Personal Challenge

Mark Zuckerburg is now eating only meat that he kills. Apparently he is attempting, like so many of us, to become more aware of where his food is coming from. It's his personal challenge, a goal he makes every year to accomplish something he otherwise would not make time to do. Besides ruling the world, last year he challenged himself to learn Mandarin.

Although I have very little interest in the man himself, I think the idea of a yearly personal challenge is compelling. It's less flimsy than a New Year's resolution but more flexible than a vow. I have a new friend whose boys go Beacon Hill that inspires me so much in her personal challenges. (Among them making her own movie, competing in a figure competition, and winning statewide TaeKwonDo tournaments.)

Just this week I made my own personal challenge. It's been a while since my half-marathon challenge and I'm really excited! I want to read the top 50 books I've never made time to read but have always wanted to. My children are all out of the baby stage and I'm finding myself strangely with some time on my hands during the morning hours! So instead of catching up on whatever brain candy reality show is on hulu from the night before, I'm going to use the time to become what my husband needs me to be: thoughtful, well-read, and discerning.

Here's my list:

1. Swiss Family Robinson

2. Pride and Prejudice

3. Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Ancient World

4. Susan Wise Bauer's History of the Medieval World

5. Augustine's Confessions

6. Robinson Crusoe

7. Capon's The Supper of the Lamb

8. Gulliver's Travels

9. Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea

10. The Canterbury Tales

11. Ann of Green Gables

12. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

13. Mary Poppins

14. Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray

15. Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship

16. Here I Stand (bio of Matin Luther)

17. Uncle Tom's Cabin

18. Lewis' Surprised by Joy

19. Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners

20. Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno

21. Dante's Divine Comedy: Purgatory

22. Dante's Divine Comedy: Paradise

23. Leithart's Ascent to Love

24. Paradise Lost

25. The Pilgrim's Progress (2nd time)

26. The Jungle Book

27. Around the World in 80 Days

28. ten Boom's The Hiding Place

29. Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude

30. Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces

31. The Lord of the Flies

32. David Copperfield

33. Mere Christianity

34. The Brothers Karamazov

35. The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle

36. The Call of the Wild

37. Steinbeck's East of Eden

38. Shaeffer's The God Who is There

39. O'Conner's Wise Blood

40. Don Quixote

41. Calvin's Institutes (portions)

42. Jordan's Through New Eyes

43. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina

44. MacBeth

45. Hamlet

46. Leithart's Greatest Heaven of Invention

47. Chesterton's Orthodoxy

48. The Odyssey (2nd time)

49. Jane Eyre

50. Moby Dick

There is so much great stuff out there it was hard to narrow it down. If I'm successful, I already have a list ready for next year.

I Love It

Precious time with Aiden and Jonathan this morning. Abby decided to sleep until 8 which is unheard of, so it was a little more laid back.

There is only one boy in the history of the world, including literature, who has more puppy-sick disease than Jonathan, and that is Billy from Where the Red Fern Grows. I've been wanting to read it out loud to them for a long time, but was trying to wait until they were ready for it. Today I decided we had waited long enough. So we read Ch. 1-3. I closed the book and both boys immediately jumped up, exclaiming, "I want a dog, mom! What can I do to save up to buy a dog?" Bless his heart Jonathan has decided to save up for a fishing pole so he can catch fish, cook them, and sell them to people. I don't have the heart yet to tell him about business licenses, commercial zoning, and food safety laws. I wish it was as simple as he thinks it is! I know someday this sweet boy will get his heart's desire: a dog. It does give me a great idea for his birthday coming up: a fishing pole!

The boys were feeling ambitious so we started doing some chores. Aiden wanted a little music on to get us in the mood. He chose his current fav, "Joyful Noise" by Flame, featuring Lecrae and John Reilly. It's this amazing Christian rap song introduced to us a few years ago by our super cool cousins Claire and Jorden. (Because you all know we don't know much about Christian music less than a hundred years old. :) It's God-glorifying worship, like Dominic Balli. Everyone should know about it. It's a joy to hear my son sing it's lyrics:

Angels surrounding His throne and

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain

The whole earth is full of His glory

All nations bow to his name

His majesty fills the heavens

Our hearts give thunderous praise

Declare the Lord is forever

Make a joyful noise in this place.

Chores? Not so much this morning. Just a lot of hanging out and being together, dreaming, planning, and singing. The kind of stuff I wouldn't trade a million dollars for.

The Gastronomical Me

Some books are just delicious. The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher is one of them. Though not a Christian writer, I have never read anyone that can describe the very Christian connection between the table and fellowship like she can. My favorite book in this 5 book anthology is The Gastronomical Me, a memoir of her early years.

She describes in beautifully vivid detail her grandmother's "violently active cannings" of summer fruit. How her grandmother, stirring the boiling fruit, "stood like a sacrificial priestess in the steam, 'skimming' into a thick white saucer, and I, sometimes permitted and more often not, put my finger into the cooling froth and licked it."

She describes visiting her great-aunt's house in the high desert of Los Angeles, with the "war-time crews of old men and loud-voiced boys picking the peaches" that would later that day be made into pies using butter cooled in a nearby stream.

And so on...into adulthood and her table gatherings in Dijon, France, and her many meals on ocean-crossing voyages. In her forward, she explains, "I tell about myself, and how I ate bread on a lasting hillside, or drank red wine in a room now blown to bits, and it happens without my willing it that I am telling too about the people with me then, and their other deeper needs for love and happiness...there is a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk."

These are some thoughts I will take with me to our Saturday night feast and to the Lord's Table.

March 2011

Here's a bit of what we've been up to in the last month.

Our dear neighbors the Georgescus moved to England for 7 months, taking Geneva's BFF and Jonathan's "little brother" with them. We're so happy for them though. How cool would it be to live in Cambridge for a summer?! Especially when a royal wedding is coming up. So fun!

We've taken a few field trips: LA Cathedral (their tapestry "Communion of the Saints" is absolutely amazing). Joni and Friends Headquarters (Joni herself showed the group around and told her story. We love this organization!). And finally, the family went to the Reagan Library for Colonial Days this past Saturday.

The tooth fairy has come 3 times in the last month. All Jonathan wants for Easter is his two front teeth. Geneva lost her tooth in the bath--and found it! Jonathan (ahem....his parents) lost both his front teeth before they made it under the pillow. Somehow the tooth fairy still knew just where to place the goods. All's well that ends well.

We are really enjoying the spring in our new home. The windows are open, the backyard hosts daily picnics with many stuffed animal guests, and when the gladiators come home from school, the picnic area becomes an arena. Sprinklers rarely spray without children running through them. The seeds are sprouting in our garden and we hope to invite you all over for Caprese as soon as our tomatoes and basil are ready to harvest.

A Great Encouragement for Difficult Times

These past two months have been a wonderful season for us. We have a new house, Beacon Hill is going really well, and we are seeing a lot of maturity in our children. But the Lord has tempered this with some really difficult providence. Two of my mentors have an aggressive form of cancer. One is my grandmother and one is a dear friend. They both have granddaughters named after them. They both are amazing and I cannot even imagine the world without them.

I have been slowly reading through The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment by puritan pastor Jeremiah Burroughs. I read about two pages per day--it is that rich. Today I read the following:

It is the way of God to work by contraries, to turn the greatest evil into the greatest good. To grant great good after great evil is one thing, and to turn great evil into the greatest good is another, and yet that is God's way: the greatest good that God intends for his people, he many times works out of the greatest evil, the greatest light is brought out of the greatest darkness. I remember, Luther has a striking expression for this: he says, 'It is the way of God: he humbles that he might exalt, he kills that he might make alive, he confounds that he might glorify.' This is the way of God, he says, but every one does not understand it. This is the art of arts, and the science of sciences, the knowledge of knowledges, to understand this, that God when he will bring life, brings it out of death, he brings joy out of sorrow, and he brings prosperity out of adversity, yea and many times brings grace out of sin, that is, makes use of the sin to work furtherance of grace. It is the way of God to bring all good out of evil, not only to overcome the evil, but to make the evil work toward the good.

A Gem From John Piper

"I confess that I have gotten very excited about being a father as I have been thinking this week about what a family is and what it's for in God's great design for the world. I get excited when I think of the family as:

A breeding ground for children who hope in the triumph of God,

or when I think of it as

A training school for teaching what is true and false about what the world is really coming to

or when I think of it as

A boot camp for fitting out young soldiers of Christ for the greatest combat of the world,

or when I think of it as

A fortress for protection

or

A hospital for healing,

A supply depot for replenishing the troops,

or

A retreat center for R and R,

and I get especially excited when I think of the family as

A launching pad for missiles of missionary zeal aimed at the unreached peoples of the world."

--John Piper

The Christian's Joyful Duty of Storytelling

The conservatives want to keep the truth of the propositions, unencumbered by any troublesome questions about whether it actually happened or not But when we separate them like this, they both die. Liberals love story, but they cannot tell it any more because they have gutted it. Conservatives love abstracted truths, but they can't defend them anymore because truth without a body has no immune system.

We must meditate on the example given to us in the book God gave to us. There we learn to honor the power of the narrative, throughout the course of much of both the Old and New Testaments. And the preeminent preacher and teacher was, of course, our Lord Jesus. And how did he teach? The answer is that He taught overwhelmingly by means of parables--short stories. Why is this so rarely imitated?

We therefore have a responsibility (as Christians seeking to be faithful to God and His holy Word) to learn how to tell stories. We must do this so that we can repeat the story, for those who have not yet heard it. And we must also do this so that we can tell lesser stories, stories that revolve around the great story, and which derive their glory from it.

--Douglas Wilson