Discernment Is Never Easy

My 18-yo nephew came and spent much of the weekend at our place. This was the first time I'd met him.

At one point he asked me if we had any good books he could borrow for the train ride back up to Seattle. My first thought was Would you read a religious book? And my thoughts made their way, eventually, inevitably, to John Eldredge's book Waking the Dead, a book I want to recommend to just about everyone. In an attempt not to be pushy, I gave a sort of general description of our book collection - lots of sci fi, some religious books, some miscellaneous other things. He wandered over to the bookshelf; Waking the Dead caught his eye and he pulled it out and looked at it. He put it back, saying that he would have to read it eventually. I ended up pulling out one of my favorite sci-fi books to lend him.

Later on, I prayed about it, asking God if I should lend Waking the Dead to my nephew. (Why I was still worried about being pushy when it had already caught his eye, I don't know.) Then I looked for which decision brought me more peace. The sense that I got was 'no'. Part of me was not happy with that answer, but I figured it was just the childishly eager part of me that wants to leap before looking, the pushy part; better to trust God.

Then, at Mass on Sunday morning, the Ascension readings included the line, "May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened", a line that I very clearly remembered Eldredge talking about in his book. I had, in fact, been thinking about that line just that morning.

It was too much to be a coincidence. I resolved to lend my nephew the book.

I thought back to that feeling, that sense of 'no' that I had had about lending the book. And I found that I could believe that it was a false sense of peace, an imitation of true peace. The peace that I felt now was... not deeper exactly, but more overall. Less tinged with reservations, although, believe me, I wasn't going to be lacking in doubts, no matter what I chose. (Although I was reassured when my nephew decided to start reading it before the other books I lent him, and said the first 8 pages or so were awesome.)

This has happened before.

Repeatedly, I have found that whenever I start relying on any one kind of 'sense' about what God wants, it ends up steering me wrong. If I rely too much on opening the Bible to a random place; if I rely too much on a deep sense in my heart; if I rely too much on an overall feeling; if I rely too much on listening to others' suggestions.... eventually it will go wrong. Eventually, Satan will start imitating whatever thing I am relying on, to lead me astray. Instead, discernment seems to require a sort of never-ending vigilance and the willingness to admit I got it wrong.

PicVids - May 2011

I love her smile!

Haha.

He's SO cute!

Yummy roasting pan!

Pile on dad time!

What better place to sleep than a doorway? 

Gabe was feeling left out of homeschooling time, so he went and grabbed the board and markers and said, oh so eagerly, "dah dah dush?!" [I think he thinks this means "can I do this?" or "what about this?" or some such]. I said yes and helped him get the general idea of tracing. And then I was amazed at how well he did.



Yeah, I was really impressed. Did I mention I was impressed? :)



Julie is totally dancing to the music. She rocks. Literally.



Nothing says "brotherly bonding" like game after game after game after game of high five.



And nothing says sisterly bonding like, umm, crawling over the top of your sister?



They were being extra cute, and then I got the camera out, and suddenly they were only mildly cute. Ah well, mildly cute is still cute.

I laid down with Jules and Savi & the rest came.

Julie fell asleep in the middle of it all.

I was amazed at Julie's ability to sleep through all the chaos going on around her, until she suddenly wasn't anymore.

Father-daughter bonding time, too. I guess we've been having a lot of bonding time lately, eh?

Food Is Not Always Life And Death

(This is the post that I meant to put up yesterday.)

So this is how I've been thinking about my food choices lately.

Will that dried milk powder give me cancer?
Will the additives in store-bought mayo harm my body?
Will it shave fifteen years off my life if I eat a lot of grains?

And so on. Having questions like that which are essentially impossible to answer, but which you feel like you need to answer, is a sure recipe for soul-killing anxiety.

I had prayed about this a bit, asking God for continued guidance on my food choices. Then the Home Dairy book that I mentioned before finally came from the library. And on one of the first pages, I read the following line:

"There are small, simple measures you can take to enhance your life while also caring for your family, community, and the larger world."¹

It immediately struck me, in that "God is telling me something" way, and I realized that it was the answer to my dilemma. I need to think of my food choices not as life and death choices, but as small enhancements to my life. I'm not picking between poison and great food; I'm picking between good food and great food.


^1. The quote was referring to the author's blog, Small Measure.

Elijah's Birthday

So, this year, for Elijah's birthday, we went to Roundtable pizza. It was sort of a haphazard thing, not a planned out event with lots of kids. (Which was probably good, because when we got there and I said I had a reservation for a kids' birthday party, the pizza guys appeared to have no idea what I was talking about. "Uhh, sure, you can set up in the back room if you want." Note to self: do not count on Roundtable.)

But, I brought all our laundry-money quarters so that the kids (mine plus the one neighbor boy) could play the arcade games. We had cake after the pizza. This was Elijah's first year getting to pick out a store-bought cake - last year I finally finished off the "You can't read this" series with "You can (finally) read this!". And Elijah opened his presents there. At one point he declared, "This is my best birthday EVER!" I think it was mostly the arcade games.

Which just goes to show how awesome even crappy things can seem to you when you're a kid. They had a couple of those "claw" machines, and the adults kept commenting on how rigged they were, against winning. Towards the end, I gave Elijah one last quarter or two to play, and was so sorry for him when he didn't get anything out of the claw, *again*. But he turned around and said in an excited tone, something like "I almost got something that time, Mom! It was so cool!" Kids.

The downside is... I didn't bring my camera! I was really bummed about not being able to get shots of his excitement. The following PicVids came after he got home, from playing with his new toys.

He got these squirt guns from someone and then had a blast going all commando with them.

Racetrack!

Brotherly love.




I saw this and started to wonder if we were watching too much Stargate around the kids or something. But it's cute. :)



I don't think I had the camera out in time to catch the first one he did. It was awesome; he kind of did this commando-crawl along next to the table, and when Gabe came up, he held a finger up to his lips and said, very quietly, "shhh", and then they both jumped out together for a surprise attack.




Yeah, I think he did this a lot of times over again. It was THAT fun.




Of course, Julie got in on the fun, too.




Gabe kept running around yelling what sounded like "gone gone!" I eventually figured out that he was, of course, saying "gun".



What better use for plastic golf clubs that are still in the case, than as an ax?



Dad helped them set this one up.




I'm including this video too mostly because I think it's cute to hear all the kids' laughter.




Ok, so my videos were in reverse chronological order; this was actually the first one that I took after we got back. Hence the trying to ask Elijah to tell us something about being at the pizza place... an endeavor I quickly gave up on, since he was too distracted to talk to me.

Funny Things Kids Say

1. I was reading the Easter story to the kids on Easter Friday. I think it was because of the angels in the story that one of the kids brought up fairies. Elijah asked me right out if fairies were real. Thinking of the fairy books they've been getting from the library, I said, "No. Fairies are just for pretend."

Elijah responded by asking, "Then who puts the money under Kyrie's pillow?"

Erk! I was not thinking of the Tooth Fairy. And Elijah hasn't even lost his first tooth yet. (I'm not quite sure how he took my response, which was to guffaw with laughter and then try vainly to shove the cat back in the bag with some sort of hypothetical question like, "I don't know; maybe they exist after all?")

I'm putting up random pictures. This is me dressed up for my anniversary night out, with the kids hamming it up.

2. Kyrie got these scapulars from her First Communion class. Savi comes into my bedroom Fri morning (5/6) wearing the green scapular on a chain around her neck. She says, in a near-tearful tone of voice, "Kyrie gave me this so it can heal my toe which did get hurt and was bleeding."

Savi, with Gabe peeking in on the left.

3. I sent Elijah and Savi to stand in various corners b/c they were squabbling. Apparently Gabe was feeling left out, b/c he went to a corner, looked at me and said, "toenah?"["corner?"]. When I said, "You can be in the corner if you want to", he smiled and turned around to face the corner.

Gabe tried to apply lotion to himself.

4. To set the scene for this, let me point out that the available floorspace in our bathroom is maybe 3 by 4 feet. And half of that was taken up with laundry piles. So I'm getting dressed after a shower, and Savi comes in and says, "By the way, mom, did you even notice that Julie is in here?". No, no I did not notice the large 7 month old baby that I've been trying not to trip over for the last five minutes.

She's like a cat. You're standing by the table and all of a sudden something brushes against your leg. Really made me jump  one of the times that she did that.

5. Elijah, with Kyrie's help, was trying to make himself some chocolate milk in the kitchen. When he pulled out the chocolate syrup, he said, "It even smells like chocolate!" Um. What did you expect chocolate syrup to smell like?

6. Kyrie: "I read where you wrote "men are not angels". Me: "I did write that." Kyrie: "So that means angels are women or girls."

The kids' room got mold, so they spent a couple nights sleeping on the floor of my room while I dealt with it.

7. Gabe brought me a little Lego guy whose bottom half he could not get to fit into the top half. "Dah doopih" he said. It took me only a moment to figure out that he meant, "That's stupid." I was torn between angst over the other kids using the word, and amusement over Gabe using it for the first time.

8. I was looking at the massive volume of granola that I made, and I wondered aloud, "Where am I going to store all this granola?". Elijah promptly grinned and said, "In my mouth!".

Gabe really likes Julie. He INSISTED on feeding her.

Update on Kyrie's 1st Communion

There was one other incident that I forgot to relate in my earlier post, during the Mass where Kyrie received her First Communion.

Throughout his homily, Fr. David asked the kids a few basic questions. Every time he did this, Kyrie raised her hand, wiggling in her seat with eagerness to answer the question. (The other kids, when they did answer, did not usually raise their hands. I have wondered about this dynamic before.)

Towards the end of the homily, when Fr. David asked a question, Kyrie raised her hand as usual, and none of the other kids were answering. Fr. David tried ignoring Kyrie's hand, and then eventually said, "Ok, someone besides Kyrie answer this one", or something to that effect.

It was so reminiscent of my own childhood, and so typical of Kyrie. The whole congregation was mildly amused. I thought it was very cute.

What's Missing From the Evolution Debate?

Kyrie refused to draw an evolution picture for me on a sunny day when she could be outside,
 so you'll have to put up with my cartoons.

The Beauty of Evolution

Evolution-as-Science, Evolution-as-Religion, Intelligent Design, Young-Earth-Creationism, Old-Earth-Creationism - the debates around evolution go on and on. What I'd like to present here is something that I don't recall ever seeing in these debates before. I maintain that there is a beauty to the theory of evolution that many of us are missing.¹ (The scientifically-inclined among us probably already see the elegance of the theory - I'm talking about a somewhat more theological beauty.)

Men Are Not Angels

The glory of the angels is that they were formed complete in the first moment of their existence. The legend of Athena says that she sprang, a fully-formed adult, from the skull of Zeus, her father. The angels are like this, springing full-grown from the mind of God. They are never children, never need to grow up.

Men are not angels.

Our glory is not to be complete from the start. Our glory is to come into being over time. We begin as a single cell, knowing nothing. We grow; we learn. We move from being self-centered babies to people capable of self-giving love. Mentally, physically, and spiritually, we begin as the tiniest spark and grow, over time, into the fullness of who we are.

As With Men, So With The World

This pattern that we find in multiple aspects of our own lives is repeated over and over again in nature.

• An adult chicken grows from a small egg.
• A giant oak grows from a single nut. 
• The towering sunflower plant begins as a tiny, edible seed.
• Every living organism begins as a single cell and grows into full reproductive maturity². 
• The human species as a whole began small - with a single Adam³ - and has grown now to our current size of almost seven billion. 
• The very universe itself began as an infinitesimally small point before expanding rapidly from there⁴.

Clearly, it's a pattern God likes.


Evolution

Evolution is merely one more bullet point in the list, right in between "human species" and "the universe". Evolution says that all of life, too, began as a tiny spark and grew continuously to become the large, diverse body that we have now. 

And that's pretty much it.<sup>5




1</sup> I was talking with my sister-in-law one day, and she said she didn't believe in evolution. Knowing her to be a very intuitive, beauty-driven soul, rather than a primarily abstract thinker (as I am), I gave her an overview of how I see evolution fitting into God's design of things. I forget how long it took me to do it - ten minutes, maybe - but at the end of it, she said she was convinced. To which my response was along the lines of, "Wait, what? You've completely reversed your position because of something I said? Huh. That's not usually the response I get." Although she has since told me that she's still not completely convinced.


² Even single-celled creatures require some amount of time and, I think, growth, before they can reproduce themselves by splitting again. But I admit there may be exceptions to that general rule that I am not aware of.


³ Assuming the Bible meant that literally, which it may not have. Although I am rather inclined to think it did. Either way, the human species definitely started off a heck of a lot smaller than it is now.


⁴ When I hear that scientists have found that the expansion rate of the universe seems to be increasing, I wonder if the universe is going through an adolescent growth spurt.


⁵ You would be surprised at how many related thoughts and speculations I made myself leave out of this post. Hell; free will; more on the angels; aliens; C.S. Lewis; Christian Scientists; intelligent animals; Limbo and babies.