So there.

I've smelled some smelly smells in my day, but I don't know if anything beats a rotten potato.

Suffrage

OK, Anonymous from way back when who asked about women's suffrage. If you're even still reading, you'll have to forgive me. It takes me a REALLY LONG TIME to think about something. And to talk to everyone I want to talk to about it. And to decide how I'd put it. And then to type it up. And then to let it sit in my drafts while I think about it some more. And then revise and revise and revise. And then run it by my idiocy checker. And then let it sit in my drafts for a few more months. And then . . . . . . . . . . post.

Now, the Voters' Assembly as we have it in the LCMS today is a made up thing and Americanish and mostly silly. And that's why I've never been too clear on how to respond to the suffrage question because the Bible doesn't say, "Women shouldn't go to (or speak at or vote at) voter's meetings every first Monday of every other month at seven of the clock post meridiem." Suffrage is simply not in Scripture. All I could say was, I don't go and I wouldn't.

But now that I've done the thinking and the talking I'm doing the typing (and maybe even the posting). Here's what I turned up that was helpful. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is about congregational order. To keep order, we do things the Christian ordered way, that is, with men heading families as icons of Christ our Head. At home, the buck stops with Dad. He catechizes and calls the shots because God told him to, which means it's on his head if those things are done poorly.

Family is a microcosm of the local parish. The congregation is a family. So when the family units gather as a greater congregational family, the heads do the heading. They listen, they discuss, they decide what would be best not for themselves individually but for their family. If Mom is concerned about something, she can talk to Dad about it in the mutual love and patience of their own relationship, and he will weigh her concern like he always does, and make the best decision he can see. Mom trusts Dad to represent and care for their family wisely and selflessly at church just as he does at home.

Might I ask why the heck this post so long?

OK, but the hard cases: the moms without dadly care back at our control group, the microcosm, the family. Sometimes families get messed up. They don't have Dad at the head. Mom has to step up. It's not OK, but it happens. Although she is Acting Head, she is not a true Head. We can also factor in at this point the virgins and the widows.

Well, at church we're not so micro. There are numerous heads because there are numerous families, which means: that woman who has to step up at home doesn't have to step up at church. At home she doesn't have anyone to provide for her and protect her and in whom she can put her earthly trust. But at church she does. She has every other Dad looking out for her. She can take a load off and not worry about this world's cares for once in her life (just like the virgins and the widows and the abandoned did in Luther's day and Walther's day and every other day until 1969). If she's concerned about something at the parish, she can do what she can't do at home: take her concern to a man whom she trusts, and trust him to weigh her concern regarding the parish and make the best decision he can see. A woman whose husband or father has failed her is not as a result also failed by her parish family. At church she has the comfort only a woman has the benefit of enjoying, even when she has been robbed of that comfort at home.

Will the men of her church family fail her sometimes? Yup. In some parishes, it might be pretty often or pretty serious. But just as in a family, this is not license for Mom to push back and commandeer. In those hard, terrible cases of unfaithfulness, abuse, or abandonment, it is license for her to leave.

Why are we consummate Americans asking this Voters' Assembly question? Is it because we are concerned about our rights and having our voices heard? Because that's not how Christians think. The way Christians think is, in charity and humility, "My fathers and brothers have my best interests in mind. I know I can trust them because they kneel with me at our Lord's altar every week." It means that sometimes we live with the mistakes of others, even as they live with our mistakes. It also means that sometimes we learn that someone else really did know better, or that something didn't matter as much as we felt it did.

Here's the real money line I got from my favorite consultant: women voting in the Voters' Assembly is as disordered as mothers working outside the home. It's got a lot of problems. There are costs built into it, including a greater danger of slippery slopism into other disorders than in homes where it doesn't happen. But it's pretty far from the worst thing in the world. Every sane person understands that, and Christian charity guides us to put the best construction on any particular case of it happening.

But if it doesn't have to happen--why make it happen? And in the church, it just doesn't have to happen. So I don't go, and I wouldn't, even if I weren't the pastor's wife, even at a parish that "allowed" it. Not because it's wrong for me to go, but because I think it gives a better testimony to God's ordering of human life if I don't. I think it communicates trust and humility and the otherness of the family of God if I say of my parish family, "The dads/husbands will take care of us," even as I am blessed to be able to say that at home.

I don't think women who participate in Voters' Assemblies are bad people. I do think this is a very muddled topic for the American mind, which is steeped in the language of rights, individualism, populism, and feminism, and for the legalistic Protestant mind which thinks in terms of strict chapter and verse permission or prohibition rather than Christian prudence. I am not on a campaign to end women's suffrage by Synodical resolution, that most powerful catholic force, any more than I'm on a campaign to get people to eat more spinach. But I do think in my own private mind that eating spinach is good for most people, and I eat it myself, and if someone asked for my opinion on spinach I'd say I'm for it.

Usage you can use: -igamy

Bigamy is having a second wife at the same time as a first wife.

ex. After hanging around with a lot of really nice people in Utah, he became a bigamist.

Digamy is having a second wife after having lost a first wife (through death or divorce).

ex. After a lot of court dates, awkward dates, and finally good dates, he became a digamist.

I've heard the term "serial monogamy" used to indicate digamy+, but I think I like digamy better. As a usage, obviously. Then again, trigamy appears less clear so maybe it won't work.

My brain hurts

I actually have to plan when I'm going to think about things. Supper tomorrow: while driving to store. School thing: on walk to Post Office. Other school thing: while up with baby at night. School thing number 84: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. Christmas stuff: next mending session. Everybody's clothes for wedding: while hanging laundry. Schwat I'm in danger of totally botching due to not having thought about: right now.

Got luggage?

Thus wrote F.W. Boreham:

"It is part of the pathos of mortality that we only discover how dearly we love things after we have lost them…

"So is it with the lading and luggage of life. We never wake up to the delicious luxury of being heavily burdened until our shoulders miss the load that galled them. If we grasped the deepest philosophy of life a little more clearly we might perhaps fall in love with our luggage…

"Our load is as essential to us as our lunch… At any rate, it is clear that man owes as much to his luggage as a ship owes to her keel. It seems absurd to build her delicately, and then burden her dreadfully. But the sailor loves the heavy keel and the full freight. It is the light keel and the empty hold that have most reason to dread the storm. Blessed be ballast! is a beatitude of the forecastle.

"Such is the law of life's luggage. But the New Testament gives us a still loftier and lovelier word: 'Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.' And these laws the law of nature and the law of Christ are not conflicting, but concordant. The one is the bud, the other is the blossom. For Christ came, not to remove life's luggage, but to multiply our burdens. It is true, of course, that He said : 'Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,' but He only invited them that He might offer them His yoke and His burden.

"Here is something worth thinking about. Christ gives rest to the heart by giving burdens to the shoulders. And, as a matter of fact, it is in being burdened that we usually find rest. The Old Testament records the sage words of an old woman in addressing two younger ones: 'The Lord grant’ said Naomi, 'that ye may find rest, each of you, in the house of her husband!'

"Who ever heard of a woman finding rest in the house of her husband? And yet, and yet! The restless hearts are not the hearts of wives and of mothers, as many a lonely woman knows. There is no more crushing load than the load of a loveless life. It is a burden that is often beautifully and graciously borne, but its weight is a very real one. The mother may have a bent form, a furrowed brow, and worn, thin hands; but her heart found its rest for all that. Naomi was an old woman; she knew the world very well, and her words are worth weighing.

"Heavy luggage is Christ's strange cure for weary hearts."

Recommended reading

One of the best pieces of parenting advice I ever got was that any book written before the 1950s is OK for your kids to read without your previewing it. Anything after that may have problematic content (there's some historical reason for this I can't remember; decency laws or something). This isn't just for big kid books. I can't remember how many picture books we've brought home from the library that I ended up hiding for the rest of the week. Here's a great article on how children's books have changed to justify and laugh at what would have been considered bad behavior in ages past. I got a kick out of Frances being contrasted with Olivia--my grandma never approved of Frances. She put the bad in Badger back in those innocent 80s.

Olivia, in our house children don't talk to adults that way.

Stop me if you've heard this one ...

Folks, I’m running a bit too low on electrolytes to get jiggy with the fanfare, so I’m just going to out and say this: Gravida sum. EDD: Feb. something-or-other.

Rock on.

Hey, kid, boogety too!

It's getting harder and harder to remember...

...but I'm pretty sure that there was a time in my life when the centerpieces on my kitchen table weren't composed entirely of amphibians and invertebrates.

Hey lady, are you gonna eat that cricket?

Second Annual CSPP Conference

It's been over two years since our last annual conference, so it's about time we scheduled another. To that end, the Second Annual CSPP Conference will be held concurrently with but not at all in the same place as day 2 of the Gottesdienst 15th Annual Oktoberfest. That's Monday, October 11 (and Gottesdienst is having Scaer, so it's worth your dude's time). The CSPP conference will be held at the Trinity Center of Trinity-St. Paul Lutheran School in Worden, IL. Don't worry, homeschoolers, there's no corrupting school that day. JK! Love you girls! :D

Unlike the other one, this will be sort of a real conference, by which I mean we sort of planned something. The basic outline is get here when you can and hang out. Kids play, moms confer (we're hoping for good weather so most of this can occur outside at the Old Timey Playground of Deadliness). Bring picnickings for your crew.

After lunch, and this is the cool part, we'll have a live interview and Q&A with a humble and gracious lady* who happens to be the mother of nine kids who all, get this, turned out OK. Babysitting for older children will be provided on immediate premises while we take in Mrs. F's wisdom for an hour or so (Babes in arms, tots up in arms, and any kids who want to listen or don't like other kids are welcome to skip the babysitting. If they could be kept something like quiet so people can hear our soft-spoken honored guest, that would be great. I anticipate being out in the hall the whole time wishing my kid would be quiet.)

This will be followed by more hanging out. If you stay too long Gauntlets and I will start acting rude to you. Actually we won't because it turns out neither of us are good at it in person, so it's really up to you to do the right thing. (We're still twisting Reb. Mary's arm about getting here too--no promises.) You'll be able to make it back to Kewanee in time for supper with dad.

RSVP to CSPP inbox with number who will attend and names and ages of children. There is no conference fee, but I'll put out a dirty cereal bowl if you want to toss in a few farthings toward the babysitters and facility. Formal midwifery services will not be available if you're thinking about traveling large, although I'm sure any of the adults and many of the children present would make a fine doula. You will also probably be put to work at some point in the day, and there will be crying and poop and stuff and it will be a big pain in the neck, so choose wisely.

If you're lucky, and if he's not going to Gottesdienst himself, you might spot a local celebrity running around the neighborhood in goofy shoes and no shirt.

*Prayers for the good health of this humble and gracious lady and her husband would not be amiss!

Let's keep in mind

All we who are not primary researchers arrive at our decisions regarding what is safest, healthiest, and best on the basis of someone else's authority.

There is always an opposing view with research to support it, and always a question of whether the prevailing opinion prevails because it is conventional or because it is right.

To depart from the majority position is merely to exchange one form of credulity for another.