Sunday Wrap Up--June 20, 2021

The big news of the past few weeks in our family is that Shane and Dorcas are expecting a baby girl.  The wee one has four older brothers, so this is a much-anticipated prospect.  A sonogram last week showed a strong heartbeat, which was another cause for rejoicing.  This good news was especially welcome after some concerning possibilities showed up on the previous sonogram, at 20 weeks gestation.  

The biggest item of concern is that a large (7 cm) chorioangioma was discovered.  This is a non-malignant tumor of the placenta.  Sometimes babies suffer no ill effects when this condition is present, and sometimes it's fatal to the baby--depending on how large the tumor is and how "greedy" it gets for the available blood supply.  The only intervention the doctor has mentioned so far as a possibility is inducing labor if signs of distress show up.  Late in the pregnancy, this is not as grim a prospect as it would be now, of course.     

Many prayers are being offered on this baby's behalf.  Dorcas' transparency is inspiring, and she posted the good news and the concerns on Facebook with just the right tone of anticipation and vulnerability involved in the balancing act that the realities call for.  

For now, scans will be performed every two weeks.  During the third trimester, the interval will be reduced to one scan each week. That's a lot of trips to Wichita to see a specialist.

Sometime in the near future, the results will be available for a blood test for Down Syndrome.  This test was done since a few (two) characteristics consistent with Down Syndrome were observed on the first sonogram.   Laughing about this as I did is probably not considered a typical response--and I didn't laugh right away, but hear me out.

The two things noted as potential DS indicators are characteristics that my perfectly normal Asian husband also possesses.  He also possesses one more that's on the list, but this baby does not have that third one--or any of the other five non-Asian characteristics that appeared on the list I saw.  The specialist, however, was very firm in stating that "these are not Asian characteristics."  I'm thinking maybe she knows and maybe she doesn't. God knows, so we'll keep right on talking to Him about this--receiving the hope and peace that He gives.  His presence is guaranteed in any case. 

I realized very quickly that this baby will be welcomed and cherished with or without Down syndrome.  I also thought right away of a Facebook friend of mine who has several children with Down Syndrome, only one of them being homemade.  She's very convinced that Down Syndrome is a gift, and she truly delights in all of her children--four of whom were adopted with pre-existing handicaps.

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Our eight-year-old granddaughter has volunteered as a test subject for one of the Covid vaccines for children.  She has received one injection.  Since it's a double-blind trial, neither those administering the vaccine or the one receiving it know whether she's getting a placebo or the real thing.  Collecting data through phone calls and blood draws are part of the trial process. 

Our son heard about the possibility of participating in the trial and thought it would be a wonderful thing for his children to have a part in it.  The children's mother wasn't so sure, so nothing was said to the children.  Then a  young friend spoke of it with great excitement because she already had plans to participate.  At that point, the oldest granddaughter begged to be able to join the trial "to help America."  After talking through how many needle sticks that meant (at which point the younger sister bowed out), and reminding her that it would not help just Americans, and securing an agreement that the daddy would be the one shouldering the responsibility of providing transportation, etc.  the deal was made.  Off they went to Newton several days later.  

It so happens that there's some hefty financial incentive for participation also.  I'm not sure that the granddaughter knows how this will be handled, but her parents have plans to tuck most of it away for her to access in the future.

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My sister Lois is expecting her first two grandchildren in the near future--the children of Hans and Heidi.  Both of them are local, so we're all getting a chance to share in the excitement.  

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Wheat harvest has been in full swing during the past week.  With one hot dry day after another, anyone who could escape equipment problems got a good shot at getting the "gold" into a bin.  There's a chance of rain tonight.  A very welcome cool-down is on the way as well.

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Today is the summer solstice.  I watched the sun go down tonight and noted the features on the horizon that lined up with the "sinking" spot.  I've done this throughout the year.  

I don't recall ever seeing the exact figure, but I estimate that if I were to stand facing straight west and point my right arm to the summer solstice sunset spot and my left arm to the winter solstice spot, my arms would be spread at something approximating a 90-degree angle--maybe less.  

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I have some very striking tall red-leaved plants growing in my garden from seeds that I scattered last fall and this spring.  The seeds came from amaranth plants that were growing at the demonstration garden on the Hutchinson Community College campus last summer.  

At HCC the plants always reseeded very enthusiastically in the former Thomas Jefferson garden area.  In other words, the seeds originally had been acquired as part of a collection of seeds gathered from the gardens of Thomas Jefferson at Monticello.  Sally, a Master Gardener, had nurtured the garden until that area became the cutting garden area.  Those annual red-leaved plants came back every year since then from seeds dropped the year before. 

Our daughter-in-law, Hilda, noticed the plants in my garden and observed how much they looked like the red "greens" they used to eat in Bangladesh.  There, they were called lalshak.  I knew that amaranth leaves could be cooked and used like spinach, so it seemed safe enough to try eating them.  Hilda took some home and prepared them as she was used to eating lalshak, and the whole family was delighted to taste this favorite familiar dish again.  Hiromi and I have eaten some since and liked it too.  

I think it's remarkable that Thomas Jefferson and Bangladesh are meeting in my Kansas garden.

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 Grant and Clarissa's house is teeming with the activity of six little "Prettyman" boys.  Clare and her sister Tara each have three boys, and Tara is here for a visit from Washington state.

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My sister-in-law Judy has a brother Mark who is battling Covid in Costa Rica.  He has been hospitalized with Covid pneumonia.  

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A group of local bikers are headed west now, with the culmination of the trip occurring at the top of Pikes Peak.  This is happening in lieu of the annual Bike Across Kansas that was canceled for the second year in a row.  

I might worry less about this trip if I didn't know about Hiromi's niece's experience with a run up Pike's Peak.  She collapsed partway up, despite being a very experienced runner who has run double marathons.  With a medical crew providing oxygen, she limped along a little farther till she reached the point where she would be provided a ride to the bottom.  Otherwise, she would have needed to walk down, and she couldn't think of doing that.  

Starting out in triple digit temps was surely not much fun.

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Carol, Shari, and Braden are headed to Greece to work in a refugee camp for several weeks.  Braden's parents and siblings will be going to Pennsylvania where Arlyn plans to teach during summer term at Faith Builders.

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Lil Nisly is suffering from some paralysis on one side of her face, resulting in the normal eye-blinking reflex going on vacation.  This dehydrates her cornea and calls for various interventions at different times.  Eye drops applied at frequent intervals, lying down with eyes closed, and at night taping the eye shut are measures I've heard about.  

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Many of the situations that I've mentioned are prayer concerns.  Thank you for joining in this prayer effort.  

Respectful Patience

In an email, I recently lamented something that still causes me some unease:  regrettable results of weighing in publicly on controversial matters.  I'm trying to sort this out, so please bear with me while I record some of the bits and pieces that occur to me.  My email correspondent, who is far younger than I, commiserates on this lamentable point, noting that he often experiences something similar.

Sometimes I get a "lecture" that I think is designed to pull all the controversial elements of an issue into a well-stacked load that can ride grandly down the middle of the road in the bed of a powerful, conservatively-styled, but new-looking pickup.  The problem with this is that I feel misunderstood when this happens--since the summary being presented does not look substantially different from my position.  So what's the point of the comment?  I'm trying to figure out what part of the mess* is mine to deal with.  

I'll begin by noting that the effort to lecture me often comes from people a number of decades younger that I am.  Why do they feel the need to lecture me?  Perhaps more germane to my inquiry is the question of why I am particularly annoyed when young people lecture me?  The email writer identified Millennials as the group that annoys him.  They are younger than he is.  I don't have a name for the demographic from whom I am hearing lectures.  Is everyone annoyed when lectured by someone younger? 

Maybe my annoyance stems from being perceived as having not taken the time or possessing the wisdom to think through various aspects of a matter before I weigh in.  While I can't vouch for my wisdom, I can certainly vouch for having taken plenty of time--normally at least.  I am reflexively indecisive at the beginning of considering an idea.  I am also relentlessly restless until something solid emerges from considering a matter.  On the way to resolution, I prune off and throw on the compost pile many details that I'm pretty sure will prove to be "unfruitful" when the ingathering can finally begin.  This discarding of details reveals a limitation I deal with.  My mind simply does not retain no-longer-needed details very well.  

Why do people assume that the "load" they're presenting as the summary of all the relevant considerations looks different from my load--from which I have unpacked only one box to put on display?  The fact that I haven't bothered to reiterate all of the details, that is, unpack all the boxes, doesn't mean that I have failed to consider them.  It may just mean that I'm trying not to be too long-winded.   

By and large, these are people who know me very well.  Why don't they let my input stand on its own merits?  Several possibilities occur to me.  Maybe they haven't really been paying attention in the past, and truly don't know enough to trust me.  Maybe they feel a need to be heard.  Maybe in some back-handed way they're trying to affirm me. Maybe they're working so hard to tiptoe around possible offenses that they don't really voice the disagreement they're feeling with me.  Could it be that a woman's word should always be topped with a man's word?  

Maybe the main issue on all sides is respectful patience.  I need to be patient with younger people.  Younger people need to be respectful toward me.  My patience needs to be laced with respect.  Their respect also calls for patience.  Both of us should be claiming the need for respectful patience as "my part of the mess.

*A term I remember from Leadership Reno county classes.

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The meme below which I saw on Facebook recently (and Joel helped me find again) also speaks to one of the reasons that I am sometimes annoyed by lectures of the kind I referred to above.  Think about it.

Ruminations on Pentecost

I've been preparing to teach the first of four Sunday School lessons on the topic of "Pentecost."  The word itself is a reference to the time during which the Old Testament feast of Pentecost was to be observed--fifty days after the Passover Feast.  Pentecost was the middle one of the three feasts that all Israelite males were required to attend.  Others besides the men were invited also.  The ones specifically mentioned are sons and daughters, male and female servants, Levites (the priestly tribe), foreigners, widows, and the fatherless.  It was to be a time of rejoicing, offering sacrifices, and a time of bringing freewill offerings in proportion to the blessings that God had given. 

The interval of fifty days is reminiscent of the Year of Jubilee, a special observance which was to take place after seven 7-year cycles of labor and rest (six years of labor and production, followed by one year of sabbath rest).  In the fiftieth year, debts were forgiven, slaves were set free, land was restored to its original owners, and the land rested (no planting or harvesting occurred).

On the first day after the death and resurrection of Jesus, a momentous event occurred on the Day of Pentecost.  The Holy Spirit, whom Jesus had promised, visibly appeared and the church was inaugurated, made up of an energized, empowered group of Christ-followers.

Pentecost apparently was celebrated on the first day of the week.  We know this because Passover was always a Sabbath celebration, occurring on the seventh day.  Observance of the Sabbath itself was in response to God's command.  Here are the words from Scripture:

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so, on the seventh day he rested from all his work.   And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.   (Genesis 2:2-3)

Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.   Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.   On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates.   For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.   Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.   (Exodus 20:8-11)

Something clicked with me this morning as I was studying.  I have often wondered, usually in passing, about how it is that the keeping of the sabbath (the seventh day as a day of rest) is the only one of the Ten Commandments that is not regularly observed among Christians.  The explanation I've heard is that Christians shifted from seventh-day observance to first-day observance after the resurrection--because Jesus came back to life on the first day of the week.  Gradually this became the gathering day for Christians.  The "rest" part of the Old Testament Sabbath was incorporated into the first-day observance for believers--not always successfully, as it turns out.  Today I'm wondering why people ever tried to combine rest, worship, and gathering all in one day.  I'm thinking of what might be gained if we moved toward restoring the seventh day as a day of rest, and kept the functions of worship and gathering as First Day activities.

I know why this seems impossible--because most of the people in most of our households are absent from their homes during the other five days of the week, for most of their waking hours.  If any work is to be accomplished at home, Saturday seems to be the only day for that to happen.  So we've made Saturdays as full of work as any other day.  Our Sundays may be only slightly less busy, with leaving home for gatherings a prominent feature of the day.  This is a different kind of hard work, but in some ways, no less taxing than physical labor.

What if, in our homes, our schools, and our businesses, we shifted to a four-day work week?  In other words, the work-at-home day could happen every week on Friday.  This would leave Saturday for rest, and Sunday for worship.  I believe the work hours during the first four days of the week might need to be extended, but I suspect that some efficiencies would be gained by less time spent "starting and stopping"  and going to and from our work and school places. 

While I'm on a roll, I'll add here that I have often wished that people who live at our latitude could somehow give more recognition in our schedules to the fact that daylight hours vary enormously throughout the year.  Basically, I believe that God gave us daylight for work, and night for rest.  

The Sabbath for the Jews begins on Friday evening at sundown.  This means that far more rest occurs during the "short day/long night" portion of the year than otherwise. Anyone involved in agriculture knows that crop production requires many hours of hard work, so it's fortunate that the days are long during this period.  In other words, far more work could occur during the long day/short night portion of the year than otherwise.

I don't have any illusions about being able to figure this out now, for everyone, for all time.  Nevertheless, I long to see at least small steps being taken toward a more sustainable way of ordering our lives.  Perhaps there's no better time than now, having just come through the most major societal disruption of routine in our lifetime.  

What if a reordering of our routines turns out to be one of the most durable blessings of our time in "the wilderness?"  What if labor, rest, and worship could be restored to balance on our watch?  I can think of no better prospect for looking back on the pandemic with gratitude rather than lament.

Two Big Fears

I seem to suffer from twin maladies.  Both can be paralyzing, and overcoming them is a struggle.  One fear is that I don't know enough about something to write about it credibly, effectively, and helpfully. The obvious remedy for this is to keep on learning a while longer before I write about it.  The other problem appears after I've spent enough time learning that I feel I have something to say.  When I do so, the subsequent fear is that I am now too uncurious and resistant to learning more on that topic.  Stuck in a rut.  Closed-minded.  Lacking a growth mindset.  Removed from reality.  Smug and over-confident.  

The most scary and vulnerable way of writing I know of is to document the learning process in writing.  This means asking the questions before you know the answers.  You express your unease before you've figured out whether it's justified or not.  You probably don't have any improvement to suggest for whatever you're questioning.  For all the world to see, you are revealing your ignorance and lack of insight by writing.

I know of nothing better than to keep learning and listening, but most of all, to stay tuned to the inner promptings of God's spirit within.  When I recognize that, I will be able to write as needed.    

For today, I will simply list some of the topics that for me currently fit into the "most scary and vulnerable way of writing" category.  While I have already made a stab at some of them previously, I hope to come back to some or all of them eventually.  In the meantime, if you have ideas or resources to share on any of these topics--or other topics that fit into this category for you, please feel free to do so, by whatever means seems good to you:  a face to face conversation, a phone call (620-567-2123)--leave a message if no answer, text (620-931-0815), a comment here, a Facebook message, or email (miriam@iwashige.com).  My favorite way to respond is by email, so if you contact me by another means, please leave me an email address where I can respond--unless that is problematic for you.  As I have time and opportunity, I may add to the list or insert links that seem relevant.  

1.  Deconstruction--used in the sense of re-examining matters of faith.

2.  Responsibility for "owning" the past sins of people groups of which we are a part.

3.  Institutions at critical inflection points--appropriate responses.

4.  Dealing with deep disappointment with or a sense of betrayal from those who were trusted friends or leaders in the past.  

5.  Handicaps or diagnoses of serious illness--vigorous efforts to correct the problems or willingness to embrace difficult realities without seeking recourse.

6.  Housing--traditional construction with its enormous debt load or alternative ways of building and funding.

7.  Health--benefiting from various branches of healing arts and sciences--built on the foundation of recognizing and utilizing the Lord's provision.

8.  Dealing with both abusers and victims redemptively and legally.

9.  Categorizations of personality or characteristics (such as the Enneagram):  useful for growth or excuses for bad choices or bad behavior?

10.  Scripture-informed (and accurately interpreted) gender roles.

11.  Ritual and spontaneity in church gatherings.  Related ideas: Tradition and innovation.

12.  Media:  How to know what to trust.  How to use it well personally.

13.  First things in the kingdom of God:  Maintaining strong faith communities or engaging in efforts at extension of it in far-flung locations. Strong personal faith is assumed in both contexts.  

14.  Ageing:  Being realistic about limitations without using them as excuses for bad behavior, laziness, or imposing guilt on others. How the church and/or the family should function in relation to the elderly.

15.  Being practical/being artful.  Both are good.  Can both be pursued to excess?  

16.  View of Scripture:  Honoring and understanding it.  Distinguishing rightly whether a literal interpretation and application are called for.  

17.  Education.  Making homeschooling work.  Correcting deficiencies in the classroom school model.  Pursuing higher education.  

18.  Being in the world but not of it.  Politics and science are two areas in which I especially feel the need for clarity on how this Christian imperative looks.  I'm familiar with a sense of homelessness.  

19.  Mental health.  How is it related to trauma, physical health, spiritual health, personal responsibility?  What remedies should be pursued when it is lacking?

20. Incompetence.  When it seems intractable in ourselves, what can be done? 

21.  Grief.  Relation to mental health.

22. Repentance.  Relation to mental health.

23.  Distressing circumstances.  Removing yourself from them or staying in hopes of making things better for everyone.

24.  Tenets of faith that can be construed to look ridiculous in light of commonly understood current values.