New Blog!

Haha, I know, another one!?  I've got this, my personal blog.  And my librarian book blog.  And my Joss Whedon blog (which I....haven't done anything for in a very long time.  Oops.)  But I cannot stop myself!

I'm starting a new blog about the fruits of the Spirit!  Full details are on the blog itself, which is up now with some basic information and a suggestion post.  Daily blog entries will begin tomorrow, Sunday, April 22!

Join me at http://fruitofthespiritproject.wordpress.com/.

(Why wordpress?  Because I read a book that said we are happiest in a state of growth, and I figured, why not learn a new blogging platform, since I've used blogger to death?  And you know what?  It was really fun!  I like wordpress.)

Abortion Alternatives

A friend of mine from college posted a request on facebook the other day.  She asked if anyone was interested in working to decrease the number of abortions through means outside legislative acts.  And suddenly I realized--I was!  I'm not a real believer in creating laws that police theological issues, specifically marriage and abortions (since those are the two big hot topics).  For one thing, I don't believe the United States is a Christian country, so I don't believe it is right to force all citizens to obey Christian laws.  But my second, more practical reason, is this:  people won't obey them.

Not allowing gay men and women to officially marry does nothing to stop gay relationships.  Not allowing women to have abortions does little to stop abortions.  Those laws just make the abortions more dangerous.

Obviously my ideas are not complete--I'm all for laws that prevent and then punish murderers.  That is a moral issue, and many would say it is just the same as preventing and then punishing aborting mothers.

I guess my real point is:  I think there is a better way.

My friend suggested many courses of actions:  better adoption services, providing free babysitting for single mothers, supporting comprehensive sex-ed classes in school.  I think these are fantastic ideas!  I am almost always more interested in changing the world through personal interaction rather than governmental statutes. 

What got me really excited was when I thought of my own suggestion.  Many women who are struggling with the choice to abort or keep their pregnancy could use counseling.  Not in an "anyone who would even consider aborting their baby obviously needs counseling!" way.  There are many reasons, some extremely complicated, why a woman would consider such an action.  I think counseling would be helpful.  And counseling for women who have had abortions.  And counseling for women who chose to keep their baby, now have a child they weren't 100% in favor of keeping, and need someone to talk to.

I could be that person!  Basically, I'm finding it super exciting all the ways studying biblical counseling will enable me to serve people and bring God's kingdom into our world. 

Pottermore!! Excuse Me While I Nerd Out

I have waited seven months for Pottermore to open to the public.  Seven months, Rowling!  How do you still have such power over me? 

So far it is totally worth it.  It's my understanding that the linear walk-through-book-one setup gets old after you go through the whole thing once.  But let's be honest.  I'm only here for the Sorting Hat.

OR SO I THOUGHT.  But it turns out you kind of get sorted when you answer questions for your wand!  And you guys!  I love mine!  It's a 13 1/2 inch unyielding sycamore wand with a phoenix feather core.  I've always wanted a phoenix core wand!  Quite right too, because in the description it is said to be the most rare kind of core (you know I like things to be unusual) and temperamental but capable of great magic.  YEAH.  And sycamore wood?  Is for questing!  And adventures!  And if you turn into a boring middle-aged wizard magically summoning your houseshoes, it will combust in protest!  Oh my gosh, how did Pottermore know me so well!?

OH MY GOSH I AM ABOUT TO BE SORTED RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT.  And Jo is talking to me!  And the Sorting Hat's decision is final!  ACK!  What if I'm not in Ravenclaw?  Okay, here's my list of preference.

1.  Ravenclaw
2.  Slytherin
3.  Gryffindor
4.  Hufflepuff

OH PLEASE.  Over the past decade, I never thought I could really go to Hogwarts and get sorted!  The magic of the interwebs!

Oh gosh I think I just chose a Hufflepuff option.  But it was true!  I'm trying to be honest!  Yeerk, the stress of this!  I think this is worse than fighting trolls!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!  I'm in GRYFFINDOR!! WHAT!?

Okay, no, wait, I can make this work.  I'm like Hermione.  I once read an article that said she didn't belong in Ravenclaw because Ravenclaws like to know things for the sake of knowing them.  Hermione likes to learn things to USE them.  On adventures.  Right?  Because of my sycamore wand?

*sigh*

At least I get to hang out with the Golden Trio and fight with Draco.  I suppose this isn't so bad.

Ooo hey, and we're second in House Points to Slytherin.  Okay, I've got to change my perception of myself.  Jo has spoken, and her word is law.  I'm a Gryffindor!  House alliance!  Woo hoo!

Okay, now I really really want to go back to Harry Potter World, go on the main ride, and while I'm in line stop by the house point containers and pull a cheesy grin by the Gryffindor pile. 

Help!

I need your help, blogosphere perusers!  I'm working on developing a project where I very deliberately try to grow the fruits of the Spirit in my life.  I know it sounds stupid to "develop a project" on something that should just be done.  But I need gimmicks for growth!  When I do things without boundaries or time limits or plans....it lasts about two days.  So I'm trying.

Here's the thing.  It's kind of hard to think of practical ways to enhance spiritual fruit.  I've got some ideas--for love, I can send someone a card.  For patience, I can get in the longest line at a store.  For peace, I can set aside a half hour for quiet.  But I need more examples, and more help!  So if you guys could give me suggestions, I would be super grateful!

Here's a refresher, if you need it:

Love
Joy
Peace
Patience
Kindness
Goodness
Faithfulness
Gentleness
Self-Control

Why Do I Love the Potterverse?

(I found this post when I was cleaning up my drafts in Blogger.  I don't know why I never posted it!  It's quite convincing!  If I weren't already in love with Harry Potter, I would have convinced myself.)

Why do I love Harry Potter so much?  Let me count the ways.

1)  The friendships.  There is a reason why they are called the Golden Trio.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione have the sort of friendship that I long for.  They stick together through fights and jealousies and crushes and Big Bad Evil People trying to kill them.  They laugh together, cry together, fight together.

2)  The minor characters.  What other world emotional invests me in paintings?  When the Fat Lady's painting was slashed in Prisoner of Azkaban, I was genuinely disturbed.  Come on, that's amazing.  And there are few characters I'm more interested in than the Marauders, and their story is only hinted at in relation to Harry's.  Rowling created a world full of three-dimensional characters, whether they appear for one chapter or seven books.

3)  Harry vs. Voldemort.  And no, not like in an epic fight.  I remember when I first realized that Rowling had set them up as foils, and it rocked my world.  I love that she made them essentially the same character--orphaned as babies, raised in hostile environments, ushered into a new life of wonder and acceptance....and then one was a hero, and the other was a villain.  It's perfect.  It makes me love Harry so much more, because honestly, he should have ended up just like Voldemort.  And it makes me love Voldemort, because I completely understand how he got where he did.  I love me some identifiable villains.

4)  Draco.  I heart him in all his incarnations.  I don't know why I love a snotty little boy who tries so hard to be impressive and constantly fails, but I do.  I guess it's because he wants so badly to live up to expectations (both his and society's) and when he doesn't, all he knows to do is lash out and make things worse.  I pity him, and I want to huggle him.  HP6 breaks my heart.  His is a truly tragic story, because every step he takes leads him further and further towards evil, and he keeps missing all the off ramps to heroism.

5)  Dumbledore.  I want a wise mentor like him, even if he was just grooming me for self-sacrifice.  His wisdom and his quirks and his oh-my-word-speeches.  His conversation with Draco at the tower in HP6 kills me ("No, Draco," said Dumbledore quietly. "It is my mercy, and not yours, that matters now."  GUH).

6)  Magic as an allegory for real world emotions/phenomena.  Come on.  Boggarts?  Genius.  There is no better way to portray Molly Weasley's emotional center than to show her cowering from a boggart that costumes itself as one dead son after another.  And dementors?  Also genius!  That is how depression feels, like all the happiness is seeping away, like cold is encroaching, like it might kiss away your very soul.

7)  Horcruxes.  Nothing more defined my beliefs about violence than horcruxes, believe it or not.  The idea that killing someone rips your soul in two--irreparably--is so poignant.  That's all I can even say.  Augh!

8)  The payoff.  I love that little things early the series are revealed to have a deeper meaning by the end.  The quaint little habit of new Defense Against the Dark Arts teachers every year?  Oh yeah, that's because VOLDEMORT CURSED THE POSITION.  Dobby, the strange creature with bug eyes and an unfortunate habit of hurting Harry while helping him?  Dies to save Harry's life.  Harry's handy invisibility cloak?  Only an ancient artifact passed down for generations that holds the answer to facing death.

9)  The story overshadowing the romance.  I love me some love.  But I refuse to believe that romance is the center of all existence.  Love?  Maybe.  Romance?  No.  So while I enjoyed the romance in the books (even if I rooted for Harry/Hermione all the while knowing it was a hopeless wish), it was so gratifying to see the romance as secondary.  The characters are teenagers, so of course they have crushes and love interests.  But they are teenagers in the midst of a massive battle of evil attempting to take over the world.  They have bigger things to worry about.  Much appreciated, Rowling.

10)  Love.  This might seem contradictory to #9, but it isn't!  I love that love is so important to the HP series.  Harry wouldn't be alive if his mother hadn't loved him so much.  Harry chose to die because he loved his friends more than himself.  Again with the friendships--these characters choose to love each other even when they're obnoxious and don't actually deserve to be loved.  A story that focuses on platonic and agape love instead of romantic love?  COUNT ME IN.

11)  Lots of enemies.  I love so much that not only are Voldemort and the Death Eaters the antagonists, but so is the Ministry of Magic!  Good guys who fight by the bad guy's rules inevitably become bad buys themselves.  I love the character of Umbridge, because she thinks she is good, but she is so creepily evil.  And Fudge!  What better depiction of the idea that not doing good is just as wrong as doing bad.  I love that heroism is not found in an institution--it's found in individuals.

12)  Death.  I love it when an author rips my heart out.  Epic battle of good versus evil?  I need to see a sizable body count if I'm going to take you seriously.  So when Rowling killed Sirius, and then Dumbledore, and then Hedwig and Fred and Lupin....I believed that this was a battle worth fighting.  I still stick to my pre-HP7 idea that the series would have been more awesome if Harry had stayed dead, because I tend to be a bit morbid and nihilistic.  But Rowling went all Christian on me and brought him back to life (it astounds me that anyone can still think these books are evil and anti-Christian).

13)  The Christian stuff.  Because even though my propensity to love Teh Sad wanted Harry to stay dead, I won't lie.  My heart rejoiced a little when Harry came back to life.  A perfect parallel to Jesus?  Of course not.  But sacrificial love is always good to see in pop culture, and the HOPE that it thrills into my soul.....oh man.  Good stuff.  And not just that scene.  One of my favorite favorite lines is when Dumbledore says, "To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."  Preach it, Dumbledore.  And then he lives up to his ideals by dying with dignity and with hope.

I'm going to leave this at an awkward number.  But I love Harry Potter, and it is a series that I will probably squinch and cuddle and study for many many years to come.  Are there parts I don't like?  Yes!  But overall, HP gives me the warm fuzzies.

That is why anything HP related, anything that keeps the Potterverse alive, gets me all tingly and excited. 

Satisficer

I've found a new label for myself!  As someone who thoroughly enjoys introspection and categorization, this is very exciting.

I am a satisficer.  I learned this term from Gretchen Rubin, whose book, The Happiness Project, I am currently reading (more on it later, probably).  She talks about how people tend to be either satisficers or maximizers, though the inclination can change depending on circumstances.

What is a satisficer?  Satisficers are people who make a decision or take action once their criteria is met.  By contrast, a maximizer is someone who wants to make the optimal decision.

In my words, being a satisficer means that if I'm pleased with something, I do it or buy it or accept it.  I don't bother with looking into other options or better deals.  This isn't to say that I have either low or high standards.  If I want to buy a camera under $100, I might have to wait a whole year before buying.  Or if I see cute shoes for $20, I'll buy them without going to all the other stores in the mall to see if there's a better deal.  What counts is that I choose what I want without looking at other options.

This played out in real life very recently.  When I was in the fledgling stages of deciding whether or not to move to Dallas, I went to my mentor/friend for advice.  She told me to look into other graduate schools in other states, for lower prices, for better teachers, for shorter studies.  That idea made no sense to me, and I tried to explain that I was deciding between going to Dallas or not going to Dallas.  I wasn't interested in looking elsewhere. 

My friend/mentor was equally unimpressed with my idea.  She said some things that offended me, and since then, I've wondered who was in the right.

Turns out, I was.  And she was.  For my life decisions, I am a satisficer.  Trying to become a maximizer would have only added to my stress.  For her life decisions, she can act as a maximizer.  If I told her not to sweat it and just go with the one that stuck out to her the most, she would probably also be stressed.

But it just so happens that studies show satisficers tend to be happier.  That makes sense to me.  Trying to make the absolute best decision can take up a lot of physical and mental time and energy.  And once you've made it, you might always doubt that you got the best deal.  I'm that way some of the time, but not often.

Mostly, as I look back at my life choices, I made the decisions as a satisficer.  I only ever applied to Union, and I loved it.  My post-college mission life was Senegal or nothing, and I loved living there.  I bought Tim's fancy-pants camera without looking at other options, and I love it. 

Based on my experiences and the consequences of my decisions, I'm quite pleased with being a satisficer.  But it's nice to know that there is a term for it, and that other people think the same way.  There's a tendency to look at satisficers as lazy, maybe, but I don't think that's it.  We just know what we want, and when we get it, we are pleased.  Sounds good to me.

40 Days of Water COMPLETED

Today is the last day of 40 Days of Water!  Or really, the first day of drinking whatever I want!  Lent is set up to end on Easter Sunday, symbolically ushering in added joy and celebration to a Christian's best day of the year.

But I have a confession to make.  (No, it's not that I drank Sprite for lunch a couple weeks ago and didn't even realize I'd broken my fast until I thought about it two days later.)  My confession is that I lost the spirit of the event about halfway through.

I started with pure intentions.  I wanted to teach myself about the suffering of others.  I wanted to trust in God, to remind myself to pray for people who don't have access to clean water, to be more thankful for what I have.

But after a couple weeks, it mostly became a chore and a routine.  I happily celebrated my feast days on Sundays, but didn't think about how the physical could lead me to the spiritual.  I craved coffee and tea, but instead of using that craving to remind me of others, I simply complained.

Despite my mostly failure, I'm very glad I participated in 40 Days of Water.  I will donate the money I saved by drinking water, and that is important.  But even more important, I learned some stuff.  I learned that fasting is an area of my life that needs work.  Doing things is not valuable only if we succeed.  There is knowledge in failure, and worth in failure, too.