2014 NYR

                    This is a photo of Fran and Anna a few days before New Years,
ice skating in downtown Greenville.  Since Abby moved there,
getting to know Greenville has been such a delight.

 This New Year was a particularly special one as we had some of Fran's family over and ended up playing a hilarious game of pictionary and charades, making it a very merry, if not a slightly jet-lagged crowd. It ended with a midnight run-about in the yard with 3- foot long sparklers that kept shooting off at dangerous angles.

My 2013 New Year's Resolutions basically flew out the window once I became engaged.  I should have revised them. I only accomplished a few.  I did read 30 books and saw some of the North East of England. I think I'm most proud of learning how to drive a stick shift in the UK and passing my theory test.  I'm almost there to getting my license! I did rest a little from 'work', but that was mostly in the form of having consecutive chest infections this past fall. We attended one dance class in the Dominican Republic. We did not attend a festival, but we did go to our fall gig-of-the-year up in Edinburgh. I didn't learn how to draw or play the voilin.  I had no desire to read Tin Tin or attend evensong consecutively, and fell shockingly sparse in my correspondence. *ahem* *cough* read: changed addresses twice. 

My goals this year I'm sure will be vastly different from what I actually accomplish, and that is what I find so difficult about New Year's resolutions.  They often don't encompass what all you actually did in that year. I found last year a stretching year.  This year I want to rest.  I want to say 'no' often. I want to focus on my research.  I want to learn how to garden and grow things in our backyard. I want to be a better owner to my bunnies.  I want to make our house just wonderful.  I want to find storage space for all our odd and ends.  I want to get rid of more of our possessions and focus on living simply.  I want to paint and to be rid of our boxes on the floor.  I want to eat well.  I want milk delivered to our doorstep.  I want to read for pleasure again.  I want to hike the trails behind our house.  I want to have people over for Sunday lunches.  I want to savor my issues of Garden & Gun and Southern Living.

But despite all these desires, on New Year's eve, I only wrote down three wishes for 2014. 

1. To get married 

2. To stay married

3. To work on my PhD 

Keeping ambition at bay. xo

 

NYR 2013

Okay 2013, here we go. A sampling. 

1. Learn to drive a stick-shift and get my UK driver's license. 
2. Learn how to draw
3. Consistently work 9-5, rather than my current haphazard schedule.
4. Attend a dance class
5. Journal often
6. Significant, significant strides in Phd. 
7. Read 30 books  
8. Learn to take proper rests from work
9. Explore the North East of England
10. Visit a place I read about in a medieval text
11. Attend evensong in Durham Cathedral each day for a week, and then once a week for a month. 
12. Achieve Grade 1 on the violin
13. Write Hannah Bonner often
14. Read all Tin Tins and watch all films
15. Attend a music festival. More live music.

Do you do resolutions? Do you have any for 2013? xo

A this week in May

Carburritos with Mubbs

Night Light

Jessica Long and the New Kind

Band buddies

River Whyless

Church Picnic: Keri and Abby

Church Picnic: Mom and Dad at horseshoes

Mr Beamer's BBQ

Culverts

Cornhole

I travelled up to Chapel Hill to see some old friends play in Jessica Long and the New Kind. They were on tour with the River Whyless and I would recommend you see them both.  Halli from Whyless played the violin so well it made my heart ache.  It made me want to play it well too.  Why is simply listening never enough?  I laugh at my feeble attempts to sing along in tune and key with Gotye.  It was so good to see old faces, visit old haunts, and meet some of the New Kind and Whyless. All are ridiculously talented.

I spent Friday morning trolling through the stacks of UNC library.  As an undergrad I didn't realize how exceptional they were: it was just the library.  Now I walk among them in awe and gratefulness. We drove home that night and attended the church picnic Saturday. Horseshoes, frisbee, and a three-legged race, which I lost to my mom and sister. Mr Beamer made his own BBQ. I wish I could take it back to Scotland and say, "Taste and see that this is good. Now how can your life ever be the same?" That or lemonade.

That night we went on a walk and took a detour to the culverts. We used to race through these as kids, one in each tunnel, blindly competing, hoping desperately not to fall in, get stung by yellow jacket, or worse, lose. We also used to swing across the creek, with it's pathetic shallow bed, on a rope swing, and catch crawdads in the shallow rocks. I wonder if we weren't half wild. I wonder more that we didn't see more snakes.  Annabelle had never seen them before. Silly dog.  She pushed Abby in the water in her excitement. On Sunday dad and I worked on making our own cornhole, perhaps I will post more on that later, and all of us watched the new Sherlock Holmes on PBS. (Won't Martin Freeman make the most adorable Bilbo?? Much better than my childhood vision of him as this.) Sunday night Mystery has been a family favorite for ever so long and I love the introduction PBS uses to accompany the series. 

#3: Francis Chan, Crazy Love

# 3, Crazy Love, Francis Chan.

This book emphasized in contemporary language everything I learned in Bonhoeffer. Basically, to love God, really love God, he's not kidding when he says give stuff away to the poor. As an evangelical, he took everything straight from the Scriptures, and challenged the American church in its wealth and complacency. But it wasn't a book that destroyed the church. Our lives are to be characterized by obedience. I came away, not harassed, but with a strong sense of "I need to be doing something", and wishing that I had loads more resources free to give things away. When I grow up, I want two things. I want an old stone farm with lots of animals, and I want to make enough to give most of my proceeds away. But, I don't want to be delusioned with the 'I'll do it later' mentality, so it's got me to thinking what I can do now. And I'm just not sure.

Tenets: #4

The Key to Personal Peace, Billy Graham

This is in reference to my New Years Resolutions to read one spiritual book each month.

While perusing my parent's bookshelf at home, the only work we possessed by Billy Graham caught my eye. It was a short pamphlet, fifty pages or so, and hardly qualifies as one of my twelve spiritual books, as I read its entirety while in the bathtub.

Unlike Bonhoeffer, Graham did not write to his title. This book is a basic recapitulation of the Christian tenements, with an entire section devoted to signing your life over Christ. Its a book for evangelism: one to give away to your non-Christian friends who perhaps are wondering about the faith you possess. It's not a hard book. It's a simple one. It may have been too simple.

While reading this, once I discovered that it was an evangelism tool, I grew disappointed, and was tempted to just peruse through it to say I'd read it. However! I tried to read it like I was reading the tenements of Christianity for the first time. It helped. But it just seemed too easy. One section asked if I felt wicked or disgusting or had sins I needed to repent of. My initial reaction was 'No! I'm good! I'm fine. Leave me be.' I then realized if someone had asked me if I felt particularly good, angelic, holy, I would have replied, 'No, far from it!' This put me in a complex position: I felt both unholy and unsinful at the same time. I think that's what the problem was with the book. It didn't account for this complex way I was feeling, the capacity for good and evil, or lackluster in both.

I recognize where this book would have it's uses: someone who wants a basic introduction to what Christianity is all about. It simplified the precepts in plain language. While I wasn't in the category, I thought the book might still be useful in reminding me what the gospel is all about. Instead, I grew annoyed, as I sometimes do with evangelism, that is oversimplified the state of the human soul.

Spiritual Books: #7

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to read a set of Christian books: one for each month. This is the first in that series.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

For someone trying to ease their way back into reading Christian tenements, this was not the book to choose first. It happened by accident. I was in the airport and wanted to start on these Christian books on this 8-hour flight, so I dug into my overhead bag and pulled out Bonhoeffer. I was disappointed. I wanted something easy, like Francis Chan. But Bonhoeffer was interesting. He was a German in WWII. He had the opportunity to escape, he was even in Britain, safe, but voluntarily decided to return, because he felt he could in no way help reconstruct the church in Germany unless he suffered with it. Guards shot him two days before the Allies freed the camp.

Bonhoeffer knows what he's talking about. He writes about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus, and it is no easy line. He doesn't smudge it to make it easier for us to swallow or digest. Holding nothing back, he describes the magnitude of sacrifice expected from Christians. And its exhausting. I had an extremely difficult time concentrating because I kept thinking, but I'm just not good enough to do all this. Extenuating human inadequacy, the perfection of God, and the high standard expected of Christians, left me despairing. That's exactly what Bonhoeffer intended us to feel. But Bonhoeffer wanted us to despair, to shout in anger and frustration at our inability: he wanted us to leave all that behind and throw ourselves wholly on the mercy of God and through his good grace in us, accomplish anything.

The Cost of Discipleship is hard. I wouldn't read it again in a hurry. I can't say it nourished my soul and made me love God more. But it did have its moments. My favorite part was the ending chapter on being made in the image of God: that the more we strive, the more we worsen things, but God in his mercy "does not neglect his lost creatures," and "if we surrender ourselves utterly unto him, we cannot help bearing his image ourselves."

Chewing Cud

Some bovine lovin' in Sweden. I think this photo captures my anticipation of these 12 books exactly

Growing up in a Christian home has been one of the largest boons bestowed upon me. I am a more complete, contented person because of it. However, gathering religious ideas at young age, caused me to think some funny things, not by direct teaching necessarily, but rather by youthful inference. For example, I once thought that non-Christians were wicked people and there was no good in them at all. Or that sex was evil, and marriage was for the weak minded. (Up until I was 17, I was all for being a celibate saint.) Or that no one should ever take communion, because, who really is completely without sin and wants to drink damnation on himself? No, thank you.

Well, once I got to UNC, I realized some of these Christian ideas were whacked. Some of my favorite people were non-Christians, and even (dare I say it?) better people than some of the Christians I knew. This led to a lot of confusion and then to skepticism of the organized church. I continued to retain my beliefs, but for the past few years, I've avoided reading overtly 'Christian' books: every time I tried, I would just get angry. (Come on: who hasn't read a really awful 'Christian' book? Left Behind series, anyone? Which, I was told when I was 13 that this was excellent literature.) So after a six-year Christian-reading hiatus, I figured it was time to objectively read tenements of the faith.

My goals are to approach these texts humbly, to try and not get angry, and to be open to allow these works to shift and shape my notions of Christianity and its doctrine. I want to be critical, but not cynical. No longer spoon-fed; no longer anemic; but, shall we say, chewing the cud? A revisiting of the essentials, the mains, the hay, the grass, mindfully considering it once again.

12 Spiritual Book List

After canvassing many people for their most life-changing spiritual works, I've developed a tentative list. I have selected 12, one to reach each month, though I have a feeling this list will change. Some of these I found on my parents bookshelf. I harassed my brother and sister for others.

1. The Practice of the Presence of God with Spiritual Maxims, Brother Lawrence.

2. The Westminster Standards: The Confession of Faith, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms.

3. Crazy Love, Francis Chan with Danae Yankoski

4. The Key to Personal Peace, Billy Graham.

5. The Mark of the Christian, Francis A. Schaeffer

6. The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard

7. The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

8. The Weight of Glory, C. S. Lewis

9. Confessions, St. Augustine.

10. The Diary of David Brainerd and 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God', Jonathan Edwards

11. The Freedom of a Christian, Martin Luther

12. The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright

The Back Up List:

- The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis

- Abide in Christ, Andrew Murray

- Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton

-Summas, Thomas Aquinas

- The Secret Providence of God, John Calvin

-Knowing God, J I Packer

- The Biography of H. Gabrielsson, S. L. Gabriel

Do you have any must-read books that have changed your life in a spiritual way? Any recommendations or alterations?

New Years Resolutions

After twenty four years of accumulating idiosyncrasies and fears, I've finally decided to not let them fester anymore, but attempt to thoughtfully (re)consider them. Each of them responds to a specific fear and while I'll expound on each in more detail, here's a rough list.

1. Read 12 Christian books. Solid affirming tenements and bulwarks of the Christian faith and doctrine.

2. Learn to drive a stick shift.

3. Get my UK driver's license.

4. Paint 3 pictures, one using oils, one acrylics, and one waters.

5. Form successful working habits for my doctorate and become proud of my work.

6. Write two short stories.

7. Read 3 works of poetry.

8. Develop firmer habits of self-reflection.

9. Languages: better my Latin and begin French.

10. Watch all the James Bond films

11. Read 60 books

12. Climb Arthur's seat every day for a week; and then once a week for a month

13. Form lovely handwriting

14. Go to Iceland

15. Attend my first conference

16. Give an academic paper.

17. Form habits regarding back care: especially yoga.

18. Dance. Dance classes.