The Final Touch

photo © 2008 Paul Swansen | more info (via: Wylio)
A line from a news arti­cle I read today at the New York Times blog for Kin­dle (and, yes, I know I said I wouldn’t reveal sources when I turn writ­ing errors into teach­ing moments, but some­how I think the Times is big enough to take it from li’l ol’ me; I won’t name the author, though):

“Mr. Blago­je­vich, a Demo­c­rat whose for­mer aides say once saw him­self as a pres­i­den­tial con­tender some day, was found guilty…”

To be fair to the writer, this is a really tricky con­struc­tion. I had to reread it a few times to even sort out whether it was incor­rect or not. But, alas, Read the rest of this entry »

It can be hard to do some­thing pub­licly when you know not all peo­ple will agree. But I have come to such con­vic­tion about the mat­ter addressed in this procla­ma­tion that I can­not authen­ti­cally do any­thing else. I have added my name to the procla­ma­tion below (it may take a cou­ple days for those adding names to catch up with all their emails). If that causes me to lose friends or fol­low­ers or clients or poten­tial clients, so shall it be. I believe I am doing not only what Jesus “would” do but what he DOES do: includ­ing those soci­ety has too often treated as unclean. Time and time again, Jesus touched, ate with, served, and showed love for peo­ple deemed unclean by sec­u­lar and reli­gious lead­ers and oth­ers. I strive to walk in the foot­steps of Jesus — in this and in all else — so help me, God.

P.S. I’m happy to explain in pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion with any­one inter­ested how I arrived at and why I believe in this posi­tion, but I’m not inter­ested in debat­ing about the mat­ter. I agree with the Procla­ma­tion where it states that “the debate is over.” I’m weary of it.

(The for­mat­ting copied imper­fectly below from the web­page where this is posted. I’m not going to try to edit it here. I encour­age you to visit www​.Heart​land​Procla​ma​tion​.org to see the doc­u­ment as posted and to view a full list of signers.)

The Heart­land Proclamation

by the Heart­land Clergy for Inclusion

As Chris­t­ian clergy

we pro­claim the Good News con­cern­ing Les­bian, Gay, Bisex­ual and Trans­gen­der (LGBT) per­sons and pub­licly apol­o­gize where we have been silent. As dis­ci­ples of Jesus, who assures us that the truth sets us free, we rec­og­nize that the debate is over. The ver­dict is in. Homo­sex­u­al­ity is not a sick­ness, not a choice, and not a sin. We find no ratio­nal bib­li­cal or the­o­log­i­cal basis to con­demn or deny the rights of any per­son based on sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion. Silence by many has allowed polit­i­cal and reli­gious rhetoric to monop­o­lize pub­lic per­cep­tion, cre­at­ing the impres­sion that there is only one Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive on this issue. Yet we rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate that we are far from alone, as Chris­tians, in affirm­ing that LGBT per­sons are dis­tinc­tive, holy, and pre­cious gifts to all who strug­gle to become the fam­ily of God.

In repen­tance and obe­di­ence to the Holy Spirit, we stand in sol­i­dar­ity as those who are com­mit­ted to work and pray for full accep­tance and inclu­sion of LGBT per­sons in our churches and in our world. We lament that LGBT per­sons are con­demned and excluded by indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions, polit­i­cal and reli­gious, who claim to be speak­ing the truth of Chris­t­ian teach­ing. This leads directly and indi­rectly to intol­er­ance, dis­crim­i­na­tion, suf­fer­ing, and even death. The Holy Spirit com­pels us:

to affirm that the essence of Chris­t­ian life is not focused on sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, but how one lives by grace in rela­tion­ship with God, with com­pas­sion toward humanity;

to embrace the full inclu­sion of our LGBT broth­ers and sis­ters in all areas of church life, includ­ing leadership;

to declare that the vio­lence must stop. Christ’s love moves us to work for the heal­ing of wounded souls who are vic­tims of abuse often prop­a­gated in the name of Christ;

to cel­e­brate the prophetic wit­ness of all peo­ple who have refused to let the voice of intol­er­ance and vio­lence speak for Chris­tian­ity, espe­cially LGBT per­sons, who have met hatred with love;

There­fore we call for an end to all reli­gious and civil dis­crim­i­na­tion against any per­son based on sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion and gen­der iden­tity and expres­sion. All laws must include and pro­tect the free­doms, rights, and equal legal stand­ing of all per­sons, in and out­side the church.

This is an AWESOME video! Funny and true at the same time — as is good satire.

In the words of its cre­ator: “In honor of all those Lutheran papas who made sure we got out of bed on Sun­day morn­ing, who taught us to pray, and who didn’t let our moth­ers bear the bur­den of rais­ing us in the faith all by them­selves.” Hear, hear!

Take time to watch it… and then, if it applies to you, call or email your own dad and say “thanks”!

This is a longer-than-usual post, but since it is a book review, I didn’t want to split it into two or more parts. I hope you will enjoy my reflec­tions and per­haps be moved to read the book your­self. Please let me know what you think in a com­ment below.

I just fin­ished read­ing Bat­tle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua (Pen­guin, 2011). It stirred up quite a con­tro­versy upon its release, so I requested it from our local library to see what all the hub­bub was about.

Chua, the American-born daugh­ter of Chi­nese immi­grants, writes of how and why she val­ues the Chi­nese tra­di­tion of parental author­ity and the belief that – in my words, not hers – father and mother really do know best. She uses the terms “Chi­nese par­ent­ing” and “West­ern par­ent­ing” some­what loosely, explain­ing that, of course, nei­ther all Chi­nese par­ents nor all West­ern par­ents see eye to eye. In fact, she acknowl­edges, some actual Chi­nese par­ents have adopted pat­terns of leniency with their kids, while some U.S. par­ents with­out an ounce of Chi­nese blood fall more in line with Chi­nese par­ent­ing than with the style more com­mon in the United States.

Chua shares that as a child, she was not allowed to do such things as the fol­low­ing; nor did she allow her own two daugh­ters, Sophia and Louisa (“Lulu”) to do them:

• Attend a sleepover;
• Have a playdate;
• Choose their own extracur­ric­u­lar activities;
• Get any­thing less than straight As;
• Play any instru­ment other than piano or violin;
• Not play piano or violin.

Read the rest of this entry »

Oh, I knoooooowwwwww… I’ve been remiss about blog­ging for waaaaaay too long! This is how I’ve always been with jour­nal­ing, too — off again, on again, always hav­ing a hard time keep­ing at it faith­fully. I like jour­nal­ing — the idea of it, that is — the con­cept of record­ing my thoughts to look back on later, espe­cially thoughts about faith and life, prayer con­cerns that I can see answered in ret­ro­spect, ques­tions I’m pon­der­ing, that sort of thing. But the only time I’ve kept at it steadily has been when I was trav­el­ing. I faith­fully recorded my expe­ri­ences in Nor­way daily for two weeks the sum­mer before my junior year in col­lege. No, two weeks isn’t much to brag about, but then I also faith­fully jour­naled (maybe not every day, but reg­u­larly) through­out my five months in Spain dur­ing the spring of my junior year in col­lege. That, I think, was the last time I faith­fully kept a jour­nal. So, no big sur­prise here that think­ing of some­thing to write about and mak­ing a point to do it every few days for the sake of my blog does not come eas­ily to me. So, my apolo­gies. But since I’m here now…

I’ve decided to start some­thing new and make a series of it — maybe a once-a-week sort of thing; we’ll see. As a copy edi­tor, and a fanat­i­cal one at that — one who can’t turn off her proof­read­ing brain, even after the client-based work is done for the day — I am often not just annoyed but appalled by the errors I see “out there.” Now, because my aim here is not to shame any­one — and since, after all, I wouldn’t have much of a free­lance edit­ing career if every­one had the gift of excel­lent writ­ing skills — and because whereas I have strong writ­ing skills, oth­ers have busi­ness or math or sci­ence or par­ent­ing skills I will never have — I will not reveal the iden­tity of a writer, busi­ness, book, etc. with whom/which an error is asso­ci­ated. What I want to do is to turn these fre­quent nerve-shredding nui­sances into some­thing pos­i­tive. So, every few posts, I plan to use a real-life sen­tence or phrase or some other snip­pet of writ­ing I’ve seen as a demon­stra­tion of what the cor­rect con­struct should be and why.

So, here goes. This is a com­mon error in ordi­nary, casual con­ver­sa­tion as well as in writing:

“It con­tains a story about my hus­band and I!” No. “It con­tains a story about my hus­band and ME.” Why “me” instead of “I”? Here’s a help­ful trick: Take the prepo­si­tional phrase (“about my hus­band and…”) and omit the object of the prepo­si­tion that is not the pro­noun in ques­tion. Get rid of it so you can focus only on the pro­noun. Now try it both ways: “It con­tains a story about I” or “It con­tains a story about me.” Clearly, even in casual con­ver­sa­tion, we would say “me.” So, too, should you choose “me” — an object pro­noun, it’s called, whereas “I” is a sub­ject pro­noun — when there is another object in the phrase as well: “It con­tains a story about my hus­band and me!”

Another post sooner than later… I promise!

Oh, and if you see an erro­neous gram­mar or punc­tu­a­tion con­struc­tion “out there,” please men­tion it in a com­ment below. I’ll do my best to explain what’s right and what’s wrong, and why.