catch up

Alright, I have been a pretty big slacker on the photo project thing as of late, but I have been taking and posting more than I have been putting up here.  So, here are three weeks worth.  Two of them are cell phone pics, which I count, and the third is one I finally got the real camera out for again.  Cheers.

First is Windmill Island. I was kayaking around and didn't know how far I went - nice gardens there (at least from the water)!

This is a dying flower. I thought it was funny because half is clearly very dead while the other half still actually looked really good and alive.  Surely there is a metaphor in there somewhere...

This is Saugatuck State Park on Lake Michigan. The beaches are actually really nice and there are great, tall sand dunes complete with dunes grass just off the beach. It was fairly windy when we were there so there were even pretty legit waves. With such a big lake it really is almost like being at the ocean except for the salt smell in the air. Oliver was enjoying the sand... takes after his mom (yet again).

36 weeks

So Sara is right at about 36 weeks now.  The end is coming.  Fast for me, not fast enough for her (probably).  We just had an appointment today at which they did an ultrasound.  Apparently the kid is huge.  We knew that by the 'are you having twins' question from strangers, but he is currently about 7.25 lbs and the doctor was joking about how he will not be able to hold up his head it is so big, ha.  Also he has tons of hair.  That gift to him did not come from my side.  Anyways, some pictures.

I was joking the other night about how pregnancy is probably more convenient than it is not convenient.  Here is proof: 

Despair re-defined

This past week at out Bible study we were talking about New Year's resolutions, so I have been thinking about that this past week.  Last night I was thinking about how it is interesting that we tend to phrase our resolutions in negatives - lose weight - or in thinly veiled positives - be more productive (stop being lazy), be more organized (stop being sloppy), eat healthy (stop eating junk).  What would it mean, instead, to think of resolutions that were indeed positive ones.  'Productive' ones.

We talked about the verse in Ephesians (2:10) that says, "we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  In this sense, having a productive resolution then relates back to our identity in Christ.  For the longest time I thought identity issues were interesting but at the end of the day had nearly no meaning for me.  I always thought, 'yes, I agree that my identity is in Christ,' but this carried no real impact, no real change it seemed.  It was a statement that sounded Christian, warm and fuzzy.  

Then I came across a statement in Kierkegaard once about despair.  He thought that one is thrown into despair when they come to the realization that they cannot be better, cannot change, or cannot fix something.  We all have habits we get into, things we do, talk about, think about or whatever that is not in line with who we 'are' or want to be.  This is the whole point of the resolution almost.  But Kierkegaard had it right, I think.  We must see, at some point, that those failings are endemic to who we are, and this realization shifts how we see ourself not only now, but also who we see our self becoming and even re-defines who we thought we were in the past.  It changes all.  Even that statement is hard to grasp without having had the realization; having had the veneer over despair ripped off.  That is despair, and it cannot be shaken off.  It can, however, be taken from us.  This is what it means to have our identity in Christ.  He takes the identity of despair from us and gives us his own identity of being right before God.  It is only in this way that, for me, 'identity in Christ' is not only a fuzzy little Christian saying, but a reality that changes all.  Who I am, who I can be, and who I have been.  

So, the resolution.  It is, can be or should be positive because it is first rooted in an identity that allows one to be productive in life.  To do what God intends for our life.  This is only possible because we are able to really be that person created by God and not someone who tries, fails and gives up, or forgets and deviates.  Yes we do forget and we do fail, but we do not despair and be overcome by lassitude.  This is why forgiveness is not once and done, it is frequent and redefining.  

Peeps during the Reformation talked about vocation in a new way.  Before them, it was seen as a cloistered life and they changed it to be a life of meaning.  The work we do matters and does something real of worth in the world.  They talked about how we are God's mask in the world doing his work.  That is how the work we do can take on a much deeper meaning and be 'productive'.

So, the question remains then.  What positive resolution, direction or path is there for us this year and in life?  Probably a good thing to think about and struggle with.  I actually think the struggle is central to the staying 'on path.'  Maybe we should be like the old Rabbi Akiva, who wanted to pay a soldier to stand outside his door and ask him every time he passed, "Who are you, and why are you here?"

Doctors, culture and patient compliance

My first year at Baylor I wrote a theory paper about what happens within a patient/physician interaction when there is a larger and smaller spread between the two people's cultural background.  So if the patient is very poor and is struggling in life, the world that they know and how it works has a very different feel and nature to it that the physician, whom we would assume is not struggling - at least in the same sense.  I got to thinking about these issues again today at the eye doctor.

Our eye doctor (or mine - Sara doesn't need to go... yet) clearly has a different cultural background that I do.  It is in a very nice neighborhood, in a building whose rent cannot be cheap, and I am betting serves a certain kind of client that is from the upper end of the socio-economic ladder.  Much of this makes me feel uneasy being there - not because I am intimidated by them or something like that, but I feel as though I am merely a dollar sign and has a feel to it like I would imagine a used car lot would.  The conversation they have with me, the words they use, the seemingly memorized lines that are 'answers' to my questions and the assumption that I am more than willing to pay out of pocket for additional and seemingly unnecessary stuff.  The highly visible diplomas of the doc on the wall, despite the fact that she has an office.  The clothing they all wear - stilettos (yes, literally designers super high heels) and matching everything that I guarantee is not at Old Navy.  All of it are symbols that communicate a cultural background foreign to me.

As such, I am on high alert for things that it seems that they are trying to 'get' me on (it happened no less than 4 times today).  Because I am on high alert, I am halfway listening to what they have to say about my eye care (which is only a notch above nothing) and halfway defending my wallet.  This naturally makes the conversation borderline adversarial most of the time, which spurs them to try and reassert their position as the expert in the room.  I am sitting there trying to not elevate their defensiveness because I am aware of the fact that this will not help either of us, but can't shake the feeling of a disconnect between myself and them.

All of this leads me back to the patient/doctor interaction and patient compliance.  We know that rapport with a patient increases the information the patient will supply to help the physician solve and problems or figure out a diagnosis, but past interactions also play in.  If they know the patient from past interactions, it only helps - unless the interaction is breaking down.  This is why continuity is such a big deal when it comes to medical care, but also why attempts to reduce the cultural gulf between patient and physician is crucial.  All of this leads up to the point at which the patient leaves the office or the hospital.  Are they going to follow the advice?  Will they do it willingly or begrudgingly - both of which will impact outcomes for either the better or the worse.  Are they able to follow the advice?  Did they understand the advice given, and relatedly, did the physician know whether or not they communicated successfully?  Medicine is a pretty hard job - because it really is almost never just medicine.

Erroneous and Skewed

We like categories.  Boxes.  Organization.  I get that and it is clearly necessary for social interactions to work because it lays a bedrock of working assumptions upon which a non-dysfunctional society is based. But it is also very hard to avoid dismissing things you do not like by automatically (miss)categorizing.  I have always tried to avoid labeling people/thoughts/ideas quickly without really thinking about the content.  Doesn't always work, but I try.

This is even more true now, I would like to think.  Since people have read about some research I have done, many avoid really thinking about the content of the research or the content of their own assumptions of how things work by quickly putting a 'yes' or 'no' label on both me and the work.  Me and the research have been put in every camp possible it seems.  An article I wrote for Christianity Today came out recently and I really started to think more about this after those comments.  There are probably a few things going on.  Many quickly react to the title and don't even read the article it seems.  Other read it but what they already think literally drives what they read, and read some of what is written in literally opposite of what is written.  This could be a clarity issue on my part, but still.  There are some really good comments, too, but they are less fun to post.  Here are a few comment-morsels for you:

• [this is a partial - the person goes on and on, but I have no idea why this is talked about - maybe they think I am a universalist?]  Jesus' parable of the wheat and the tares entirely contradicts the universalism of the liberals. So does his injunction not to throw pearls before swine, and his description of the Pharisees as 'offspring of vipers', in other words genetically cursed, and his parable of the 'wicked tenants' or 'wicked husbandmen', describing those who were attempting to usurp the kingdom.- the Edomites, descendants of Esau, described as a people God hates (Malachi 1:2,3), who had been converted to become 'Jews' in about 120BC.
• [I like this one, ha]  Wait wait wait... So you're upset that the author uses statistics to form conclusions? What else would you suggest? And nothing is "proven" in science. What the author is doing is using the facts to support her argument, explaining what they INDICATE. Your discernment is clearly hindered. Might I suggest some Bible reading to boost it? :)
• What an erroneous conclusion from what sounds like a skewed poll.
• [maybe my favorit one]  What a load of baloney. Liberalism is simply encouraging the Government to wrongly assume the role of the church. Keep Jesus out of your socialism.
• [again a partial, but even I am not sure what political viewpoint would be 'evident' and I wrote the thing]  Besides the likely problems inherent in the poll and thus the interpretation that others have pointed out, the political orientation of the author is evident. His criticism of Beck is misplaced, for instance....

inconspicuous consumption

I have been thinking about how I/we buy things this week.  It mainly started after reading this article about books and publishing after Amazon.  Now, I buy a lot of books and Amazon makes it so easy to find them, order them, get them for cheap, and they offered my free shipping on any purchase no matter the total price because I am a student.  Mainly because of this last part, they have received a lot of money from me this past year.

It is easy to consume, but hard be consume well.  Responsibly.  Maybe even morally.  Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist back in the day and he worried about the effects of modernization on society.  In the pre-industrial revolution days, he saw society as being defined by mechanical solidarity - people are socialized and bound to one another because they were in community with each other and interacted or were aware of one another regularly.  After society modernized, this changed to what he called organic solidarity.  This was defined by a removed dependence on others.  I don't know who provides my gas for the car, but I need them, and so on.  We are all still connected, but in a different way; often unnoticed but still 'organically' needing each other.

I have mentioned before that I like Wendell Berry.  He is a critic of short-sighted modernization.  Being a farmer, this typically is aimed at agriculture, but he is aware of and talks about the wider implications.  This is a point of a great essay, where he argues that we try to solve problems by immediate and short-sighted solutions, or try to get unrealistic gains that don't take into account long-terms results.  (Solve problems with solutions that are the next problem to be solved.)  He thinks that we do not think about the fact that everything is connected in some way and changes, or failings, affect the entire system for better or worse.  (other related Berry posts talking about implications of this here and here... if interested)

My consumption is no different.  It is easy to not think about the authors, publishers, book seller, and all the other people involved with each of my purchases.  Amazon is arguably a less than responsible way for me to spend money, and my spending has implications for many other people out there that it is easy to forget about.  The other day I spent a bunch of time trying to find more responsible ways to purchase books because I think it is important for me to be cognizant of the effects of my spending.  This is the same reason we only buy fair trade coffee (I know, this list should be longer...).  My spending DOES do something, it is just a matter of whether that something is in line with how I ought to live or not.  We are blessed to be a society that has the option to consume; we are cursed to be a society habituated into doing it blindly.  And that is costly.

Distinction

How is it that we are able to tell the difference between things, and how are there such stark differences in what people recognize?  This is one of the topics that we were talking about today in the undergrad class that I work with and I thought some of it was pretty interesting.  Back in like the 80's this French dude, Pierre Bourdieu, did some research on culture and how people think about it, and what makes people like different things (think: micro-brew beer vs. bud light).

He would ask things like 'what is a photo beautiful' with answer choices like: sunset, bark of a tree, and a woman  breastfeeding (i know, that one seems totally random).  Turns out that there are strong social class differences in people's answers.  Lower class people like sunset photos (easily appealing, colorful, easy to 'understand'), middle class people like the woman breast feeding (ahhh, not sure here - value family?), and rich people like picture of tree bark (drawn to abstract stuff, appreciate subtle art themes more).  Now, these were strong differences and not just like some upper class people here and what not.  Weird.

The idea is that we all live in certain social circles that then impact what we understand, recognize, like, appreciate and so on.  Why are something things familiar to us while other things we don't 'get?'  Only certain people recognize different wines, let alone even like it (or can afford it even more).  But it can be more than just physical things like art and food/drinks.  Religion is like this (type of music one likes in church, theologically liberal or conservative, and so on), and pop culture (movies, music, who dates who), politics...

Here is the part from class that I thought was interesting (if you stuck with me this long).  Two things.  First, Baylor has more upper class students and some will recognize this and others think what they see here is pretty common.  This thinking that upper-middle class-ness is normal or not actually as upper class as it is is conditioned by community and context in just the same way.  No, it is not normal for everyone to be wearing Sperry Topsiders with their niki running shorts - but you see it enough you will start to think that this is not related to money.  No, normally there are not this many Mercedes on a college campus.  They have a lot of money, but it is relativized so that they don't think of it as a lot, but as 'normal.'

The second thing is volunteering.  Baylor really pushes this.  It is even to the point that some of their scholarships require students to do things in the community here a few times per week.  It would be interesting to see what difference (if any) this makes for constructing a certain view of volunteering as something that 'normal' people do.  I hope it does make that difference.  On the flip side, it reinforces distinctions here.  The students 'go out' into the community to help them.  The school is separated as different and reinforced as such.  They are not a part of the community, but they are the big brother that steps in to beat off the bullies when the brother is able to show up when needed.  the 'we' goes to help the 'them.'  Not making 'our' community better, but helping 'their' community.  Makes me think, how do we understand volunteering?  How should we?

despair and blissful ignorance

When I tell people that I am studying sociology and focusing on the sociology of religion, inevitably there are questions.  I usually need to explain to people that no, I am not going to be a pastor when I am done.  Other times, somehow the word 'religion' is like a mental block that doesn't allow people to think beyond 'theology,' which ironically is something that we very, very rarely consider.  Either way, the conversation usually doesn't stop there.

This makes for interesting bar/happy hour discussions.  (This isn't really a new thing for me at bars - ask Sara)  Not too long ago we were at the bar with the residents and someone asked me and so we got on the conversation of religion.  Seeing as how I like to talk about this stuff, and also seeing as how I have been on an existentialism kick for a bit now, we somehow arrived at Kierkegaard.  Ok, I arrive at Kierkegaard.  I was talking about his ideas of despair and defining commitments as a way out of the dark, and one of them, trying to take the blank look off his face - i need to figure out how to stop causing that - says, "well, ignorance is bliss."  To him, the best line of action is to do all that he can to avoid arriving at the inevitable realization that life apart from a Kierkegaardian defining commitment is submersed in despair.

In earlier generations this would probably seem like an odd conclusion juxtaposed the possibility of realizing one is stuck in despair, but for our generation this is old hat for some reason.  Why is this, I wonder, that we prefer to survive though life with a veneer of optimism instead of tearing off the veneer and looking into the face of actually living life?  In the past social research consistently showed that going to college could be detrimental to one's belief in the existence of God.  People would go to school and be exposed to lots of different view-points and ideas and realize that their own may not be the only one, nor the best one.  It can be tantalizing (or paralyzing?) to live in a box and then have the door opened and see a myriad of options.  It is like living in the corner store and then going to a super Walmart.

This is not really the case anymore.  The secularizing effect that college used to have on students is nearly absent today.  One of the reasons for why this is the case is that students today are literally no longer interested in questions of ultimate purpose and existence to the extent that it makes a difference personally.  This is interesting to me.  Why are we more content to live in despair than otherwise if given the option?  More than that, what does optimism really mean if we prefer ignorance?  What are we optimistic for in that case?

Do I prefer my box in disregard for world as it is?