How we pray.

Prayer: petitioning God in word or thought. We pray for everything from world peace to athletic victories (going so far as to adapt the name of a plea for intercession from the mother of Jesus as a ditch-effort play), from good weather and academic grades to divine intervention.

We petition quite a lot. It’s left me wondering how thoughtful we are about what we ask. Perhaps we have all been cautioned to “be careful what [we] ask for”, and certainly that applies in prayer life. I’m particularly struck by how we pray for one another. We pray for safety, for deliverance, for protection, for miracles–and we limit the way that the deliverance, protection and miracles may take shape. It seems that most of our petitions are one-demensional, bound by our physical world and focused on the immediate situation (specifically avoiding or escaping that circumstance).

We are uncomfortable with suffering, with struggle. We are so focused on escaping trial, that we miss the opportunity to pray for sustanence within it. Just fix it. Make it stop. I want to be happy, without worry. Without pain.

I’m not suggesting that we give up on miracles. I merely suggest that “fix-it” miracles not become the gut-reaction, the sole answer–”well…we’ll just pray for a miracle”–as though we through up our hands in disgust at the helplessness of the situation. Or, rather that we cast off our responsibility to really minister and intercede at a deeper, more intimate level.

So, pray for strength to endure, for emotional and spiritual growth, for deeper faith to result. Pray for comfort, encouragement and sensitivity in the physical world. Pray that eyes will be opened to the suffering in and the redemption of the world. Might these be the true miracles we hope for.

Book review: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

First published in 1943, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is an instant and endearing classic I wished would never end. As Anna Quindlen describes in the book’s forward, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is not the sort of book that can be reduced to its plot line. The best anyone can say is that it is a story about what it means to be human.”

Through the eyes of young Francie, the reader is drawn to Brooklyn circa 1919 where Smith weaves realistic issues of race, poverty, alcoholism, gender roles and immigrant status at the turn of the century. This book has been a favorite of my book club.

Book review: The Worst Hard Time

Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowlis undeniably one of the best, most engrossing, books I’ve read in a long time. If all of history was written this way, I believe more people in our country would know and appreciate the years and events which have shaped this nation. Egan’s book is more than just history. He weaves together an engaging saga of real life, where fact is more compelling than fiction. This is an outstanding book–a ‘must read’.

While Steinbeck wrote of plainsmen who fled the dust storms of the 1930’s in The Grapes of Wrath (Centennial Edition), Egan tells the gripping realities of those who remained. Using their own words from journals and newspapers, their story is haunting and raw. This is the grit and determination which has shaped people of the Great Plains. As one pioneer wrote, “It was not a rain cloud. Nor was it a cloud holding ice pellets. It was not a twiter. It was thick like coarse animal hair; it was alive. People close to it described a feeling of being in a blizzard–a black blizzard, they called it–with an edge like steel wool.”

Natural disasters occur with regularity around the world. Earthquakes, flooding and ice storms are all part of the earth’s cycle. The dustbowl of the 1930’s is different in that it was a completely man-made natural disaster. As ecological stewardship gains in popularity in the 21st century, this book recalls the same pursuit during the dirty ’30s. As politicians today debate the merits of a number of government programs in light of a struggling economy, Egan brings to life the people and circumstances behind several of Franklin Roosevelt’s policies during his presidency.

The end of the book references a film created in 1936, describing the erosion of both soil and spirits in the Great Plains. The film, The Plow That Broke the Plains, was inducted in 1999 to the National Film Registry of “artistically, culturally, and socially significant” films. The first half of the film is available online at http://www.archive.org/details/PlowThatBrokethePlains1.

what’s happened to our dreams?

Where have our dreams gone? As children we had many. Through high school and college they were, perhaps, refined. And now…? In my conversations with college students and recent college graduates, I’ve been talking and thinking quite a bit about dreams for the future…theirs’ and mine, specifically and generally.

My six-year-old daughter dreams of being an astronaut, a baker, a teacher, a mom, a veterinarian and a farmer. I tell her time and again that she can be all of those–even all at the same time. This is her dream. What is yours? What is mine?

Do we need dreams to propell us? To motivate and prompt us?
Do dreams fit within the context of everyday reality?
Are dreams meant to be achieved?
Or, is the point that they are just dreams–never intended to be actualized?
Why is it that so many dreams are quite easily derailed or self-sabatoged?
Is the journey of pursuing a dream more fulfilling than actually achieving it?

Two of my friends, Ann & Jean (names changed because they may actually read this blog), have very different experiences regarding their dreams:

For Ann, over the last few years she has witnessed, one by one, each of her college dreams come true. Now that nearly all her dreams are fulfilled, she’s come to realize they don’t measure up to what she expected them to be. Fulfilling her dreams have not fulfilled her drive. New dreams are taking place of the old.

In contrast, Jean had many ambitious dreams that have never taken shape. She has watched others take steps toward the life she always dreamed of, but never achieved. Today her dreams are being weeded out by new desires. She is consciously opting for a path which will likely not lead to the fulfillment of her original dreams. She’s okay with that trade.

I can relate with both friends. Perhaps you can, too. I have both watched my own dreams manifest before my eyes, and watched friends and mentorees take steps in their lives I was unable (or opted) to not take. Like Ann, I have been diappointed when the realities haven’t matched the expectations of my dreams.

So if we are disappointed by our dreams, or don’t really intend to achieve our dreams, what’s the point of dreaming? Is it simply the pursuit? The chase of a dream which motivates us to just keep going?

All I know is that a world without dreams seems like a sad and lonely place. It’s too depressing for me to consider living without having dreams to strive for. So I’ll keep dreaming–outlandish, dangerously challenging dreams. And I’ll take one step at a time. Maybe I won’t achieve those dreams until I’m in my 90’s, but they’ll keep me going.

Guest post: Book review: Mindless Eating

My friend Rachel was really jazzed about a book she listened to (on CD). CBS has promoted this book as a “Freakonomics of Food” and  ABC’s 20/20 ran a segment in 2007 on the book and its premise. I asked Rachel to write a guest post about the book, to which she graciously agreed. Following are her reflections.

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Recently, I enjoyed listening on CD the book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think by Brian Wansink.  Originally a native of Correctionville, IA, Wansink’s Iowa connections appealed to me in addition to the book’s topic.

I thoroughly enjoyed his humor and also how he combines health, psychology, and consumer behavior. Wansink shares results from a number of experiments that he and his team of graduate students had completed, centered around why we eat the foods we do.

Wansink’s chicken wing example is fresh in my mind.  He and his students hosted a super bowl party for a number of college students.  During the party, the students were offered unlimited chicken wings.  In half the restaurant, the wait staff was told to clear the empty baskets of chicken wings.  In the other half of the restaurant the wait staff was told to leave the empty baskets of chicken wing bones on the tables.  They discovered that if the wait staff removed the visual cue (the empty chicken wing basket), the students consistently ate more chicken wings than the students for whom the baskets were not cleared. Students with no baskets before them did not realize how many chicken wings they actually ate, (the empty baskets had been removed and they no longer could see the remains of what they had gobbled up!) whereas students who visually saw the baskets of bones pile up conscienciously limited their consumption.

Later after listening to the analysis of this study, I went to a Mexican restaurant and enjoyed baskets of chips and salsa—and lo and behold the wait staff removed the baskets when they were empty, replacing them with full baskets and fresh salsa.  Hmmm….how many chips had I eaten, or for that matter how many baskets had I eaten? 

Throughout this book, you often find yourself in these Ah Ha moments, where you realize that you have been eating mindlessly.

Check out Mindless Eating at http://mindlesseating.org/ for more insightful information.

The ethics of eating.

Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life just keeps on giving. I wrote a book review, and several related posts after I read the book earlier this year.

On July 3, Speaking of Faith, a “public radio conversation about religion, meaning, ethics & ideas”, featured an interview with Kinsolver regarding the book and its premise. Krista Tippet, who conducted the interview also journaled about the book and conversation.

From Krista’s journal, I particularly appreciated this section:

          The real irony is that the way most Americans eat is elite in the extreme.
          This is hard to grasp, as crops behind some of the cheapest, easiest staples
          of American life–including that ubiquitous high fructose corn syrup–are
          underwritten by government funding. …And then there are, of course, the
          environmental costs, harder still to see and calculate and that we confer
          as a debt to our children. Some people give up meat, Barbara
          Kingsolver says; she has given up bananas, no longer willing to live with
          the fossil fuel footprint that is necessary to bring them all the way to her
          in Virginia.

Props to mk for passing along the Speaking of Faith link.

Tippet, K. (July 3, 2008). The Pleasurable Choice is the Ethical Choice. speakingoffaith.org

Guest blog–Job 36:26

I wrote a guest blog for my husband’s blogsite, witoozy.com. The post is about Job 36:26a (KJV): “Behold, God is great, and we do not know him.”

Follow the link to access my musings.

Book review: Eat Pray Love

I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s memior, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, for my book club last month. Following an extremely low point in her life, Gilbert embarks on a journey of self-discovery to global locations which she perceives to have mastered specific areas of well-being: physical (Italy), spiritual (India), emotional (Indonesia).

Throughout the book, I was reminded that this option–of abandoning all responsibility for an extended period of time–to travel the world to “find” one’s self is a luxury very few people can afford. Financial and non-financial implications for the average reader make this book somewhat of a farce from the onset. Clearly the international travel added glamour to the book, though a person could probably just as easily ”find” themself within the cultural variance of traveling within the continental United States. Gilbert’s writing was rather tidy and convenient–noting that this trip was for the specific purpose of producing a book–leading the authenticity to be suspect.

On a side note, I wondered if this is not the “new” American Dream. Sure, the house with 2.5 kids, a dog and a white picket fence remains a standard for achieving the American Dream. Yet it seems that once those things are accomplished, there is a drive to abandon it all…to find freedom from the responsibility all that Dream imposes.

I also wonder if this need to “find” one’s self, to identify some kind of meaning and purpose in our lives is an American phenom which is somehow related to our Dream pursuit. Do people of other cultures wallow in their need to be affirmed that they are doing something worthwhile with their lives? Have we as a culture repressed our ability for pleasure for the pursuit of achieving some great meaning of life? Is this not an upper-middle class (and upper class) luxury? A good friend of mine often reminds me of the perceived Italian way to a satisfied life: good food, good wine, good women (or men). Has the American way paved too complex of a road that we miss the simplisity of a good life?

54 years of asparagus

A friend sent me this article of a colleague’s grandparents who have sold asparagus out of their garage for 54 years.

It’s a delightful story. Enjoy.

the locovore debate

As a kid, I remember a big marketing ploy by manufacturers which toted their products as “Made in the U.S.A.”, instilling pride in citizens to shun foreign companies. Ford and Chevrolet teamed up to sway consumers from Honda and Toyota. Did it work? I don’t know. I recall that my dad was sold. I suppose this, in a global way, was a locavore mentailty. We continued, however, to consume grapes from Chile and pears from Argentina, so the U.S.A. loyalty was selective.

The debate continues. Stephen Dubner wrote an article for the New York Times about the growing locovore popularity. The comments following his op-ed are worth reading. Thanks to my dh for passing it my way.