'cause everybody knows what you really mean

one of my fave concepts from semantics and pragmatics class was the idea of illocutionary force: what people really mean by what they say. is it a request? do they want information? are they making a statement? sometimes the surface form and the intended meaning are skewed. but even in that case, you play the game and ignore the surface form unless you're either a) communicatively impaired or         b) obstinate. i'd go with the latter on this one.

(thanks to the seattle post-intelligencer for posting comics online :) ).

Currently Watching Taare Zameen Par see related

...well, i was watching that last night, anyway. very cool that this film seems to point to a growing understanding of and attention being given to children with common learning disabilities in the developing world, and if that's not the case, this film might spark that kind of awareness.

the good stuff

there is no shortage of stuff in the world. in fact, there's so much that sometimes it's hard to sort it all out. so in the hope that it might save you some time or energy, i'd like to share this list of a few things that i've found that i'd put in the category of moderately Good Stuff.

cell phone service: charity mobile
i held out for a long time, but necessity rather forced my hand, and i've entered the 21st century. one of the things that held me back for a long time was the issue of doing business with large corporations which make well-meaning charitable contributions to causes i don't want to support. i was about to dismiss my scruples as perhaps over-cautionary and sign up for a plan with one of the major carriers... when i came across an offer indicating their direct partnership with an organization i have serious objections to. if you want to know the details, feel free to ask. anyway... i did finally locate this company that offers good service at a comparable price and donates part of my bill to the pro-life charity of my choice. i've had it for a few months, and so far i've been pleased with the service.

squeaky clean
it seems like it's about time to give up the idea that i will someday grow out of the perpetual pimple problem. i've tried a lot of different stuff, some of which has been helpful, some not so helpful. this one is a bit expensive, but i think i like it. another concession has been made to the fact that somewhere along the line, my hair crossed the threshold from blond to brown. i remained in denial for many a year, probably, but the transition to thinking of myself as a brunette is somewhat tempered by the availability of suave's less expensive nod to john frieda - hey, i'll take "radiant" as an adjective any day!

in the interest of traffic safety: free headsets
it hasn't come in the mail yet, and i had started to wonder if this was, in fact, a scam, but i got an e-mail today saying that my order had been shipped. it seems this company has a great desire to lessen the dangers of cell phone using drivers on the road. and since i've become one of Those People, i thought maybe i'd try this out.

music
i'm no authority on this subject, but here are a few sources of quality tunes: the ruf hymnbook and indelible grace projects and the square peg alliance. some other specific artists who come to mind are sara groves (for thoughtful lyrics), the old blind dogs (for being a talented band that puts a modern twist on traditional scottish music), and the biscuit burners (for super fun bluegrass).

smart tv: an oxymoron? you decide.
a year or two ago i was pretty jazzed to run into a program on public tv that airs independent films. the first one i saw was a documentary about two children working in silver mines in peru. powerful stuff. it's called the independent lens. there's another similar program called wide angle. i've only seen a few of the films, but i appreciate the fact that there are some good, informative stories being produced and aired.

breaking the chain: going independent
i can't say that i never shop at chain stores (i recently had occasion to note that michaels has a happy selection of greeting card materials, but hobby lobby still wins the prize for photo albums - back home in cleveland pat catans has the standard stuff and some good surprises), but i really like to support the little guy and shop at local places. a few faves in my current home area are: cox farms for vitamins and healthy food, ben franklin for medicine, the greek bakery & cafe and toshio's for international cuisine even in duncanville, and america's best coffee for free wi-fi and a place to journal. back in the day, amidst efforts to boycott goods produced in unethical fashion, i used to ponder the thought of opening a store where you could shop with a clean conscience. i'm not really the entrepreneurial type, but i'm glad there are some folks who had that kind of idea and the expertise to pull it off - i haven't yet purchased anything from ten thousand villages, but i appreciate the concept.

'cause love is still a worthy cause
as long as i was on the subject of fair trade, i thought i'd throw in a few other organizations that do great things towards meeting physical and spiritual needs. food for the hungry, compassion international, the international justice mission, and project grace are a few that i think deserve mention. a friend who has been doing research that involves visiting a lot of pregnancy-related websites was especially impressed with this one: abort 73. there are some disturbing pictures, but this is a disturbing topic.) and for anyone who stumbles upon this page who might be in the very difficult position of facing an unplanned pregnancy, please know that there is hope and help - here is one site where you can go to find help in your area: Care Net's OptionLine.)

just a few things i thought i'd share, in case they're helpful to anybody else. feel free to add to the list!

cross-cultural partnerships: letting others lead without leaving them holding the bag

I just watched a really interesting story about an attempt to put together a model eco-friendly village in northeast China (http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/green_dreams/). A noble goal, but it's turned out only to be a good model  if your concept of the ideal village is a ghost town of empty houses. The matter is intriguing enough in itself, but there are definitely some lessons here for those of us who would be involved in any kind of cross-cultural work where we're partnering with people in developing countries. This has been a matter that's been on my radar screen for a while - the desire to be part of the solution to the vast problems in the world, not by being the savior who tries to bring about the solution myself, but by helping to empower people to bring about change in their own communities (or more specifically, to help people gain access to the Word that is the catalyst for transformation, the good news about the One who is the Savior). If you asked the development team in this case, I'd bet they'd say they had those kinds of ideals. For good reason colonialism has fallen out of fashion, and most people who are conscious of such things want to do everything possible to avoid being paternalistic.

But in the repeated refrain "it's not our village," I hear a lot of confusion about what that kind of partnership looks like. As westerners who probably do have more money and sometimes more eduction, we do want to have the attitude that that fact does not make us "better" or give us the right to run the show. Ideally, it really isn't our project. At best we're catalysts for change, but the project has to be owned by the people. ...And that sounds really nice, and we want to be altruistic... but practical realities might make this a more difficult enterprise than it looks on paper. When people are coming from such incongruous backgrounds, how do you really communicate? Do they really grasp what's being asked?  How do they perceive our interests, intentions and goals? How do they perceive our role in the process and their own?

The question is, how do you act as a catalyst or provide some kind of guidance without going to the one extreme of paternalistic over-managing or to the other extreme of putting too much weight on people who are learning new skills? How do you partner in a way that allows for their ownership, but doesn't leave them hanging if things don't work out? So that "it's not our village" isn't really saying, "sorry, it's not our problem"?

(A few years back I read an article for class about this program. I think I have some idealogical differences with these organizations, but the thing that stands out in my mind about the article I read was that the Canadian university involved seemed to be pulling off the task of helping to build up faculty at an Indonesian university in a way that provided good support without paternalism. And it all sounded very successful... but then again, it was written up by the Canadian university :) )

musical expression of a lopsided equation

i was here at the indelible grace site, mooching free tunes to play in the background while packing for an overnight retreat, when i encountered "sweet amelia."

it seems like love is a two-way street - it's sure good for the receiver, but so good for the giver, too. and the kind where the giving is heavily weighted more on one side than the other... if you didn't know better, you'd probably think that the benefit was correspondingly skewed towards the receiver. but the funny things is that it seems like the numbers don't add up that way in this kind of math. ed welch talks about the freedom that comes from recalibrating the gauges of your life so that you're seeking to love more than needing to give love. just listening to these thoughts that flow from one woman's longing to give love and life and home to a child makes me think about how sacrificial love is, by nature, a thing that leaves scars. but they're scars that make someone beautiful. (maybe like the way much afraid picks up a lot of stones on her painful journey and in the end finds herself with a pile of jewels.) even the longing... i want to be that kind of person. the kind of person whose longings are sincerely for things that give life to others. and solid. the kind of person you can count on. i'm not either. but a girl can ask. and as i write this, the train of thought pulls in at this station: that's probably a request that's for something more like bread than stones, so... new resolution to ask in hope.

but the point is... it's so beautiful to hear those kinds of longings - the wanting to give love to somebody you don't stand to receive anything back from - voiced.

(on a related note... bella does a powerful job of telling this kind of love story in film. but i suggest... don't watch the trailers if you plan to see it. i was glad to have the story unfold as an unexpected surprise.)

and my little mind... i'm writing about this because it intrigues me, but this is pretty well beyond my understanding. i can't even pretend to be a person who knows about this subject. it's really presumptuous of me to even try to write about it... just a few frail observations.

edit: hmm... funny, this isn't really what i intended to write when i started this entry, but this is how it ended up, anyway. what i was originally thinking about was more specifically focused on maturity and parenthood, a task which i hope will someday fall to me, but which is nevertheless a frightening prospect in some ways. but i guess that's because it isn't my job right now, and thus i haven't been given the grace to handle it. anyway... i guess i was just pondering over how someone takes the psychological leap from being in the child role or the independent adult role to being a person who's really adept at the task of taking care of needy, dependent people, and feeling enough competence at it to even seek the role.

Currently Reading Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer By C.S. Lewis see related

on the acquisition of names

for some reason, earlier this evening a few of my fave lines from the hobbit came to mind.

a smashing bit of dramatic transition:
"They were come to the Desolation of the Dragon, and they were come at the waning of the year."

and this bit from bilbo's chat with smaug:

"Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Smaug the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities," replied Bilbo.

"You have nice manners for a thief and a liar," said the dragon. "You seem familiar with my name, but I don't seem to remember smelling you before. Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask?"

"You may indeed! I come from under the hill, and under the hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air. I am he that walks unseen."

"So I can well believe," said Smaug, "but that is hardly your usual name."

"I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number."

"Lovely titles!" sneered the dragon. "But lucky numbers don't always come off."

"I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me."

"These don't sound so creditable," scoffed Smaug.

"I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider"...

i've always liked that line - it's always stuck with me - all these grand descriptions he comes up with for himself, or rather, realizes about himself.  they've become his, and they're his to wear, but he never planned any of the adventure that made those names his. they came to him more like a birthday present than a paycheck. because he was gonna stay in a hole, smoking a pipe and getting fatter and fatter till the end of his comfy, but unremarkable days. in spite of the fact that sometimes the journey seems less than epic for those of us who are not fictional... it is no less so (epic, that is). every once in a while, if you've got the eyes to see, you might catch a glimpse from that angle. and the names come to you, they become yours, in the choices you make and the choices you don't. and clearly, the whole thing is bigger than us. our clumsy little hands aren't really the ones writing the story. something to ponder and rejoice over. as for myself, i'm a few things i know and a lot of things i don't.

i'd like to come up with some great things i could be... the Ringwinner, the Luckwearer, the Barrel-rider... something grand. but over the last year or so a reality that i cannot escape has been indelibly branded into my flesh, with all the pain one would expect to accompany such a process: the future is out of my control. and sometimes that has really freaked me out. it has nearly eaten my lunch. the thought that all of my vague notions of becoming... something... i don't know what, but something good, something better, could very easily come to nothing, it has nearly crippled me at times. (hmmm... saying that out loud, well, in print anyway, sort of defuses that a little bit.)

but i guess this is where it all comes together:

"...We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

furthermore...

"To him who overcomes, I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give him a white stone with a new name written on it, known only to him who receives it."

He is Artist and Preparer and Name-Giver. I am Canvas and Clay, Prepared-One and Name-Receiver. I am both Empathy, one who would be clothed in beauty, and Word-Murderer, chained in ugliness, Broken. He is Costly Mercy and Forgiveness. And if all that's true, then perhaps I can say that He'll erase the names I've tried to write for myself, rub them off and polish the whole thing clean of all my childish scribbles and appalling graffiti before He presents the gift. What else should I expect from the One who embodies all grace?