A Few Things that Caught My Eye

Knowing I'd have to get up at 4:00am somehow made it harder to sleep, not easier, and I was wide awake at 2:00am, instead. Reached for my iPad and did some reading. Here are a few things I enjoyed and thought you might, too:

Could the most important (and most transformative) command of the scriptures be the command to rest?

"This 'above all' command encourages us to trust in God in a way that no other activity can. So much more could be accomplished by adding another day of labor, but the Sabbath requires us to trust that God will provide for all our needs and that he will continue to manage the world without our help. The Sabbath is a practical reminder that we are completely dependent on God."

How Madeleine L'Engle little-known novel, Camilla, has been made into a movie.

A friend from Denver writes in defense of princesses.

Do Christians really love people who aren't Christians? Read what Jon Acuff says.

I've been thinking a lot about church - what the church is supposed to be, what I expect from a church. Probably the most eye-opening thing was to realize that in the back of my mind I am hoping to find a church that will see my fiance, as a crisis chaplain, and me, as a mission mobilizer - or just as, I don't know, great people, and say, "Wow! We would love to have you as part of our church." That's not happening.

Something else I read: Thoughts from a Church Secret Shopper

Jon Swanson looks at the spiritual discipline of "examen."

Two on marriage and selfishness: Marriage: When Pre-Engagement Hopes Meet Reality and Sharing, Closet Space and How to Prepare for Marriage.

Counting the Cost of that Dream Wedding

Go figure, this whole wedding planning endeavor is providing some interesting opportunities to learn about stress management.While doing something that "isn't you" can ratchet up the tension, or expecting things to be perfect, so can "daring to be different." Eccentricity, individuality, personal expression, and the like, those things all take a toll. The wise bride should count the cost before she tries to plan her dream wedding. There's more at stake here than the money and the memories.

Shortly before we got engaged, a friend casually mentioned to me that the pressure of planning and preparing to be married took such a toll on her body that she was sick-ish for about six months after. Oooh, don't want that.

In comparing notes with my stepmother, I took to heart her observation that doing things in a fairly traditional way is just a lot easier; it can save you a lot of trouble. You don't have to come up with your own game plan, you just follow someone else's. I'm also realizing that doing what everybody else does can reduce the stress on other people was well. It's something of a kindness to avoid upsetting other people's applecarts, isn't it? They can rest easy, knowing this is what happens at a wedding, this is what the bride does, this is what the groom does, here's who else is involved, etc. I don't want to think I can please everyone, but it is a factor.

And yet at the same time, people tell me, "This is your day, and it it should be special!" An American wedding holds innumerable opportunities to "express yourself" by doing something unique. Although I feel the tug, each thing I consider doing "not like everybody else does it" comes with an emotional price tag and more stuff to research, assess, decide, and implement.

So... I found a long white dress I actually like. I have two youngish, single, female attendants. I will carry a bouquet. I'll come down the aisle to something classical (though not Lohengrin). We'll say some pretty standard vows. We'll have lunch, and cake, and toasts. We'll skip a few things like drinking and dancing, but we'll have good music. I'm not sure about the garter thing (which smacks of sexual conquest to me), but I will throw my bouquet... before we drive off in Chris's favorite fire truck (OK, maybe that's not traditional!)

My girls are going to wear maroon.

I'll also have wedding "colors." I had subtly thought that to be a silly requirement, but have a new appreciation for it when I look at how many decisions there are to make. Picking colors for your wedding is like buying Garanimals for your children: it greatly increases the chances that your stuff is going to be aesthetically pleasing when you put it all together! A good way to keep from borrowing trouble and taking on headaches you don't need.

We're still vacillating on how to dress our groomsmen, but found something that may work out nicely for the bridesmaids. "Who wouldn't want a dress that can be worn half a dozen different ways?" asked my maid of honor. So we started looking at these wrap dresses that can be worn to suit the 'drothers of the girl (or, should the bride dictate the matter, the bridesmaid can wrap the dress to suit herself on a different occasion).

I did, however, opt for the version produced by this little company in Singapore which sells its wares through Etsy, a web store for independent artists. Nice. But since they are coming from Asia, we can't try the dresses on first. They may take longer to arrive. Returns could be tricky if they don't work out. If they do work out, I'll have something fun and affordable to recommend to friends!

Mail Order

Looks like my favorite Central Asian people group, the Kyrgyz, have weddings on their minds much as I do. As I've mentioned before, as many as two thirds of Kyrgyz marriages and in some places more begin with some level of coercion. The groom and his family arrange to kidnap the bride - often to the surprise of the girl and her parents.

Yet here is an alternative route to the married state... Turns out that Kyrgyzstan is now home to a growing business as a supplier of mail order brides, particularly for grooms from South Korea!
 
>> Read more.

Speaking of mail, I realize Chris and I are a little behind in getting our invitations out - our union being a bit more public and premeditated than that of many a Kyrgyz couple. We worked on them this weekend. I'm about to place my order for 150 printed invitations; we should have them in the mail to our prospective guests before the winds of March are past. Some of the suggested wording we found quite hilarious. Tell me which sappy sample of phraseology tickles you the most:

1.
It was love at first sight
but more important was the moment I realized
that I couldn't imagine my life without you in it
Marti Smith and Chris Wade
invite you to share their joy
as they are married
on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of May...

2.
Like a butterfly in a summer breeze,
our hearts are uplifted by love
It is with joy that we,
Marti Smith
and
Chris Wade
pledge our love as one
on Saturday, the twenty-sixth of May...

3.
He asked, and she said yes . . .
or was it the other way around?
However it happened
Marti Smith
and
Chris Wade
are getting married
and they ask you to join them
on Saturday, May 26th...

A week or two I got an email from one of those let-us-help-you-plan-your-wedding websites, The Knot. Actually they have written to me a number of times and are eager to share help and advice. This particular email congratulated me: only 90 days until my wedding! Also, I should know that there were 198 items on the "checklist" they had created for me... 88 of them overdue. Sigh!

Chris's mom showed me some of her pictures yesterday, an experience that also reminded me that a few decades ago these things were not nearly the production they tend to be, today.

Having accomplished a number of wedding-related tasks over the weekend - including (I can't fathom how they left this one of the list) "pick a fight with your groom" - I thought I'd go in and see how far I could get in persuading The Knot to acknowledge my efforts. I was able to check off or cross off quite a few items. One I was glad to see assigned to "the day of the wedding" was this:

"Thank your parents and tell them that you love them."

Want to Be a Great Teacher?

“Ask any great teacher or coach the most effective way to help people learn, and you’ll get a uniform answer: through stories. … Perhaps that was why Jesus Christ relied so heavily upon stories as His primary instructional method.” George Barna, in the introduction to Felicity Dale’s An Army of Ordinary People.

Do you think this is true?

Seriously, “any great teacher,” “the most effective way,” “uniform answer”? Sounds fishy.

I guess that tells you something about me. If you want to stir me to debate or make me think, just start making unequivocal statements like that one.

What is the most effective way to help people learn?

Any ideas?

Maybe it depends in part on culture, or personality, or "learning style."

The value of stories and storytelling as a teaching tool is great, I’ll grant you that. And, though I might never be a “great teacher or coach,” I, too, rely heavily on stories as an instructional method.

Yet I do not think storytelling alone will do the job, and I wouldn’t give it the #1 place in my bag of tricks to help people learn. I think there’s something better.

What do you think?

I'd say.... Experience. Call it situational learning, or created tension, or teachable moments. But many people learn the most through on-the-job training, not through novels or sermon illustration or hearing about something that happened in somebody else’s life. Internships, experimentation, and practical application assignments can do what lectures and stories cannot: only when a person applies the new skill or knowledge to a real-life situation does it really "stick."

So that’s why I say that storytelling isn’t #1, situational learning is. Look through the Gospels and see how well they jive with Barna's claim about Jesus and storytelling. The disciples weren't just sitting around on mountaintops listening to sermons and parables every day; instead, Jesus creates and redeems dozens of powerful teachable moments. 

Perhaps the wise teacher doesn’t use just one technique but several. If you want to be systematic about it, you might find it helpful to analyze your teaching plans in light of Robert Gagne's “Nine Events of Instruction.”

1. Gaining learners’ attention (e.g., ask a question to pique interest).

2. Informing learners of the objective (where are we going with this? What will they get out of it? Create a level of expectation for learning).

3. Stimulating recall of prior learning (i.e., appeal to previous teaching or common life experiences so learners can related it to something they already know).

4. Presenting new information (explain and demonstrate the “content”).

5. Guiding learning (case studies, examples, analogies, mnemonics to help them grasp the content).

6. Eliciting performance (learners apply the knowledge or skill and practice it, show that they can put it to use).

7. Providing informative feedback (coaching, basically. Learners are immediately rewarded/corrected for their application of the knowledge or skill; they see that they “got it” and that it works).

8. Assessing performance (this time, learners are tested in some way without hints, feedback, or coaching).

9. Enhancing learning transfer and retention (learners “perform” or apply their new skill or knowledge and are encouraged to review the content and create or consult reference materials when needed).

Fun for Your Friday -

"Once upon a time there was a race between a rabbit and an eggplant. Now the eggplant, as you know, is a member of the vegetable kingdom, and a rabbit is a very fast animal.

"Everybody bet lots of money on the eggplant, thinking that if a vegetable challenges a live animal with four legs to a race, then it must be that the vegetable knows something. People expected the eggplant to win the race by some clever trick of philosophy.

"The race started and there was lots of cheering. The rabbit streaked out of sight. The eggplant just sat there at the starting line. Everybody knew that in some surprising way the eggplant would end up winning the race.

"Nothing of the sort happened. Eventually, the rabbit crossed the finish line, and the eggplant hadn’t moved an inch.

"The spectators ate the eggplant.

"Moral: Never bet on an eggplant."

-- Daniel Pinkwater, Borgel

Who should be invited?

Trying to make a list of relatives to whom we'll send wedding invitations. First draft (on my side) comes to ~50 people meaningfully connected to me through my four parents, but no more than 25 I'd expect might show up. I sent them (the parents) my list and we'll see how it fleshes out.

Brings to mind an experience from about a decade ago, when I led a team to conduct sociological research in a conservative, tight-knit part of Central Asia. One day most of the team went another rite of passage / social event, a circumcision party. Half of them got sick from eating food that may have been prepared days in advance or perhaps had just been sitting out in the sun too long. Oops.

Well, a party big enough to allow 4-5 foreign gatecrashers without batting an eyelash is probably a good sized party. I don't remember how many people were there but one of the things they reported, after the event was over, was that the father of the boy for whom the event was being held said  he had about 1000 relatives, "maybe 200 close ones."

How would you like to try caring for and feeding that many people?

In many of the places where we've done these research projects, weddings are a huge deal and can really break a family, financially. That's why a typical wedding gift is a generous gift of cash to help cover the wedding expenses. No, we won't be taking an offering. I am pretty sure we can cover this. (Thanks to some help coming from the bride's big collection of parents, it's true.)

In Kyrgyzstan families may get around the cost by eloping. The problem is that the decision is made on the groom's side without consulting the bride. A girl may have no idea what is going on until a coworker, classmate - maybe her crush or boyfriend, but just as likely a perfect stranger - pulls to the side of the road when she's walking alone some day, grabs her, and carries her off.

Kyrgyz bride and groom (source)

Bride-napping is one of those deeply "cultural" practices which open-minded Westerners have trouble assessing. What do you do when a widespread tradition happens to be a huge affront to human rights, involving violence, coercion, and usually rape?

"It was good enough for me, it's good enough for you," the mother-in-law instructs her new household servant. This has been going on for generations.

Well, on a lighter note: Yesterday I bought my wedding dress. A relief to have made that step, though finishing the outfit is of course a little more difficult than the daily task of deciding if my socks should match my shirt. The shop will get it professionally cleaned and I'll have to arrange to have it altered. I'll probably buy some new shoes, fancy undergarments, jewelry, and more.

Looks like I'll have my mom weave a silk sash to go with the dress. Oh, and I think I'm going to wear a hat. It's Chris's sister's, and looks great with the new dress. By the way, if I were dressing like one of those Central Asian brides, I'd probably also wear a hat. I'm afraid that for me, their hats a little too ... smurfy (see right). What do you think? Do a Google Images search on Kyrgyz hats for many more of the sort!

I'm glad that our cultural traditions do not forbid the bride from smiling, as is the case in many of the traditional cultures which I've visited.

Bike alternatives

Elliptical bike from ElliptiGo

What with Eugene's bents toward creativity, exercise, and alternative transportation I should not be surprised to see, on these roads, a fantastic variety of bicycles. The city claims to be the home of all kinds of biking and bike-gear innovations.

Yesterday a pair of bikers passed me on the trail today. Neither bike had a seat; both "riders" were standing up. How do you bike standing up? If you have $1800 to $3500 to spare, you can get an elliptical bike of your own and give it a try.

Ought to cut back on saddle sores. Not sure it can provide an elliptical machine's additional upper-body workout, however.

One explanation for the bike-eating tree

In other news of bikes and culture, I see a pictures of Vashon Island's famous bike-eating tree has been circulating... this time as "a haunting reminder of the sacrifices soldiers make and the love that follows them even after they are gone." 

I lived on Vashon for a big chunk of my childhood. Had to go poking around to see if there might be anything to it. 

The sweet story didn't ring true, and not just because I'd never heard it before. Building a patriotic memorial? That doesn't sound like the way a Vashon Islander would behave, not to me. Leaving old junk lying around in the woods and forgetting about it, now that sounds like the Vashon way! 

If this story from the local paper, the Beachcomer, can be trusted, that's just what happened.