7 Quick Takes

Head over to Conversion Diary for more Quick Takes or to add your own to her list!

-- 1 --

I did some browsing of travel blogs this week, and someone linked to this guy: Matt, Liz, and Madeline. Turns out it's a single dad who travels the world. It was going to be a little family blog, I guess, and they had a rough pregnancy with bedrest, etc. I read posts about the baby coming early, complete with photos of mom seeing her baby before she was whisked away to NICU. The next day, mom stood up to go with the nurses and husband to see the baby, and she passed out... and died. Read it here. The blog has turned out to be the musings of this single dad about raising his kid and dealing with loss. Man. It got me all emotional. Isaac and I have found marriage to be far more beautiful than we even could have imagined, and just the thought of loss... phew. It gets to me.

-- 2 -- 

After Obama's State of the Union speech there was a string of negative commentary about it from my facebook friends. That always bugs me - everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I hate feeling like NO ONE is speaking about the other side of things. So... I posted that I'm proud to have him as my President, and recognized that probably everyone that just read that rolled their eyes. Interestingly, I got 8 thumbs up and 10 positive comments of agreement. It's nice to know I'm not alone as a supporter of Obama despite most of my friends being very conservative.

-- 3 -- 

Blogger Pensieve asked her followers "what speaks Southern to you?". Admission: I've traveled the world, but I'd never been in the South, at least not the real south, until about two years ago. Texas isn't the South, even though it's IN southern USA. It's more like an extension of the midwest with some southern characteristics. In any case, it's so foreign to me, and Pensieve's post confirmed it. I only recently saw Steel Magnolias, growing up I never had biscuits and gravy, collard greens, grits, pecan pie, etc. I don't know a thing about football (college or otherwise), I think saying "coke" and meaning all soda is ridiculous, I don't get the big hair/big bows/ruffles thing, I only learned what cotillion is last year. I am.... VERY not Southern.

-- 4 -- 

This week is the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Auchwitz and Dachau. A survivor of the camps wrote an editorial in the NY Times that I think is great.

The fury of the Haitian earthquake, which has taken more than 200,000 lives, teaches us how cruel nature can be to man. The Holocaust, which destroyed a people, teaches us that nature, even in its cruelest moments, is benign in comparison with man when he loses his moral compass and his reason.

-- 5 -- 
My sister posted photos from Christmas, and this photo was among them. I love it. Just another day in our house, I tell you! I love having a family that is sometimes just flat weird. It's amazing.

-- 6 -- 

It's been a while since I linked to my theology blog. I keep it separate because most of you readers don't care to discuss the fine points of theology. :) If however, you do enjoy such things, I've been on a long journey of investigating Eastern Orthodoxy and coming to understand their history and their commonalities and differences from Protestantism. 

 -- 7 -- 

My youngest sister Michelle is an artist at heart. Our interests are the same - we both love music, especially music with compelling lyrics. We both love to sing, we both love to draw, we both write poetry, and we're both intensely emotional but very controlled in how we express it. In any case, we're a lot alike. Michelle wrote a brilliant poem called "I am from" and put it on facebook, and I asked her permission to share it here. It expresses what it's like to have been raised in different places that all have pieces of your heart. She's lived in three VERY different areas of the world (I was only two - so she's got it even harder than I did!). Some of the things she says reference very specific moments, like the "splinters of fear", which hails back to when she was little and she and my mom and brother were trapped in our car when a riot broke out around them. And the 8 hearts? That's us. My family.

I am From

I am from oceans away
Where 6 degrees South meets 108 degrees East
From dazzling shades of tropical jungle
From palm trees and glittering seas
I am from the Himalayan kings
Snow-capped mountains towering in the sky
From Monsoon-seasoned hillsides
And sandy deserts claiming the horizon




I am from views out the window of a plane in the clouds
From thrown rocks, shattered glass and splinters of fear
I am from the priceless sound of rain beating on a tin roof
From the sweetness of chai and swings on a sunny afternoon
I am from Jelabeez and Suzuki rides
I am from the lilt of songs around a fire underneath the stars
I am from the thin air a mile high into the sky
From the tears that stained my cheeks with each goodbye

I am from the saving grace of a baby in straw
A faith refined by fire and strengthened through trials
I am from the ship that sailed across the sea
The sound of wind whipping through red, white and blue
I am from one choice to change countless lives
I am from eight hearts bonded in blood
A tree so strong and grown in love

I am from oceans away
I am from a home unknown and yet so missed
I am from a journey long of love overflowed