TheLionRampant.net

I’m a bit lonely. The thing is, it’s hard to live a number of time zones away from your family and all the people you grew up with. Bryce truly is my best friend in the world but I am really missing all those years-long friendships with girlfriends — where you knew what each other was like when you were 15 and have seen how you’ve grown up in the intervening years. I wish I had a girlfriend I couldn’t wait to be with and talk about important stuff — someone who challenges me, sharpens me and who calls me on things when I’m off base. It’s not that I don’t have great girlfriends here, but they’re just different from friends you’ve known for a decade.

I realise this all sounds very selfish — and I’m not even sure why I’m blogging about such things to the world. But I read blogs and get occasional emails from friends back home and I miss our closeness (and see them forming new bonds with other friends) and, as the holidays approach, it makes me miss that friendship more. However, I know even if we are reunited, that closeness won’t magically appear; I’ll always be somewhat a stranger when I go home now, having spent so much time in another place. I guess that’s part of living so far away and in another culture — part of my life experience is simply too foreign for old friends to enter into — and part of just being a real grown up. That is, when one’s ‘grown up’ it’s the family that takes over what the friends previously supplied. Being that we’re in sort of a limbo — grown up and married and yet still in graduate school and not having kids — I don’t feel like we’ve achieved a legitimacy in claiming ‘family status’ in some areas — we definitely don’t fit it conventionally.

Anyway, maybe it’s just my INFJ coming out so you needn’t worry about me.

Dour forecasters have told us that this winter in Edinburgh is to be the worst in a decade; well, if it means that we get crisp, clear days with negative temperatures and not much rain or wind, sign me up! The weather has gone a bit wonky between freezing and temps in the 50s but today we had our first snow!

My month-long bus pass ran out today so I walked in to the Uni this morning. At 9 am I left our flat and was greeted by small snowdrops when I opened the door. By the time I had walked up our street they were serious flakes and by the time I got to the West End of Princes Street, we had some lovely fluffy snowflakes. The streets were coated in white — excepting of course the paths where people walked.

By the time I arrived at the National Library of Scotland, my black coat had turned white. I also shook out my “snow” umbrella a few times to deposit the hefty bit of snow that had accumulated on it. I left the library at 11.30 and was sorrowfully greeted by brown slush. But now in my office I can still look over coated tennis courts and a white Meadows, which makes up for the slush on some level.

I hope all our American readers had a lovely Thanksgiving. Ours is tomorrow and, an update and pictures shall follow presently.

But there you have it. A small post of mine is up on Intellectuelle.

What are Christians buying into? Check out this excellent article by Carl Trueman at Reformation 21.

The Pharisees where pretty creative people. I know we don’t normally think of them as creative; we have generally been trained to see them as the bad guys–the legalists–and of course they were. But I think they were rather creative folks as well. They managed to take the Old Testament, and the Ten Commandments in particular, and extrapolate from them commands that would address ever behavioural situation. And I think they had to be pretty creative to accomplish that. They had, for example, taken the commandment to remember the Sabbath and created rules for every situation one might conceivably find themselves in on the Sabbath. And so on, and so forth. The result of their efforts is reflected in the Talmud, which seeks to apply the Law to every facet of life. To continue the example of the Sabbath, the Talmud specifies no less than 39 types of work that are prohibited on the Sabbath. The Pharisees, in their creativity, had created Laws to govern every conceivable area of life.
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As some of you know Neyir and I have taken the plunge and slapped down our 40 quid to get all the haircutting and colouring that we want at a local Higher Education college (read: beauty college). It was slightly scary at first being that to get one’s hair coloured a skin test is required each time and that we are the only people under about 78 who go to the college for hair treatments. Neyir seems to always get the chatty ones while I get the shy hairdressers. I haven’t even had to tell anyone yet about my husband training to be a minister (which is usually quite a conversation stopper). Then again, maybe I’m just shy. Somehow chatting with your hairdresser (and when this person changes every time you get your hair cut) just isn’t on the top of my list for fun activities. Beyond the general civilities, I’m not sure what to say. How does one work on one’s small talk skills?

I think this may be one reason why Bryce’s hair is long and yet still standing upright — as a means to avoid the difficult hairdresser small talk.

In other news, it’s cold and windy. I’m thankful I did get my hair cut last week (it’s at the shortest it’s been ever I think) because the day after I did, winds upwards of 25 mph were swirling my hair around like I was being tossed around in the dryer. And I’ve decided that having short hair or long-enough-to-pull-back hair is the only way to make it out alive in this Edinburgh wind tunnel. I’ve been super busy with reading for tutorials, reading for my PhD, and reading for my research job.

A post to come on intentional living, Derrida and Thoreau — it’ll probably find a home on Intellectuelle within the week.

In the name of “postmodernism” triumphalism often comes disguised as humility - after all, as David Wells points out, that’s what “post-whatever” always means. The posties (whether post-liberal, post-conservative, post-evangelical, post-modern - the important thing is the post), say they, have transcended the false polarities of modernity and our enlightenment past, but in claiming so have unwittingly embraced the quintessential idea of modernity - progress. And so they don’t turn out to be post-modern at all, but are in fact just the next version of modernity. They are not radical enough.

From Reformation 21.

…preached by me last Sunday at New Restalrig on Ephesians 4:1-16. This might be the best sermon I’ve preached yet; I’ve been working on a few things and after many hours of preparation it came together reasonable well (and I almost managed to keep it under 30 minutes!). So, enjoy, if you want. And, if any pastor-types happen by and care to leave me some detailed feedback (I’d appreciate it!) you can use the form here to send me an email.

President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. “We do not torture,” Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA prisons overseas.

Bush supported an effort spearheaded by Vice President Dick Cheney to block or modify a proposed Senate-passed ban on torture. – From AP News

Am I missing something here? We don’t torture, but we’re against making it illegal to torture?

Check out how good your UK/US terminology is here. I think I knew most of them, which is good considering we’ve been here more than 2 years.

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I just finished making a nearly vegan chocolate cake and it was super fabulous. This was attempt #2. Attempt #1 involved me not having maple syrup (and so I added sugar and water and it was awfully hard and bad); additionally, the recipe for attempted cake #1 called for brown rice, and this should’ve tipped me off that it wasn’t going to be good. So I threw it away and baked this. Bryce loved it and being quite anti-vegetarian, this is quite a feat. I imagine you could substitute brown rice syrup for the sugar and maybe some applesauce as well.