Modern Grief

In the vein of something I posted some time ago, I was reading objections from The Lancet to the DSM 5 removing grief as an exception to major depression. The story can be read here or on The Lancet website. It does force one to ask in what world is two months too long to grieve;  I know people who have had meds pushed on them after such a short period. The Lancet suggests the motivation for the change may be greed--more people to foist pills on to. I'm not entirely sure that's the only reason.

From a Christian perspective, the development goes to show that not only is the "guilt perspective" of the western church being medicalized away, so now is the pain of death being pathologized. Pretty soon there's not going to be anything left for Jesus to save us from, people. We'll have done it all ourselves. Right?? Yes, we'll still be guilty. We'll still die. But you see it won't matter in the long run. We'll have masked and explained away and treated all the negative symptoms of the decay that is endemic in the human race without having to deal with God at all. And without having actually fixed a thing. Oh brave new world that has such creatures in it.


The quote from Philippe Aries was illuminating:

 Death must simply become the discreet but dignified exit of a peaceful person from a helpful society that is not torn, not even overly upset by the idea of a biological transition without significance, without pain or suffering, and ultimately without fear.

Yeah. We may think we can dress the wound as deep as the sea with a bandaid and say peace, peace, but there is only one way off of the one way ride to oblivion; to throw yourself on the mercy of the one stronger than death, your guilt and everything else. Solus Christus.

Recipe for Frustration

The old hippy leaflet had lied and it was time to get hold of some of those sciency metal chemical things it warned against.

So much entertaining truth. :) Cotton? Beets? Yeah.

Playing Chicken

Over Christmas I actually got to make a few things. All two of you who are part of the in crowd of theo already know about this, but posting it anyway for posterity:

Heh yeah I just stole the pictures off of Holly's blog. I guess the USian government H8s me now. Oh well, not like I ever played by other people's rules. 

I saw a chicken quilt on pinterest, and decided to make one for Holly since she is a pastoralist now--there has to be some advantage to having little char to care for. Although I'm sure little char can probably care for herself, I'm also pretty sure she's probably totally self-absorbed and narcissistic, which means she is very demanding. And she prolly tries to peck out the eyes of all the happy chickens named after hebrew letters who don't give her books even after they promised to. 

Anyway it's a pretty simple piece, just fused the pieces on and machine embroidered, and quilted in a freeform feather pattern. It's been a long time since I've done any extensive machine embroidery, so I wasn't sure how it would turn out (especially because I had no stablizer), but I used some old bounce sheets and went to it. Here is a shot Holly posted of the embroidery.

 Skillz-I still has em.

Going to Ignore Life and Make Things Now.

Wow. Do not like this new blogger. It keeps changing the post!

I haven't made anything in a long time. And it's been even longer since I did any beading (a good 5 years at least). When I first learned how to do beading, I started with peyote stitch. It's been more constistently the one stitch I go back to all the time just because it's pretty easy and doesn't require equipment of any kind.

Because I hoard the first thing I made in any technique (I have plans of one day making a crazy quilt with a lot of this junk in it) and because I love it, I still have the first thing I ever made in peyote stitch:

I made this bracelet when I was about 20. I saw a picture of a similar one in a magazine and like everything, thought I could make that. So I learned peyote stitch in order to make it, not knowing that the wider something is, the more difficult it is to keep it even. Anyway, I stitched it loose (which I always liked because it's kind of drapey) and made a lot of mistakes, but I always really loved the bracelet. It is huge-at least 2.5" wide (though not consistently as you can see) and it really reflects my philosophy of trying new things. That being when you are first learning a technique you should try the hardest thing you possibly can just to see if you can do it. If it looks good you can pat yourself on the back because of your mad skillz. And if it looks terrible, you can blame the difficulty of the pattern rather than your lack of said mad skillz.

Anyway, the bracelet is getting very raggedy and has had to be repaired several times, so to distract myself from the fact that there is currently nothing in my life that doesn't make me utterly miserable, I decided to make another one. I didn't want to rip that one up (the hoarding) so I picked out new beads to make a second one.

These are the tests I did with different bead combinations. At first I didn't like the one with the silver lined turquoise (at the bottom), but it has definitely grown on me. I think I just didn't like the fact that it was very different than the original. Out of the combos I settled on, I used mostly Japanese beads (prefer the rounded cylindrical shape of the non-delicas) but the perfect turquoise I found was a Czech. Caused some problems because a) the doughnut shape and b) I accidentally bought a size 10 instead of 11 like the rest, but hey it makes things interesting. The pictures don't do the frosty opacity of that turquoise bead justice (the one drawback of my phone is that its camera is frankly crap). It's a really pleasing colour.

The new version. It's pretty wavy and not so even, due partly to the differences in beads and the width of the weaving, but turned out pretty well. It also was a fair bit shorter than the original so it just fits on my wrist (and as mem knows I have the Moore toothpick wrists, so it's small).

See?

This picture really doesn't capture well how different they look. The silverlined reds do show up nicely in the newer cuff though. One more of them together to show a little of the contrast:

First Church of the Utter Narcissist

Brothers do not be children in your thinking.

One of the interesting things that has often been noted about the book of 1 Corinthians is how Paul corrects the errant behaviour and childishness of the Corinthians with the gospel. It seems counter intuitive, and leaves one wondering why he thought this was so important when it’s pretty clear they had major issues with practice. Why is Christ Crucified the only thing he determines to know among them? Why does he lace a letter that has to deal with a variety of terrible behaviour with doctrinal truths?

I think the reason becomes apparent when we consider the common thread of the behaviour itself. While there seem to be a plethora of issues, all of them-from picking Apostolic sides to interrupting the assembly to eating up everything at the Lord’s supper-are mere symptoms of what the Corinthian problem really was. Paul diagnoses the underlying illness, it is this problem that he seeks to heal with the word of the gospel-the problem is simply incurvatus. Or in English, plain old selfishness.

The Corinthians exhibit all to the childishness that only narcissists are capable of, because narcissists really do believe the world does revolve around them. Even Christianity is all about my salvation, my satisfaction, my sanctification. Right? Me me me.

But unfortunately for our narcissistic tendencies, our religion isn’t called “metianity.” There is someone else’s name in the title. Someone else who gets the top billing. The story has another protagonist.

Paul hits the narcissists of Corinth with the gospel because anyone who really thinks it’s still all about them after everything he has preached has missed and misunderstood what the gospel really is. And Paul reminds them of the fact. When he preaches Christ Crucified, he does it to remind them not only of the work of Christ, the climax of all human history, but also to say “that means the climax isn’t you, you short-sighted morons“.

The gospel transforms us because the gospel inverts us. It pulls us from our natural orientation of self as centre of a decaying universe, and pulls us outward. Suddenly we see a new kingdom, where someone else is King. Not only does it present us with the true centre of the universe giving up everything to pay our debts, but it reorients our entire perspective to him. To the one bearing the shame of the cross. Not because he demanded his rights, but because he gave to those who had wronged and deserved nothing from him.

To say we still want to do it our own damn way is to return to our own navels. So we throw childish tantrums, sue one another, take offence at minor slights, even disrespect the table of the Lord. Our belief that everything is permissible is nothing more than a colossal example of missing the point. Of everything. Paul repeatedly tells his childish readers “imitate me”-then goes on to say how he has given up everything, asked for nothing, demanded no rights-”as I imitate Christ”.

We are given insight to the need for the narcissist to hear the gospel by the parable of the unmerciful servant. As Christ said, if you don’t forgive neither have you been forgiven. And I have long thought he meant that the bitter and unforgiving have no idea what they’ve been given in forgiveness. They do not appreciate how much was done for their benefit. They don’t really “get” forgiveness. We who have been forgiven much should love much. Not only love God whom we haven’t seen, but love our brothers whom we have. This is why John ties this kind of love to the gospel. Not because it’s a substitute for the preaching of Christ, or because it somehow is part of the gospel, but because people who get the gospel inevitably come to love the unlovable, even as they themselves have been unloveable recipients of the love of God.

So the one who can’t forgive and sues his brother, the one who eats up all the food and ignores his hungry brother, the one who lords his gift of tongues over his brothers-these people simply don’t get the gospel. They really don’t get it. And they need it. Those who think they are wise and worthy, those who think they have the right to have everything their way, those who love to be first-there is something very deficient in their thinking. And that thing is the vision of God himself not grasping for equality, but lowering himself to become a servant. Divesting himself of his right to destroy and punish and absorbing the cost in the body he took to himself forever. That’s what it’s about. Any who still whine when they don’t get what they want or have their way haven’t been sufficiently shamed out of it by the power of the gospel.

And Paul does use the gospel like a surgeon. As a sharp knife that cuts away the flesh of our hearts and eyes, that cuts the contracted tendons, that cuts the tie to our own navels. The knife that makes the painful cuts to kill and purge evil-the evil that is our native tongue. Not with eloquent words, but in power and by the Spirit.