Bad Grammar Cauldron Bubbleth Over

I love Pinterest, and I love reading quotations there.

Except when there are egregious typos or grammar errors.

Then I wince.

Oh, how it hurts to see flagrantly bad grammar used amidst such pretty ideas and pictures. The pin I shared yesterday has a missing comma, but the impact is minimized by a convenient line break and graphic elements. I could overlook that error relatively easily.

I am not nearly as persnickety as I used to be, and I never feel offended by grammar errors in blog comments or Internet forums...casual writing will have errors, and pesky errors creep into the best formal writing on occasion. I sometimes make errors on purpose for rhetorical effect, but I certainly make unintentional errors, too. We're all sinners, and forgiveness usually comes easily for me.

But not always.

Consider this offender:

I'm sorry, but I just can't let this go. Let's itemize the errors here from a purist's perspective.

1. No beginning quotation mark. There's a quotation mark at the end, but not one at the beginning. Both or neither, please.

2. Comma error. Generally, do not use a comma before because. It's a subordinating conjunction, not a coordinating conjunction connecting two independent clauses.

3. Pronoun error. Most properly, he/she should apply only to humans, but I've always felt that was rude to animals. I like anthropomorphosis and give the world permission to anthropomorphize to its heart's content. If you're going to make the bird a girl by using her, however, you may not change to its in the same sentence. Her/her or its/its would be correct. Her/it's is most definitely not.

4. Its/It's usage error. It's is a contraction of it is. Its is a possessive pronoun. You wouldn't type her's, would you? I know this is confusing because apostrophe s usually indicates possession, but pronouns violate that rule. Remember that we're writing English. It often does not make sense unless you spend a few semesters studying linguistics, and even then, it does not make much sense.

5. Preposition choice. Perhaps this is nit-picking, but usually we trust in something. We do not trust on something.

"A bird sitting on a tree is never afraid of the branch breaking because her trust is not in the branch but in her own wings. Always believe in yourself."

That's so much better.

I feel better.

I hope you do, too.

Words, Words, Words about What's Missing

Source on Pinterest

I love this quotation. So much of our bitterness and anger comes when the world and other people don't deliver what we think we need. We yearn for kindness, for connection, for warmth...and we save it up until we receive it. But it withers and grows old and dies in us.

All of our goodness and love grows only when we give it away freely and generously, without expectation of return. And then, miraculously, it comes back to us multiplied. 

I know a couple who wanted but could not have children. Instead of getting bitter and resentful, they decided to do volunteer work with children. If they couldn't love children of their own, they would channel that love into other people's children. How generous and good that decision was! And also, no doubt, hard and courageous.

What do you feel is missing in your life? How can you be that for the world?

Yay! May Is Mental Health Awareness Month!!!

This is my second post for today. Please scroll down to read today's essay.

Y'all who've been reading for a while know I experienced an episode (okay, years) of severe depression in my teens and early 20's. Y'all also know I got the help I needed to get out of that black hole and, praise the Lord, have not been dragged back into it.

I had the weirdest conversation a few weeks ago. An electrician and construction supervisor were in my house doing warranty work, and we struck up a conversation. Both men freely admitted to having suffered anxiety disorders. One was still on medication for it, and the other said he would go back on meds in a second if his symptoms returned. Their comfort in discussing their problems openly warmed the cockles of my heart.

BUT, too many people still believe that mental health problems are a choice. No. They. Are. Not. People who suffer from anxiety, depression, PTSD, bipolar disorder, autism, schizophrenia, ADHD, et. al. do NOT choose to be ill. Nor are they weak.

They need help. Professional help.

If you want to learn more about Mental Health Awareness month, please click HERE.

If you want to read Heather Armstrong's words about it, please click HERE. The many comments on her blog post will show you that you are not alone, whether you suffer from mental illness or have a loved one who suffers.

If you are suffering, GET HELP. Please. Just get help.

The Intentional Online Life

My laptop died a few weeks ago. There was a dreaded black screen...not even the dreaded blue screen, but pitch-black nothingness resonating with the horrific death rattle of the CD-ROM drive.

I stared at it like a golden retriever contemplating an empty food dish.

"I has a sad."

Then, a very tiny voice deep inside me said, "Yay!"

I wasn't glad that the laptop died because replacing it was expensive and awkward. But that little burst of joyous fireworks came with the knowledge that some of the information on that old laptop was gone with absolutely no effort from me.

I've written plenty about feeling weighed down by too much stuff in real life, but my online life gets weighed down, too.

For instance, my old email program automatically added contacts when I replied to an email. That meant when I answered Jane Doe's question about how I adhered the glitter to my holiday thank-you card, Jane Doe magically appeared in my contact list. Jane Doe got her answer and never contacted me again. I forgot about Jane Doe, moved on with my life just like she did, but there she was, in my contact list, every time I wanted to send an email to my real-life friend Janet.

Multiply Jane Doe by about 385, and you get the clutter in my contact list.

Then there were the 9,642 emails in my inbox. Trying to stay on top of emails when thirty or forty a day come in is tough. It requires discipline and determination and ohmygosh they are like bunny rabbits humping and multiplying independently and exponentially and what is a girl to do?!?!?

First-world problems strike again.

At least if I were in the world of Once Upon a Time, I could cook these rabbits with potatoes and have the pleasure of grossing out Gollum. But no, these multiplying rabbits sat in my inbox and mocked me with their bold-type unread status.

Of course I'm exaggerating for effect. The fact that my thighs rub together bothers me a lot more than email proliferation. But the loss of all those emails didn't send me into a state of cyber-despair.

No, cyber-despair came at the loss of maybe 200 or so wonderful emails, funny emails, supportive emails, emails containing funny videos of my niece and nephews, emails that I'd saved to special folders but not to my external hard drive.

That loss hurt.

But why?

Haven't those emails served their purpose? Their authors, my readers, took time to share their comments with me, and I read them and was so very grateful. Yet how often did I actually re-read those emails? Weren't they simply there, like the dozens of storage boxes in my basement taking up so much space? Only these emails were 0's and 1's on a hard drive that crashed spectacularly in an instant.

Truth be told, other than the videos of family, saving those emails was mostly about ego. Isn't my online life important? Don't my readers care about me? Am I not useful and kind and helpful? Sure I am! The proof is in the emails!

Not really.

Our online lives can be enormously enriching and useful, but the proof of that doesn't exist on our hard drives. The proof exists in the human response, in the relationships, in the questions asked and answered and life moving on, in acts of kindness (even if they are merely words of encouragement encoded in html).

What we do for others means something. Yet what we do disappears into the past, fries on a hard drive, fades without proof of existence.

Technology lies to us, saying that all these 0's and 1's are important in and of themselves, real and tangible things, and we need them, just like we need screens, touchscreens, iPhones and e-readers to decode them.

No. We need people. We need connections with people, not screens. At times, screens can connect us with people life never would have connected us with otherwise, and this is good and important. The widow mourning in British Columbia whom I pray for daily...how would I have learned about her if not for her touching email response to a blog post of mine? The rubber-stamping Starbucks barista who lives in Arizona and whose emails always and without fail make me smile big smiles. The woman who got picked on as a child and is now over it...I think I helped her just a tiny little bit. 

Those people are real, and so are the connections. But before screens, they would never have crossed my path, nor I theirs. We now have so many people we can touch.

So many people.

Where's the limit? What can one person do? How much should one person do? When does our focus on all those people on the internet--real, important, beautiful people--start getting in the way of paying attention to the people--real, important, beautiful people--in our own homes and workplaces and communities?

Screens connect us, but they also disconnect us, sometimes from what is most important in life...living it well, with love and kindness and goodwill. A friend recently stopped blogging, and one reason she gave was that she needs to live her life, which has changed and is continuing to change. She might come back to blogging later, or she might not. The point is, she's living a good life, trying to find balance.

Perhaps what we need is to live with intention, to be aware of what we're doing and what we need to do every minute of the day. How often do I get sucked into Pinterest, lose track of time, and realize that hours have passed...hours in which I could have been doing something more important or even more fun?

My mother, on the other hand, recently got sucked into YouTube. She discovered a number of incredibly educational art videos and spent an entire day learning at her computer. She never does this. She ordinarily spends little time at a screen, but that day wasn't time wasted. It was good time, learning time, motivating time that got her excited about painting.

Screens are not all bad.

But how sad it is to see so many children interacting with screens instead of each other. My worst moment during a recent visit to my sister's house was when I walked into the family room to see my nephews, son, and niece staring fixedly at screens in their hands. My other son was in the living room watching a movie. No one was talking.

In contrast, my favorite moment of the trip was outside in my sister's back yard. All five cousins were running around playing, just like my cousins, sister, and I did as children. They blew bubbles, threw a baseball, played badminton, climbed the play set, yelled and screamed and laughed and made all sorts of noise that would get them shushed inside. Heck, my son and one nephew even helped clean up the yard without complaining.

There were no screens in the back yard other than the ones on the adults' digital cameras as we tried to freeze those beautiful moments for years to come.

Screens can be good, or they can be bad. It's what we do with them that makes them so. And we have to figure this out because, for good or bad, screens are here to stay.

It's ironic that I've sat at a screen typing this post. I remember the good ol' days of pen and paper, manual typewriters, electric typewriters. I love writing. Deep in my bones. Love. I want to do this, share my thoughts with the world, hoping my words are useful and entertaining to someone else.

The internet is better for this than pen and paper were. I love that the internet allows me to connect with an audience in real ways. I don't have to bother with a publisher or agent. My words are direct to you. When I get emails telling me my words touched someone, made them laugh or think or both, I want to write more. Those emails motivate me, so no wonder I let them pile up in my inbox!

And when there's a hand-made card in my mailbox, as there was today, well, that puts me into spasms of joy and gratitude.

My official word for 2013 is Intentional. Being intentional with screens means using them for a good purpose. I use my screen time to share on my blogs in ways that connect with you. 

What I do on my blogs is a small thing in your life. You could stop reading at any time, move on, live your own intentional life without any further thought of me or my blog or my words. I would go on living. You would go on living. It would all be good.

But for now, you're here and I'm here and we're together here.  I appreciate that. I'm having fun and hope you are, too.



How do you use your screen time intentionally? Do you limit your activities in deliberate ways? Do you feel like you have a good balance or are screens taking over your life?

Gratitude Journal #186

Today, I am grateful for your feedback on replacements for Google Reader. I'm going to check out Bloglovin before doing anything.

Today, I am grateful for my new computer. As expected, all the weirdness of Windows 8 is fading with experience, and now I'm mostly adjusted to the difference. What I really love is the speed of this computer and its lovely screen. Thank you again, George, for picking it out for me!

Today, I am grateful for rain, for birds at the feeder, and grass growing.

Today, I am grateful for my mom and mother-in-law in this week leading to Mother's Day, and for my sister, nephew, husband, and crazy golden retriever...all of whom have birthdays this month!

Today, I am grateful for moments of quiet.

What are you grateful for today?

Turkish Barbarity, or Gettin' All Feminist in Church

Several months ago, I was asked to participate in a series of educational presentations at church about our denomination (United Methodist). I jumped at the chance to learn more about women in leadership. It's shocking how ignorant I was of the details of my denomination on this subject in particular, seeing as I'm a Christian who's also a fan of feminism who giggled with glee when our church was assigned a female pastor.

Below is the speech I read in church today. Even if you're not a Christian, or a Methodist, I hope you see in it the value of persistence and determination for the progress of women everywhere.  

 

  

 

When we want to look at the history of women in leadership in the Methodist church, we might as well start with its founder, John Wesley. In his sermon On Visiting the Sick, Wesley writes:

“Indeed it has long passed for a maxim with many, that ‘women are only to be seen, not heard.’ And accordingly many of them are brought up in such a manner as if they were only designed for agreeable playthings! But is this doing honour to the sex or is it a real kindness to them? No; it is the deepest unkindness; it is horrid cruelty; it is mere Turkish barbarity. And I know not how any woman of sense and spirit can submit to it.”

We might well ask how Wesley came to see women as having “sense and spirit” in a time when few men thought that possible, and I think we may give primary credit to his mother for this.

Susanna Wesley, often called the Mother of the Methodist Church, set an example to John and his siblings of the power of women’s witness for God. Susanna’s Sunday evening Bible studies filled her house to overflowing and were more popular than the Sunday morning services at their Anglican Church. When the Anglican minister learned this, he tried to get Susanna to stop. She refused.

Imagine the impact on the young John Wesley of watching his mother’s powerful witness to so many people. While Wesley certainly never promoted the idea of women’s ordination—he was a staunch 18^th century Anglican—he vigorously protested women’s exclusion from Christian service and from Methodist meetings when some of his early followers pushed for it. He also commissioned a number of women to preach, even a 16-year-old named Mary Fletcher, whose parents did not approve of their daughter speaking in public.

Following John Wesley’s death, the Methodist movement splintered into different groups, and in most of them, the official participation of women lost the little ground it held. By the 1840s, the situation was fairly grim for most woman who felt God’s call to lead. But due to a number of very strong and persistent women, and the passage of about 150 years, the situation would eventually change.  

Phoebe Palmer was an evangelist and writer in the mid-1800s. She ran the first Methodist prayer meeting attended by both men and women…and not just any men attended. Her meetings attracted Methodist bishops, theologians, seminary professors, and ministers, all of whom wanted to hear her ideas on John Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection. Through her prayer meetings and speaking engagements and the many books she wrote, Phoebe Palmer exerted enormous influence in the 19^th century Methodist church.

Two other women represented official firsts within the Methodist tradition around the same time as Phoebe Palmer.

Helenor M. Davison was ordained deacon by the Methodist Protestant Church in 1866. She is considered to be the first woman ordained in the Methodist tradition.

Ten years after that, in 1876, against tremendous odds, Anna Oliver earned her Bachelor of Divinity degree from Boston University School of Theology. Oliver was never allowed to achieve her goal of full ordination in Methodist ministry, although she did serve as a preacher in New York and New Jersey.

Gradually, more and more women pushed for official recognition in seminaries and pulpits. I will single out just a few.

Georgia Harkness became the first woman professor in an American seminary. She felt called to do graduate work in theology, but Boston University, the same school that graduated Anna Oliver in 1876 with a Bachelor’s degree, refused Georgia admission to their graduate Divinity program in the 1920s. Not to be deterred, Harkness earned a Ph.D. in philosophy of religion in the university’s Department of Religion instead. For the next 15 years, she taught philosophy and religion at a women’s college, but took every opportunity for continuing education at a number of divinity schools, including Harvard and Yale, but always as a “special” non-degree student.   

Eventually, the very persistent Professor Harkness was accepted as a full professor at Garrett Biblical Institute, a post-baccalaureate Methodist seminary dedicated to preparing students for ordained ministry. She continued to teach at that level at several different seminaries until her retirement in 1960.

On May 4, 1956, four years before Professor Harkness retired, the General Conference of the Methodist Church approved full clergy rights for women. I love how this was done because it was so simple: years of debate were summed up in a single sentence added to the Book of Discipline that reads: “All foregoing paragraphs, chapters and sections of Part III [of the Book of Discipline] shall apply to women as well as to men.”

Maud Jensen was the first woman to be granted full clergy rights after this decision by the Central Pennsylvania Conference. She was not present for her appointment, however. She was in Korea.

In last week's service, before we read the Korean Affirmation of Faith, Pastor Suzanne told us that the Methodist church in Korea is very strong. Well, Maud Jensen is part of the reason for that strength today. She spent forty years in Korea as a missionary, helping lay that foundation for today’s vibrant Methodist church in that country.

Another woman, Grace Huck, received full clergy rights in 1958. At a conference celebrating the 50^th anniversary of women’s ordination, Reverend Huck told a story from her first appointment. When the district superintendent told the congregation he was appointing a woman, one man in the congregation pounded his fist on the pew and shouted, “There will be no skirts in this pulpit while I'm alive.” Yet after Reverend Huck arrived and began her work, this same man became one of her staunchest supporters and allies in that church.

In 1974, 1 in 100 students in Methodist seminaries in America was a woman. Just one percent. In 2006, that number was 1 in 2. Fifty percent. From one to fifty percent in just 34 years.

Imagine how Anna Oliver and Georgia Harkness would feel about that.

It wasn’t until 1980 that the first woman was ordained as a Methodist bishop. According to the most current statistics I could find, in 2008 there were 14 women serving as bishops in the United States and 36 men.  Elsewhere in the world, only two other women serve as United Methodist bishops…in Mozambique and in Germany.

This issue of women’s ordination and full clergy rights is still extremely controversial, though less so in the Methodist Church than in some other denominations. Last week, Will [the youth pastor] spoke about the Wesleyan quadrilateral and its emphasis on using Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience to discover our faith. The experiences of Mary Fletcher, Phoebe Palmer, Anna Oliver, Maud Jensen, and so many other women speak to all four points in the quadrilateral. The debate isn’t over, but it is moving forward.

Let us, however, go back to that passage from John Wesley’s sermon On Visiting the Sick that we started with. He concludes, 

“Let all you [women] that have it in your power assert the right which the God of nature has given you. Yield not to that vile bondage [of being seen and not heard] any longer. You, as well as men, are rational creatures. You, like them, were made in the image of God; you are equally candidates for immortality; you too are called of God...to 'do good unto all men.' Be 'not disobedient to the heavenly calling.'"

Questions about Google+ and Reader and What Passes for Advice around Here--Edited

Edited to add links to Feedly and Old Reader. See below.

Y'all, I've been writing up a storm and feel so strange to have so little posted on this here particular blog o' mine. That will (hopefully) be changing soon with more regular posting, and a big post is coming up on Sunday. If you're looking for something to read now and you're interested in devotional writing, click over to Transforming Common Days, where I am doing a weekly post on Proverbs.

For today on Questioning, however, I have two questions for you, and few comments.

1. What's up with Google+? I think I have an account but have no idea what to do with it. Anyone have any helpful tips, like is it worth my time? Anyone using it? If so, what can you do on it?

2. Google Reader is GOING AWAY. Folks, this is devastating for me and for at least 120 of you who read this blog in Google Reader. (Isn't it freaky that I know that? I think so.) Have any of you figured out what you're going to do? If so, please share in the comments here if you want to help others out.

I have a bunch of blogs I read in Google Reader. I've tried migrating to Feedly and the The Old Reader, and haven't been successful transferring my feeds. VERY frustrating and a waste of two hours of my life I will never get back.

The Old Reader looks better to me than Feedly, so I'm going to manually move my feeds over there the hard way.

Several of you have asked what I recommend for my readers. If you have just a few feeds in your reader, it might be easier to subscribe to them via email. Most bloggers have that option in their sidebar. Just remember that you will have to respond to a verification email that sometimes gets shunted to your junk mail folder.

If, like me, you have lots of blogs in your reader (I have about 80), I recommend migrating to The Old Reader, just because it's free and similar to Google Reader, so the learning curve will be faster. (Hopefully the "easy" transfer of your subscriptions works for you!) I've also considered opening a special email account and subscribing under that account. That way, the blogs will all be together and not cluttering up my inbox.

If you're pretty savvy, however, you might want to investigate other services that have mobile apps and such. Feedly has received good reviews on the sites I've looked at, but there are others as well. A quick google search of Google Reader alternatives will be useful if you want more options.

What do you think?

3. No question, but if you want to see a cool video of killer whales, check out this link: Killer Whales