had registered my pathetically slow “running” times and had categorized me as a “walker”. The walking function now accurately tracked my walking distances, provided I didn't try to do anything stupid, like press the recalibrate button on the walking function, which I found only defaulted to the previous inaccurate tracking...

Funny thing, though - I'm not sure how far I actually walked that day. Between all the starts and stops and quarter mile recalibrations and the switching from run to walking functions, there was no easy way to add up my mileage. I think I walked somewhere between two and three miles...which was the approximate distance it estimated the first time out two months ago. Yeah, irony...

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be: meetings.

- Dave Berry, "25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years"

 Aging With the Culture

I know of the tragic anguish of the Red Wedding...

When Dan Stevens didn't renew his contract, I saw the writing on the wall for Matthew Crawley...

Happy Endings is gone, but Community remains – barely...

Jack Bauer is coming back...

I know, but will not reveal, the true identity of John Harrison...

I know where Bernadette went...

Mumford and Sons, Dawes, the Decemberists, Jack White, the Black Keys – all have found their way onto my iPod...

A culture-saavy stranger, stumbling upon this blog for the first time, might not be surprised at any of the above confessions – until I reveal that the said iPod was a gift for my sixtieth birthday. Yep, six-oh. And those artists share the playlist with the more boomer-appropriate Eric, Neil, Bob, Paul and Art...

A much younger friend recently commented on the fact that I was more up on relevant cultural issues than he was (though I'm not certain how relevant the above issues actually are...). His comment did cause me to reflect on how I came to be this way. My conclusion? I just can't help myself - I'm the kind of person who hates to think I'm missing anything...

When I was growing up, the combination of being an avid (compulsive?) reader and an intensely curious child left me always wanting to know about everything. I would read anything left lying around the house. The Reader's Digest was responsible for my coming home in third grade and proudly announcing to my horrified mother that I was the only person in my Girl Scout troop that knew what venereal disease was. (I honestly don't remember how the subject came up. I think maybe we were discussing communicable diseases, and I volunteered my newly-acquired knowledge.) I was unclear on much of what I read but used the dictionary and an even-then-old Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia to fill in the gaps of what I didn't understand.

As I got a little older, I moved on to newspapers. I read movie and theater reviews, though I almost never went to see either. I knew the plots of them all, as well as the actors and actresses in them. As adolescence approached, I read some racy radical 60's books, away from the eyes of my mother (and anyone else, for that matter). I was basically a “good” girl, with a healthy amount of Catholic guilt. I was very aware that though others did not see what I was reading, God did. So I bargained with Him. If I didn't have to reveal my “wicked” reading in the confessional, I promised Him I'd never actually “do” whatever I was reading about at the time. Though it was quite a few years before I entered into a mature relationship with God, I think the bargain saved me from getting into all kinds of reading-inspired trouble that I could have stumbled into during my teen years. 
 
As an adult, my curiosity about culture continued, though I sincerely tried to hold it at arm's length. My kids accused me of making them get braces so I could read the People Magazine in the orthodontist's office because I'd never go out and actually buy one. The arrival of the internet made it easy to satisfy my cultural curiosity. Everything I want to know is now just a click away... 
 
So, I have never actually seen The Game of Thrones or Happy Endings, only rarely Community, but a cursory scanning of the the headlines of Entertainment Weekly gives me more than I need to know to feel like I'm not missing out on some significant cultural media event. My favorite website? The IMDb, a dream-come-true for those like me who frequently utter the words “What have I seen him in before?” 
 
I do watch Downton Abbey and have seen the new Star Trek movie (and know way more about Benedict Cumberbatch than any woman of my age should, though I do not identify myself as a Cumberb****...) I have read Maria Semple's quirky book and have dutifully watched 24 with my husband. And, yes, I do actually listen to, enjoy and am knowledgeable about a wide variety of music. (I recently drew a blank on a reference to Neutral Milk Hotel. Fortunately, I am married to a man whose vast knowledge of the music of the past 50 years easily filled in the blank for me. I pleaded ignorance of Neutral Milk Hotel based on my belief that no real music was made in the 80's...) 
 

So, here I am, a brief step into the seventh decade of my life, wondering who the next Doctor will be. Matt Smith, I love you to bits and I'll miss you, and Rory and Amy were the best companions ever, but Tom Baker will always be my first love. After all, I am sixty...

There is a very fine line between 'hobby' and 'mental illness.'

                        - Dave Berry, "25 Things I Have Learned in 50 Years"

 

(Every year the members of our church spend some time writing and sharing “Living Psalms” which are original outpourings of our hearts to God. This month's “Super Moon” got me thinking about the living psalm I wrote a year or so back...)

Psalm of Praise for Creation

Oh, Lord, creator of all things, we give You praise and glory,

for all that is seen and unseen in the world You have made around us.

You have given us Your most excellent in all that You have created,

in the things that delight us and in the things that awe us,

in the things we puzzle over and wonder at.

You have allowed us to observe Your works and to name them,

to play at understanding and describing them.

Once the psalmists called us to praise Your sun and moon and shining stars.

We now add to their praise our own for Your works then unseen,

for the moons and rings of planets, nebulae, myriads of galaxies,

star clusters and interstellar clouds.

The highest heavens have revealed wonders, always known to You,

but new to our minds, of black holes and quasars; of the sound of background radiation,

a remnant left from the moment You spoke the universe into being,

the force of Your creation ever continuing outward into the heavens.

In the beginning, You laid the foundations of the earth,

that which we see and stand on and live in.

We praise You for the building blocks You have chosen for Your foundations,

for atoms and electrons, quarks and leptons, neutrinos and muons,

all those pieces we pretend to see and strive to understand

and boldly label with names of our own choosing,

but born of Your words spoken into the void on the days of creation.

We praise you because we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful, we know that full well, right down to each cell,

our DNA, mitochondria, each part perfect, each piece formed by Your desire for us.

When sickness and injury cause us to doubt Your perfection,

we look to the hope of the perfect body You have prepared for each of us,

waiting for us in Your holy presence, waiting only for the time You call us from

this present corner of Your creation.

When man in his finiteness, doubts You, fails to see You,

You call to him with Your wondrous works of creation.

When the physicist questions that “this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets, and all these atoms with all their motions...can (it) merely be a stage...that... is too big for the drama”*,

Your Word, Lord, then, answers him with Your truth.

And we praise and give You glory, Lord, for that truth, that Your drama has more acts, more scenes of Your infinite love and majesty than we are able to imagine.

This play of salvation and redemption is bigger and longer

and more spectacular than we can conceive.

And the stage You have created is perfect in size.

*It doesn't seem to me that this fantastically marvelous universe, this tremendous range of time and space and different kinds of animals, and all the different planets and all these atoms with all their motions, and so on, all this complicated thing can merely be a stage so that God can watch human beings struggle for good and evil – which is the view that religion has. The stage is too big for the drama. – Richard Feynman, physicist

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

- Romans 1:20

June 22 – Feast of St. Thomas More

Let me tell you about my life-long crush on Thomas More...

The library in the Catholic school that I attended as a child was small and mandatory. Each week every class had an assigned library time. Each child was required to check out one book and return it the following week. By the time I was in fourth grade I thought I had already read most of the interesting books the small library had to offer. One day I found myself still bookless by the end of the library session. The teacher, a rather threatening nun, told me to just pick anything. I randomly grabbed a book off the shelf. It was a biography of Thomas More. I had never heard of him...

I was a compulsive reader. By this I mean that the printed word was somewhat irresistible to me. Of course I read the book - because it was there - and I fell in love with the man in the book. Briefly, Thomas More was a Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII. He opposed the divorce of the king and his subsequent marriage to Anne Boleyn. He was beheaded because of it, and the Catholic church eventually declared him a saint. Those historical facts were not what endeared him to me.

Thomas grew up the son of a lawyer in 15^th century England. He loved God and wanted to serve Him. He explored the idea of becoming a priest or a monastic brother, going so far as to live with them for awhile. He came away from his experience with the certainty that God was not calling him to the priesthood, but rather that he was being called to be a husband and a father. Like his father, he became a lawyer, an occupation at that time full of temptation and corruption. Thomas managed to avoid both. He married the love of his life and had several children. He was progressive in that he believed in educating his daughters as well as his sons. When his wife died at a young age, he quickly, pragmatically, remarried a widow who was several years older than he was. She was unlike his first wife in both temperament and education, and yet they had a long successful marriage. He rose to heights of political power as chancellor of England under King Henry VIII. He opposed the king's divorce from his first wife and his remarriage to a second wife as well as the king's setting himself up as the supreme head of the church in England. He was eventually imprisoned and finally beheaded for treason as the result of his opposition to the king. He managed to do all this with integrity, godliness and even humor.

Even as a nine-year-old, I appreciated the charms of a godly, humorous and faith-filled man who was in the world, but not of it. When I was in eighth grade, the Robert Bolt play about More, A Man for All Seasons, was made into a movie. It won numerous Academy Awards, including best picture, so the nuns deemed it worthy of a movie field trip. I saw the movie, read the play, and both added to my crush on Thomas More. He was the man I wanted to marry – a lover of God, a man of strong moral fortitude and someone with a quirky sense of humor (portrayed in both his biographies and in the play/movie). He had a rare ability to live a life serving God in the public sector, do his job extraordinarily well and without compromise, and laugh along the way. I made a deal with God – give me a man like that to marry, and my first son will have Thomas somewhere in his name.

Well, God does answer prayers. He gave me that kind of man as my husband, right down to the quirky sense of humor. Even better, my husband has managed to keep his head...so far. My son knows that his middle name, Thomas, is after Thomas More and he knows that there was some sort of deal involving God and a husband. And A Man for All Seasons is still my all-time favorite movie...

I do not care very much what men say of me, provided that God approves of me. - Thomas More

In the Garden - Update

For anyone who was interested in the square foot gardening series I did in May, I've posted some photos of my garden's progress below with commentary.

The season has been a little strange so far, too cool for the tomatoes and peppers, too warm for the peas, pak choi and broccoli rabe. Lettuce has been good, however. The zucchini, patty pan squash and butternut squash are also waiting for more heat. They've sprouted, but haven't really grown much yet. I took advantage of today's cool, bug-less weather to weed, cultivate and mulch my garden with compost. Then I decided to take some pictures...

Kentucky Wonder Pole beans to the left; the heirloom Triumph de Farcy bush beans to the right.

Great leaf lettuce - Flame and Simpson Elite.  The spinach and pak choi on the left have started to bolt after a few hot days  without producing much.  I did have some pak choi tonight at dinner - very tasty sauteed with olive oil and leftover chicken!

Nine California Wonder pepper plants and nine alpine strawberry plants.

The herb frame - chives, sage, French tarragon, cilantro, thyme and Greek oregano.  I'd like to plant my Italian parsley here, but the rabbits are back....!!!

Overall view of the garden.  The rabbits are back, and though I haven't seen any deer yet, they usually show up sometime in the summer, so the fencing is up for the vulnerable crops.  The squash is barely up on the mounds to the right and left of the center cage.

 I usually plant my basil, marjoram, and parsley in large pots on the deck so I can bring them into the house in the winter.  I also plant them on the deck so the rabbits and deer can't get at them.  What you see is the devastation of some critter, possibly a raccoon, most likely a squirrel, that dug out my six Italian parsley plants and scattered them on the deck.  Where are the coyotes when I need them...?

Five different kinds of tomato plants - Jelly Bean, Roma, Black Krim, VF, and 4th of July.  Snow peas in the fencing on the right.  That's broccoli rabe going to (yellow) flower in the rear

I like reading your blog, Mom...except for the gardening ones – boring..."

- son, who will remain unnamed, but not anonymous...

Working with the Gift

Who would have thought? There it was, on the stage of the Academy Awards...in the opening monologue of Saturday Night Live...the age-old, on-going theological discussion of “faith” versus “works”. The unwitting, oblivious theologians? Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner. Well, actually, they didn't use the words “faith” and “works”. They used the words “gift” and “work”, which is close enough for me to weigh in on their discussion.

In his acceptance speech as producer of the movie Argo, Ben acknowledged his wife, Jennifer Garner, in these words “I want to thank you for working on our marriage for ten Christmases. It’s good, it is work, but it’s the best kind of work, and there’s no one I’d rather work with.”

In the post-Oscar chatter that followed, Ben took some flack for his use of the word “work” in describing his marriage. A few weeks later, during his opening monologue on SNL, he was joined on stage by his wife, and the now infamous speech came up. He asked her what word she would have used instead. Her response: "Gift! I would have said, 'Thank you to my wife, our marriage is a gift!'”

And there it was again – the somewhat difficult relationship between “gift” and “work”, or “grace” and “works”, or “faith” and “works” or...

Entertainment value aside, I'd like to think Ben and Jennifer went home that night and acknowledged the fact that they were both right. That marriage is both work and a gift.

I've always looked at my relationship with the Lord as like a marriage. I can look at my early life and see God pursuing me, courting me. Then there came a point I felt called to take a serious look at this God and decide whether I wanted to go on with Him for the rest of my life. How could I resist a relationship with Someone Who was willing to die for me, in fact, actually did die for me? He, on the other hand, required nothing of me – no dowry, no promises of great spiritual cooking or homemaking skills, certainly no spiritual beauty of my own. He asked only one thing – that I believe in Him, have faith in Him and His promises for me. He offered this to me as a free gift, nothing that I had to earn or pay for to enter into, a relationship bought with His own blood. Did I want to enter into this relationship forever on these terms? I said “I do”...

There is an exciting intimacy in the early days of marriage, and it was no different in my early days with the Lord. Prayer and worship came easy and joyfully, wanting the same things that God wanted was almost effortless. The desire to do the things that I felt He wanted me to do I would do willingly and obediently. The extended honeymoon was all grace and gift.

Then came a time when easy, joyful, effortless, willingly and obediently didn't seem to be quite that any more. The love, the commitment, the gift of the relationship didn't change, but the almost effortless forward momentum was not there anymore, not in the same way it had been. The honeymoon, in a way, was over. That's when thoughts of the “w” word first crept in...

Much of the work of making marriage great is simply doing the things that need to be done on a regular basis whether one feels like doing them or not, making the choice to love and connect when the intensity of the feeling might not be what it once was. As a newlywed, doing laundry, cooking a special meal, can seem like a love gift to one's spouse. As a not-so-newlywed...no, laundry just needs to be done, people need to eat... But somewhere in doing the wash and making the meal there is contained a certain pleasure on both sides when you see he looks great in that shirt, when he enjoys that lasagna.

Prayer, worship, intimate connection with God over the years does take work. Fortunately, God does the heavy lifting. His dying for me was the ultimate work. In that incredible task, He accomplished all the work that needed to be done for our relationship. His work provides for the works I could not do myself. And any of the work I do do for our relationship comes from faith in His great work, already done, first and perfectly. I can muddle on, knowing that my truly “better half” will love and cover my imperfect work. So I aim to spend time and connect with the Lord everyday in the same way that I aim to spend time and connect with my husband. Some times it is still effortless, and other times it takes on the feel of work, work that I know is good and life-giving to the relationship, or as Ben says, “...the best kind of work, and there’s no one I’d rather work with.” But that work does not replace or supersede the gift-ness or grace of the relationship, that commitment and connection. It does not add anything more to the reality and substance of God's original proposal to me – that I believe in Him, have faith in Him and His promises for me – any more than icing adds to the reality and substance of a great chocolate cake. It just allows it to taste sweeter...

For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - -Ephesians 2:8

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? - James 2:14

Just Close Your Eyes, Girl...

I have a vision problem. Fortunately, it's perceptual, not physiological, though at times it has handicapped me as if it were a physical defect. My problem? I see things that could but don't happen. I'm poised to catch the toddler in the next shopping cart, hanging over the side, about to fall – but he doesn't. I internally jump when I see a wine glass, inches away from the elbow of an animated dinner guest, see the trajectory of where the red wine will land on the carpet – and glass and wine remain on the table to be safely finished. I see the dad with a small child on his shoulders, heading out a door, and I shudder, waiting for the scream as small head smacks doorway – and they both go on their way, laughing.

This vision problem causes me the most trouble when I am in the car. I see exactly where a car approaching the intersection will end up if the driver doesn't stop at that stop sign. I know exactly where my bumper is going to get clipped when the weaving car in the left lane cuts in front of me too soon. When I'm behind the wheel of the car, driving defensively (“in control”, my husband would say), I can minimize my bodily reaction to the looming disaster that never happens. It's when I find myself in the passenger seat that I get into trouble...

For years this problem of mine had been a point of conflict between me and my husband, as well as a source of amusement to my children in the back seat. Though I had learned to control my mouth, and could sit in silence while potential havoc lurked outside the car, I had never been able to silence my body. I just had to physically react in some way. My most frequent action was to apply what my children would call the “ceiling brake”. I'd put my hand suddenly, but unconsciously, on the ceiling of the car when the brake lights of the traffic ahead of us appeared. Husband - “Stop that!” Me - “I can't! I'm not doing it on purpose!” Over time, I lowered the “ceiling brake” until it became the “side handle brake”. Still, my husband was not happy. “Don't you trust my driving?” he would say. I said I did. “Well, you don't act like it...”

I got to thinking about trusting the driver. My husband is an excellent driver. In all the years I have known him, he's never been in an accident. (I don't count the slow motion side swipe by another car in a blinding snowstorm.) He's appropriately cautious, in my opinion, and has a good sense of what the other drivers are likely to do. My mind and heart know I can trust him behind the wheel. Now, if I could only convince my body of this. How do I stop the uncontrollable reflex to grab something and hang on? I realized that on a long trip, if I sat in the back seat, I never grabbed for the ceiling brake. Why? Because there, I usually wasn't paying attention to what was going on outside the car. I wasn't seeing what could, but probably wouldn't, happen. How could I recreate this obliviousness in the front seat? I thought, “Just close your eyes, girl!”

The next time I was in the front passenger seat, I applied my new technique. Approaching a four-way stop with cars coming in three directions, I closed my eyes and reminded myself that I trusted the driver. I didn't even flinch. I opened my eyes as I felt us move past the intersection. The next time on the interstate, when the brake lights of the cars ahead suddenly all turned red, I closed my eyes. No impact, of course...and no flinch from me. And no “Stop that!” from the driver. I could just sit back and enjoy the ride. Closing my eyes was so effective that I wondered why I had not thought of it sooner.

It got me thinking about my spiritual flinching, my searching for some invisible “ceiling brake” in my relationship with God. Similar to the way I trust my husband behind the wheel of our car, I know my heart trusts God behind the wheel of my life. But I also know I flinch unconsciously as I travel with Him next to me. How is God going to work in some particular situation, to circumvent some potential collision? When I flinch, I don't hear God say “Stop that!” but I do have a sense of Him asking “Don't you trust My driving?” Yes, I trust His driving skills, but my eyes see all that could go wrong, all the possible road hazards. My reflex reaction - anxiety and fretting. So I decide to choose not to “see” the things that could go wrong, to not focus my sight on the things that I can't control and are already in the hands of a very capable God. I remind myself “Just close your eyes, girl” and sit back and enjoy the ride. I remind myself that I trust the Driver...

Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.

                          - From My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, December 9