22July2008
Posted by Convallaria under: Health; Science; Younguns.
What’s the deal with immunizations? One side is dogmatic about giving them and the other is dogmatic about refusing them. I’ve been recently looking at the controversy trying to decide whether to continue with the normal schedule of shots, to slow it down a bit (i.e. space out the shots over a longer period of time), or to discontinue them all together.
On one end of the spectrum I have my SiL who is staunchly against immunizations and has not immunized my two youngest nephews at all. She’s not alone as several young mothers in my church have made the same decision. On the other end of the spectrum is all my training in Public Health most of which can be boiled down into a single statement: an ounce of prevention goes a long way.
But it’s one thing to sit in a classroom and listen to lectures on preventative medicine and quite another to try and make informed decisions that could affect your baby’s whole life.
Read on, MacDuff!
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11July2008
Posted by Puretext under: Essay; That Vision Thing; Theology.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I’m a mystic. But I’ve discovered that word makes some people, particularly non-charismatic evangelicals, nervous, so let me explain. By “mystic†I mean a person whose devotional life is characterized by intensely affecting spiritual experiences. These experiences may be in the realm of simple theological insight, or they may take more literary forms. At times they may cross over into the realm of prophecy; that is, dreams, visions, words, and phrases laden with theological context.
From a natural perspective, mysticism can come from two sources. It can be personal, or social: On the social spectrum, mysticism can be presented as something to aspire to. Some Christian traditions – the Pentecostals, the Orthodox, some revivalist traditions – present mysticism in such a way that it seems to be the only way to have a properly Christian devotional life. At the other extreme, some traditions, particularly the Reformed and Protestants as a whole, seem to perceive mysticism at best as something useless, at worst as something suspiciously unchristian, smacking of Papism, adding to scripture, even beckoning the demonic. On the personal spectrum, a person could be naturally predisposed to have certain kinds of experiences, or they could find themselves completely unable to do so, or they could be somewhere in between. (Please note that, for the sake of simplicity, I’m lumping what a person thinks about these things in with the social scale.)
The difficulty, of course, comes when a person’s natural predisposition doesn’t align very well with the tradition they find themselves in.
Read on, MacDuff!
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2July2008
Posted by Convallaria under: Younguns.
Kyle and I have been having some rather extended conversations about parenting and the direction in which we wish to lead our children (novel concept right?). And we’ve been discussing the fact that we want to instill into our children a forward thinking perspective that looks towards long term goals and benefits. Now Kyle tends to focus mostly on legacy building, but I have been coming back to the need to raise our children in an environment that embraces responsibility at an early age.
In my last post, I talked about the current definition of childhood and how we have culturally glorified it to an untenable position. I would like to further look at this social construct in light of our responsibility as parents to train our children.
In our zeal to appeal to the modern world, we’ve let society dictate to us how we should respond our children’s youthful urges and behaviors. This dictation is undermining Christian principles because it in no way acknowledges a Sovereign God who has given us the duty to mold our children to seek after the paths of righteousness. On the contrary, society would rather have us be our child’s ‘best friend’ and ‘understand what they’re going through’ than to follow our calling to love, admonish and discipline our children. Society would rather we give unconditionally to our children’s desires without thought to their rightful needs.
The desire to give good gifts to our children is not a bad thing and neither is wanting to shield them from worries. But to let society dictate that the best way to do that is to allow them free reign to pursue their desires is decidedly unchristian and detrimental to their ultimate happiness.
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1July2008
Posted by Convallaria under: Quotables.
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. - Douglas Adams
And God’s fingerprints are all over the map and itinerary.
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1July2008
Posted by Convallaria under: Goodblog.
This was a very good read and I thought that this in particular nailed it on the head:
All my life, the message I had heard loud and clear was that sex was for pleasure and bonding, that its potential for creating life was purely tangential, almost to the point of being forgotten. This mind-set became the foundation of my views on abortion. Because I saw sex as being by default closed to the possibility of life, I thought of unplanned pregnancies as akin to being struck by lightning while walking down the street—something totally unpredictable and undeserved that happened to people living normal lives…. I came to see that our culture’s widespread use and acceptance of contraception meant that the “contraceptive mentality†toward sex was now the default attitude. As a society, we had come to take it for granted that we are entitled to the pleasurable and bonding aspects of sex even when we are opposed to the new life it might produce.
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30June2008
Posted by Convallaria under: Health; Younguns.
I have found responses to this to be very frustrating. Ever since the Time article came out, there have been a lot of media sources jumping on it and railing about the horrors of teen pregnancy. Most of the topics that have cropped up in response to the initial article have been centered around access to birth control and better sex-ed. Both of which are missing the mark as usual.
Read on, MacDuff!
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19June2008
Posted by Puretext under: Reviews; Younguns.
For a long time now, I’ve disparaged families who are so negligent as to “use the TV as a babysitter.” I had my reasons:
TV are stuupid. Television is designed to pitch to the widest possible audience. In part, this is usually accomplished by also pitching to the lowest common denominator. This means that most television, even movies is noticeably lacking in any kind of content which might require an attention span. But people only mature and become capable of working with more complex information by being regularly exposed to stuff that is beyond what they’re actually used to. You don’t improve in anything unless you have to struggle a bit. Since TV constantly pitches low, a regular diet of television makes you dumb.
TV are annoying. Young children are geared toward repetition and memorization. Which means that, even if you find a way to expose your kids only to “smart TV,” they’re going to want to be watching it a great deal more than an adult is quite prepared to tolerate. I don’t care how much better than the standard fare Thomas the Tank Engine is. It’s not good enough for me to have to memorize it. And I don’t know that I want my kids memorizing it either. OK. Maybe Veggie Tales songs. But I have limits.
Unfortunately, ideals are all wonderful until you encounter real life, in which a child requires a great deal of stimulation.
Read on, MacDuff!
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15June2008
Posted by Puretext under: That Vision Thing.
Richard Hobson gives me permission to write this sort of thing:
A few weeks ago, my mother sent me a personality test. A real one - not one of those quizilla things. It turns out that I am an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: An introverted, intuitive, feeling, judging type (In this case, “judging” refers to the act of making a decision, or defining something, rather than the act of condeming). We are rare birds, quite literally - INFJs are approximately 1-2% of the human population. If you have 100 friends, and I am one of them, then you might have one other friend who has a similar personality to mine, and if you know who that other person is, I really wish you’d introduce them to me because it’s getting a little bit weird over here being the only one.
The Personality Page has a list of potential career options for INFJs, starting with clergy, then teaching. Next, if you skip over the medical options which are nulled by my aversion to cutting and poking people, there comes psychology, psychiatry, and counseling, which are options I had actually at one time considered. So it seems I have been unwittingly working my way down the list.
Read on, MacDuff!
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22May2008
Posted by Convallaria under: Health.
This afternoon I was reading an article about yet another expasion of the google universe: Google Health. According to the terms of service, google states that they are not under obligation to follow HIPPA regulations like other healthcare facilities since they are not considered a ‘covered entity.’ In plain English this means that whatever you share can be accessed by third parties because it’s up to you what info you put up. Currently, the service does not have advertising, but I see this as shaky at best as more and more people use the app. and companies want to target specific groups of illnesses. This bit from the terms of service is of particular note:
Google may make third-party services available through Google Health. In order to use a specific service, you may choose to allow the third-party service provider to retrieve, provide, and/or modify health and other information in your account or otherwise share your information with the service provider. Once you enable a specific third-party service provider to access your account, the service provider may continue to access your account until you affirmatively disable access. Third-party service providers include both health care providers and other entities. It is your sole responsibility to review and approve each such third-party service before sharing your information through or otherwise accessing it.
I’m going to sign up and see what it’s like, but I do caution everyone that if they do choose to use this service to be careful what you share.
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20May2008
Posted by Convallaria under: Health.
Sandal season is here, are you’re feet ready for it? I just read an interesting article on prepping your toeses.
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