Category Archives: Uncategorized

Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God

Was it because I dispatched my husband at the 11th hour to buy a peach pie rather than making a fancy casserole for the church’s potluck lunch? Was it because – if truth be told – I never had any intention of breaking a sweat over any kind of casserole – fancy or plain? I’m not sure for which of my many sins I was being punished, but this Sunday I learned that Jonathan Edwards was absolutely right:

We find it easy to tread on and crush a Worm that we see crawling on the Earth; so ’tis easy for us to cut or singe a slender Thread that any Thing hangs by; thus easy is it for God when he pleases to cast his Enemies down to Hell.

It was “Worship in the Courtyard” Sunday. After the service, there was a bounce house, a potluck picnic, and even a magician. We marveled at the bountiful feast spread out by the hospitality committee. A long table was groaning under the weight of all the elaborate salads and casseroles that people had lovingly prepared with their own hands. My daughter was especially impressed by the watermelon cut out to look like a frog whose mouth contained a beautiful medley of fresh fruits, and she took pains to point it out to me. I nodded nonchalantly, trying not to betray the guilt I felt as I thought of the “store-boughten” pie I had furtively snuck onto the dessert table. I gorged myself on the feast others had brought, heedless of “the arrows of death” which “fly unseen at Noon-Day.”

It was time for the magician’s act. Like any true introvert would, I picked a seat in the very back row, right on the end of the aisle. About half way through the show, the magician’s wife and assistant asked for a volunteer. I gazed benignly around at the many hands shooting up all around me. Obviously, my own hands stayed firmly in my lap.

Almost every natural Man that hears of Hell, flatters himself that he shall escape it; he depends upon himself for his own Security; he flatters himself in what he has done, in what he is now doing, or what he intends to do; every one lays out Matters in his own Mind how he shall avoid Damnation, and flatters himself that he contrives well for himself, and that his Schemes won’t fail…He don’t intend to come to that Place of Torment…

“The woman in the back row with sunglasses on her head.”

I swiveled around in my seat to see which poor sucker had volunteered.

There was no woman in the back row with sunglasses on her head. Except for me. The magician’s assistant skewered me with her gaze and nodded vigorously as I pointed weakly to myself with a questioning, hangdog, really-can’t-you-see-that-I-am-dying-a-thousand-deaths-look.

Oh! then what will be the Consequence! What will become of the poor Worm that shall suffer it!…To what a dreadful, inexpressible, inconceivable Depth of Misery must the poor Creature be sunk, who shall be the Subject of this!…when God beholds the ineffable Extremity of your Case, and see your Torment to be so vastly disproportion’d to your Strength, and sees how your poor Soul is crushed and sinks down, as it were into an infinite Gloom, he will have no Compassion upon you, he will not forbear the Executions of his Wrath, or in the least lighten his Hand; there shall be no Moderation of Mercy, nor will God then at all stay his rough Wind…

I slunk up to the front and then this happened:

This is but a mere snippet of the “exquisite horrible Misery” I endured.

When you look forward, you shall see a long Forever, a boundless Duration before you, which will swallow up your Thoughts, and amaze your Soul; and you will absolutely despair of ever having any Deliverance, any End, any Mitigation, any Rest at all; you will know certainly that you must wear out long Ages, Millions of Millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting with this almighty merciless Vengeance; and then when you have so done, when so many Ages have actually been spent by you in this Manner, you will know that all is but a Point to what remains…

I sought comfort in the gaze of my husband who sat in the audience. What I found was my very own phone held aloft, recording every moment for posterity. My husband was holding my phone, grinning maniacally from ear to ear as he witnessed my torment.

How awful is it to be left behind at such a Day! To see so many others feasting, while you are pining and perishing! To see so many rejoycing and singing for Joy of Heart, while you have Cause to mourn for Sorrow Heart, and howl for Vexation of Spirit!

There was one person who pitied me. Later, as my son and fellow introvert watched the video my husband had recorded so gleefully, he literally averted his gaze and said, “I can’t watch! I feel so sorry for you! I’m so sorry that happened to you.”

At least one person in our family is not going to roast in hell for all of eternity.

*You can read the full text of Jonathan Edwards’ Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God here.

Dreams of Flight

When I was a little girl, I would occasionally dream that I was flying. I can still feel the exhilaration of effortlessly swooping and soaring through the air. My flight path would always take me high above my school playground, where I would see my grounded classmates gaping up at me, hands shading eyes, as I flew past. So vivid were my dreams, I was convinced that it was only a matter of time and practice before I would be able to fly in my waking hours too. Alas, the many hours I spent running and flapping my arms in my back yard were all for naught. Sadder still: as I grew older, my flying dreams became rarer and rarer until I eventually stopped having them altogether.

Last week a storm took the power out in our neighborhood. Reluctantly, I surrendered to the darkness and went to bed early, griping to my sister by text that I hoped to awaken in the 21st century, when we could take things like power and light for granted. At 4 am when the power was restored, I was awakened by the sound of systems coming back online. As I lay in bed listening to the clicking, whirring, and humming of my house in the ‘burbs coming back to life, I realized with nostalgia and regret that I had had my first flying dream in decades. It went like this…

My dream began at work, where I quarreled with a colleague and huffily announced that I was quitting to take another job. The new job was even more stressful, because I had to pretend I knew what I was doing, all while straining to be perky and personable to make a good first impression. Suddenly, I was outside, and I was flying. But instead of soaring past it all, sleek and serene, as if in a Chagall painting, I was seated on a wobbly, flying ring. I gripped the sides of the ring for dear life as it bore me aloft. I was completely at the mercy of the wind. Scared that I would lose my balance and plummet from my perch, I timidly tried to exercise some control over where I was going by kicking my legs, to no avail. From time to time, a strong gust of wind would suddenly lift me to a dizzying height. Just as suddenly, the wind would die down, and I would sink alarmingly fast toward the ground. At one point, I looked down to see a man and his child flying a kite. I glanced up just in time to see their big box kite coming straight at my face and had to quickly duck my head to avoid slamming into it. It was then that I woke up.

It’s pretty obvious the universe is sending me an important message through this dream. I think it’s telling me it’s time to shrug off this mortal coil, to slip “the surly bonds of Earth,” to get out there and start flapping my arms again…And I almost definitely will! Maybe tomorrow. If it’s not raining, or too hot, and if I’m not too tired after work.

 

 

 

Panoramic Sugar Eggs

For the past couple of years, I’ve been taking my kids to the Lorna Sundberg International Center at the University of Virginia to decorate panoramic sugar eggs. When we’ve gone, all the hard work has already been done for us. All we have to do is show up and decorate our already-made eggs. If you’re feeling ambitious, making the eggs from start to finish would be a fun project for Easter or to do over the spring break.

Panoramic Sugar Eggs

  • Whisk 2 egg whites until frothy. You can add food coloring to the egg whites to make a colored egg.
  • Place 5 lbs. of white sugar in a large bowl. (Superfine sugar will give the eggs more sparkle).
  • Create a well in the sugar and pour in whisked egg whites.
  • Mix with hands 5 minutes until well blended.
  • Pack sugar mixture firmly into a mold. You can buy special egg molds, or just use a plastic Easter egg like this one with a flattened base:
This egg came from Michael’s.
  • Scrape tops of packed eggs with a knife to flatten, then remove from mold and place on a baking sheet flat side down.
  • Bake in preheated oven at 200 degrees for 20 minutes.
  • Hollow out the center of the egg halves with a spoon until the shells are about 1/2″ thick. (You can reuse scooped out sugar to make more eggs, just place in bowl and cover with damp paper towel).
  • Cut off the front of the narrower end of the egg and continue to hollow out the viewing window as necessary.
  • Let air dry for 2-3 hours, or put eggs on their backs into a 200 degree oven for another 45 minutes to finish hardening.
  • Gently rub two halves together to smooth edges.
  • Create a scene inside the egg by arranging small figures, candy, and “grass” inside egg. Secure everything with royal icing. (Beat two egg whites until stiff, but not dry. Add 4 cups sifted confectioner’s sugar and beat for another minute. Add more egg white or sugar as needed. Tint with food coloring).
  • Pipe royal icing along an edge and press two halves of egg together. Run finger along edges to remove excess icing.
  • Use pastry bags filled with tinted icing to pipe borders and other decorations on the egg. A decorative border will hide the seams where the egg halves come together. You can pipe your own flowers onto the egg, or buy frosting flowers and attach them with icing.
  • A vertical egg can be made by cutting through the flat egg half, using the flattened area as a cutting guide to create the window. Try creating a base by packing sugar into the rounded wider edge of a plastic egg that opens vertically. Fasten the egg to the rounded side of the base with royal icing.

Eggs can be displayed for Easter, then wrapped in plastic and kept in a dark, dry place. Sugar eggs will last indefinitely.

Here are some eggs the kids and I made a couple years ago:

Fly-by Post

Thanks to my friend, Anne, who posted this link on Facebook, I have now become a completely useless and unproductive member of society.

A livecam is set up 24/7, which gives you a front-row seat to all the adventures happening in an eagle aerie, somewhere in Codorus State Park in Pennsylvania. Two little eaglets hatched from their eggs just a few days ago and their parents are lovingly tending to them.

The first time I tuned in, I saw a bloody and headless-yet-still-flopping-fish in one corner of the nest. The mama eagle sat on top of her charges, impassively watching their next meal’s wild gyrations from the center of the nest. When I tuned in today around lunch time I got to actually see the two gangly, ridiculous-looking little eaglets roughhousing with each other like a couple of toddlers. The mama sauntered over to the edge of the nest, picked at that now-unmistakably-dead-fish and tried to feed her charges. They took a few bites but were far more interested in wrestling with each other. She finally gave up trying to feed them, sat on them, and rocked them back to sleep. I’m not exaggerating, she ROCKED her little eaglets back to sleep, or submission, or at least stillness. Her partner made a cameo appearance too. He showed up for a few minutes, ate some fish, and flew off.

This is the most compelling reality tv I’ve ever seen!

Showing up

First posted a year ago today…

A week ago today I went to a memorial service for a woman I first met in graduate school in New York City. She had been a fellow student in my department for a year or so before she disappeared. People dropped out of the program all the time, and I assumed that she, like so many others, had decided it wasn’t for her. Although we were never close, I was surprised and delighted to spot her familiar face in the choir loft of the church my husband and I began to attend when we moved to Charlottesville about four years later. I found her after the service and tried to reconnect with her by chatting about our department and about New York. My overtures were coldly rebuffed. I was bewildered, but gave it no more thought until the following Sunday when she found me and wordlessly handed me a handwritten note on a scrap of paper before walking away. In the note she told me that she had been forced to give up her studies because of her health problems. It was painful for her to talk about her time in New York, because it was a cruel reminder of everything she had lost.

“Thank you for your note,” I said the next time I saw her. She did not reply. I’m sad to say that these were the last words we ever exchanged. Over the years, I awkwardly smiled at her or waved as we crossed paths. She would make eye contact with me, but nothing more. I feared that the very sight of me made her unhappy. Our paths diverged further and further. I eventually finished my degree and began teaching in my field. My family rapidly proliferated. She grew sicker and ever more remote. I would often see her walking along the road on her crutches, always alone. I learned from her obituary that on top of her other health issues, she had been diagnosed with Asperger’s, which would explain some of the difficulty we had in interacting. From her obituary I also learned that she had graduated from Harvard with high honors, that she had a working knowledge of seven languages, and that she was a Chicago Cubs fan…Now she’s gone, and I’m left wondering if I should have tried harder to be a friend to her. If I had persisted, maybe I would have learned these things from her, rather than from her obituary. In the end, all I could do was show up for her memorial service.

It was a beautiful service given with love and compassion by our minister who knew her and appreciated her struggles, her strengths, her quirks and the essential goodness of her character. Knowing that she was unable to work, the church staff had appointed her as “adjunct staff.” She took care of things like folding the church bulletins, making sure the pencils in the friendship register were sharpened just so, and gathering up bulletins left behind in the pews to recycle. She volunteered at the hospital and for Emergency Food Bank, and many other places as well. The minister read a prayer for her called “For Those Whose Work is Invisible” by Mary Gordon from her series of “Prayers for the Unprayed-for”:

For those who paint the undersides of boats, makers of ornamental drains on roofs too high to be seen, for cobblers who labour over inner-soles, for seamstresses who stitch the wrong sides of linings, for scholars whose research leads to no obvious discovery, for dentists who polish each gold surface of the fillings on upper molars, for sewer engineers and those who repair water mains, for electricians, for artists who suppress what does injustice to their visions, for surgeons whose sutures are things of beauty. For all those whose work is for your eyes only, who labour for your entertainment or their own, who sleep in peace, or who do not sleep in peace, knowing that their efforts are unknown. Protect them from downheartedness and from diseases of the eye. Grant them perseverence, for the sake of your love which is humble, invisible and heedless of reward.

I’ve only been able to locate these prayers on JSTOR, which I hope you can access. They are full of poetry, humor, and empathy for human beings in all of their diversity. Gordon lovingly casts a holy light on human frailties and foibles by juxtaposing them with divine acts of creation, mercy and love. Here are excerpts from the other prayers in this series, all of which are worth reading:

For Liars: “Shelter them in their dream for an earth more various than our own…For your sake, who have thought of universes not yet made that rest, like lies, in the mind of your infinite love.”

For Those Who Have Given Up Everything for Sexual Love: “Grant that we who have lacked their courage may be strengthened by their example to pursue our partial loves with gladness and fullness of heart.”

For Those Who Devote Themselves to Personal Adornment: “Bless them, because a change in fashion can allow us to believe there could just be, for all of us, a change in heart. Grant this for the sake of your love which has adorned the mountains and created feathers and elaborate tails, O Lord, source of all that exists for delight only, for display only, suggestions, in the joy of their variety, of the ecstasy of light that is eternal, changeless and ever changing.”

For The Wasteful: “Look with kindness upon those who travel first class in high season, on those who spend whole afternoons in cafes, those who replay songs on juke boxes, who engage in trivial conversations, who memorize jokes and card tricks, those who tear open their gifts and will not reuse the wrappings, who hate leftovers and love room service, who do not wait for sales. For all foolish virgins, for those who knowingly give their hearts to worthless charmers, for collectors of snowmen paperweights, memorial cups and souvenir pens. For those who take the long way home…We pray to you whose love is prodigal, who multiplied the loaves and fishes so that there were baskets upon baskets left, who turned plain water into wine of a quality no one required, who gave your life when you need only have lifted a finger…”

For Those Who Misuse, Or Do Not Use, Or Cannot Use Their Gifts: “For conservatory-trained composers of incidental music, for beauties run to fat, for the patrons of charlatans, for athletes who watch television, for poets who write commercials, for mathematicians turned card sharks, for legal aid lawyers turned corporate counsel, for actors who are waiters, for wives who do not wish to stay at home, for cat lovers afraid of mess, for paramours afraid of transmittable diseases, for those who no longer go to auditions, for blacksmiths and letterpress printers…protect them from diseases of the spine, so that they may turn and bend to glimpse your hand at the fork of roads not taken, at the tunnel’s end.”

My own prayer? That I will gain the courage, the strength of character, and the compassion exemplified in these prayers to show up for the living, rather than for the dead.

Lovely

lovely-blogThank you, Nicola Bourne, for nominating me for the One Lovely Blog Award! One of the best aspects of working on this blog has been connecting with people like Nicola, both in person and through their writing.

To accept the award you must 1) thank the person who nominated you, 2) display the One Lovely Blog Award button, 3) say seven things about yourself, and 4) nominate others for the award and let them know you’ve done so by leaving a comment on their blog. (I haven’t been able to figure out how to do this for all of them)!

 

Seven things about myself…

1) When people ask me where I’m from, I never know what to say…Arlington? Charlottesville? Korea? Outer Space?

2) I have a catastrophically poor sense of direction and am constantly getting lost. Fortunately, I’m married to a freaking bloodhound, who could be dropped blindfolded in the middle of the Sahara and still manage to make his way home. I’d be lost without him.

3) I’m a night owl. For as long as I can remember, I have always dreaded the moment when I have to actually go to bed. I love sleeping, but for some reason, the decision to go to bed always fills me with irrational anxiety and makes me feel like I’m giving up. I’m out like a light as soon as my head hits the pillow though.

4) I adore nature in theory, but am most definitely an indoorsy kind of person.

5) Similarly, I love the idea of pets, but it never seems to really work out for me.

6) I veer between complete shiftlessness to obsessive, single-minded fixation on whatever project happens to capture my interest at the moment.

7) I’ve always thought people have certain kinds of luck. For example, I once had a roommate who always won prizes and lotteries. I’ve never once in my life won so much as a gumball. My particular kind of luck in life has been my family.

 

The ten blogs I nominate for the One Lovely Blog Award are all written by Charlottesvillians, almost all of whom I’m lucky to count as friends…

100% of our brothers have cancer is a blog by a husband and wife team, who write about their lives with raw honesty and humor. I have all kinds of respect for them.

Amomynity is written by a blogger from Charlottesville. I don’t actually know her, but I feel like I do. I think we’d get along!

Cold is written by a friend who has just published her novel, The Bone Church. For years I knew her only as the mother of one of my son’s friends. I was blown away when I discovered that she is an amazing writer.

I went to see DeeDee Stewart’s one woman show, Dirty Barbie and Other Girlhood Tales and was utterly enthralled. The show is based on personal stories from her blog DeeDees Living Will.

For What It’s Worth (FWIW) is an advice column written by a friend and featured in the It’s Obvi blog. Her advice is always, always spot on.

A Gringuinha Grega is written by a friend who has been doing research for her dissertation in Brazil. She describes her struggles and triumphs along the way with vulnerability and infectious enthusiasm.

Jocelyn Johnson is not only the amazing and beloved art teacher at my kids’ elementary school, she is also a wonderful writer.

A Minister’s Musings is a thoughtful and thought-provoking blog written by my former next-door-neighbor, and favorite Unitarian minister, clown, magician, fire-eating philosopher.

Mothermade is “a collection of thoughts on being American, Asian and adopted,” written by my friend, who has been burning up the internet lately with a #flipthescript campaign to give adoptees a voice. Although she’s moved away, I’ll always think of her as a C’ville friend.

Riding the A Train is my friend’s whip smart and deeply moving blog about “a mom, a boy, and autism.”

 

Portraits

Beach portrait

I’ve just added a new Portraits tab. Please check it out, and let me know if you’d be interested in having me take portraits of YOUR family!

 

Is that so wrong? Part 2

When my first child was little, he never seemed to hear me until I was shouting at the top of my lungs. I began to suspect that there might be an underlying medical condition which would explain this, so I took him to get his hearing checked. When the doctor announced that his hearing was perfect, I was just the teeniest, tiniest bit disappointed…

Is that so wrong?