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Starreyedgyrl
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Name: Charis Rebecca
Birthday: 1/18/1985
Gender: Female
Interests: Many and varied, I'm still learning.
Expertise: I have a knack for fantastic accidents and injuries.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Other
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  starreyedgyrl
Member Since:
8/24/2004
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| The Big NewsI've just been accepted to the University of South Carolina, and will be starting my Masters in Public Health (specifically, Health Promotion, Education and Behavior) January 15.
Anything else I say will likely be senseless babbling. So excited to be heading back to school, and the program sounds like a perfect fit, partly because of their work with the Hispanic community in the Southeast, and the impressive increases in funding and publications of the school within the past ten years.
- Glory be to God on high
- And on earth peace, goodwill towards men,
- We praise thee, we bless thee,
- we worship thee, we glorify thee,
- we give thanks to thee, for thy great glory
- O Lord God, heavenly King,
- God the Father Almighty.
- O Lord, the only-begotten Son Jesu Christ;
- O Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father,
- that takest away the sins of the world,
- have mercy upon us.
- Thou that takest away the sins of the world,
- have mercy upon us.
- Thou that takest away the sins of the world,
- receive our prayer.
- Thou that sittest at the right hand of God the Father,
- have mercy upon us.
- For thou only art holy;
- thou only art the Lord;
- thou only, O Christ,
- art most high
- in the glory of God the Father.
- Amen.
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| well, folks...
completely out of things to write about at the moment.
So...
either
a) whenever I get around to it, you're going to get my "things I want to read" list, and/or excerpts from my favorite books
or
b)leave a comment/send an email with a question or comment and it will be answered (if it's overly personal, you'll receive an email, not a blog post)
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| The LORD is my shepherd;
therefore can I lack nothing.
He shall feed me in a green pasture,
and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
He shall convert my soul,
and lead me forth in the paths of righteousness for his
Name's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.
Thou shalt prepare a table before me in the presence of them that trouble me;
thou hast anointed my head with oil, and my cup shall be full.
Surely thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Psalm 23. This translation pre-dates the King James. I stumbled across it a while back...There's something about those first three verses.
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| In the not-so-distant past, I promised a post on the rise of discussion on single-sex education in public schools.
Because this article caught my eye, and bothered me quite a bit.
To say the least, I'm a fan of public education. I think it's absolutely awe-inspiring that the United States promises an education to any child, regardless of how much money their parents make or where they live. The US has quite a bit of work to do before being able to adequately fulfill that promise. But it's a great thing, and I believe that Christians should be deeply involved in ensuring that all children, not just their own, receive an adequate foundation of knowledge for making their way in the world. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to have a parent home to teach, or the extra money to send a kid to a private school. By yanking little Julie or Johnny out of the reach of evil influences, you are lessening the motivation for a public school to do its job well, and the motivation of teachers to teach there.
Ideally, attending a public school should give you the opportunity to interact with people of different races, socioeconomic status, religion- the sort you don't spend your time with naturally. An essential part of education is learning how to interact with people who are different than you, and this is part of what makes me flinch at the thought of single-sex classrooms.
Another part is the fact that "masculine" and "feminine" are not as clear cut as we would like. Heck, the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether the only concrete definition of femininity should be "learning to live with one's anatomy, including the potential to give birth and nurture children." In A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis recalls praising his wife for her "masculine" virtues. She retorts, asking him how he would like to be complemented for his "feminine" traits. Madeleine L'Engle has mused a bit on this, I recall a quotation from her son-in-law, creating an analogy between his role as priest and that of a midwife. Femininity and masculinity are not a simple checklist of traits that either one has or doesn't. And, as the article linked to above points out....while there are general differences in how boys and girls learn, separating children by gender and hoping to put them in the group in which they'll learn best is about as brilliant as lining children up by height and expecting them to be aligned by age as well- in general, you'll do well, but there are quite a few kids that will end up in the wrong age bracket.
I do think gender is important. I think Freud's "anatomy is destiny" logic and utter dismissal of women is preposterous, though I've heard certain conservative Christian leaders voice something that sounds eerily similar. However, I think that college is a much better arena for the consideration of these issues. My grounds for doing so is primarily personal experience, which is too subjective to be worth much. I'm a fairly competitive person by nature, and until I graduated highschool, pretty much any time I was in a classroom setting, I was fighting to be at the top. Early on, I got used to competing with males in an assortment of arenas- science, math, debate, Tai Kwon Do, English, social studies.....and what I learned was that I could be competitive in almost any area I wished. I ran into a teacher or two who refused to consider their female students important, and I quickly wrote them off as out of their minds, because I had a more objective notion of my gifts and value. I learned to physically defend myself, as well as to spot that momentary hesitation in an opponent that can turn the fight in your favor. I learned to create my own entrance in a whirl of fists and feet should my sparring partner not give me the opportunity. I took some nasty bruises, but I gave out my fair share as well.
I think those are things girls need, at a fairly young age. To encounter boys, to not live under a set of curriculum-prescribed assumptions about how you learn and what your interests are, to compete on an open playing field.
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| Travels with CharisThough travels with Charlie are more interesting, I'm sure.
And I'm uncertain of how to organise and write this post, knowing that it will be accompanied by a captioned facebook album, without boring those who will see both.
Thursday, I ventured off to Nebraska, for the wedding of one of my dearest friends. Holly and I met in high school, the daughters of two ministers who'd been called to this county with a church on each corner. Out of place and much alike, we formed one of the most solid friendships in either of our lives. Since we stumbled across each other, we've seen our parents criticized and despised by their parishioners, battled our way through two graduations each, dated and disentangled ourselves from two manipulative, destructive fellows, and survived the death of a friend. We are the sort of friends who fall asleep next to each other and wake up in the middle of the night already in a conversation. So I didn't think twice about traipsing off crosscountry to be a bridesmaid.
Getting there was an adventure....a mad dash across the Denver airport to catch a shuttle I was supposed to meet at 1:10. My plane originally was supposed to arrive at 12:08, which became 12:45. The shuttle driver then informed me that my destination address had to be wrong, because "it can't be on North __ street, because streets run east-west and avenues run north-south" Well, ___ street and ___ avenue intersect, and that's where this particular house was. He then inquired "are you sure? I think this is a minister's house" I told him I truly hoped it was a minister's house, since I was supposed to be staying with a minister, and then retrieved my bag and bounded up the stairs to see one of the wisest, most gracious women I've ever known, whose presence I'd been deprived of for about four years.
The groom's family were an interesting bunch- his father, seconds after meeting me, upon discovering that the bride and I had met in Dayton asked "Dayton? isn't that where they hang evolutionists?" Even I was left speechless.
And yet for the most part....the couple's friends and family blended into each other joyously, flinging sarcastic barbs and raucous laughter left and right as we scampered about attempting to decorate a hall and get to various meals and ventures on time. We bemoaned the fact that as of yet, none of us have been handed an instruction manual for adulthood....and hoped that perhaps it may be given to us at age 25? That's what the car rental companies seem to think. And, somehow, we've received broken college diplomas- no high paying careers fell out when they were opened.
Holly laughed as we compared the bruises on our legs, telling us "this is why I chose floor-length dresses for my informal wedding". Holly, her mother, and I are the three most clumsy people I've ever met, and somehow, we successfully made it down the aisle with no injuries.
This was especially impressive in light of some of the clothing difficulties....poor Holly was faced with the challenge of planning a wedding in Nebraska, while her bridesmaids lived in MD, GA, and MO. (and she and her husband were students in TN). Most planning was done last summer, including dress purchase....and this didn't work out so well as far as size. One bridesmaid was rather concerned about her ability to both sit and breathe in this dress, and I was rather anxious about the possibility of mine falling off. Never mind the dangerously tall shoes I had acquired in an attempt to deal with the over-longness of the dress. . .it was frightening.
The bride's mother accepted and rejected some of our humor....she's quite allright with us single bridesmaids being "adults in training". However, when we referred to ourselves as the "leftover bridesmaids" (accompanying the leftover wedding cake to church for coffee hour) she took issue.
By the end of the weekend we were sitting around poking each other up and down rows and circles, and concluded that facebook needs a "pass the poke" application...yes, we were all rather tired.
Sunday evening+Monday morning I got the chance to see a bit of my family- the bride's mother, determined that attempting the 3 hour drive to the airport on Monday in time to clear security for our late-morning flights was not a good idea for five very tired non-morning people. So, we piled into the Subaru, thankfully all quite good friends by now, and headed for Ft. Collins, munching leftover cookies and dinner mints. After some frantic phonecalls and planning, I managed some time with my cousins and grandparents who are just an hour away. Managed to leave the Pea Patch (everyone needs a family farm) and dash through security at Denver. Flight was beginning to board just as I arrived at the gate.
I'm currently exhausted, and my body had just enough time to adapt to Mountain time before I yanked it back to the east coast, so I'm a bit disoriented. But I'm left with a sense of completion...of the brilliance and colour that belong to relationships that are strong enough to transcend time and space.
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