Sunday in the Zoo

Sunday Afternoon at the Zoo

This summer I took a Sabbatical from teaching Sunday school. Matt and I used our open-ended weekends to travel some more and get to know some other people in Greenville. We started teaching again last week, and I’ve been apprehensive about taking on the responsibility and commitment again. Additionally, we began using a new curriculum that is completely different from what I’d been using for the past four and a half years. Instead of teaching a story and a verse and singing songs, I have a series of five to six activities that lead up to the children’s church lesson that follows. The past two weeks of Sunday school have been a delightful learning experience for me! I hope my little five-year olds are getting as much from the lesson as I am. Yesterday we focused on the creation of man and how we are made in God’s image.

Matt had been sick and I knew from experience that the best way to get him feeling normal again would be to get him outside. He and a friend had talked about going to the zoo, so he asked him if he’d want to try to go to the Columbia zoo for a couple hours. We could not have asked for better weather for a car ride and the zoo. The sky was that vivid primary blue that marks the end of the white heat and the beginning of the cool fall. The air has lost it’s humidity but it’s still mild enough for short sleeves, flirty skirts and sandals.

I’ve been to the zoo many times in my life, but between the weather, the significance of Sunday and the Sunday school lesson I was struck with new thoughts. We were standing in the exotic bird display, and I couldn’t tear my gaze away from some beautiful blue parrots. I wanted to take a picture, but there was no way to do that without catching the wire mesh separating me from them. With the account of creation still fresh in my mind, I began to think on what it would be like if we could be that close to breathtakingly beautiful birds without a cage containing them. How sad that sin has put so many barriers in our lives. The friend who was with us has made some imperfect decisions recently and hurt us and others. Respecting his privacy, we’ve never questioned his behavior; but I have a list of questions in my diary that I would like to ask. I will never know why he was so rude to me all in the name of "teasing." I’ll never know why he broke my best friend’s heart. I’ll never know why he completely disappeared for four month in spite of the hours Matt had invested in their friendship. And, I’ll never get to experience blue parrots without constraints.

I’m slowly realizing that this is yet the consequences of my sin. And God’s grace is greater than all of it. Closure is waiting us in heaven. On this side of paradise, I will content myself with birds in cages and unanswered questions.

OP ED - Other People's Noses

Early this morning, I read an article on CNN.com about how Donald Trump had offered to buy the land that is the potential future site of the hotly contested 9/11 Mosque. But what truly caught my attention were the comments (this was early enough that there was a manageable amount of them). The first comment actually pertained to the article at hand (the author felt that Mr. Trump was trying to buy off people’s morals), but the remaining comments quickly disintegrated into flagrant statements about the rightness or wrongness, as judged by the constitution, of building the mosque and whether all Muslims could be equated with those who carried out the terrorist attacks or whether that was an extremist group of Muslims. And I realized they all had missed the point.

There is an adage that says “your freedom ends where my nose begins.” The implication being that, we all have a right to liberty, but we also should not encroach upon the liberty of others. In a physical realm, we demonstrate this all the time. If I buy a bus ticket, I have a right to sit on any seat in that bus; however, if someone is already seated, I waive my right to that particular seat—I do not sit on top of them, and I do flippantly not ask them to move. The reality is that sometimes our freedoms overlap. A civilized society compensates for this through graciousness and selflessness.

Mr. Elzanaty and the other owners of Park51 have an unequivocal right to build a Mosque at that site. They own the property and the zoning laws are such that their proposed plans are in line with them. Freedom of religion is culturally accepted in the United States, so there are no laws barring their building a place of worship for their religion. And yet there are noses in the way. These are the noses of the family and friends of those who died in the 2001 terrorist attacks. These are also the noses of Americans who think it’s distasteful or dangerous to build an ostentatious Islamic building in proximity to the primary site of those terrorist attacks, lest it be viewed as celebratory gloating or a challenge.

Americans have, since their founding, accepted that men have a right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” These rights were violated in the September 11^th Attacks. And many Americans argue these foundational rights are again being violated in the building of a Mosque near the site of those attacks.

The “non-extremist” Muslims protest that theirs is a religion of peace and of love toward fellow man. Mr. Elzanaty has been offered an opportunity by Mr. Trump (and according to the article, several others) to withdraw, with no financial loss to him, from the volatile situation and defer to other people’s noses. In refusing, he is not practicing the Islam that his Mosque is alleged to support.

Writing a book!

Rebekah and I are writing a book. I can't tell you anything about it, except that it is going to be very good. Today I wrote the last page. Now I have to write the rest of it.

Too Many Shoes- Sarah

This past weekend, I was forced to face the fact that I have A LOT of shoes. My nine year-old sister was visiting me with my parents and decided to go through my shoe collection. She came out and modeled a majority of them before the family. There is nothing quite like seeing one's own clothes on someone else to fully appreciate them, but it's a completely different thing to see them on someone much younger than you. Thanks to her childish legs and feet, I saw all too well how extreme my taste really was. Most of the shoes had an average heel of 4 inches and were in exciting colors and prints. I seem to favors bright blues for some reason. I still love my shoes and will probably be collecting then for a very long time or until I have a husband who finds them more annoying than sexy. However, what is so appealing about shoes and why is there a need for so many? One of my favorite book series is "Confessions of a Shopaholic." The main character Becky Boomwood always envisions people talking about her and her outfits before she buys them and referring to her as the "girl in the green scarf" or "girl in the zebra jeans." While I don't hear "girl in the out-of-this-world-shoes" every time I try on a fabulous pair of shoes, I do hear something in my head telling me that they'll give me more status as an expert on fashion, that it will enhance a certain outfit, hide my large feet, or help capture the attention of "the one." Shoes can appear be your best friend, they will never make you feel ugly on a fat day and will usually help you receive more compliments than any other clothing item. You rarely have to change sizes and can collect a lot of them. Also, they are the ultra-feminine thing and they scream woman pride. This causes women (and sometimes men) to feel bound to stop a perfect stranger and compliment her on her amazing shoes. I have mixed feelings about the comments I get from people who ask "how can you walk in those?" I feel annoyance at a common misconception of heels and a secret pride in wowing people with my stiletto skills :) Despite all of the pros of owning many shoes and mastering walking in them, I think I ought to start thinking more practically about shoes since I am attempting to join the business world.

Remembering the Sixties - by Peggy

While the events of any decade shape those growing up in it, I believe the decade of the 60's had an unusually strong influence on those of us who were young at that time. I began kindergarten in 1961 and graduated from 8th grade in 1970. I remember my mother's reaction when she received a phone call telling her that the president had been assassinated. I remember the Beatles. I remember the race riots that were occurring in Milwaukee and other cities. I remember the distrust of the younger generation for the older generation and the evils of the Vietnam War. I remember a man landing on the moon. I remember being afraid of being a teenager because I understood them to be disrespectful of the "Establishment." Their music was scary; their clothes were scary; their activities were scary.
The backdrop of the sixties in the book The Wednesday Sisters was of particular interest to me. My memories of those events are those of a child while the author uses the point of view of young adults who are working to discover their talents and place in society. The young women in the book are also shaped by their experiences of the events and the tumultuous times in which they live.
Some good things came out of that decade. I am glad that interracial marriages are no longer considered taboo and, in fact, barely noticed. I am glad the women can run in marathons and participate in a number of professions tradionally thought to be only for men. However, I am saddened that a woman's primary purpose, to be a completer of her husband and to pour into the lives of her children has been eclipsed by her other accomplishments in society. I am saddened that boys and men are made to feel like second class citizens because the women are no longer looking for their knights in shining armor, or maybe not so shining. I am saddened because Scripture is not the standard by which we judge the value of who a person is or what a person does.
As a child of the sixties, I felt keenly the instability of a culture of relativism. When I came to know Christ as my personal Savior, I also came to understand the Bible was Truth. A source of absolute truth provided more comfort for me than understanding that I could be sure of going to heaven. And so now I can look back at this most interesting decade in light of biblical truth. Everything now becomes subject to being put through a biblical grid, even the characters and events of The Wednesday Sisters. Many times they act nobly; other times they seem to be subject to the age of relativism without thinking through long term effects of certain philosophies.
In many ways though the Wednesday sisters represent women in a universal way. How do we blend our interests, abilites and talents into the demands of a marriage and family? How do we balance our ambitions and our intelligence with a position of submission to a husband? Our husbands don't want to be married to doormats, yet they are fragile and so easily discouraged by their wives and other significant women in their lives. I do believe that Scripture teaches that a woman is to be proactive in their marriages, as mothers and in the society in which she lives. Women are often portrayed in Scripture as strong, courageous, and wise. I don't believe that either subjecting women to men nor elevating them above men is biblical. Much of what the Wednesday sisters did fit well into a biblical grid, however, in some ways they fell short because they lacked an understanding of God's view of women. God didn't need to be mentioned, but I doubt that the author understood this view because it did not come through in the book as it could have had she understood it. As believers, I think we can examine the characters in the light of a biblical grid and glean from their enthusiasm and accomplishments while applying what we know of biblical truth to our own varioius circumstances. Thus we can be shaped not only by the events of our time and culture, including the books we read, but ultimately by the truth of God.