Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round Without a pause, without a sound: So spins the flying world away! This clay, well mixed with marl and sand, Follows the motion of my hand; For some must follow, and some command, Though all are made of clay! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—Keramos. L. 1. I am on a pottery course on Lake Malawi! I’ll resume regular posting on my return. Peace, all! Read more
No, no, not what are you for, as in, why are you here–what are you for, as opposed to “what are you against?” In the (sometimes-exhausting) world of social media and blogging–especially in an election season!–it can seem like everyone is always talking about what they are against: what they fear will happen if the other party wins, why the other side is so wrong, why parenting/worshiping/eating/living in a particular way is destructive and bad and so on. Without trying... Read more
“All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits,” wrote the psychologist William James. I think that may be as true online as it is in real life. We tend to do things in a fairly regular pattern; log onto email first, check the news, browse social media, read blogs, get outraged. Yes: outraged. Some days I am amazed at how much potent vitriol gets spewed all over the Internet. (Other days I’m... Read more
What does it say about a culture if when a baby’s born, the mom’s tummy size gets as much attention as the baby? The British magazine OK! came under fire earlier this summer for running a feature story on Kate Middleton’s “post-baby weight loss regime.” Even as moms around the world tweeted and blogged their appreciation of Kate’s post-baby appearance, in which she seemed not to make any attempt to disguise her postpartum tummy, OK! magazine, like any good tabloid,... Read more
My husband and I basically fell in love via AOL instant message conversations that led to daily email missives and then to phone calls and then, you know, to actually hanging out in person. We knew each other in ‘real’ life but I was so afraid of saying something stupid in front of him that I basically ignored him, which, as it happens, is not a great way to indicate that you actually really like someone. But IM-ing made me... Read more
The September print issue of Christianity Today has my recommendations for the ‘top 5’ books on the body. It was really hard to pick only five, but here they are. They’re diverse: some are about sex, some are about food, some are explicitly focused on Christian belief and behavior, some are totally secular. All come highly recommended by yours truly. (Click for the full list at Christianity Today.) Read more
There is a very old prayer–known as the “fisherman’s prayer” or the “seafarer’s prayer”–that goes something like this: “Dear God, be close to me; thy sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.” To me, this prayer captures something of what life itself feels like: the world is big and wide, and not altogether safe, friendly, or predictable, and our ability to cope with it all feels as flimsy as a small wooden boat battling the waves of... Read more
My children spend more time building with Lego than just about anything else. While they covet and save up for sets like any good little American consumers, they spent most of their time re-mixing those sets (and their thousands of eBay purchased random pieces) into wildly new creations. Seriously, some of the stuff they come up with is just incredible. They use pieces in ways that I’m sure the designers at Lego never intended. Ons the shelf in the other... Read more
There is an appealing, almost haunting spareness to the Taize Picture Bible (1968) in both word and image. Published in the USA by Fortress Press (mine is a fourth edition, 1978), the “note to readers” says “The guiding editorial policy in this adaptation has been to facilitate understanding by readers of many age levels while remaining faithful to the words and meaning of the Biblical text.” There is nothing prettified or cutesy about the images or the storytelling in this... Read more
I identified with the late David Rakoff in a number of ways. Sure, I’m a straight, Christian woman; he was gay and (as far as I can tell) non-believing, but we share a Jewish heritage and what he once called the “Jewish worldview”—the idea that “all joy houses the Newtonian capacity for an equal and opposite sorrow”—and a propensity for both worrying and self-deprecation. We were both anxious, omniphobic children, precocious in speech, remarkably small for our age, and desperately... Read more
Rachel Marie Stone
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