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weekend sabbath

October 23, 2011 / Michele Minehart

For two consecutive weekends we’ve arrived to Friday without plans. We each had separate goals or hopes in terms of achievements, but an itinerary did not exist. A “free weekend” is pretty rare concept in our life as we frequently have some sort of engagement to attend to, be it family gatherings, tickets to an event or even plans to go to a lakehouse or two. Since moving in, these past few weeks have been the most “free” as we’ve ever experienced, and in many ways they were more rich with blessing than if we would’ve tried to cram something in.

A call from one of the Husband’s cousins resulted in a spontaneous dinner visit, which was splendid. I enjoy conversation with her, and when not pressed within a larger family setting, we got to hear so much more of what is going on in their lives.

This morning we were graced by the children with an extra hour’s sleep before heading off to church, in the company of one of my favorite people in town. After doing a bit of work in the kitchen, I took dinner down to my cousin and his wife and new baby and ended up staying for some delightful conversation. Truly, we live much too close to not see each other more often.

These seem like relatively simple and small things for weekend life. But oftentimes when we cram our calendar with visits and stopping here, there and everywhere along the way, the entire 48 hours flies by and we arrive at 8pm on Sunday simply exhausted. But this weekend we saw more people who aren’t in our current rotations than the previous 10 months combined. And the kids made it to bed on time and we got to sleep in.

I love order and reason, so I’m a believer in schedules and calendars. But I think perhaps we need to implement a weekend sabbatical rule. Once every 7 weekends we plan to plan nothing, and allow things to spontaneously rise to the top. Even if it’s painting the shutters, going to the park or even staying in our jammies most of the day while enjoying a movie and baking cookies – plenty of small joys are festering below the surface, just waiting for us to clear a space for them to bloom.

There are some things, like a date with KLR, that if we don’t put it into the calendars, they won’t happen. But there are other things that never go into the calendar and will never happen if we don’t clear it. Fortunately for me, this week includes a bit of both.

wash. rinse. repeat.

October 21, 2011 / Michele Minehart

Some sort of psychological effect comes from hearing a message or idea too much, that it’s too common to you. It begins to loose meaning and become part of the scenery. I find this to be true at times of reading passages in the Bible that are popular preaching material; it’s difficult not to go into with “I’ve heard all this before.” Alternatively, when you approach with a posture that you will “learn something new”, quite often the shiny nugget of insight turns out to be fools’ gold, something conjured because otherwise we believe our time spent in the passage will be in vain.

Or perhaps I’m the only one who suffers these afflictions. It might be possible that the rest of the world approaches scripture in a much healthier way.

In any case, the story of David and Bathsheeba came through the line up. This time around my attempt was to simply let it be. Take the time to read and soak, and then move on. That was the goal. But it took me too many days. So many things jumped out at me that I needed to keep rereading.

A summary of what I’d heard before:

“At a time when Isreal was off to war” – David was not where he was supposed to be.

“David saw a beautiful woman” – keep your eyes out of other people’s bath tubs.

Also, in seminary it was discussed that when this passage is brought up in an American context and the question is posed: “What was David’s sin?” the answer is largely sexual impurity. However, when posed to a non-American (specifically in our discussion, 3rd world countries), the answer is abuse of power and greed. Because I’d heard these things before, here’s what caught my attention:

Then David confessed to Nathan, “I’ve sinned against God.” Nathan pronounced, “Yes, but that’s not the last word. God forgives your sin. You won’t die for it. But because of your blasphemous behavior, the son born to you will die.” (Ital mine).

Blasphemous? Really? It sounds quite extreme. But in Nathan’s word to David, he had explained that God gave David everything that he wanted or needed, yet David craved still more.

Juxtaposed next to this passage is then the story of Amnon, David’s son raping Tamar, his half-sister.

So, there was this tree. And from it fell nuts. But those nuts didn’t fall very far….

Snuggled into this story: King David heard the whole story and was enraged, but he didn’t discipline Amnon. David doted on him because he was his firstborn.

I have to wonder what David’s experiences have to teach us as parents who have screwed up some place in our own lives. Though David’s particular sin was absolved, it continued on by repeating itself through his offspring. While we want to protect those we love, how do we become honest about our mistakes and shortcomings in our lives in a way that doesn’t justify it or write it off?

And more so, if David lived forgiven – which he was – did Amnon believe that such an act was simply forgivable and therefore he partook? I partially-read a book by the father of a drug addict who did research on the topic of parental drug use. He found that being “completely honest about past mistakes” didn’t always yield itself as a deterrent. Actually, the opposite was true. No matter the sob story you tell about how bad life was, if you’ve been able to rectify it and you end up alright, the kids generally think, “well you did it, and you ended up okay.”

So, I don’t lobby for hiding our sin from our kids.

And yet, living as if it didn’t have lasting consequences doesn’t seem to work either.

Perhaps living forgiven doesn’t mean living forgotten?

Has anyone seen this done well? How have parents you known stopped one cycle and began another?

social media appropo’s

October 19, 2011 / Michele Minehart

What I really need someone to tell me is this: do I text, or do I facebook message?

Is there an unspoken of qualifier or criterion that must be taken into consideration when trying to transpose information to someone who is both your fb friend and in your list of contacts?

Here’s what I’ve been operating on. Please tell me if I’m violating a social media faux pax.

1. Time immediacy. Even though most of the social sphere is on smartphone time, at least 50% of my family isn’t, so if I need a timely response, it goes text.

2. Privacy. Those thoughts that I don’t want to disclose to other people go via text. Even though no one else can read a fb message, for some reason the text just seems safer. So a snippy text about a co-worker’s habits or a mutual friend’s dressing habits frequently go the way of text. As if there’s a FB message screener but Verizon would never think to look in upon such things. Or I have an underlying sense that the VZW troll keeps his mouth shut.

3. Relational proximity. Though I might have them in my phone book because I called them 2 years ago, that doesn’t mean a random text is appropriate. Perhaps Zuckerburg had a greater sense of social hierarchies than we thought when he created the FB message.

4. Content. It seems that nearly all FB messages require response whereas texts do not. So there must be an underlying sense of seriousness. This does not mean I respond to my FB messages because anyone who has sent me 2 or more knows that I do not. This is a laziness issue, not to be confused with a lack of social media clarity.

What did I miss?

Michele Minehart

Page 191 of 312

weekend sabbath

wash. rinse. repeat.

social media appropo’s

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