July 2012

Women and Guilt
July 27, 2012 | 0 comments

It seems to me many women spend countless hours feeling guilty.  I include myself in this group.  When I was working outside the home, I felt guilty because I had to put our oldest child (a nursing baby at the time) into day care.  Fortunately, we were both in the same facility on a naval air station and I could nurse him on breaks.  Also, I knew the ladies were pouring love on my little boy when I couldn’t.

Then, with the arrival of two more babies, I stayed home.  As a women’s libber, I felt guilty because I wasn’t bringing in my share of the bacon.  I felt guilty because my parents had taken out a second mortgage in order to pay for my college education.  I felt guilty I didn’t have a career.   I wondered if I was wasting my life cleaning the house, planning menus, changing diapers and intervening in sibling squabbles.  Add to that, housewifery can be a thankless job. It sometimes seemed the only time anyone notices how...

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Humiliating Jesus
July 18, 2012 | 0 comments

Dorothy Sayers said Jesus suffered three humiliations: the incarnation, the cross, and the church.  There is truth in these words.  Think of the humiliation of God, Creator of the Universe, the One who created mankind in His own image, choosing to impregnate and be born through a human woman.  He left heaven to live on earth among fallen men and women in order to give them the opportunity to once again have a personal relationship with Him – as Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden.  He did this because of His great love for each of us.  And then, he suffered the torture and indignities of the cross.  Imagine.  He was beaten, spit upon, lacerated by a whip, stripped of his clothing and nailed to the cross where he hung for hours while his enemies gloated.  Even as He was dying, He was thinking of others.  He gave His mother’s care over to John.  He called upon God, the Father, to forgive us.  He finished the work His Father...

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God's Gang
July 15, 2012 | 0 comments

God’s Gang

We tend to picture Jesus’ disciples as the great saints they became, depicted in longs robes and wearing halos in some churches.  Have you ever thought about who the twelve disciples might be today?

Simon-Peter - a slightly-overweight middle-aged, grizzled, graying-bearded man with callused hands steering his fishing boat out to sea before dawn, his wife and children snug in their beds at home

Andrew – a thirty-something man who prefers to be on land where the action is rather than stuck fishing with Peter - his hard-working, ill-tempered, opinionated and controlling older brother who can never shut up

James and John - hot-tempered, affluent, know-it-all teenagers who are ambitious and eager to get ahead in the world, thankful for a mother with family connections who is willing to ask for a private consult with the boss in order to get her boys promotions

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To Russia with Love
July 9, 2012 | 0 comments

Rick and I spent the month of May in Russia and visiting Capitols of the Baltic Sea.  For the first half of our adventure (Russia), we flew into St. Petersburg and spent a few days at the gorgeous Grand Hotel right around the corner from the “Church of the Spilled Blood”, one of the iconic sites of Russian orthodoxy.  We set out on a Viking river boat and traveled along the Neva River, across Lake Ladoga to the Svir River to Lake Onega and finally to the Volga, with a final stay in Moscow.

Russia was not what I expected. 

We grew up during the Cold War, the Space Race, the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Most of the pictures I had seen showed a dismal, black-and-white Russia with unsmiling people in heavy coats and fur hats, or an immense army parading in Red Square.  I can’t even remember how many movies we saw dedicated to Russian “moles” and plots to overthrow America and turn the world into communist collectives. 

The last thing I...

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