Dominion Family

It is a funny, sad thing but negativity sells. In order to boost my blog hits after my dismal rejection of it, I have decided to tell you all about the things I would have blogged about had I been blogging last month which I was not I put the smileys in for those who never quite know when I am joking

In truth ( I am sick of saying actually), my final irritation which happened last night in Decatur, Alabama decided the fate of my blogging venture. I just HAD to have a place to vent.

If you wake up at 4:00 am with a pithy blog post running through your head it is best to get up and blog it. I am sure that is what G K Chesterton did. If you wait until 7:30 to write your thoughts down they will lose their pithiness. Nevertheless, while being witty is lethal, it’s the thoughts (ideas) that count.

The world is ever turning on the widening gyre and all that, but sometimes we wake up and realize it must have turned a whole lot while we were sleeping. Suddenly everyone is saying things that just a few years ago no one would have said or thought. That’s ok for a while until suddenly you begin to realize that everyone is Everyone and the world has turned upside down.

Isaiah 5:20 Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!

I am about to tell you about three separate issues that are all connected in my mind. They are all screaming at me that the world has changed, that good is now evil and evil is called good. It has changed so much I very much doubt that you will agree with me on all 3 things, which sort of implies, I guess, that I think I am right, which I do. But that can’t be helped. I always think I am right. I know that I am not always right, I just don’t know where I am wrong. When you can’t be G K Chesterton go for Bertie Wooster.

I will start with the one you are most likely to disagree with on then proceed to mature content followed by blasphemy.

1. I am driving along in my car along 565 in Huntsville/Madison, Alabama. Madison, Alabama is the birthplace of the middle class. It couldn’t be any more suburban if it tried. But it does try. Everyone in Madison always does everything right. They save money and buy iPods and send their children to rival universities and go to church. There are so many Toyotas for dad and Suburbans for mom it irks. I get curmudgeonly just driving in Madison in my Honda van on my way to a pedicure. I feel just a tiny bit superior. At least I know this is all a silly game. I am a detached onlooker and social critic but I am playing and that is where all the angst comes from. Someday I will buy a farm in KY.

Anyway, there is a big billboard. Unfortunately I can’t remember EXACTLY what it says. I am a global thinker. But it is for a local college and it says something like:

Own a successful business? Make it count by getting your degree at our easy-to-attend university.

Let us pause and think. What is wrong with this picture?

My blood pressure is up just writing that down. For me it is the last straw. I am so entirely sick of this whole college thing. Of course, everything I say sounds like sour grapes and I must admit a few of my gripes are sour.

How did this happen? When did getting a college degree become important after you had succeeded in life? Now please understand I am not talking about EDUCATION. If that is what we were talking about it wouldn’t be an issue. I would go to Bannockburn, New Saint Andrew, St John, even Bob Jones in a heartbeat to improve my education. But I am just so offended that people think that masses and masses of students can go to college, get a degree and it means something. You can argue that the piece of paper means something in our society but that is where it stops. It is a piece of paper. If you are successful, you are successful you don’t need a piece of paper to prove it.

I know, I know. There are a lot of societal issues here. I am just saying it is a game and don’t ever forget it. I hate to break the news but not all of our children are Above Average, right? My point is that this shouldn’t matter one whit. God made lots of people; they can’t all be Above Average according to the current trends in Madison, Al.

There is a whole fulfilling life for ordinary people committed to Christ and content not to constantly strive after false values. Only they can’t be too ordinary for they have to be very brave and very sure.

I want to apologize for beating this horse so much but I am not going to. Somebody must beat it.

Ok, ok, I am not going to be able to tell you about 2 and 3 right now. I have to go lie down and think of waves while listening to Tchaikovsky.

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I hope you will allow me a little folly on my return. Every once in a while, since I was in the 8th grade, I think, I have written poetry.

I return to the modern arena with a poem. You will find in it quite a bit of accidental, incidental cribbing, but that is, after all, the point.

The cradle rocks the beat of mother’s heart
The rhythm of the English timpani
The gentle rocking telling of a start
Of language born in ten-part harmony
I hear the telltale heartbeat everyday
It tells THE story; it must have its say.

The singing of the old pentameter
It reaches out to me across the Isle
I am a hearer and a character
In that song-story, wild and clear and mild.
To sleep, to dream perchance it is to hear
The melancholy song; it brings a tear.

I am a mother born of Caedmon’s call.
I chant in old iambs to my children.
They gather round to listen one and all.
They wander off repeating lines of ten
And so across the ages heart to heart
The Shakespeares and the Miltons get their start

And as they take the stages of their time
I sing in the dark shadows of the room.
My voice, they scarcely know that it is mine
But still I sing among the curtains gloom
Do not be sad for me it is the way
It does not stop the lilting cradle‘s sway.

And so from out of bourne and time and space
I’m caught up in the song that birthed the stars
I hear the waves crash louder from that place
I long to hear the moaning of the bar.
Then face to face I’ll hear my great love say
That was a lovely song. You sang my way.

“Copyright 2007 by Cynthia Rollins”

Tomorrow, Lord willing, I will tell you about 3 things that got my goat over the last month.

Thanks for all the kind comments. On the way home from the baseball game tonight (yes, it’s fall ball) I asked Nathaniel if he thought I should just stay on sabbatical. He didn’t answer which is his way but it was nice to come home and find the comments.

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Over at at Semicolon Sherry is welcoming in the autumn. Now we enter the best time of the year. We should have good weather and good times from here until January 2nd.

Unfortunately, I have had the most disheartening autumn news. We won’t be having any real cider this year. Oh, we can buy that stuff at the local grocery store but our favorite vegetable stand is selling apples from West Virginia this year. No big bins of local apples for us, no apple cider slushes, no hot cider in the crockpot for Thanksgiving. The West Virginia apples aren’t looking too jolly either.

I didn’t tell you we didn’t have any peaches this year, did I?

Our weather could not have been worse from the middle of March when the apples were killed by frost through the summer long lack of rain to an entire month with temperatures over 100 degrees. I am beginning to pause movies on thunderstorm scenes. I have a theory about the weather. If you are a Christian you are only allowed to complain about one season of the year. If you hate the cold you may mutter all winter but you are disallowed from complaining about the heat. But if you complained all summer about the heat you must now cease complaining until next May. I did not complain about the heat although the lack of rain did grate.

I despise any weather that causes me to have to wear clogs and socks instead of sandals. I believe you could make the case that sandals are more biblical

I grew up in Florida so the whole idea of autumn was lost on me until I was 18 and spent the fall with my grandmother in Cincinnati. Call me slow but I had a bulletin board epiphany at 18. Suddenly all the yellow raincoats, puddles and leaves floating amongst the cork made sense.
So much of my early education was lost in translation.

Happiness
by A A Milne

John had
Great Big
Waterproof
Boots on;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Hat;
John had a
Great Big
Waterproof
Mackintosh –
And that
(Said John)
Is
That.

I have not forgotten my rants. Two to go. I don’t think I will ever be finished ranting about #1.

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While I have teased about boosting my blog hits there are some kinds of hits I do not want and I certainly don’t need any more spam. I am distressed that some legitimate comments get lost in the spam folder but I can hardly wade through thousands of spam comments a day. If you don’t see your comment it has either gone to moderation from whence it will appear later in the day even if you say ugly things about me, or it will be in the spam folder where it will languish and die.

I say all that because today’s topic uses a few words that could provoke problems. I am going to use the word ‘nursing’ to describe how a mother feeds her baby and I might also make up a few words or leave out a few letters as I go along.

This reminds me of the night Alex and Andrew and I spent in the Dupont Children’s Hospital after they both had febrile seizures. I was there all night “nursing” Alex. I told Andrew he couldn’t go to sleep yet because the “nurse” was coming in to see him. He got a disgusted look on his face and cried, “She’s going to nurse me?”

I am not done with disclaimers. I am going to discuss this subject from a sociological point of view. I don’t mean to imply that I think women should let it all hang out in public. Nursing mothers should be discreet.

But that really isn’t the issue here imho.

My dad told me this story while I was visiting him in the hospital in Lexington, KY. He said a woman had been asked by the manager to stop nursing her baby in a local Applebys. This had caused the woman to start some sort of campaign for the right to nurse in public.

Putting the woman’s motives aside and the manager’s also, is this not the height of hypocrisy?
For a society that has a restaurant named something like “Shooters” to feel all disgusted by a woman nursing her baby is truly the world turned upside down. When you can walk into any place of business, church or restaurant and see more cleavage than thought possible and sometimes more than cleavage and increasingly more often, at that, to be squeamish of a baby being fed seems over the top.

The truth is that we have so sexualized the breast that it causes us discomfort to be reminded that it is also a mammary gland. In our increasingly adult world not only are children not welcome but we certainly do not want to be reminded that there are words like ‘procreation’ and ‘breastfeeding’. Better to hide the children away than to be reminded that ideas have consequences.

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My final rant is not much of a rant really just something that left me speechless. Maybe you can find the words that I can’t find.

In Decatur, AL there is a billboard that says:

Love God?
Hate Church?

It is the billboard that brought me back to blogging

It is an advertisement for a new church, a new kind of church. At first glance it appeared to be a sign for an online church but it looks like they will have real services.

The Epicchurch.tv website says their goals are:

epicchurch.tv exists to help people become
fully devoted followers of Christ.

we accomplish this by creating experiences where people are challenged and encouraged to…
Love God
Love Others
Serve the World

So they will be helping people serve Christ through experiences rather than through the Word.

Further frustrating statements on their website include:

RELEVANCE - Irrelevance is irreverence.

Time for a little hard cider.

GROWTH - Maturity does not equal conformity.

No, I suppose maturity means getting a cool haircut.

Anyway, that speaks for itself I think and it gives me a great chance to talk about my church. When we first went to our church, Tim and I made the decision and the children weren’t too happy. We had so many confirmations from the Lord that we were doing the right thing we decided to just see it play out. We wouldn’t normally just ignore the children’s cautions.
Now our 6 children at home love going to church every week. This in spite of the fact there hasn’t been one music video shown.

As we were singing this week I realized how comforting a liturgy is to a small child who can’t read. Alex has memorized several of our regular songs, The Apostle’s Creed and The Lord’s Prayer. He takes communion. This allows him to be a part of the body of Christ. He loves going to church and he loves being a part of the service. He wouldn’t be any happier in a children’s service. Would it make him happier to think that church was all about him rather than all about God?

Finally, we are doing something relevant at our church. We are participating in the 40 Days for Life. Starting tomorrow we will be fasting, praying and participating in peaceful vigils. I want to bring these 40 days home to my family and also highlight them on this blog. Pray that lives will be saved during the next 40 days and beyond.

I think I like Mylon Lefevre’s saying better:

Love God.
Hate sin.

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I am going to use today to clear up a few odds and ends.

Dana and Carol, I can’t make comments on Xanga anymore. I don’t know why.

Sora posts a billboard that trumps mine.

I know of at least 2 new blogs that appeared in my absence:

I got to meet Kerry at Circe this year. She is one of the Classed girls and has the loveliest family.

And I have also met Lisa W and family in person in Virginia even though she lives in California, which is good because I am NOT going to visit California no matter how many apples they have. Her boys are charming and now she has a new daughter.

On the home front, we suddenly have tiny, tiny ants and they are annoying. They don’t seem to be responding to the little octagons we have placed around the kitchen. We have killed millions of them with our bare hands but I am beginning to feel like a Spartan at Thermopylae. I even plugged the tiny pass in the window they were coming through but still they come on like the Persian hordes. Help!

And finally as my old friend Uncle Al used to sing:

Today’s your birthday
Today’s your birthday
We love a birthday party
We love a birthday party
We’re here to celebrate!

(Wouldn’t it be nice if all poetry were that easy?)
(Did you ever watch Uncle Al and Wendy?)

Yes, folks I have another 16 year old. The distress continues. Once again I will enjoy a day of reading at the DMV, unless it is some sort of Alabama holiday. Every time I try to go to that place it’s another obscure holiday. I guess that is how the south keeps its leisure and pace. (PS He passed and for the first time we only waited 10 minutes. Last time we waited 5 hours.)

And here is the handsome fellow with the bridesmaid he escorted at Nicholas’ wedding. I must admit he cleans up nice. To tell you just a tad about Christopher: he works at Chick-Fil-A, plays fantasy baseball, talks baseball stats most of the time, plays infield, loves to read about WWII and had an intelligent conversation with his brother yesterday about the merits of The Aeneid over The Iliad.

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