– of the Edinburgh Tattoo
– of our trip to Rome and our cruise
– of our day trip to Loch Lomond and your favourite Heilan Coo, Hamish.
Stay tuned.
*UPDATE*– photos added:
Rome photos start on this page.
Here’s a pic of the Tattoo. Bryce took super fast film so his pics may actually turn out!
Hamish can be found here.
Okay, I’ve bitten off way more than I can ever hope to chew with this blog title. But nevertheless, I hope my very quick thoughts will get us all thinking.
First off, I wonder how much my ideas about women and the church are influenced by my culture and how much by the Bible. (And a further clarification: I’m not going to talk about women in leadership in the church right now — that’s just a bit too much for the spare brain power that I have.) What concerns me is that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of thinking women in the church at large. This is the sort of thing that blog groups like Intellectuelle and College girl are seeking to address. It seems to me that in contemporary evangelical subculture many of the “older women” Paul writes to Titus about do well to admonish younger women to “work in the home” and to “love their husbands” but I fear that beyond this there’s not much mentoring going on. (Please do correct me if I’m completely off base — and I do know that this is not the case everywhere and there are many exceptions, I’m just making, perhaps unhelpful, generalisations). That is, the “older women” lead craft nights and host baby showers as well as helping out younger women when it comes to marriage and family, but the Christian life for a woman is not always seen outwith such a framework.
I know it is the case that many women thrive in their role as Christian wives and mothers and although I feel that even if one’s role is a wife and mother (without an outside career) one needn’t live the role, one may fulfil the role without making the role the defining feature of one’s identity. After all, we’re not to live the role of beautiful, perfect, everything’s-perfect-on-the-outside woman and this is easily addressed in Christian subculture — beauty comes from the heart, etc. However the role of wife and mother is held up as the telos of a Christian woman’s idenity in an evangelical environment. The role of Christian wives and mothers is, I believe, essential and it makes sense that the church would stress this aspect of womanhood in relation to the feminist outcry of the last generation. At the same time however, I fear that emphasising these roles to the exclusion of the person is detrimental to Christian women. What if one isn’t sure about ever getting married or having children? What do you do with your church’s single women? What is a girl to think if her worth is wrapped up in her role as a wife or mother? Must all women have as their end goal marriage and family? How do outside interests/career fit in with this? What does the “Christian woman” look like (the Proverbs 31 woman sure juggled a lot more than just 2 roles!)?
I think that the evangelical church would do well to consider some of these questions and view it in light of the whole gospel of God. And I do find it a bit hard when women are content to settle for the role rather than transform the role. A woman as well as a man has been bought by the blood of Christ if she has been redeemed. Here is her worth. Not in a wedding ring or baby nappies.
We arrived back in Edinburgh safe and sound yesterday afternoon. We had a great couple of weeks seeing the sites and hanging out with Ashley’s parents. I dropped off 10 (yes, 10!) rolls of film to be printed yesterday. I won’t post them all, don’t worry.
Here are some highlights from the trip.
Rome is a great city. The Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s were cool, and kinda strange at the same time. My favourite painting at the Vatican Museum is Rafael’s School of Athens. I like the architecture of St. Peter’s, but I can’t get over the fact that it was built with money raised from the sale of indulgences. We went to all the other standard Rome sites; I think my favourite was the Trevi Fountain.
I have a new appreciation for the Baroque style and Bernini. The food was amazing, I’d go back just to eat. We also saw this really cool statue in Rome: 
After 3 days in Rome we got on the cruise ship and were pampered for the next week. The Cinque Terre was incredibly cool, and I want to go back.
I got a new pair of sunglasses in Corsica. We went to 
Napolean’s house on Elba (not a bad place to be exiled, I must say).
We rubbed elbows with some really rich folks in Portofino
and St. Tropez (where we also experienced my mad moped skills).
Monte Carlo deserves a paragraph of its own. What a strangely intriguing place. I have more questions than answers. For example: Why is this place so rich? What’s the difference between a country and a principality? Why is it ruled by a prince instead of a king? I think these are legitimate questions. I read an entire book on Monaco and have no answers. I’ll have to spend some time with Google.
Anyway, we went to Casino Royale and didn’t lose too much money.
This place was completely unlike a Vegas casino. It’s small (probably only 15 tables at the most) and filled with people who can actually afford to lose all the money that they are betting. Playing roulette required a knowledge of French that surpassed my ability (which is non-existent) and the two blackjack tables had minimums of 25 and 200 Euros, so we didn’t play. Just to get the full James Bond experience we had martinis, but they were so expensive that we had to share 2 between the 4 of us. All in all, Monaco/Monte Carlo is an interesting place that I probably wouldn’t feel the need to revisit were it no so strangely mysterious.
We got of the ship in Nice in the pouring rain. Our day of trying to see some sights was made difficult not only b/c of the rain, but also b/c nothing’s open on Sunday. I have no idea why nothing is open on Sunday, it’s not like everyone’s at church–it’s France!. Weird.
After a couple hours of flights and a sprint through the airport in London we made it home yesterday afternoon, but our bags didn’t join us until this morning. I’ve read all the spam I received while away and Ash has started the laundry. Carolyn is staying with us for about a week, which will be fun.
That’s about it. For now it’s back to the land of dodgy weather and poor customer service. I’ll have a few more highlight pictures up in a few days.
Well we are not suckers. We will not pay $55 for an hour (or some such ridiculous sum) of internet on the cruise ship. So we are in a cafe in town paying 4 Euro an hour. Nevertheless, we will make this short, just to let you know we are having a blast and are taking way too many pictures. Scottish folk, beware, we are brown! You never thought it would happen living in Scotland, but yes, we are TAN.
We had a wonderful few days in Rome hoofing it around the city and consuming about 2 gelatis a day. By the time we leave I should know all my fruits in Italian as we have had every possible fruit ice cream. We left on the cruise on Sunday and have been to Corsica, Elba and today we are in Livorno, which is actually a surprise because one of the other stops we meant to take was not able to be reached due to some festival. Anyway, it has all been amazing and Bryce is ordering 2 entrees a meal and we are very much enjoying the copious amounts of food and apertifs on board as well.
Elba was very cool. Unfortunately all the vespas were sold out so we did not get to motor around the island, but that is the plan for our stop tomorrow in Portofino. Today we took a day trip to Cinque Terre, five little villages hugging the Italian coastline. I had been there actually in 1999 and loved returning to walk the Via dell amore (I am probably butchering the Italian there) with my love this time. We had lunch on an ancient watch tower and swam in the clear Mediterranean water. Gorgeous.
We will have lots more stories, lots more pictures and a few pounds to lose I am sure when we return on Monday. Till then, ciao!
Dear friends, we’re off tomorrow morning for 12 days with my parents. We’ll be taking in the sites of Rome before hopping on a cruise (!) for a week in the Italian and French Mediterranean. I’m debating about bringing work along and if so, what kind. We are very excited to be getting sun (it’s raining right this instant) and a chance to relax as well as seeing my family once again (saw them last in January).
We’ll take loads of pictures and will eat lots of good food. The Hays are being so nice as to water our tomato plants (or trees as we affectionately call them) and are filling in for us with church stuff — very nice. Now it’s just time for some last-minute work, last-minute cleaning (my mom’s coming back to Edinburgh with us), and last-minute packing. Have a good two weeks without us, our (few) loyal readers and generic lurkers on the blogosphere!
An alarm clock that can sense when you are in a deep sleep cycle, and when you’re not, and can then wake you up when you’re not in a deep sleep cycle. I think it could work. It may require you to sleep with a suction cup on your forehead. I think it would be worth it though.
Maybe I’ve just given away a brilliant idea that could make me millions. How do I patent this? I guess it’s copyrighted since I just wrote it, but I don’t know if that does me any good. Oh well. If someone invents it I can at least buy one, and then maybe getting my rear out of bed in the morning wouldn’t be so terribly difficult.
In other news…ummm…we’ve been trying to get everything done before we leave for vacation on Wednesday morning. I’m trying to finish a chapter/section in my Christian Education course I’m writing. I’d be able to get it done if I could just get about 6 hours to write.
Check out the new website for our church, New Restalrig Parish Church of Scotland, that I designed. The layout/structure is done (aside from the constant tweaking); the content is mostly done, but I’ll be revising it a bit to make it a little more friendly to nonChristians. I also need to work on search engine placement, which is tough.
My sister and her family have just moved from Scotland to Santa Barbara and I’m curious to know where they went to church today.
I’ve designed some flyers and posters for Neyir’s show in the Edinburgh Fringe. They look fab, if I say so myself. Just use your imagination.
I’m trying to decide which books to take with me on our trip. Currently at the top of my reading list are:
Christian Apologetics, by Cornelius Van Til
Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (actually Ash has required that I read this on our trip, so…)
The Deliberate Church, by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander (which I have to review by the first week of September)
and The Story of My Life, by Giacomo Casanova (which I started reading at the beginning of the summer and have left to the side; very interesting/weird)
Obviously I’m not gonna get all of those done. I’m thinking I can probably get through two of them. The problem is, I can’t decide how much work to try to get done.
Listening to techno/trance while I’m working late at night is really cool. It helps keep me motivated. I wish I had more than this 1 CD, though.
I haven’t been able to check my main (Westmont) email account since Friday morning. This is highly annoying. Their server has been pretty inconsistent lately, and it’s getting to the point that I may have to change my main address. I like my Westmont email address and was planning to keep it until I get a job and have a bryce@somesweetchurch.com address. But if I can’t depend on my Westmont account, I’m gonna have to make a change pretty soon. Soooo, if you’ve sent me an email recently and not received a response, I’ll get back to you as soon as I get your email. Hopefully some IT dude at Westmont will be working on Monday.
Wow, I didn’t think this post was gonna be so random.
Ok, that’s it for now.
I got my hair cut the other day — a bit more layered than the picture above. I’m liking it. Although after seeing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” I really wanted to cut my hair like Helena Bonham Carter. We’ll see; I am afraid however that that haircut would make me look too much like Annie.
Bryce and I signed up for easy cinema, an online DVD renting thing. It’s very fun; they send you movies in the mail and you post them back when you’re finished with them. We saw the first two episodes of the Decalogue, a Polish TV series based on the 10 commandments; unfortunately it was a little disappointing. They were all sad and we couldn’t figure out who was good or bad and kept waiting for something exciting to happen. Ah well. Now we have “Supersize Me”. I think we might watch it this afternoon so we have time to recover before dinner.
We’re still working on things and hoping for more summer weather; it’s been rather rainy lately but thankfully not cold. The piano we have had stored in the flat for some previous owners should be moved out while we’re away, which leaves a whole lot more room for my mom in our second bedroom! Well, sorry for such a mundane post. Enjoy your weekends!
This is my last review of Marilynne Robinson’s novel, Gilead. Here are the first, second, third and fourth reviews. Be sure to check out Amanda’s and Laura’s reviews as well.
*****
Wow, what a book. I think a lot of it made me ponder that alter ego of mine I wrote out in my entry for the Intellectuelle blog (which didn’t make the cut, but nevertheless was a good writing exercise for me). You can read it here if you’re interested.
But back to the novel.
I don’t want to ruin the plot, so I’ll just give you a little peek. John Ames learns about the loneliness of his namesake, Jack Ames Boughton, and forgives him in a moment where he blesses him, ‘to the limit of [his] powers, whatever they are, repeating the benediction from Numbers of course — “The Lord make His face to sine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee and give thee peace.”‘ He surmises ‘Nothing could be more beautiful than that, or more expressive of my feelings, certainly or more sufficient, for that matter’ (275). This is beautiful, not just because we have a scriptural benediction in a prize-winning novel, but also because scripture IS sufficient for all situations, for our whole selves and our whole lives.
I’m just going to leave you with a few beautiful passages to think on. Nothing I could say could properly sum up the novel but I hope this will give you a feel for melancholic beauty of the writing, the narrator and the place he lived, Gilead, Iowa.
When reminiscing about meeting his wife: ‘At this point I began to suspect, as I have from time to time, that grace has a grand laughter in it. She confided to this unworthy old swain with perfume in his hair tha tshe came to me seeking baptism’ (236).
When telling Boughton goodbye from his soon, Jack: ‘There he was yesterday evening, sleeping on his right side as he always did, in the embrace of the Lord, I have no doubt, though I knew if I woke him up he’d be back in Gethsemene. So I said to him in his sleep, I blessed that boy of yours for you. I still feel the weight of his brow on my hand. I said, I love him as much as you meant me to. So certain of your prayers are finally answered, old fellow. And mine too, mine too. We had to wait a long time, didn’t we?’ (279).
‘It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance — for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. That is what I said in the Pentecost sermon. I have reflected on that sermon, and there is some truth in it. But the Lord is mroe constant and far more extravagent than it seems to imply. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration’ (279-80).
‘What have I to leave you but ruin of old courage, and the lore of old gallantry and hope? Well,l as I have said, it is all an ember now, and the good Lord will surely someday breathe it into flame agian’ (281).
And my favourite — the ending of the nove:
‘To me it seems rather Christlike to be as unadorned as this place is, as little regarded. I can’t help imagining that you will leave sooner or later, and it’s fine if you have done that, or you mean to do it. This whole town does look like whatever hope becomes after it begins to weary a llittle, then weary a little more. But hope deferred is still hope. I love this town. I think sometimes of going into the ground here as a last wild gesture of love — I to will smolder away the time until the great and general incandescence.
I’ll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.
I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep’ (281-2).
