Friday, June 30, 2006

sharp things elevate my blood pressure

so, i watch the food network a lot. like, an insane amount. like, wednesday every show from michael chiarello to rachael ray was a repeat and i was seriously disappointed. "[pouting at the tv screen] aw man i've seen this one, too! this is the one where giada pours the pasta water all over her leafy green salad! gross!"

here's the thing, though. i don't cook. up until last night, i didn't even have salt or pepper in my kitchen. it's not that i don't want to cook. or that i don't think i could actually be decent at it or anything. it's just that being a dutch calvinist in west michigan means you have to be married in order to stock a kitchen with all the necessary supplies. i mean, my highest purchasing priority as a single college-graduate was certainly not a kitchenaid mixer. many times my roommates and i thought about throwing ourselves a big housewarming party and simply putting on the invitation "sara and sarah are registered at target and bed bath & beyond. thanks." seriously, un-married people need knives too.

which brings me to the real reason i started this post. i hate knives. i hate pretty much anything with a blade, actually. and don't even get me started on circular power saws. nope. my heart beats faster just thinking about them. [shivers] tell you what, rachael ray makes me nervous every. single. time. she picks up that ginormous knife of hers and starts chopping celery like a crazy person while telling some story about when she was a fountain girl at her local hojo. "[screams at tv set] look at what you're chopping rachael!! for the love!"

the first kitchen supply i'm going to register for when the time comes: 3 different sized food processors, baby. i'll leave the knife chopping to the professionals.

Monday, June 26, 2006

i just made 7 loaves of banana bread with my mom...

... 2 of them have chocolate chips in them.

josh and i were watching a tv show the other night. it was about the process that movies go through to become formatted for television. they showed examples of how much of a movie gets lost when it gets cut from widescreen to full screen. it's quite disturbing, actually. and i agree with the host who said that it completely perverts the director's intention. almost as if you are seeing an entirely different motion picture. think of the time and care that a director puts into each shot, and then imagine that shot chopped in half. the plot is still the same. but the art is almost entirely lost.

as a youth group leader, i've been part of a few discussions with my young people over the years regarding sex. i've read plenty of books on the topic and am always looking for new creative ways to talk to them about it. the church hasn't really done a bang up job with this discussion in the past. most of my kids say the primary reason they don't want to have sex before they're married is because of the immense guilt they would feel. not exactly the healthiest way to go about it, i don't think. instead of listing all the reasons why they shouldn't have sex before they're married, (which they've heard a thousand times before, anyway) i think we need to talk to them about the reasons sex and marriage go together. why wait? it can't just be about pregnancy, disease and guilt. why did God design sex in the first place? what is it for? why does it not only belong in a marriage, but also make sense only within a marriage relationship.

laura winer does a great job of explaining some of this mystery in her book, real sex. springboarding off of many of her ideas, i came up with an analogy that i thought might work to help explain the concept to young people.

sex before marriage is like a movie edited for content and formatted to fit onto a tv screen.

sex is the movie. God is the director. he created sex. he designed it. he took great care in creating human bodies especially for it. sex within marriage is the movie as its director intended it. a movie edited for content and formatted to fit a tv screen is a perverted version of its original. sure, the characters are the same. the plot doesn't change. and you might even derive some of the same general pleasure from watching it. but something central to the movie is and will always be missing. no, i don't usually feel "guilty" for watching movies on television. in fact, sometimes i even enjoy it. and most people who choose to have sex outside of marriage probably don't feel all that guilty about it either. and if what we see on television is any indication, they certainly seem to enjoy it. it's still sex, afterall. but in the same way that a person who loves watching movies should want to respect the artist's intention for them, people who love the Ultimate Creator should want to respect his intentions as well. a real movie can only be truly experienced in widescreen. real sex can only be truly experienced within a marriage relationship. why would we want to settle for anything less?

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

dave matthews and sweat

my ears are ringing. one of them actually kind of hurts. i'm waiting for my laundry to dry. it's a dreary chilly day in west michigan. i have not posted on this blog since march.

i've never enjoyed being hot. when i was younger my mother would say i got 'benauwd' in the heat. benauwd is dutch for 'uncomfortable or constricted or put out.' that word along with a few others like it are the only remnants of my ancestral heritage. i'm not dutch. i'm american. anyway, i hate being hot when the occasion doesn't call for it or when i'm not prepared for it wardrobe or otherwise. i don't mind being hot when i'm at the beach in a swimsuit or running around my neighborhood in a pair of gym shorts. i hate being hot when i'm wearing a pretty outfit and i have makeup on and my hair is down and it's all getting ruined by the beads of sweat pouring down my face and back. that's when i get benauwd. there's one exception to this rule, however.

last summer sarah and i were in wisconsin in early august and it was hot. 94 degrees hot and humid and sunny. the kind of day i'd usually refuse to do anything but lie on a couch in an air conditioned room. we had tickets in the upper pavilion - the uncovered part of the alpine valley music theatre. i was wearing cropped jeans and one of those strapless smocked peasant top thingys with cherries on it. standing in the middle of thousands of other hot sweaty hippie wannabes. not complaining as i attempted to peel the denim away from my sticky summer skin. but jumping around and cheering as dave strapped the 12-string to his chest. cuz we all know what song they're about to play when dave picks up the 12-string. just like we know what song they're about to play when leroi picks up his baritone sax or dave decides to mention that steffan lessard plays bass for the dave matthews band as if we weren't already aware of the fact and screaming 'watchtower' at the top of our lungs. it's not possible to get benauwd at a dave concert. it's not possible to be much of anything at a dave concert but sublimely happy. even as you feel the sweat drench the back of your shirt or drip off the bottom of your chin.