A new haircut. I decided to go back to short hair today. And I am so happy! Oh short hair, I forgot how wonderful you are: so light, so easy, so cool! Here are some pictures:
It is hard to take a picture of the back of your own head.
Isn’t it adorable? I am so happy!
For those of you who have expressed interest in reading my M. A. thesis, Your Daughters Shall Prophesy: A Theology of Single Women in Ministry, it is now in PDF format, ready to download.
Yes, you read my title correctly. Yesterday I found palm trees in Chicago. Lainie and I ate lunch together yesterday, and I decided to walk home from Wacker and Monroe. I was walking past Sears Tower when I noticed the building next door to the south had a huge atrium, so I decided to go investigate. The Birthday Cake building (so called because the top of the building looks like a cake) is the building to the left of the Sears Tower:
As I approached the revolving doors, I saw palm trees on the other side of the glass. I thought no way! There’s no way there are palm trees in there! I went through the revolving doors, and there is a way for there to be palm trees in Chicago. You need a really, big glass atrium. Here’s what I saw when I walked in (this is why you always carry a camera!).
The tables are part of Pazzos at 311, an Italian restaurant. The Hubby and I may have to try it out sometime.
And there’s also a fountain, a magnificent fountain:
That is my new Chicago discovery. I’m glad I went for a walk yesterday.
I normally don’t write political posts, but I am infuriated with our government, and the passing of the FISA amendment. The UCLA is taking out a full page ad in a major national newspaper to announce taking the un-Constitutional amendment to court. They want tens of thousands of signatures on the ad:
We want Congress to stand up for our freedom, but they keep caving in to fear mongering! Help the ACLU spell it out for them.
The ACLU is preparing to challenge the unconstitutional FISA Amendments Act in court and protect your right to privacy.
In addition, the ACLU will be taking out a full-page ad in a major national newspaper announcing the lawsuit and expressing outrage at this abandonment of our Constitutional principles. Their goal is to run an ad containing the names of tens of thousands of Americans who believe in the Constitution and want Congress to hear our message loud and clear: next time, stand up for our rights.
There has never been a more important moment to demonstrate to our leaders that we believe in freedom – not fear.
Go here to sign. I already did. Tell this government that illegal wire tapping is a crime, and that the Fourth Ammendment is still part of the Constitution. Treason is NEVER legal or moral.
A couple of articles on religion from The Washington Post caught my eye today. The first talks about the Coptic Christians withdrawing from Muslim society in Egypt. This is so sad to hear. Christians and Muslims have lived side-by-side in peace in Egypt for centuries. The one thing that struck me is that when Christians and Muslims live in the same neighborhoods, they are good friends. There are no violent clashes. It’s the Christians and Muslims that have separated themselves into separate enclaves that are clashing. In an article I wrote for Credo magazine, I said, “When we make friends outside of our own group–Muslims, Buddhists, or atheists–it is harder to consider an entire group an enemy” (p. 23 in upcoming November 2008 issue). We cannot consider a whole group of people an enemy when we have friends, and they put a human face on that group. Here is an excerpt from Egypt’s Coptic Christians are Choosing Isolation:
Sidhom said he has a simple rule for predicting where Muslim and Christian violence will break out. In a community where Muslims and Christians still live and work together, he said, there will be no problem.
At another auto parts store in Shobra, where Copts and Muslims intermingle, Copt and Muslim clerks laughed at the idea of religious strife.
“Any wedding, funeral, they will be there,” Hussein Mohammed Negem said of his Christian friends. A black bruise on his forehead showed Negem to be a Muslim who regularly bows his head to the floor in prayer.
Nagib Emed Aziz George, a Christian shopkeeper from next door, smiled as he leaned on Negem, his arm and chin propped on the Muslim man’s shoulder.
The worst thing about this is that Jesus taught that our worst enemy is our neighbor, and we are to love them and care for them (see The Good Samaritan, Luke ). This goes directly against the second greatest commandment: Love your neighbor as yourself. It doesn’t matter if you agree with their religion or not, we still love them as Christ loves us and loves them.
The second article is about a Jewish pilgrimage in Morocco:
While religious tensions flare in Jerusalem and beyond, in Morocco, Jews and Muslims say they nurture a legacy of tolerance and maintain common sanctuaries where adherents of both religions pray. Decades of emigration to Israel by Morocco’s Jews and terrorist bombings in Casablanca that targeted Jewish sites haven’t diminished the draw of these annual pilgrimages.
During the festival that began Friday, visitors prayed and feasted around the shrine of Abraham Ben Zmirro, a rabbi reputed to have fled persecution in Spain in the 15th century and then lived in Safi, where he is buried with six siblings.
A half-Jewish, half-Muslim band played local tunes during a banquet, including a song in French, Arabic and Hebrew with the line: “There is only one God, you worship Him sitting down and I while standing up.”
The pilgrims were joined Sunday by Aaron Monsenego, the great rabbi of Morocco, who prayed alongside the regional governor and several other Muslim officials at the shrine’s synagogue for the good health of Morocco’s King Mohammed VI and his family.
“It’s very important for us to pray altogether,” Monsenego told The Associated Press.
People of different faiths can come together, worship together, pray together, and live together. But first we have to listen to each other and actually get to know each other. And above all: respect each other!
MJCIV posted this prayer on Street Prophets. This prayer in in M’s daughter’s book god bless the gargoyles by Dav Pilkey.
God bless the rain and the stormclouds that bring it
God bless the music, and the voices that sing it.
God bless the ones who sing everything wrong.
God bless all creatures who do not belong.
God bless the hearts and the souls who are grieving
For those who have left, and for those who are leaving.
God bless each perishing body and mind,
God bless all creatures remaining behind.
God bless the dreamers whose dreams have awoken.
God bless the lovers whose hearts have been broken.
God bless each soul that is tortured and taunted,
God bless all creatures alone and unwanted.
Singing Owl said: Back in the day, before I went to seminary, I worked in the Children’s Room at the Public Library, and every year we geared up for Summer Reading. Children would come in and record the books read over the summer, and the season included numerous special and celebratory events. As a lifelong book lover and enthusiastic summer reader, I find I still accumulate a pile of books for the summer.
This week, then, a Summer Reading Friday Five.
1) Do you think of summer as a particularly good season for reading? Why or why not?
Yes, I think it’s because I was in school for so long, and summer was when I could read whatever I want.
2) Have you ever fallen asleep reading on the beach?
No, but I’m willing to give it a try.
3) Can you recall a favorite childhood book read in the summertime?
Anything by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
4) Do you have a favorite genre for light or relaxing reading?
Urban fantasy. Last weekend I read Jim Butcher’s White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9) and Francis Clark’s Waking Brigid. I stayed up until 3:00 in the morning reading, and read both books in two days. I love doing that! Although it doesn’t happen as often as it used to. But there’s nothing better than being curled up in bed lost in a book as the wee hours tick tock by.
5) What is the next book on your reading list?
A book my friend Jen wrote. I’m eagerly awaiting for her to finish the second draft.
I swiped the picture from Singing Owl. 🙂
After watching the Food Network in PJs all morning, I went to the library. It’s been a good day. 🙂 Here’s what I checked out:
Fiction
White Night (The Dresden Files, Book 9) by Jim Butcher (I need a Bob fix)
Waking Brigid by Francis Clark
Feminist books for Career Women of the Bible
Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility and The Whole Woman by Germaine Greer
Thinking and Creativity
Serious Creativity Using the Power of La and De Bono’s Thinking Course, Revised Edition by Edward De Bono
When I came out of the library, I heard music and walked a block to the park by the library, and there was a Cool Jazz Festival going on, so I enjoyed that for awhile. It’s a gorgeous day here in Chi-town. It’s sunny with big, fluffy white clouds gliding by, in the 70s with a great breeze. Perfect weather for the pizza party that will be happening on the roof of our building this evening.
What are you doing this weekend? What are reading?
From Kimberly Roth at Jesus Manifesto:
I am a daughter of Eve.
I am a daughter of the woman who plucked fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because it seemed good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom (and was also kind enough to share with her husband).
I am a daughter of the curse.
I am a son of God.
Through faith, I have been clothed with Christ Jesus and am neither male nor female but Christ, Abraham’s seed, living in me through the Spirit.
I am a son of the promise.
<snip>
Why is it that women in vocational ministry seems to be Christianity’s final frontier?
Ok, God, we can accept those Gentile believers, and we can even give up our slaves… but you can not be serious about that female thing?! Surely you’re not going to let Eve off the hook that easily. Did Jesus put you up to this? Do you have any idea how long it took us to live down that whole Deborah thing (and don’t even get me started on her friend Jael…)?
There seems to be a lot of fear surrounding what would happen if women were released to run amok in ministry, at least down here in the Bible belt. Children would be abandoned, meals would go unprepared, men would be disrespected in their own homes and left to pick up their own dirty underwear. Chaos would ensue. Theology would be twisted beyond recognition. Salvation as we know it would cease. Sunday school is one thing, but the entire Body of Christ… that’s just too much to consider.
I grew up with this attitude. It took God a long time to convice me that yes God could call me into leadership positions, and that it was okay that I DID NOT want to be a traditional wife, and do not want to have children. God used women like Deborah and Jael who were not typical wives, and the Bible does not even mention if they have children. God also used women like Mary Magdalene and Lydia–single women who were not linked to men, other than Jesus. God also used Priscilla and Aquilla who worked side by side making tents and pastoring churches. It’s been a long, and at times hard, road. I know I need to write about it. I have said that I would. I guess I need to start writing. I always put off telling my story. I guess I don’t think it’s that important. But may be it is important. May be I need to tell my story, so I can tell other women’s stories. I know that is far past time for Eve and her daughters to be redeemed.
How do you feel about telling your story?
1. Don’t be mean. It makes you hard to work with, and is that how you really want to be remembered?
2. Don’t be afraid to experiment and explore. Yes, you might have the occasional mess, but you will also eat a lot of exquisite meals.
3. Live (and cook) from both the head and heart.
4. Be passionate and in love with what you do.
5. Taste your food before you serve it.
6. Admit when you’re wrong.
7. Chicago girls rule! (Yes, I was cheering for Stephanie!)