Blessed, blessed St Martin

I know I'm early, but I thought you might want a little time to prep.


The babies and I got a book about Germany from the library a while ago. One of the things it talked about was St Martin's Day, and that it's traditional in Germany for children to pick one of their toys to give away to the poor.

The CSPP perfect storm! Educate, live the liturgical calendar, be charitable, kill an hour of your interminable day, and clear some schwat out of your house! Our kids have been looking forward to it ever since we read about it, perceiving that they will have less to pick up. So gather round tomorrow and read about good old St Martin (with obvious Luther tie-in), hand everybody a bag, and start cutting cloaks. Hard to say who will benefit most.

I'm flummoxed

There's a decisive chill in the air (to say nothing of snow on the ground), and I can't keep socks on these kids. A cursory compilation of two days' household detritus yielded 27 socks (!) and 2.5 barefoot boys. Yet whenever we're late going somewhere (i.e., whenever we're going somewhere), there's nary a sock to be found, much less a matching pair.

BabyGuy, like all babies, views socks as challenges and chew toys. Then too, Boy2 often wears 4 socks at once (two on his hands, for eczema purposes). And Boy1 sometimes changes his socks for no apparent reason at all. Still. This is ridiculous.

Catch me if you can!

Tag

Dakota Pam wants to know seven random things about us.

1. The CSPP bloggers live in three contiguous states.

2. The CSPP bloggers were born in three contiguous years.

3. Two CSPP bloggers have nearly identical given names.

4. Two CSPP bloggers had never spoken to each other in person at the time of this blog's inception.

5. One CSPP blogger used to be the boss of the other two.

6. One CSPP blogger has never lived in New York City, one has never lived in Slovakia*, and one has never lived in Wisconsin.

7. Two CSPP bloggers play the flute, and one plays the tuba.

We tag everybody, especially you.

*lived is being defined as "had to launder their clothing in the bathtub numerous times." We've got nothing on Ashley.

Realism

I'm doubtful about the long-term virtue building power of this fascinating life experiment. Sure, I've gotten over the shock of having vile human by-products left on my floor, but I'm also getting really *@#% $^&*(*@ =(*&#$&*(@)( #(*&^^ @@@@@@@@@@ sick of cleaning them up.

I'm not the dewy-skinned young thing I once wasn't, but I'm also pretty far from old enough for the end to be in sight.

How quickly they go feral on us

As I was flipping through my copy of The Writing Life looking for the other anecdote, I noticed another section ripe for Mad Libbing. I will change but two words (“[written] work” to “child” in two places):

A child in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the child grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, ‘Simba!’

Skip but a day, and nature has its way. The Old Adam rises kicking and sputtering to the surface, ornerier than ever for realizing that we’ve attempted murder, biting back hard on the hand that seeks to hold it under. We choose our parenting battles carefully because we know that, although the war for our children (which sometimes feels like a war against our children) is long and fought on many fronts, we can ill afford to lose so much as a skirmish. The same, of course, is true of the battle in our own hearts.

Thank God that His grace is lavishly sufficient. And when the fight is fierce, the warfare long, Steals on the ear the distant triumph song…

Time to step back into the next room. SIMBA!!!

I love Reporter day

Cool Kids Form Group, Meet In Cool Places To Reach Out To Other Cool Kids

LCMS Youth Ministry Office anthropologists' recent discovery of the new human demographic designated "kidults" has led to the formation of the Kidult Ministry Advisory Committee. This seven member committee seeks to grant credence to the YMO's ongoing existence and use of LCMS mission dollars, in addition to providing aesthetically pleasing LCMS visibility in fashionable centers of commerce.

"Young adults are marrying later and having kids later," said the committee convener, expressing no suspicion that these factors may be intrinsically problematic and indicative of even greater problems. "By this time, their lifestyle is already established and church just isn't a part of it." The committee believes that more ironic personal accessories and increased use of church names incorporating non-representational graphemes will attract loft-dwelling kidults to trendy alternative post-contemporary ecclesiastical cliques.

While many members of LCMS churches are in their 20s and 30s, these faux-kidults actually hinder kidult ministry by showing up for conventional church services at conventional times in inexpensive clothing with inexpensively clothed children (occasionally in gauche quantity). Faux-kidults further damage kidult outreach by their participation in socially suicidal church groups such as Ladies' Aid, and with self-betraying lifestyle choices like the full-time care of their children, and having children to begin with.

Questions regarding tensions arising from the style-conscious values of the Kidult Ministry Advisory Committee vis-á-vis the inherent Boomerish lameness of the Ablaze! program remain unanswered.

Ok, I'm sorry, I'll lay off the partisan rhetoric for a while now--but I just couldn't resist this one. And I know the accent is supposed to be grave, and I'm too lazy to find out how to fix it.

The utterances of the deranged

I’ve been feeling rather melancholy about the difficulty of connecting with a longtime friend whose path in life has diverged greatly from mine. Friendships, particularly long-distance ones, tend to roll this way: you get married, and gradually you notice that you’re hanging out more with couples and less with your single friends. You have kids, and it gets harder and harder to connect with friends who don’t.

Particularly vexing in this situation is the fact that, when it’s my turn to talk, I find that I have basically nothing of interest to say about anything, unless your tastes run toward the obsessive details of pediatric regularity or lack thereof. Then, too, there is the awkwardness of attempting to explain to someone who knew you Back in the Day that your husband, children, and church Are. Your. Life. Yup, that’s about all there is to it. Nope, nothing else going on. Really, nothin’ else to declare.

It’s rather ticklish to explain oneself to someone who doesn’t have children, isn’t even married, and has a different understanding of faith and vocation. Yeah, being at home with these kids drives me crazy. No, I don’t have any plans to stop having crazy-making kids or to get out of the house. Yes, (even if you’re too polite to come right out and say it), I’m aware that this doesn’t make any sense to you and that you’re concerned that I’ve become a brainwashed fanatic, a complete lunatic, a dimwitted doormat...

Pondering this dilemma, I recalled one of my favorite scenes from The Writing Life, in which Annie Dillard finds herself stumbling through an explanation of how very much she often despises her vocation (of writer), though she couldn’t live any other way:

Whenever an encounter between a writer of good will and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of writing, each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed. From such chastening encounters I have always learned far more than I intended.

Let’s CSPP MadLib it:

Whenever an encounter between a Concordian Sister of Perpetual Parturition and a regular person of good will happens to touch on the subject of [vocation/having another child/staying at home with the kids/contraception/etc.], each person discovers, dismayed, that good will is of no earthly use. The conversation cannot proceed…

See how well it works? I’ll include most of the rest of the scene as she wrote it; just substitute “CSPPer” for “writer” and CSPP-related things for “writing” and “write,” and there you have a very apt description of the dilemma:

This neighbor, who crewed on a ferryboat, was one of the world’s good, sane people…One rainy day, this member of the real world gave me a ride home. I invited him in for a minute, and somehow all hell broke loose.

Politely, he asked me about my writing. Foolishly, not dreaming I was about to set my own world tumbling down about my ears, I said I hated to write. I said I would rather do anything else. He was amazed. He said, ‘That’s like a guy who works in a factory all day, and hates it.’ Then I was amazed, for so it was. It was just like that. Why did I do it? I had never inquired. How had I let it creep up on me? Why wasn’t I running a ferryboat, like sane people?

…But I rallied and mustered and said that the idea was to learn things; that you learn a thing and then as a matter of course you learn the next thing, and the next thing….As I spoke he nodded precisely in the way that one nods at the utterances of the deranged. ‘…And then,’ I finished brightly, ‘you die!’

At this we exchanged a mutual and enormous smile. Still nodding and smiling in perfect agreement, we ended the visit and walked to the door.

A difference, of course, is that we at CSPP may frequently be amazed to find ourselves in our vocation, but not for lack of enquiry; rather because our inquiries increasingly convicted our hearts that it must be so.

MadLibs or no, The Writing Life is solidly in the Book, Recommended category.

Stuff Confessional Lutherans like

A definitive guide to the unique taste of scores.

Making the sign of the cross

Paul Gerhardt

Three-year-olds who know all the ordinaries

Blogging

The Mother of our Lord

Issues, Etc.

Not being pietists

The Office of the Holy Ministry

Mollie Z. Hemingway

Mollie, why are you so cool?

Pining for bishops

Pining for just basic church discipline, then

The liturgy

The Wyoming District

Not saying "Merry Christmas" during Advent

Individual Confession and Absolution

Higher Things

The canonical hours

AC XIV

Making snarky comments about choosing our neighbors when they drive past the corner of Bellevue and Clayton

When someone comes up with a name for them like "past-oriented museum keepers"

O Lord, open Thou my lips

When Cyberstones got back from sabbatical

Being theologians of the cross

Saying Luther's table prayers instead of Come, Lord Jesus

The Wittenberg Trail

Being called antinomians

David O. Berger

David O. Berger, why are you so cool?

Lent

Easter

Weekly Communion

That picture Pastor Weedon linked to of the consecration of the Latvian bishops that you can't get to any more unless you know Latvian

Martin Chemnitz

Being from Baptist country and making do

Denouncing "This Is The Feast"

Lay people who hate lay readers

Down in front, already!

The historic lectionary

Catechesis

Observing second-class feasts

Beer

Every Day Will I Bless Thee

Preaching Christ crucified

Bach

The Lutheran Heritage Foundation

Malachi 4:1 (ESV)

Stubble Ablaze!

Giving their kids weird and/or extra names

Starke's Te Deum

Chiseling out some unique and nuanced position on corporate absolution, acolytes, contraception, how the Athanasian Creed should be confessed on Trinity Sunday, etc.

Planning what they're going to say about the thing confessional Lutherans like that they don't like that much as soon they have opportunity to do so nonchalantly

UPDATE: And how could I forget?! THE TREASURY OF DAILY PRAYER!!!!!!!

John 16:33 and Pascal's Wager for CSPP

I blame CSPP for everything. I'm tired, I'm cranky, I never leave, I have no interests, I don't exist, I look awful, my brain has gone to seed, I don't know what to make for supper, everyone's clothes are in baskets in the hall instead of the dressers . . . it's because we have four kids under six, it's because we have two kids under three, it's because I'm nursing, it's because I could be pregnant any day now if I'm not already.

As if my life would be any easier if my kids were older, or there were fewer of them, or I went to work every day and got home five minutes before however many people lived here started sniffing worriedly around the kitchen. A while ago I read The Quotidian Mysteries by Kathleen Norris, expecting to really, really like it. Instead I found myself thinking the whole time, what is she whining about? She doesn't have any kids! She doesn't have quotidian mysteries, she's eating quotidian cheesecake! I'm supposed to feel sorry for someone whose biggest problems are laundry for two people and writer's block?

What can I say, I'm a jerk. Of course Kathleen's life is hard. Everyone's is. So on to the wager: why not have a bunch of kids? In this world I will have trouble regardless of how many children I have, so I might as well invest myself in some eternal capital. Just think how awe-struck strangers will be seeing our family Christmas picture on our friends' refrigerators a few years from now, DV.

When you put it that way

Expanding the horizons of our genre: your daily dose of soul preaching.




HT: My strangely resourceful husband.