For all you non-Christians, this book isn’t for you. It’s basic premise — Rescuing Marriage and Sexuality from the Economics of a Fallen World — rests upon a belief in the Bible and in the words of Jesus. Without that, there really isn’t any point in reading this book. Oh, and this is going to be a long post because there’s a lot to say. Feel free to skip it. 🙂
For the rest of us, this book, by Carrie A. Miles, is an interesting look into the history of male-female relationships, marriage, and th expectations laid out in the Bible for both. Her basic assertion is that God never intended marriage to be “man rules and works and woman stays at home”, but rather God created male and female to be complete in each other.

The reason given in Genesis 2 for woman’s existence in no way implies her inferiority, but neither does it support the notion that she is complete in herself. Woman is not creation’s all in all any more than the man is. … Rather, sexuality in creation belongs not to the individual but to the relationship. Female and male exist only for the sake of the other. Power has nothing to do with it.

It’s only because of the Fall that the historical pattern of marriage emerged.

Miles spends a lot of time on the economic history of marriage. She asserts that it’s because man had to work for his bread that what we’ve come to view as “traditional” marriage emerged. And then, only because the woman had an asset that man didn’t: the ability to give birth. Because she could do that, and because children were essential to the economy of the pre-industrial world, she was by necessity tied to the house. If she worked hard in the fields, she ran the chance of miscarrying. Having given birth, she was tied to the house to nurse and then raise the child. Miles writes, “Eve was told that she would bring forth children in sorrow– sorrow because they would be valued not for their individuality or for their relationship with God but for what they could produce.”

Miles goes on to write that Jesus (and even Paul) asserted that this was not the way relationships between man and women were supposed to be.

Jesus opened the door not only to female discipleship but to the possibility of men and women interacting without reference to sex. Further, in shifting the blame for lust from the woman to the man, Jesus removed the assumption of sinfulness that adhered to women’s very existence as female.

(There’s even a chapter on the Song of Songs — or the Song of Solomon, as I know it — and how it’s a blueprint for a true and lasting relationship. Very interesting.)

She goes on to assert that what Christians believe is a decline in morals in today’s society is a result of the Industrial Revolution. Marriage, in the last 100 years, has essentially become a luxury, not a necessity. We marry for love, for sexual attraction, not because we need someone to bear our children so that we have people to work the farm. “Feminism,” she writes, “did not cause the breakdown of the family; rather, the breakdown of the historic functions of the family caused feminism.”

She goes on to write:

With the forces sustaining the sexual cartel gone, young women in the 1960s discovered that they had little restraint on their sexual behavior. Casting away the old morality once inculcated through shame and obligation, young women began asking themselves the same question that importunate young men had been askig forever: Why not? Why not enjoy the same “sexual prerogatives” that men enjoyed? Economically dependent on neither man nor child, tehy armed themselves with reliable birth control, the right to abortion should birth control prove not to be so reliable, and, if all else failed, the knowledge that a good job, welfare, or child support would sustain them. While far from every woman personally embraced the sexual revolution, middle-class women increasingly took it as their right to join the wealthy in behaving as they pleased.

So, what do we, as Christians, do with this? If what has been historically the traditional marriage relationship is not supported by the Bible, then what? Unfortunately, here is where the book breaks down. It’s not that she doesn’t make the book relevant to 21st-century relationships; she does. But she doesn’t do it with the same passion and assertion that she talks about the historical relationships and Biblical expectations. I’m not sure what I was expecting; this isn’t a marriage-help book. But, I think I was expecting some sort of light: Ah, THIS is how I can make my marriage work better. Or, THIS is what I can do to survive in this world. There is a lot of talk about “in the world of thorns”, and I suppose the assumption is that if we didn’t want to live in the world of thorns, we wouldn’t do that. Perhaps, I may have been expecting something Miles felt wasn’t necessary. In fact, her last paragraph reads:

The Bible offers a single, simple ideal for marriage: a union of two souls that is romantic, poetic, and by worldly standards completely impractical. But God did not create sexuality and marriage to be practical. Practicality is for those who live outside the garden. redeemed as Christians and as lovers, we keep the fruit of our own vineyards.

In the end, then I figure this book is just an extended study on how the Bible interprets marriage. Whether or not anyone gets anything out of it is completely up to them.Which, I guess, is a lot like religion and our relationship with God. We can learn all we can but if we don’t do anything about it, there’s really no point to the knowledge we have. We need to be constantly progressing and changing, and if that means reconsidering our relationship to our spouse (and children) then this book can be a good catalyst for doing that.

Ah, Wendell Berry. The last time I attempted to read him, I, um, didn’t succeed. But then, I wasn’t getting much sleep either. And one thing I’ve learned about Berry is that you really have to focus on what he’s saying. I re-realized that with this book; I found I got the most out of the essays when it was quiet.

So, about the essays — the book is a collection of some of Berry’s essays on from the last thirty years, though I think the most recent was written in 1999. They touch on typical Berry subjects: the environment, place, community, conservation, farming. It wasn’t as extremist as I remember being Sex, Freedom, Economy & Community being (though there are several essays from that book here), but there was still food for thought.

And, as an interesting aside, I felt less guilty than usual while reading this book. I guess I have to back up a bit here: Berry makes me feel guilty. I guess it’s because I actually am persuaded by many of his arguments, and feel bad that I’m not doing more in my life. And since we’ve actually started making changes in our lives (read hubby’s post about that here) to conserve and to treat the world we live in better, I was able to read this book without the huge dose of guilt that has come along with reading Berry in the past.

Some other thoughts. I loved the first essay: “A Native Hill”. They called it a geobiography, and it was just beautifully written. Berry is such an evocative writer.

Perhaps it is to prepare to hear someday the music of the spheres that I am always turning my ears to the music of streams. There is indeed a music in streams, but it is not for the hurried. It has to be loitered by and imagined. Or imagined toward, for it is hardly for men at all. Nature has a patient ear. To her the slowest funeral march sounds like a jig. She is satisfied to have the notes drawn out to the lengths of days or weeks or months. Small variations are acceptable to her, modulations as leisurely as the opening of a flower.

There is one essay that hurt (I really can’t think of how else to put it). I was having a really bad day, as a mother, and I sat down to read “The Body and the Earth” and I got to a section entitled “Sexual Division”. And I read this:

This determinations that nurturing should become exclusively a concern of women served to signify to both sexes that neither nurture nor womanhood was very important. But the assignment to woman of a kind of work that was thought both onerous and trivial was the beginning of their exploitation… Women had become customers, a fact not long wasted on the salesmen, who saw that in these women they had customers of a new and most promising kind. The modern housewife was isolated from her husband, from her school-age children, and from other women. She was saddled with work from which much of the skill, hence much of the dignity, had been withdrawn, and which she herself was less and less able to consider important.

That’s exactly how I was feeling. Isolated. Like my life was a drudgery. It was emotional to see my feelings there on the page.

It was a good read. It is good to be reminded that nature is there and it is good, and an integral part of our lives, whether or not we live on a farm. That the real things in life: community, the growing season, nature, are what really matter. That technology and business isn’t the total sum of existence (and in fact, it just might do more harm than good). And if it takes an old crank from Kentucky to remind us of that, so be it.

I love Bill Bryson. Really. He usually makes me laugh out loud.

But I have absolutely no interest in finishing this book.

I’m about 3/4 of the way through (well, I’ve got 3 1/2 chapters left), and I’m looking at it, and looking at all the other books I’ve got to read and thinking to myself, “Nah. Not interested enough.”

It was pretty funny; he’s one of the few authors that can make me laugh out loud. But, with that said, I have two problems with the book.

Point number one. Saying he grew up in the 50s is kind of like saying I grew up in the 70s. I didn’t, not really. I was 8 in 1980, and I consider myself a child of the 80s. I can remember the 80s (pretty vividly), while the 70s are pretty much a haze. He was born in 1951. He was 9 in 1960. Yes, he was a child in the 1950s (mostly), but “growing up”? Not so much. It bugged me that he spoke with such authority about a time period when he was just a little kid. I don’t know why. It just did.

Which leads me to point number two.

2) I’m amazed anyone can remember in vivid detail anything before they’re 8 years old. It seems to me that this book was just an excuse to harp on and explore the 1950s. I would have rather something more memoir-ish. He’s become (at least with the last couple of books) more of a “trivia guy” rather than a story teller. The book was littered with little bits of trivia about the 1950s, some of which was interesting, but most of which was just distracting and annoying.

I’m sure there’s more wrong with the book. There’s more right with it, too. It reminds me of Bryson’s book The Lost Continent which I couldn’t get through either (he crossed the line from being funny to being mean, in my opnion). It’s too bad; he’s written some of my favorite books. This just isn’t going to be one of them.

I meant to write these separately, but I figured, since I finished the second book before I had a chance to post the first I’d just combine the two.

So, Manhunt by James L. Swanson. The subtitle gives it away: The 12-day chase for Lincoln’s killer. Interesting, I suppose. But Swanson’s writing is really… odd. Maybe he thought that since it’s a sensationalistic topic — I mean who wants to read a book about the “bad guy” after all? — he’d write a sensationalistic book. It reads like a really bad Gothic novel in parts. Here’s one example:

Marooned in this desolate place, did Booth reminisce about happier days, when he ad his beloved sister, Asia, played as carefree teenagers in the forests of Bel Air, Maryland? Once upon a time, before he became a famous actor and a denizen of America’s great cities, Booth loved to commune with nature… Booth and Herold murmured quietly, most likely talking of their crimes and speculating on their fate. What would they do? What would tomorrow bring? When would they cross the river and find rest on the other side? When Booth smelled the forest scent of the thicket, did its sweet, piney odor take him back to a time of youthful innocence and allow him, briefly, to forget murders and manhunts?

Do I really care?

On on level, albeit a voyeuristic one, I found this book fascinating. I didn’t know it took 12 days to find, and kill Booth (that’s a priceless scene: burning barns, bumbling army sergeants, simpering sidekicks, Booth as the tragic actor, and God-inspired snipers). I didn’t know that before his assassination, Lincoln was only considered a middling president (amazing how history changes itself). But, in the end, I still didn’t really care.

Plain and Simple, by Sue Bender, is a sparse, quick narrative of her journey to Peace and Understanding of Herself. I shouldn’t make fun. She needed it: in the early 80s, she was a teacher, therapist, artist, and — as she says herself — spinning too many wheels in too many directions. She was drawn to some Amish quilts and dolls that she saw, and began to think that life might have Meaning outside of Achievement. She found some Amish women who were willing to send her dolls and became a pen pal with one of them. She also, for two summers, found Amish families to live with. She learns Life Lessons (and writes down nine of them), and discovers that the Amish are 1) not all alike — the first family she stays with is much stricter and less healthy than the second; and 2) they find ways to be accepting and joyful about their life situation without pining for what is missing.

I’m not the target audience — I suppose I’ve already made that journey. Most days I’m happy with my life choice to jump the career track and stay home with my kids. Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something “more”: I’d like to go back to work someday, but only if I can do something I enjoy. I do recognize that it is a luxury, because we can live off my husband’s income. Granted, that means living with less, but I think it’s worth it. I do agree with what she learned: Home and Community are supremely important; Living in the moment is better than pining for what has gone or what is to come; work and play are the same, if you make it so, and life can be art; there is freedom in limitations; and making a choice isn’t the same as having many choices. I could go on about the last one — it feeds into my belief that we’re totally off base in this country about rights, freedoms and choice, and that more isn’t always better. And in the end, that’s the message of the book (and the Amish): more isn’t better. More is… more. And sometimes the best lives are the ones that are lived simply.

The business of moving is a royal pain, and incredibly time consuming. I have spent the last two weeks running here, there, everywhere. Getting driver’s licenses, the farmer’s market (we’ve found local providers for meat and eggs, yay!), a bank, finding the library (which is better than Macomb, but not as good as Jonesboro), figuring out where everything is. The kids are sick of the heat and the car. Thankfully, the place we rented is in a neighborhood that has a pool (there are two houses for sale in this neighborhood, and the pool is a big incentive to stay) and we’ve visited every day this week. Without that, we’d all be grumpier than we are. I’ve realized that over the five years we’ve lived in smaller towns, I’d become accustomed to that pace of life. Sometimes I’ve felt overwhelmed; swamped by the sheer size of things around here. Then there’s just having four kids around all day at the end of the summer. It’s time for school to start (and thankfully, it does, next week) — they’re at each other’s throats for the littlest things.

Perhaps all this influenced my opinion of Look Homeward America, by Bill Kauffman. I found it grumpy, sarcastic, and downright mean. I don’t mind sarcasam, and at times Kauffman was funny, but too often I thought he dissolved into arrogance and meanness. His basic philosophy is the same as Crunchy Cons, but where Dreher was doing his best to convince readers that his ideas were worth something, Kauffman holds contempt for those who don’t agree with him. Or, at least that’s the way it read to me. He may have been trying to convince people to be “front porch anarchists and reactionary radicals” but fell way short of the mark.

There was one chapter that I liked: the anti-war, Wendell Berry one. But then, it’s probably because I like Wendell Berry and am a pacifist already. So, it really wasn’t a stretch for me to appreciate his point here. But the rest of the time…

Then again, I could be giving this book the fuzzy end of the lollipop — it has been a stressful couple of weeks.

I wouldn’t recommend going on vacation for three weeks and then turning around and moving 10 days (well, 8 and counting) later. It’s not exactly stress-free. Though it does reduce the OCD-induced depression I get from being surrounded by boxes. That was not fun last year.

I had a pile of books to read on vacation, and only got to three. Something about talking to friends and talking to relatives and being lazy and it being hot.

The other downside of reading on vacation and then not posting, is that I can’t remember all the insightful and pithy things I was going to say about this book by Rod Dreher. Sigh.

In a nutshell: It’s a book written for members of the Republican party (which annoyed me at time; I am not nor will ever be a member of the Republican party), but mostly to convince them of some very reasonable ideas. I should define the terms, first. Crunchy: i.e., granoly, flaky, left, hippy, etc. Cons: conservatives, primarily social. The ideas are presented in a series of interviews and stories (though my husband insists it doesn’t hold together theoretically, but that’s not my forte). Some are great: buying local, mostly organically grown food, for example. Or choosing to live closer in the city in older homes rather than bigger, newer McMansions. The education chapter made me feel guilty (homeschooling is best), but then I feel guilty easily about my kids schooling (and I get it frequently, as most of hubby’s family homeschools). There was a chapter about religion (it’s good) and something else, which I don’t remember right now.

It’s not a great book, but I think it’s an important one, especially if it can get die-hard, big-business, money-grubbing, free-capitalist conservatives to think twice about their lifestyles. The question is, will any of them actually read it?

You have to like a book that has a title like that. Or at least smile. And you know, the book by Bob Tarte is just as good.

It’s essentially the memoir of a pathetic but endearing man and his complete incapability to say no to his pet-loving wife, Linda, whom he can not say no to. In reference to Linda’s ability to gain animals:

“We’ve been down this road before. Linda was driving a steamroller and nothing more substantial than a plywood cutout of a husband stood in her way. I might have succeeded in kidding myself that I had gained vast knowledge of animals over the years, but clearly I didn’t have a clue how to say no to my wife, particularly when the question involved a new pet that part of me secretly wanted, too — and that part was the knot inside my pine head.”

From the first pages, this book had me laughing: it begins a list of all the pets they’ve owned complete with short descriptions. Like “Stanley Sue, gender-switching African grey Timneh” and “Howard: amorous ring-neck dove” and “Turkeys — Hazel: victim of sneak attack/Lizzie: presumed perpetrator of sneak attack.” I could go on. And the pace and the humor keep up through the whole book. Bob’s reluctance and then acceptance of pets in rapid succession — from rabbits to parrots and parakeets then ducks, geese and turkeys — is amusing and, well, endearing (I’m lacking a thesaurus right now).

It’s great even if you’re not a pet-lover (I’m not especially; my idea of a good pet is fish). But, I think if you do love animals, you’ll enjoy this one even more. In fact, I’ve considered getting it for my brother-in-law, not because he loves animals (though I think he does), but because I can see my sister being like Bob’s wife Linda. Maybe it’s a warning for what might be coming in the future.

As for me, I thankfully can sit back and enjoy the life of pet enslavement from a distance. That is, until my husband and girls wear me down and talk me into getting that cow they’ve always wanted…

I’m torn about this book. As a book, it’s less than remarkable — the writing is sometimes gushy and melodramatic, and has an odd rhythm to it. But, as a person, Greg Mortensen is remarkable. His story is what kept me reading this, not the writing by David Oliver Relin.

In a nutshell: Three Cups of Tea is the story of how Greg Mortensen went from being a mountain climber (who only held down jobs in order to finance his next climbing expedition) to being the director of the Central Asia Institute, with the primary function of building schools, especially for girls, in rural Pakistan and now Afghanistan. And it’s remarkable what he went through in order to accomplish this goal. He started small — building one school for a village that helped him recover after a failed attempt at climbing K2 (in the Karakoram mountain range, I think).

The baby’s crying, so this will be short… it’s a remarkable book if only for the story. At the very least, it’s a remarkable cause, which makes for a remarkable story.

I was reading this book, and C came in, read the title, and said, “But Mommy, you’re not a dummy.”

That had nothing to do with anything, but I thought it was funny.

I’ve been up to my ears in home-buying stuff for the past week and a half, ever since my husband took a job at Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. Yes, we’re leaving the small town living of the past 5 years and moving back to the big(er) city. It’s both exciting and kind of stressful, and here’s where the really helpful dummy book comes in.

We really wanted to buy a house right off the bat, but after reading this book (true, we did get tons of advice from family and friends that helped!), we’ve decided to wait. It’s a great book (I’ve never read any of the Dummies books before) — helpful, in plain English, resourceful, and chock full of good advice. Much of which we’re going to take.

In the end, I got what I wanted out of this book; I now know a bit about what it takes to buy a home for the first time. And, unfortunately, it’s got me a bit stressed out. On top of that, I’m a visual person; I can’t read something and be calm about it. I didn’t understand the whole preganancy and labor thing until I went through it the first time. Reading the What to Expect When You’re Expecting book didn’t do much for me. It’s the same reason I’m down on parenting and self-help books. They really don’t help me much. But, for something like buying a house, while I still have to experience it to fully understand it, it’s nice to have a bit of a guideline to help me along. I think I’d like it even better if the authors — Eric Tyson and Ray Brown — would come to Wichita and hold my hand while we do this.

I guess that’s what family and friends are for (even if it is via email). 🙂

Okay, so I broke my “rule” and read a non-fluffy book. It didn’t put me to sleep (must be getting more sleep!), and it was worth the effort.

I tend to think I’m a pretty good parent (albeit an arrogant one!), and because of that tend to shy away from self-help books, except in certain circumstances. One of those being when my mom sends me a book saying I really ought to read it. Then I (usually) do, though usually with some skepticism. I’m really glad I read this one, by Gary Chapman and Ross Campbell, though.

The basic premise is that everyone has five “love languages”: quality time, words of affirmation, gifts, acts of service, and physical touch — but that we all prefer one (or two) languages over the others. The goal as parents is to learn to “speak” your child(ren)’s primary love language. By doing that, you ensure that they actually recognize and feel your love for them, and as a result not only behave better, but are actually more secure in their self-esteem and therefore grow up to be more secure, loving adults. Kind of sounds hokey, but I think it might work. For example, M has been having a hard time sleeping, coming out complaining of headaches, stomach aches, whatever, until we lose patience with her. After reading this book, I determined that her primary love language is physical touch, and have been giving her more hugs and kisses and just touching her more. And, sure enough, she’s been falling asleep better at nights. I think C’s primary love language is words of affirmation (either that or quality time). I’ve been trying to tell her she’s wonderful and doing a good job whenever I can. She seems to play better by herself and throw less tantrums, too.

Anyway. I’m not sure if this will work in the long run, but it’s at least a very interesting concept to think about. And, hey, more love around the house won’t hurt.