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RightAngles
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Name: Karoline
Birthday: 8/25/1985
Interests: music, theology, teaching, reading, pick-up trucks, concerts, Thai food, pencils, the Atlanta Braves, running, stargazing, autobiographies, fine teas, Latin, the first world war, thunderstorms, storywriting
Occupation: Other
Message: message me
Member Since:
7/14/2003
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| What do you do when you've had a string of days with no minute left unscheduled and you're tired all over?
I read children's books. I don't know anything better and more refreshing.
Off to The Moffats and the Enchanted Forest Chronicles. 
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| I walk, I lift up heart, eyes,
Down all that glory in the heavens to glean our Saviour;
And, eyes, heart, what looks, what lips yet gave you a
Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Hurrahing in Harvest
I know this is an autumn poem, but I find myself humming it (what other word is there for some poetry?) during the spring. I finally posted it on my studio bulletin board the other week. Just because I'm a music teacher doesn't mean I can't celebrate poetry too.
Being a music teacher doesn't limit what I teach at all, really. I'm starting to realize that being a teacher is - well, being a teacher.
Like yesterday -
Little girl: *after stumbling through her recital piece* I can't BELIEVE how good I am at this!
Me: Well Nicole, you still have a lot of work to do.
Nicole: But I'm GOOD at it!
Me: You have improved since last week. But you don't want to be boastful about that.
Nicole: *dubiously* No . . . .
Me: Do you know what "boastful" means?
Nicole: No.
Or last week -
Little girl: Is your fiance rich?
Me: No, but he's generous, which is much better.
Little girl: What's that?
Or today -
Me: Is that a half rest or a whole rest?
Student: Half rest.
Me: How do you know?
Student: It sits on top of the third line, like a hat. A whole rest hangs down from the fourth line, like a hole.
Me: That mnemonic device really works, doesn't it?
Student: Um, yeah.
Me: Do you know what mnemonic means?
Student: No.
Me: Well, there's this Greek word mnemoneuo . . . .
Sometimes I do have to restrain myself.
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| Happy birthday Evan!
My fiance is twenty-five today!
Evan, you are a blessing pressed down, shaken down, and running over. You have the tongue of the wise which promotes healing, the love which covers a multitude of sins, the generosity of soul which God rewards, and the patience of spirit which is greater than the conquering of cities. I love you, and I'm so happy I get to marry you! 
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| For the last four or five weeks, and for another four or five weeks to come, Evan and I are studying marriage together with Pastor Withington. Last week we studied the wife's responsibilities in marriage. My interest was piqued when Pastor Withington gave us a set of worksheets and told us to think about "aggressive submission."
I'm familiar with Biblical passages commanding wives to submit to their own husbands in everything, as to the Lord, and I accept that completely. But I've always been uneasy with the word "submit." There's another word used in the Bible to describe the role of a wife: helpmeet. And my default definition of "submit" doesn't leave a lot of room for "helpmeet." When someone says "submit", I think automatically of receiving a direct order, saying "Yes sir!" and walking into a rain of bullets. As in Henry VI, it's a humiliating word:
"Submission, Dauphin! ’tis a mere French
word;
We English warriors wot not what it means."
But there's another sense of "submit", which we use when we speak of "submitting" a proposal or "submitting" a portfolio, or "submitting" an application. We present something of our own, hopefully of excellent quality, for inspection and approval. In that famous description of the excellent wife in Proverbs 31, there's ample evidence of this sort of submission, which can indeed be called "aggressive." This "excellent wife" is out there stretching her talents to the fullest - in business, decorating, cooking, talking, socializing, instructing - and her husband heartily approves and is proud of what she does. This kind of activeness and creativity is described as doing her husband good and not evil all the days of her life. She clearly doesn't neglect her home: she's cooking meals, running her household, instructing her children, and giving her husband freedom to perform his job, but kitchen and nursery skills aren't the only abilities she exercises. Any knowledge she has can be used to do her husband good. The more talented she is and the more diligently she develops those abilities, the more she brings to the relationship, the more good she can do him, and the more wholly rejoice in his praise, "You excel them all!"
One question on the worksheet asked me to define, in one sentence, a wife's role in marriage. After a certain amount of labor and agony (ONE SENTENCE?) I defined it as follows: "Holding all of herself in complete readiness to minister to and delight her husband."
I emphasize the "all of herself" part because during my four years in college I observed quite a variety of attitudes towards relationships. Some girls were afraid to share their knowledge with their guys. ("What if he doesn't like smart girls? What if he tries to change me?"). But more often they said something like this: "I like this guy, and yeah, when he asks, I'll say yes; but I've made it clear to him that I have my own life. He'll get everything except my acting skills, or musical skills, or business skills, or my time, or my friends, etc. etc.." They resolved to draw their own lines and define their own space. Woe betide the man who wanted it all. They called it liberation. I wonder if any theater director, or orchestra conductor, or classroom, or work buddy, will ever appreciate those skills or enjoy their companionship half as much as their husbands would if they offered it to him first.
As I tried to highlight in my definition, this isn't a painful necessity. We girls have quite a privilege - to take every scrap of knowledge, beauty, and talent we have, and DELIGHT somebody constantly with it. Is that such a hardship?
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| We had just finished a jog along the Falls Lake dam, and Evan and I simultaneously discovered we wanted POTATOES.
Evan started it. "You know what I could go for right now? Mashed potatoes with wasabi butter."
Me: "OH that sounds good!"
So what do you do when you want potatoes and have barely twenty minutes allotted for food?
Go to Wendy's, of course. Get three fresh, hot baked potatoes, scrounge up some real butter, salt, pepper, sour cream, and cheddar cheese, and thank God with your mouth full for this incomparable creation.
Fast food gets a bad rap, but I can't allow any words against a place that gives you baked potatoes quickly.
The only perils I've encountered in connection with this fast food place have nothing to do with saturated fat or cholesterol. Twice while on a Wendy's run I've had the cops called on me. I guess it just goes to show that when something is valuable it will be protected. 
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