Where is the shredder?

When I was growing up in DC, there were, as you've no doubt heard, various scandals. Some involved documents that either were shredded by the guilty or . . . weren't -- to their mortification. Shredders were a bit of a new phenomenon then. I don't think many of us had seen one. But this atmosphere produced a saying among my peers, "Where's the shredder?" which could be provoked by all sorts of situations (not least of which was getting essays back and SAT results...).

Now shredders are all grown up. You can watch some of their work on this website. (Hat tip: TigerHawk.) Just tell it what you want to see shredded. Personally, I liked watching the couch disappear, although that brought to mind some weird sci-fi flick.

Purpose-Driven Hostage

I doubt that Rick Warren will expand his range to include this title, but it could serve as the title for the story of the woman held hostage by Atlanta murderer Brian Nichols. She won his trust by, among other things, reading to him passages out of the Purpose-Driven Life.

Read it in the Guardian, or the more complete transcript on CNN.

UPDATE:
A remarkable editorial in the Wall Street Journal by the marvelous Peggy Noonan on the same topic: "Flannery O'Connor Country."

Why I don't have a webcam....

Oh - My - Gosh.

Just go there.

And for even more fun, here is the original Numa Numa Dance site. Click on 'Watch this movie' in the upper right. The big advantage here is that you can turn subtitles and translation on or off. But for first time viewing it's funnier without. On the original page, just below the video link, is his story. He's been on CNN and VH-1. The guy was apparently wanting to try out his webcam and send something to his friends, but didn't want it to be 'too boring' of a test. You know, "Testing 1, 2, 3...." This is some 'sound check'! According to the, uh, creator of this little clip, 'the song is entitled "Dragostea Din Tea" by the Romanian pop [er, I would call it technopop] band "O-Zone".'

My Dad

I suppose lots of little girls grow up thinking their dad is a hero.

I grew up watching promotional films of my dad's test flying for North American (which is now part of Boeing, I believe). Over and over again as a child I watched him take off in an F-100 with a solid fuel booster rocket strapped to the fuselage, and over and over I watched him punch out the one time the rocket didn't drop off but dangled below the landing gear. I thought every kid's dad bailed out of aircraft at work. I suppose a lot of people WISHED they had ejection seats at work . . . .

You can watch him take off from the "World's Shortest Runway" in a short video clip here and read an article about it in Air & Space Magazine.

There's also a video produced by Air & Space, called, like the article, "Runways of Fire," but it's hard to find now. I've got a copy, but it's in NTSC format--not much good to my British friends unless they have a multi-region video player.

While we're at it, I guess I should mention my dad's book Aces Wild on the race for Mach 1 (also known as breaking the sound barrier). Surprise, surprise--it wasn't necessarily Chuck Yeager who did it first. Oooo, I shouldn't spoil the plotline!

Next, I should do a tribute to my mom....

Fore!

...i.e. time for some links...

Fascinating article on 'spirituality' and 'relevance' by Eugene Peterson here. (Hat tip: my friend Peter.)

The Times (of London) did an article on different expressions of church in the Church of England, particularly Oxford diocese, which mentions a congregation within our church, St. Aldate's, called 'hOME'. Article title: "Blessed are the Frisbee Throwers"-- one of hOME's cellgroups plays Ultimate Frisbee in the University Parks as a way of entering the culture. Wonder if they have their eyes on the cheesemakers?? (hat tip: Matt Rees, who leads hOME.)

And, in a show of solidarity, some articles and photos about women protesting for and demonstrating their rights in various Islamic countries-- in Kuwait, Pakistan, and, of course, Iraq and Iraq and Iraq and Iraq (click on Photo 2 of the slide show of Picture of the Week).

"The crumbs from Your table"

Last night, Mike and I were confirmed in the Church of England. I'm still trying to think through all that that might mean, but mostly we decided that it was a pragmatic decision, given our involvement at St. Aldate's, so that we can help out with things like serving communion, and the fact that we're leading a group there. Also, if Mike does decide to pursue ordination, this would be a required step. So... there we were, kneeling before a bishop whose theology I don't fully agree with, but who is, by all accounts, a 'good man.' I had to call to mind Augustine's arguments against the Donatists to remind myself that the Bishop's theology didn't have anything to do with the efficacy of the act of confirmation or communion for that matter (which he, of course, presided at that evening).

Some of us confirmands were called upon ahead of time to prepare a short testimony of how we came to faith and why we were being confirmed. I was one of them. Immediately after me, a young woman spoke with an incredibly moving testimony, involving her struggle with an immune disorder that meant she missed ten years of school; how with just a few GCSE's she managed to get a place at Oxford (normally, she would have needed three strong A-level exams.... sort of very vaguely like the difference between Achievement tests (SAT-2s) and AP tests...). Then last year her beloved dad died and she went through a dark night of the soul. She spoke beautifully (well, she is studying English literature!) and deeply of how Jesus came into that darkness. I was relieved that she spoke after me, because I don't think I could have physically spoken. Plus, I have to admit, I would have felt foolish with my not nearly as deep story....

Later, during the communion, I noticed that as she received the wine from our rector, Charlie, he gently laid his hand on her shoulder to pray for her. As he lifted his hand, it left behind a fine dusting of crumbs in the rough shape of his hand.

Christ comes to us in his body, through our ministry to one another, in the Bread and Wine, in quiet ways that we aren't always aware of. She turned and walked away, covered by the crumbs from his table.

A high-church sacramentalist would have been scandalized. They would never use a loaf of bread precisely because it crumbs so easily and pieces of it can fall and get lost or stepped on or . . . fall onto sweaters. A part of me even was a bit surprised. But mostly I felt the sweetness of God's grace and this very outward and visible sign of it.

New Beginning

Mike started his new job today. It was such a change from the past year and a half.... The alarm going off just before 7am, for one thing! Then, I made him my Southwest fritatta for breakfast, along with tea and toast with our homemade blackberry jam. We don't normally have toast, but hey, he has to last until lunch! :-) Then off he went at 8, with a kiss (or two) at the door, and the acknowledgement that I would make dinner, since he still has to finish reworking his talk for CrossCurrent tonight before we leave at 7.... Wow. It felt like a timewarp to the 50s! Not a bad thing, just amusing!

Chicken-fried Bible translation

An old friend (or should I say, a friend I haven't seen in awhile!), Beth Keck, checked in to my last post and left a comment which I figure combines that post with thoughts on the TNIV debate: "Everyone should leave their car at home..." Which got me thinking....

Yes, everyone should leave his/her/their car at home, or as they say in the South, "Y'all leave y'all's cah righchair!" Maybe we should have more Southerners on the Bible translation teams--thus Rev 3:20 could be rendered, "If any y'all opens the door, I'd be much obliged to have some of y'all's chicken-fried steak." Everyone in the South knows that "y'all" is singular, and is gender neutral. For the plural, you have to use 'All y'all.' My brother-in-law taught me that. I reckon it might could work for Bible translation.

But seriously, English as spoken by a significant portion of the population, be it Southern, or youth, or those without a prescriptive approach to grammar, have known for years that 'they' (or the handy second person pronoun 'y'all') can be singular or plural, depending on context. While I have spent most of my life as a prescriptivist, fighting the tides of 'bad' grammar, correcting my students' English, Greek, Latin, French, whatever, I have to admit that the grammatical descriptivists (i.e. those who deal with grammar as it is, not as it should be) on the TNIV translation team have a point.

That said, I might have opted for the first person plural: "If anyone opens the door, I will come in and we can share a meal together." Or the second person (which in standard English is quite ambiguous as to number): "I will eat with you and you with me."

I still hear nails on the chalkboard with the anyone/they shift, or the anyone/you shift, even though I realize very very few people share that twitchiness! I came to the realization some time ago that due to huge cultural shifts, the English language has become genderfied, or genderized, or gendered. Thus what used to be heard honestly as a neutral term (anyone/he/his) is now heard as a gendered term. I don't know if we can go back to the days of innocent ears and people who didn't hear 'him' as 'not her.' There truly was a time when 'he' could function as a singular of the neutral 'they.' Sadly, I think those times are gone. I think in large part the politics of gender is to blame. In some ways, we have been taught that we ought to hear things through a gendered filter. So even I now hear "brother" and think "not sister," or "son" and hear "not daughter."

But how do I deal with my grammarized ears? I wince whenever I hear the shift from singular (anyone) to plural (they). But I say it . . . .

Irony?

After writing very enthusiastically about the prospect of driving our new (new to us--4 years old) car to the grocery store, I grabbed my keys and the shopping list and some coupons from the store's "loyalty card" program (aka club card in US-English), and went out to the car. What a thrill--a bit of trepidation as I am still getting used to driving a 4-wheeled motorized vehicle on the left side of the narrow road. (A two-wheel bike--no problem!) The remote didn't work, but I managed to unlock the door the old-fashioned way with the key. I settle into my seat, fasten seatbelt, insert key in ignition, and... the car wouldn't start. It sort of turned over, and over, and over. But no engine roaring to life. I stopped trying, sat there, and tried again. Nothing. Maybe I had flooded the engine? So I give up for now and decide to try later, or ... wait until Mike gets home! What a weird thought! I have only been married a year and a half, and after years of independence and knowing how to change my own oil thank you very much, suddenly I am falling back on that lamest of get-out clauses.... Mike is mechanical. He'll know what the problem is. He'll figure it out. Feeling sheepish and distinctly unliberated, I slouch back inside.

But really... Mike is VERY mechanical. And sure enough, several hours later, he thinks he has it figured out. I should have tried another key! Clearly, the battery in this one must be dead. And therefore, the engine immobilizer wouldn't have gotten switched off by the key in the ignition. I have never had a car with engine immobilization (to my knowledge...), so this is new territory. We go to Boots (chemist, er I mean drugstore) the next day to get a battery for the remote. We replace it and ... it still doesn't work.

So much for mechanics!

But maybe Irony is too strong a label for this event (or non-event). I reckon that is just the blogification of an ordinary life-bobble.

Yes, I did get the groceries in the end. I used Mike's key.