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From Margie Haack’s blog post on hot cross buns:

It’s probably the only place I allow such blatant Christian propaganda in my life. Here: have these buns, see the cross in the middle? They’re tender and sticky with bits of raisin and apricot surprises, and perhaps you, too, will some day be surprised by Holy Week, by Christ’s tenderness and suffering and you’ll eat that joy.

Thank you Margie, for your writing that refreshes and encourages a tired mama like me today. Maybe next year I’ll make hot cross buns, but for now, I’m refreshed reading about yours.

Last night Ezra was up a few times during the night due to teething and our dog, Francis, decided he wanted to keep licking his injured foot. It made for a long night that left me pretty tired this morning. (And each morning I wake up tired I wonder how in the world I’m going to be able to handle having an infant on top of this). I will tell you that I really don’t like mornings, or that I used to like them when I was able to get enough sleep and wake up at an opportune time in my sleep cycle. Mornings often show me the true state of myself: angry, frustrated and feeling entitled to at least 7 solid in-a-row hours of sleep.

This morning my mom watched Ezra and I went to the Ladies Community Group with church. We were discussing the sermon on Luke 5:21-39, which discusses the destruction of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem (which happened in 70 AD) and the End of the Age. For all the expected doom and gloom it was an encouraging passage as we discussed it. One thing from the sermon that resonated with me this morning was that little-d ‘destruction’ points to big-D ‘Destruction’; that is, specifically within the historical context the destruction of the Temple points to the Destruction prophesied about concerning the End of the Age. We, like the original Jewish hearers, tend to make our little-d destruction into big-D Destruction. Things in the present tend to take on cataclysmic proportions in our minds. When awoken constantly from what I hoped would be a good sleep, all I could think of was that I was tired and I didn’t deserve this.

But what I fail to remember is the big picture. If I understood that all the little destruction I deal with in life fits under a much larger umbrella, the little incidents — like getting a poor night’s sleep — would take proper dimensions and not make me into the Morning Monster feeling entitled and that everyone must bend to my wishes for a good night’s sleep. Because I obviously love Ezra more than my sleep but at the moment of being re-awoken I fail to respond with sympathy and grace but out of self-entitlement — all of which means that functionally I’m loving myself more than my son. Mothering is hard work and exhausting at this stage and it would be lovely to always sleep well. But in the midst of my little-d destruction of sleep, I pray that I would be able to see it for what it really is and learn little by little how to communicate the gospel of grace to my son, even when it means I’m bleary-eyed from wakefulness.

Celebrate October by buying Fair Trade. Oxfam has information about how to celebrate Fair Trade month that you may find helpful. If you have a Trader Joe’s near you, they stock fairly traded coffee (the workers get paid a living wage), so pick some up and save the world! I know it’s not nearly that easy, but buying Fair Trade is an important way to “care for the least of these” amongst us globally. Also if you’re in the LA area, consider buying gifts or coffees/teas at Ten Thousand Villages on Lake in Pasadena, or shop from their website.

I’ll do my best to get a post up on the whys of buying Fair Trade by the end of the month.

I don’t watch Oprah, but I guess that The International Breast milk Project was featured on her show. I just found out about it and am considering donating some milk. From their website: “The International Breast Milk Project is the first organization in the world to provide donor breast milk from the United States to babies orphaned by disease and poverty.” Twenty-five percent of the milk donated goes directly to Africa while 75% is used for critically ill infants in the US; as this 75% garners $1/ounce in proceeds, this is then donated back to orphaned children.

Check out how to donate milk if you’re a nursing mother, and if you’re not, you can always donate money.

An interesting excerpt from an article called, ‘The Evangelical Mind Revisted’:

Wheaton, Baylor, and Calvin are all institutions featured in “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind,” a 2001 cover story I wrote for The Atlantic Monthly. In that essay, I tried to show that many liberal stereotypes about faith-based colleges were wildly out of date. Fed a steady diet of Elmer Gantry and Inherit the Wind, cosmopolitan inhabitants of places such as New York and Boston are likely to treat evangelicals as hopelessly backward clingers to creationism and scriptural literalism. They believe that if conservative Christians go to college at all, the institutions they attend are little better than degree mills flavored with faith—places where dogma and revealed truth replace logic and open-minded discussion.

Such stereotypes might once have been true, I argued, but conservative Christians today are not like they were yesterday. No longer confined to the rural regions of the country, evangelicals attend megachurches in exurban America, work as mid-level professionals in large corporations, and have upwardly mobile aspirations for their children. For them, college is an opportunity to be welcomed rather than an iniquity to be denounced. The published faculty at Calvin and Wheaton are as distinguished as the prospective students who clamor to get in; the SAT scores among Wheaton’s entering classes rival those at some of America’s most prestigious secular institutions. You do not attend Calvin or Wheaton—or, for that matter, other first-rate schools such as Westmont in California, Gordon in Massachusetts, or Seattle Pacific University—to imbibe intelligent design or to read the Bible rather than Emily Dickinson. I contend that the protests at Calvin and the refusal to condemn once frowned-upon behavior at Baylor and Wheaton as sinful suggest just how far these institutions have moved away from fundamentalist pieties.

Will conservative Christian colleges and universities continue to move toward the mainstream of American life? Should they? And what will happen to their institutions of higher learning if they do? Colleges exist as the pivotal point between youth and adulthood. Given how many believers there are in this country, the ways conservative Christian colleges respond to the world around them will tell us a great deal about the kind of country America is likely to be 30 or even 20 years from now.

The full text of the article can be found here. Anyone know how to get a copy of his 2001 Atlantic Montly article he mentions?

First off, we’re back from our weekend away in London. It was wonderfully fabulous and if you’re not interested in hearing more, I suggest you come back another day to read other things we’ve written (or take a browse through our archives). A few pictures are located here for your enjoyment.

We hired a car for our trip and left early Friday morning. We drove over to Glasgow and south on the M6 and rather than spending a few short hours in London before we had to arrive at the peoples’ home at which we were staying, we decided to spend those few hours in Oxford. This is exciting for me on so many levels and caused me to clap for excitement when we made the decision. For those not in the know, I spent three months there on an exchange programee (the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies), and had the time of my life; I still keep in touch with the 6 women with whom I lived, who now live in the States, UK and South America. I guess the travel bug bit us all! Anyway, we had a lovely time although I had to feel my way around the city, not having a map with me. And as Bryce says, neither of us had a ’staging area’. Whenever travelling, I need to mental prepare (or stage) myself for the experience and since we made the decision last-minute, I didn’t have the opportunity. He also didn’t have the opportunity to be led slowly up to all of these Oxfordian monuments (the Bodleian library for instance as you quite regularly round a corner and find it in front of you). We had pasties in the covered market followed by Ben’s cookies, which are heavenly. We also enjoyed the 2nd hand floor of Blackwell’s Bookshop. It was fabulous.

We then drove down to Ealing, a borough in west London, to stay with some lovely people, Graham and Katie Weeks. They graciously put us up for the weekend and fed us some lovely food! It was great to meet and be with Christians and find an instantaneous ‘comfortability’ with them. Saturday, Bryce went off to a presbytery meeting with Graham and I went into London. Having forgotten my tourist book, I acted even more touristy by asking everyone where certain things were! My first stop was Portobello Road Market, where I picked up a fabulous silver candelabra, a funky skirt and a cute silver sugar spoon for my mom. I then went to the Victoria and Albert Museum; I loved the feel for the time that you get when there and enjoyed the flattened musical instrument decorations. I then found my way to a Wagamama’s where I immersed myself with my ramen and a book, to avoid looking like a complete loner eating by myself. I then went to the National Gallery, where I’d spent some time before. I love their collection of Dutch master and impressionist painters. Van Gogh’s Farms near Avers is one of my favourite pieces there, by far and I was disappointed the gift shop didn’t have a print of it. My feet aching, I enjoyed a cup of tea until meeting up with Bryce for a fab dinner in China Town.

Sunday, we went to IPC Ealing, which both Bryce and I found extremely refreshing. The congregation was so very welcoming and they had a lovely service. We particularly enjoyed the strength of the singing and speaking with people from all over the world who attend there. It was great to meet the pastor, Paul Levy, as well and hear more about the IPC. We had another lovely meal after the service with the Weeks and then headed back to Edinburgh; we then decided last-minute that it’d be nice to visit Grace Church Hackney as we had heard good things about it. It, too, had a lovely service and we again were encouraged. We left London around 7 pm and rolled into Edinburgh in the wee hours of the morning, with several stops for caffeine, sugar and cat naps. All in all, a fabulous weekend and I hope we can quickly get back into the swing of classes and studying!

*I realise of course that our Scottish readers will probably never read this blog entry due to its title. It comes from a hilarious song that Graham Weeks played for us called ‘a song of patriotic prejudice’, whose chorus begins with the title of this blog entry. It of course was as tongue-in-cheek as most good English humour and we quite enjoyed it. This, of course, does not mean that we necessarily agree with Flanders and Swann’s song, but being that we were in the south of England this weekend, it seems only fitting to use it as our title. (End of disclaimer).

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

Great discussion on evangelical subculture, personal holiness, and if it all matters here at Intellectuelle. Also some heated discussion about presuppositions and Christian math and/or science at Evangelical Outpost. (Looks like it might be a series!)

Derek Webb is coming out with a new CD called Mockingbird due to be released 26 December, so is his wife, Sandra McCracken (she’s coming out with a hymnody album) called The Builder and the Architect.

As always, there’s some good stuff to read and ponder over at Reformation 21 blog. This week the topic is hymnody.

Here’s a great article by Tim Keller on the Missional Church, a great reminder that the Church is the people of God on mission together.

Finally a few book recommendations on Christianity and culture I’ve dipped into and can’t wait to read more: Total Truth, Is there a meaning in this text?, Meltdown (which is a great easy starting place) and a book I can’t wait to read: The Gagging of God.

New entry up at Intellectuelle.

I posted a short bit on organic food at Intellectuelle following our first delivery from Grow Wild. Feel free to jump in on the conversation over there (or here, if you’d rather).

NEW: Check out this fabulous spoof video about organic food here. (HT: FFF)