More Thoughts on Calling

I chuckled a couple weeks ago upon opening Facebook and finding Ruthie's post about calling. I've been thinking about writing a post on the same topic for the past month or so and was excited to see that my sister has also been pondering the issue. We must be going through times of transition.

A couple years ago, I was trying to think through how we discern calling in our lives. Life at that point was extremely confusing, feeling flat and directionless. I am convinced moments of enlightenment come at the most inconvenient times and clarity of mind always seemed to come while driving with the radio blaring or while in the shower - times when grabbing a pen to jot down thoughts was nearly impossible. So to remember the thoughts on calling coming to me, I had to tuck them away and quickly internalize beyond the moment.

We all struggle with calling, but I think at this time, women especially struggle with it. The paths of our lives are no longer limited, predicted. But with limitless options, comes limitless confusion and angst over what to do. For the first time in the history of the Western world, women can actively choose the things they will pursue in life. But often something so great as the ceiling being lifted feels like the floor being pulled out from under our feet.

Most Americans have grown up being told they have the power to accomplish their dreams whatever they might be. Granted, not all Americans actually come from a socio-economic background where this is realistic, but still, we have all grown up hearing it in our media and education. We all want purpose in our lives. We all feel a need to be fulfilled. It surprises me how often the word "calling" is used in a secular context, but this shouldn't be because calling is more than just a Christian catch-word; calling is the idea that something can encompass us, lift us higher, and give us a direction in which to go. Who doesn't want that?

And yet, at the end of the day, we feel lost. The problem, I realized, is that I cannot understand calling unless I understand from whence it comes. Calling cannot be created within myself; its very nature implies an origin from outside of me. To be "called" is to heed an authoritative voice not my own. If I have a calling, I must find the caller and I must listen to what the caller instructs. As a Christian, it naturally follows that my caller is my Creator, the God who made me and understands what gives my life definition.

Understanding who I am at the hands of the the Creator is the beginning of all explorations in calling. In the lingo of my old alma matter, we all have a "Big C" calling - the calling that trumps all others and defines us to the core. This calling is non-negotiable, essential to our very existence. It's a calling from our origins. For in the beginning, God called us to know him. He is intensely, purely relational and this aspect of his nature spilled over into us as he created the world. He made his creation utterly dependent on him, so much so that should our relationship with him be broken, the central aspect of our existence is lost.

Furthermore, God's creative nature was infused in us, his creation. From the beginning, God burst forth with robust and breathtaking activity. He is not a God at repose, but rather a God delighting in exerting his abilities. And he directly tells us to follow in his footsteps. The one who is capable of calling us delights in working to create something good and he fundamentally exists in relationship. Ultimately, our "Big C" calling at all stages in life is to reflect these two essential aspects of the Caller back to him.

But understanding these big picture ideas of calling does not necessarily help me understand what job to take or who to marry or how to juggle the complex dynamics of life. It explains the purpose and significance inherent in my life, but it doesn't help explain the paths before me. It doesn't give me a nice list of dos and don'ts concerning normal decisions. We recognize here that after our "big C" calling, we all have "little c" callings, usually multiples of them. These callings are good, important, often necessary, and usually flexible. They may last a lifetime or they may stay for a day, but all are real and worthy of our careful thought and consideration.

What are they? Our little callings are particular ways in which we live out the big calling at various times in our lives. They are our work, our family, our friendships, our planet, our communities. They are big all-encompassing missions to further good in this world. And they are minute tasks that we do simply to remain faithful. Our perception, management, and ultimately, appreciation of them are vital to understanding the satisfaction God gives us. And in trying to comprehend them, there are 3 things I've noticed about them.

One - God gives us themes.

We often start our thinking about calling by asking the question, "If I could do anything, what would it be?" We try to view our lives as a blank page to be filled with steps towards an inflated view of some thing "to do." But nowhere in Scripture is calling described this way. Instead, we are presented with collections of stories that tell us about God’s calling on particular people’s lives.

The key to telling a good story is having a grasp on the themes it involves. What kind of story is it? If the universe is God's story, than no matter your place in it God has a role for you. So what are the themes God is weaving into your life, or probably more accurately, what are some of God's themes that he is weaving your life into?

Bringing this down to a really practical level - it is important to reflect on what has already been present in your life to help determine what you might be being called to in the future. Have you had success in certain endeavors in the past? Have you often found yourself involved in something? Are there people in your life that have required your focus? Is there a past sin or failure God has redeemed and is using for good in your or others' lives?

Do not think about calling in a vacuum. Give yourself time to reflect and consider where these themes might take you.

Two - We don’t come to know our calling in isolation from community and relationships.

As Americans, we live extremely individualistic lives. We might ask for and receive input from family or mentors concerning large and small decisions, but very rarely is the decision not ours. This is especially true among the younger generations where we are told from a young age that what we want to do in life depends on us and us alone.

As mentioned above, though, our Creator is intensely relational and he made us to exist in community. He is not going to ignore the people in our lives in the callings he gives us. Though not without its challenges, this point is often more obvious to married women and mothers. But it is very strange for a single woman to really consider relationships when thinking about calling. But is anyone truly "single"? You might be unmarried, but no one is free from relationships and responsibilities to them.

Three - Calling does not equal planning.

The bottom line is we have no right to demand clarity from God. There are aspects of calling that will always remain fuzzy. This is not to say we should not plan or organize (a gift to truly be valued!), but rather to constantly ask ourselves: where am I substituting planning for calling? In what ways do I need to listen before I act?

In my own life, I do not profess to have all of the answers concerning calling. I cannot predict, force, or plan my way into certain paths for the next five decades of life. But with all of that said, I do feel confident in saying I have some idea of God's calling in my life. I can look back and see the themes of internationality, thought-life, and hospitality that I feel confident will carry on into my future. I am clear on the relationships I need to be committed to. And while I like to plan and strive towards certain goals, I am constantly reminding myself that my planning is not what counts, but my faithfulness to listen. 

Ultimately though, at the end of the day, I don't have peace for a single one of these reasons. I find peace because I know the God who made me capable of all the above. My true calling, my true sense of self comes from him and the knowledge that it is his image I bear.

~Hannah

Why I Have Begun to Question the Word "Calling"

This summer has been a series of emotional ups and downs. From the beginning of June, when my internship ended, to, well, now, I have been in a continuous state of limbo as far as what my life this upcoming year will be like, and whether the dreams and plans I have for my life will, down the road, be possible. It’s been very uncomfortable, and stressful. But I’ve been learning.

At the end of my senior year of college, my acting teacher Mark Lewis gave me some great advice—to allow myself to slow down. To do something meaningful, of course. But to take the time to figure out where I was meant to be, and what I should be doing. In his words: “You should be able to wake up in the morning and say, ‘I think I’ll have a cup of tea today.’ And do it.” I started crying when he said those words. And that told me something very important about myself—that I needed to follow his advice and give myself some breathing room apart from the non-stop world of college.

I did a theater internship part time, and to make some money I worked as a nanny. I was blessed to have two great families and four incredible children to nanny. And as I worked at both these “filler” jobs—an internship that didn’t pay me and as a nanny with no benefits—I began to have my first doubts about the way we, as Christians, use the word “calling.” If you had asked me a year ago what my calling was, I probably would have said that it was to be an acting teacher. But as the year went on and I opened my heart to the children I spend time with every week, I started to question the use of that word.

By referring to our careers as our “callings,” I think we misinterpret the real meaning of God’s calling in our lives. As I spent time with Ruby and Miles and Zane and Andrew, the children I have gotten to know and love, I recognized that my career will not be as their nanny. But I am convinced that my “calling,” during the time that I watch them, is to be their nanny. I have come to believe that our calling is not our dream career, or even the career that best uses our talents and skills. Our calling is to be doing whatever it is we are doing right now, in this moment as we are breathing and thinking and loving. Our calling is to serve God through our actions, and to become more like him, whatever we are doing.

As I grew more and more sure of this, and as my internship ended and I was faced with the fact that I was still nannying, but was no longer working for a theater, my eyes began to open to the way I think about myself, and the things I have to do to get approval. My goal is to be an acting teacher. That will not change. God has given me the skills and the training to be an acting teacher, and I intend to pursue those opportunities. But while I waited, and waited, and waited for schools to respond to me, and things to happen, I got to see a pretty clear glimpse of what I think is important. What I really think, when it comes down to it—not what I say I think, or think I think. And it shocked me how many of my decisions are based on the way I think people think of me, or things that I think people think I should have or do. (See. It’s so messed up it’s even hard to understand grammatically.)

Things like living at home, or driving a beater car, or being on my parents’ health insurance. Or being a nanny. Feeling like I had to apologize every time I told someone what I did for a living, or add a long story about what I really want to do. And I had to ask myself when we as a culture began to decide which jobs you have to apologize for, and which ones you don’t. When did it stop being about the fact that I am a really good nanny, and the children I watch are being served by my efforts?

I don’t want to get on a soapbox. Trust me, I know what it’s like to get a college degree and be frustrated about not using it like I envisioned. But the point is, whatever we’re doing, if we’re doing it well, we are using that degree. We 20-somethings have been trained to look ahead and push forward, and we’ve also been told that we can do whatever we want. I don’t know whether we were also told that we can do it immediately, but we definitely act like we should. And I’m just not sure that—especially as Christians—we should be ashamed of the “filler” jobs most of us have to do while we chart our career paths.

I love nannying. I won’t be a nanny forever—for one thing, I wouldn’t have benefits, and for another, I have been given an opportunity to be trained as an actress, and I believe I should use that training. But if I was a nanny forever, my life would be just as worthwhile. I don’t know if we’ll ever truly believe that—if we as a culture can ever value something like nannying as highly as something like being a doctor (and I am certainly not downplaying the importance and skill of doctors.) But as Christians, we absolutely should. We are all given one calling—to worship God by becoming more like him. What career we choose is second to that. Because no matter what we do, we are called to give everything we have, whole-heartedly, to our occupation. And that is worth thinking about.

~Ruthie

Performance of "Currency"

This is a video of a piece I wrote and performed at my friend Sarah Carleton's fundraiser for International Justice Mission and Restore International. It was a really wonderful event...for more details on that, you can visit this site.

Writing and performing a piece about beauty is not easy, if only because it becomes so personal. In working through the process of writing, staging, and performing Currency, I had to become okay with the fact that what the piece says about other people, and what the piece says about me, are both equally apparent. The only way to have the audience experience questions I wanted them to ask was through the medium of my own explorations and insecurities, and my own physical work, presented on stage. That was very scary.

A few years ago I happened upon a quote by CS Lewis, in the novel That Hideous Strength. He writes: “The beauty of the female is the root of joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god.”  I was captivated by this quote, mostly because I have felt its truth myself. It was from this line of thought that I ultimately found the pieces to create Currency. I began to wonder: what if we acknowledged our limitations, and our preferences in the area of beauty? How would it change the way we act, towards ourselves and toward others, if we were honest about the glory and the danger of being instruments that can give and receive pleasure, simply by being embodied?

In a world of extremes, these are dangerous questions. Like C.S. Lewis’s Ghost, in the excerpt quoted from The Great Divorce, it is so impossible to see ourselves without comparison. And perhaps the corruption we experience in this world, right down to the sex trade itself, can be traced back to the impossible task of seeing ourselves not through eyes that weigh, and compare, but through eyes made holy by the grace of God—the grace C.S. Lewis’s Spirit is so tenaciously trying to offer the shabby female Ghost.

In any case, these are questions we have to ask. Questions I had to ask, and I ask you to continue asking. Even at the risk of discovery.

Please forgive the quality of the video. And because the quality is bad, it's difficult to tell what I'm doing at the beginning of the piece. I am mimicking the photographs of women pasted to the wall. The song played at the beginning is "Grace," by the band U2, and the excerpt of dramatic reading in the middle is from "The Great Divorce," by CS Lewis.

~Ruthie

Girl vs. Tick - the Ultimate Battle

Last night I had the privilege of performing at a benefit that raised money for The International Justice Mission and Restore International. It was a great night, with good art, and good discussion. Unfortunately, I also had the privilege of inviting an unwelcome guest back to my house.

As I was undressing in my bedroom, late at night, I pulled my dress off and casually glanced down at my stomach. And there, just above my bellybutton, was a bug. I am terrified of ticks. So of course, my first thought was TICKOHMYGOSHTICKOHMYGOSHTIIIIIICK. I dropped my dress on the ground, and brushed at it with my hand. But I knew it was not going to flick off, because I knew it was a tick. And it was.

Now, what I thought I would do in this situation is very different than what I actually did, and that is a very good thing. My first experience with ticks was when I was 12 years old, and we had been hiking in the woods of New Jersey. Someone in the family found one crawling up their leg, and then my mom found one in her thigh. This experience severely traumatized me, and I have been worried about getting a tick ever since. (Understandable that I would be obsessed with this worry, seeing as I have also been convinced several times through the years that I have a tapeworm living in my intestines.)

Despite my fears, however, I have never actually had a tick. Until last night. What I thought I would do was to scream, and then panic, and then run downstairs and wake my mother up and make her take care of it. I can’t deny that for a moment, I did consider waking my mother up. But I didn’t scream. And I didn’t panic. And I decided, as I stood in my bedroom, that as a capable 23 year old woman, I could fix this problem all by myself.

The calmness with which I then proceeded to act is, in retrospect, very impressive. I picked up my clothes from the floor and checked them for more ticks. I checked the rest of my body for ticks. I checked my hair several times (because that would be the worst. At least with the tick on my stomach, I could keep an eye on him.) Then I went to my computer and looked up “how to remove a tick.” WebMD was very helpful. I read that you are supposed to grasp the tick as close to the mouth as possible and pull gently until it detaches itself, making sure it doesn’t leave anything in your skin. And then you’re supposed to save it for further identification. And I did all these precautionary things calmly (and quickly), with the little guy calmly sucking away at my stomach.

Finally, I went downstairs to the bathroom. I got out the tweezers, and stood in front of the mirror. In crisis situations, I like to give myself a pep talk. “You can do this,” I told myself. “You can DO. THIS.”

I have since looked at pictures of ticks online to try to identify the type, and what I have found out is a) it was a fairly large tick (about 1 centimeter) and b) it was not bloated at all yet. Both these things combined made it much easier to get him out of me. But in the heat of the moment, all I really knew was that when I grasped its neck with my tweezers, it immediately began scrabbling its legs against me, and I could totally feel its suckers inside my skin.

And this is where I would like to congratulate myself. I let go of the bug and looked up, saying out loud, “Oh my gosh. I can’t do this. I can’t DO this.” But did I put the tweezers down and go wake someone up for help? Did I dissolve into tears or scream in panic? NO. I did not. I steeled myself, grasped it again with the tweezers, and pulled, despite the wiggling legs and the terrifying sensation of a sucking bug sucking me. The more I pulled, the more it became about defeating the horrible thing, and less about the grossness of the situation. And that is what enabled me to keep pulling until it detached itself from my skin. 

Because I am a woman, and women are strong enough to remove ticks from their stomachs without help. And even though those were not the thoughts going through my brain (it was more like, “get it out get it out get it out come on come on come on GET. IT. OUT.”) I am proud to say that I rose to the challenge, when the crisis came. And I wholeheartedly believe that most women (and men) would do the same.

Turns out that little tick was almost as persistent as I was. After I got him out, I set him down on the counter and stabbed him through with the tweezers. But then I got a cotton ball and cleaned the area of my skin he was sucking, and as I was putting some polysporin on, I looked down…and there was no tick on the counter.

That was the moment to panic.

After frantically searching, guess where I found him? Yes. On my shorts. Trying to suck some more of my blood. Needless to say, this time I completely mangled him and washed him down the sink. Identification be damned. That thing needed to be gone forever.

And that is how I discovered that the roots of my courage go down much deeper than I knew (at least in the bug department). And I also discovered that ticks are persistent. And incredibly disgusting. So next time you go into or near the woods, check yourself for ticks. And if you find one, don’t be afraid. You too can defeat it, and live to tell the story.

~Ruthie

"Keep Calm and Pinterest On" - A Thoughtful Article on a Trend that Continues to Mystify Me

My new sweet friend, Molly, just wrote a great article about Pinterest for The Pender Journal. I don't "pin" and don't feel any draw to start doing so, but most of my nearest and dearest do. Thought you would enjoy reading her careful thoughts both in praise and critique of Pinterest. 

Check it out here!

~Hannah

Why it Pays to Be Eccentric and Rich

Hannah and I have decided that every so often, we will write a post profiling a famous, but not widely know, woman from the past. The woman we’ve chosen to be our first is probably more infamous than famous. At least in the Boston area.

Isabella Stewart Gardner, by John Singer Sargent

On a recent visit to Boston, Hannah and I visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which is located in the Fenway area of Boston. On a gorgeous, sunny day, it was a bit surreal to go into the first part of the museum—constructed only in the last couple of years—to buy our tickets. Surreal because of the rest of the museum. The first part is all clean lines and perfect temperature and bright, pleasing colors: a 2012 version of symmetric, breathable classiness. But once you have your tickets, you walk through a glass portal into the museum, and the real fun begins.

This is a post about Isabella Stewart Gardner, not her museum. But as I walked through the rooms, I began to sense that the museum and the woman who created it speak volumes about each other. It’s a crazy place, that museum. In stark contrast to the balance and dignity of the newly constructed entryway, the museum (nestled into a huge house that was constructed to look like a 16^th century Venetian residence) is a study in disorder. To Isabella, everything had a reason and a place. But to a visitor, it is chaos.

I wanted to know more as soon as I began wandering through the rooms. It was clear that whoever had designed the place had very strong ideas about what was important, and it was also clear that she was an amateur. Why else would she have placed Vermeers next to unknown 19^th century prints? Why would she have hung a length of green silk cut from one of her own dresses under a Degas, and then placed a 16^th century lectern, sporting a massive old manuscript underneath it?

The rooms were overwhelming in their eclectic style, and in the abundance of art. Several rooms were hung wall to wall with paintings, drawings and prints. Stepping into them and trying to look at each picture was impossible. And the experience of disorientation was only heightened by the security guards in each room. As I stared up at a painting of a woman with curly red hair, trying to find a mooring for my wandering eyes, I heard a voice close to my ear: “Does this painting…interest you?”

I turned to see an elderly security guard standing beside me. I said yes, too surprised and intrigued to say anything else, and he began to tell me in his thick accent about the woman in the painting, and how her granddaughter had stood on the spot where I now stood and told him that her grandmother had had 10 children, and was pregnant in the painting. “And from that moment, I knew, in my heart, this painting, it is the one,” he finished.

It was probably the best museum interaction I’ve ever had. As I continued walking around, I knew little more about Isabella Gardner than that she had very odd taste and had written into her will that nothing in the museum could be removed or added. But as I’ve read more about her, I realized that my interaction with the security guard is exactly what she envisioned for her museum. You can feel the eccentricities of her personality even now, almost 90 years after her death. But her museum is still doing what she intended it to do—bring art to Americans, and allow them the space to observe it in a disarming state of chaos.

Isabella Gardner was a crazy woman. What else can you call someone who, in 1912, attended the posh Boston Symphony Orchestra wearing a white headband emblazoned with “Oh, you Red Sox,” on it? Or, while building her museum, asked to borrow the beautiful and famous Sargent painting “El Jaleo” from her cousin, and once it was in her house began reconstructing a room to house it? That would make for an awkward conversation—which ultimately ended in the cousin gifting the painting to Isabella.

There are many details about Isabella’s life that fascinate me. There is her marriage to John Lowell Gardner (Jack), which was apparently a happy one, despite the loss of their 2-year old son in 1865. After their son died, they began collecting art, and Isabella conceived her dream of creating a museum—which Jack shot down, when he found out she wanted to transform their house. There is the fact that she contacted an architect in secret two years before her husband’s death, and that she brought the same architect (Willard T. Sears) up only ten days after Jack’s funeral to begin designing the museum. Apparently, art was a way of healing for Isabella.

But as I read more about her, I became fascinated with the fact that she used her eccentricity, not only to get what she wanted, but to get what she wanted for others, and perhaps even to shield herself from the society of the day. Several accounts talk about how the wealthy Bostonians snubbed her when Jack first brought her to the posh Back Bay neighborhood, and for years to come. It was only towards the turn of the century, when Isabella was in full swing constructing her museum, that the younger generation fell in love with her because of her quick wit and freedom to do whatever she wanted (see above: white head band at BSO concert. Seriously.)

And she used her influence—or infamousness—to jump start John Singer Sargent’s career, after he painted that startling portrait of her in black and pearls. (Which she loved, and her husband hated, as evidenced by his words in a letter: “It looks like hell, but looks like you.”) After her death, she left bequests to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Industrial School for Crippled and Deformed Children, Animal Rescue League, and Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. As well as endowing her museum and making it impossible to alter a single thing about the layout or pieces on display. (And also neglecting to insure the art. Which was painfully apparent when one of the largest art heists of all time took five Degas, a Vermeer, a Rembrandt, and a Manet—all uninsured.)

So I guess the conclusion is, if you’re rich, you can do what you want. You can nail a Sargent to the back of a writing desk and place a 17^th century chair in front of it. But Isabella Gardner was a rebel, in her own way, and I tend to think that if you’re going to be an eccentric well-off person, opening a museum and using your craziness to help others—and allowing yourself the freedom to get over the snobby Boston societal shun—is probably the way to do it.

~Ruthie

No Rights for Chinese Women

"Have women ever really been suppressed in China, I often wonder? The powerful figure of the Empress Dowager immediately comes to my mind. Chinese women are not the type to be easily suppressed. Women have many disadvantages, have been prevented from holding stenographic positions or judicial posts, but women have ruled nevertheless in the home, apart from those debauchee households where women have become toys. Even in these homes, some of the concubines manage to rule their lords.

And what is still more important, women have been deprived of every right, but they have never been deprived of the right to marry. To every girl born in China, a home of her own is provided. Society insists that even slave-girls should be married off at a proper age. Marriage is women's only inalienable right in China, and with the enjoyment of that right, they have the best weapon for power, as wife and mother.

There are two sides to this picture. Man has undoubtedly been unfair to woman, yet it is interesting to see how sometimes woman has her revenge. The total effect of the subjection of women consists in the general recognition of the inferiority of women, in women's self-abasement, in their deprivation of the social advantages of the men, in their lesser education and knowledge, in their cheaper, harder and less free lives, and in the double sex standard. The oppression of women is more the invisible sort, resulting from the general recognition of their inferiority. Where there is no love between husband and wife, the husband may be very autocratic, and in such cases the wife has no other recourse but submission. The women merely endure family autocracy as the Chinese people endure political autocracy."

My Country and My People, Lin Yu Tang, 1935

Does anything change in this world? While trying to slog through My Country and My People last night, I read the above paragraphs, horrified by the snobbish few of women's travails in China that Lin Yu Tang takes. As he tries to explain and defend his culture to the West, his own arrogance and misogyny is revealed.

Feng Jian Mei lies next to her forcibly aborted daughter.

With his words still rattling through my head, I read two very sad articles today revealing that nothing has changed in China. The first looks at the recurrent attempt by failing Chinese leaders to blame their worse deeds and ultimate demise on a "dragon lady" - a common slight of hand trick that has existed throughout Chinese history to paint women closest to the scene of political intrigue as overly sexual, conniving, trouble makers in order to hide where blame ultimately lies. The second looks at the story of one woman's forced abortion currently taking Chinese media by storm and discusses the ins and outs of China's one child policy.

What links them together? Despite almost a century of social upheaval, Lin's words are as true today about Chinese women as they were at the beginning of the last century. Marriage is women's only inalienable right in China... "the oppression of women is more the invisible sort, resulting from the general recognition of their inferiority." China believes itself to be a liberalized society, but it's exactly this assumption that will keep it from rising above its discriminatory past and present. Change cannot happen until China is willing, as a collective society to drop the arrogant platitudes concerning change and take a long hard look at the invisible, underlying, and completely prevalent attitudes it has towards its women.

Please read these articles and pause to reflect for a moment on the needs of your sisters. Their greatest need is for a worldview change to rip throughout China from top to bottom and back up again.

~Hannah

The Whimsey of Olive and Jane

Visit OliveandJane.com

Right now, old things are in. They have been for a while. When I was a teenager, the vintage market was just starting up, but now it is in full force. With the more recent additions of etsy and pinterest, the market has almost become commonplace. As time pushes us forward, the Western world expresses a collective look back through our most common language - commerce.

But recently, we have moved beyond the market of the old to something even more exciting and interesting - craftsmanship. The nostalgia that started with combing thrift stores and raiding grandmothers' closets has now morphed into the desire to actually produce the past into our present. So much contact with the remainders of yesterday has renewed our understanding that skills must be specialized and that often owning one well crafted labor of creative love surpasses two half-forgotten and slapped-together copies. And ta-da! new handmade objects now hold the same nostalgic joy in them as their vintage counterparts because the process of handmade craftsmanship itself rings of past decades.

At the center of all this commercial celebration of the past, both old and new, is the desire and need for whimsey. A touch of whimsey causes us to play by embracing something different. Whimsey looks to possess something outside of ordinary life, whether from the reaches of imagination, from across the ocean, from the starry future, or from the dusty past. When we have found it and brought it into our world, we laugh and the moment lightens to give us joy for our present. Through the use of the unusual or the different, whimsey gives us strength to enjoy the all-consuming present.

And now, my shameless plug. One of the best examples of whimsical craftsmanship I have seen is a new millinery start up co-owned by my dear friend, Amy Rambo. As long as I have known her, Amy lives and breathes a love for whimsey and it exudes throughout Olive and Jane. Who doesn't want to wear a hat if not simply for the joy of the word fascinator? Take a peek at the Olive and Jane lookbooks and indulge your fanciful self. Let your imagination run wild with what once used to be and then let a bit of it creep into day to day dreams.

~Hannah

What's in a Wedding Anyway?

When I got engaged at the end of August, I wondered if it would open a door onto a world of deep thoughts concerning womanhood. It didn't. Granted, much in my life has been changing. But those changes have not made me inherently wiser or more thoughtful about my identity and place in society.  Life goes on and I remain mostly the same. Now I find myself wondering the same about marriage. My suspicion is that it might have some small impact on my observations and thoughts, but overall nothing earth shattering will change. I still ask the same questions; I still struggle with the same doubts; I still get irritated by the same signs of brokenness.

While my personal changes have not yet caused much writing, the world around me remains much the same and continues to provide much food for thought. I worked briefly for a woman as a "mother's helper," and I find myself pondering something she once said in conversation.

I consider this woman to be very typical of a certain American demographic. She is in her mid 30s, but looks and acts younger than what older generations would assume of her age. She and her child's father have been together for more than a decade, but are unmarried, and the baby was an unexpected surprise after many years chasing careers and enjoying life with friends. Their lack of preparation for or pursuit of creating a family has not deterred from their love for their child and they now dedicate all of their time and energy to giving him the most perfect, protected, and politically correct childhood in their power to give. They have and want "family," but in untraditional ways.

I found out they are not married through an awkward conversation about my own upcoming wedding, and it was in this conversation that she sparked food for thought. After answering many of her questions regarding my wedding, I nervously asked about her own wedding and she laughed and replied there had never been one.  Her laughter eased the whole situation and we were able to talk more freely. I asked if they had ever considered marriage assuming assumed the answer would be "no," but was surprised when she replied that actually her partner really wanted to get married while she did not. I asked more about why he wanted marriage and her response went something like this, "...well, I think he believes it's something sacred," but as an atheist she just could not see any deeper significance to marriage since they already knew they were a committed family.  From my understanding, neither one of them have any particular religious commitments, and yet, here she was, telling me that the only point of discussion they had concerning the value of marriage was its possible sacredness.

In the midst of our conversation, this point of sacredness was interesting to me, but it was until I drove home that the full weight of it settled through the silence of my car. Here was a couple with no real interest in or connection to the theological arguments for marriage stating the whole point of the union. It struck me that in all the "culture war" debates concerning marriage, we tend to focus on and speak to the practical or natural needs and reasons for marriage. I believe the rational is that those reasons are the only space in which Christians can speak a common language with nonbelievers, the only areas in which we even have a hope to persuade. But maybe that is not the case. Maybe the younger generations are more open to arguments based on the spiritual aspects or "sacredness"of marriage?

The more I think about it, the more interesting it is to me that faith communities are relying more and more on "practical" arguments for marriage while this very secular couple focuses more on more on the spiritual arguments for it. And it makes me mourn that the church thinks it must neglect what it believes to be the most central truths about humanity in order to speak to the broader culture. The centrality of sacredness in the meaning of marriage should be the starting point of the church in speaking to the culture about marriage, not something that is left for those who already accept the reality of a God who created marriage and therefore has something to say about the institution. I believe some are focusing on this, but the overall voice of Christianity in America does not emphasize the sacredness of marriage when arguing for it. We talk about need for commitment and the goodness of the family, but those two things are only byproducts of understanding and knowing the sacredness of marriage. It is not commitment that we should mourn the loss of in marriage. For who can remain committed to something  purely secular? Who can find within themselves the capability for it? The lost meaning that should be mourned and fought for is the rich and deep meaning of marriage that goes beyond commitment and family.

~Hannah