The Manly Church

Today I want to talk a little bit about the common charge heard in Conservative/complementarian circles that today's church is 'feminised', springboarding off this article from Christianity Today called "Act Like Men: What It Means to Fight Like a Man", subtitled, Men, is [sic] your life characterised by courage, strength, and love?

Here's how the article starts: "One of the reasons many churches struggle is they're not a friendly place for men. Think about the worship service at your church. More than likely, there's a lot of talk about loving each other, but not much about fighting against sin or fighting for each other. There's holding hands when we sing, but not much locking arms as we get marching orders for the mission."

The article goes on to cite passages like 2 Timothy 4:7 ("I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race..."), Ephesians 6 ("Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil…so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand."), and 1 Peter 5:8 ("Be serious! Be alert! Your adversary the Devil is prowling around like a roaring lion, looking for anyone he can devour.")

You may not be surprised to find that I take issue with this. Here's why: what they are talking about is not feminisation. It is just plain weak theology and vague experientialism-- and I refuse to accept that as inherent to my gender. "Is your church all about lovey-dovey pop-psychology stuff, with no serious, difficult looks at sin and struggle to be seen? LADIES."

Those passages referenced above? Are inspired Scripture intended for the whole of the church, not 'Notes from the Men's Manual of Being a Good Christian'. Battle language is part of our life as Christians; warring against the flesh, fleeing temptation, standing firm against the flaming darts of the enemy, being alert and watchful are the territory of every Christian. Being "characterised by courage, strength, and love"? Two-thirds of that dictum are in my blog title referencing Proverbs 31, the excellent wife.

I have always loved John Piper's description of "strong complementarian women" as having "massive steel in their backs, and theology in their brains." By all means, let us call churches to draw from the richness, depth, and strength of Scripture in their meetings instead of relying on niceness to save us. Let us face the darkness of our sin, let us ask the Spirit for self-control, endurance, and discipline along with our love, kindness, and gentleness-- and let all of us do this without drawing a line down the middle for gender, because that line is not written into God's Word. Let us not, however, make the mistake of calling a theologically-weak, feel-good, standardless church 'feminised'. Because, I beg your pardon, but that ain't my femininity.

Music: Note Names

Today's exercise went in a very unexpected direction, which I guess is the fun of following the lead of your student's interest. The only plan I had was 'label the piano', but here's what we did:

-Got out our alphabet stickers and began labeling the notes-- all the C's, then all the D's, etc. As we did this, I showed him out all the C's sound the same, and so on with the other notes.

-Talked about how the high notes were light and high like a fairy's feet, and the low notes were deep and heavy like a giant's feet. Oh, oops, I mentioned fairies, so Scout Kid, "Where Peter Pan?"

-Improvised a quick song for each octave, with the low octaves serving as Captain Hook, the cannon, and the crocodile, on up through Peter Pan, Wendy, John & Michael, and Tinker Bell. Samples: "Crocodile ticks loud; his clock rings,"and "Peter Pan flies up in the sky." Not fabulous lyrics but we did sing a lot of scales that way...

Dessa, Children's Work

Just discovered Dessa. Talk about girlboss. Mind (maybe soul) blown.

English: Alphabet Puzzle

Mondays are our busy day (grocery shopping + claiming back the house from the weekend mess) so we keep the activities simple. Our English activities will actually be mostly playing with letters, talking about phonics and letter combinations and such as a natural part of the play. Here's what we did today:

-Got the fabulous Richard Scarry's ABC Word Book and Scout Kid's hand-me-down alphabet puzzle out. Dumped all the puzzle pieces on the floor.

-Flipped through the pages, finding the letters that matched the respective pages, talking about the letter sounds, and reading the words in the pages.

This was a very simple activity and I wasn't sure Scout Kid would be interested, but he enjoyed it. He was definitely more interested in this than last week's geography activity (although he did actually end up liking the continents song.)

Foundland Fridays: Soap Utopia

This recommendation is close to my heart because I love Canadian-made, and I also love natural beauty products. Soap Utopia makes gorgeous, natural soaps in Oakville, Ontario. I love the Baby Me unscented baby soap for the boys, and Steven and I use the Muskoka Boathouse and Oakmoss scents because they're nice and unisex (well, they're unisex if you're me and you're not into ultra-feminine, floral scents). I also love the lip-balms, they work better for me than anything I've bought at a drugstore (including Burt's Bees) and have lovely scents. Lily treats her customers well and I won't buy any other soaps for our family. Four-bar bundles for $22.60 with flat-rate shipping.

History/Geography: Continents

So for today's activity we did a little geography. It was not my most favoured activity, so we only spent about 20 minutes on it, but here's what we did:

-Watched the above video and pointed on the globe to each continent as the girls sang it. Talked about how a continent is a big piece of land, like a big, big, island, with many countries like Canada inside it.
-Printed this map of the world and coloured it in. (I hope that link works, they sometimes don't.)
-Quickly lost interest in colouring the world and wanted to draw tree forts instead. That's fine, I guess.
-Then Scout Kid wanted to go play Survivorman in his bedroom. I took him to his room, sang him the continents song one more time pointing at his big wall map in the bedroom, and then we were done for the day.

Quote: Kindness, Generosity, and Women Who Were Not Afraid To Grow Old

""You'll do one thing before you take her into the spare room," said Old Grandmother fiercely. "Moorhouse and Stackley have given up the case. They've only half a brain between them anyhow. Send for that woman-doctor."

Young Grandmother looked thunderstruck. She turned to Uncle Klon, who was sitting by the baby's cradle, his haggard face buried in his hands.

"Do you suppose--I've heard she was very clever--they say she was offered a splendid post in a children's hospital in Montreal but preferred general practice--"

"Oh, get her, get her," said Klondike--savage from the bitter business of hoping against hope. "Any port in a storm. She can't do any harm now."

"Will you go for her, Horace," said Young Grandmother quite humbly.

Klondike Lesley uncoiled himself and went. He had never seen Dr. Richards before--save at a distance, or spinning past him in her smart little runabout. She was in her office and came forward to meet him gravely sweet.

She had a little, square, wide-lipped, straight-browed face like a boy's. Not pretty but haunting. Wavy brown hair with one teasing, unruly little curl that would fall down on her forehead, giving her a youthful look in spite of her thirty-five years. What a dear face! So wide at the cheekbones--so deep grey-eyed. With such a lovely, smiling, generous mouth. Some old text of Sunday-school days suddenly flitted through Klondike Lesley's dazed brain:

"She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life."

For just a second their eyes met and locked. Only a second. But it did the work of years. The irresistible woman had met the immovable man and the inevitable had happened. She might have had thick ankles--only she hadn't; her mother might have meowed all over the church. Nothing would have mattered to Klondike Lesley. She made him think of all sorts of lovely things, such as sympathy, kindness, generosity, and women who were not afraid to grow old. He had the most extraordinary feeling that he would like to lay his head on her breast and cry, like a little boy who had got hurt, and have her stroke his head and say,

"Never mind--be brave--you'll soon feel better, dear."

"Will you come to see my little niece?" he heard himself pleading. "Dr. Moorhouse has given her up. We are all very fond of her. Her mother will die if she cannot be saved. Won't you come?"

"Of course I will," said Dr. Richards."

-Magic for Marigold, L.M. Montgomery

Music: Shakers and Rhythm

Today we explored rhythm in music. Here's what we did, for about 45 minutes:

-Listened to Paul Simon's Rhythm of the Saints while we coloured and decorated our paper plates. Drummed on our plates along with Proof, listening for the loud and soft parts.

-Filled our plates with rice and beans (one of each) and stapled them shut.

-Had a dance party to Coast, Frantik (WWMT), and Happy from Despicable Me 2. Shook our shakers, twirled ("Look, woom turning!") and ran around.

-Listened to Paul Simon's Gumboots, and watched a video of gumboot dancers, since earlier Scout Kid had been drumming on his rubber boots. While we did this, Scout Kid also practiced cutting on the streamers with his little scissors.

Meal Mondays: Five-Hour Roast Duck

The Recipe:
My friend has been trying his hand at raising free-range ducks and chickens, and we were the recipients of his first slaughteree (File that under 'words I never expected to type.') It wasn't the prettiest duck ever roasted, but beauty is as beauty tastes, so...

Recipe from Global Gourmet.

The Ingredients:
1 duck (I don't know what weight it was, sorry!)
Salt and freshly-ground pepper
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
Handful thyme sprigs

The Method:
1. Begin cooking about 5 hours and 45 minutes before you wish to eat. Preheat oven to 300F and set a rack in the middle level. Remove giblets from duck and pat dry with paper towels, removing any loose chunks of fat from the cavity. Rub the cavity with salt, pepper, and garlic, and lay the sprigs of thyme inside. With a very sharp knife, prick the skin all over, being careful not to pierce the flesh.
2. Place duck breast side up in a roasting pan with a rack (as there will be lots of grease) and begin roasting. Every hour for 4 hours, remove pan from oven, piece skin all over, pour fat out of the pan (reserving for future use!), and turn duck over.
3. After 4 hours, increase oven temperature to 350F, sprinkle duck with salt and pepper, and cook for about 1 hour longer, or until skin is crisp and browned. Let rest for 20 minutes, carve, and serve.
Note: Duck can be served after four hours; it will be juicier but not as tender as the five-hour duck.

The Verdict:
Much better than my rather sad first attempt cooking a duck a year or so back. I only cooked it for four hours and at a slightly higher temperature as I was in a hurry, and I think I pierced it too deeply, so the breast was a little dry, but the dark meat was very juicy and succulent. Mostly I think it's a case of 'practice makes perfect'; the recipe is good but I need to get better at cooking it.

Our new cat Domino was also thrilled to receive the mostly-raw neck, which had been left on the bird. Because I've been reading about homemade cat food and it put the fear in me about the unnaturalness of dry kibble for a cat.

English: Parking Lot Letters

Today we practiced uppercase/lowercase letters and phonics sounds with a "parking lot" and some toy cars. We also used a Scattergories die and our fabulous set of magnetic letters*. Here's what we did:

-Rolled the (uppercase) die and drove cars to the matching lowercase letters. 

-Picked out our family's initials from the die and parked our corresponding cars in those spots.

-Talked about the M and the W and turned the parking lot around so the W was an M.

-Pulled out our magnetic alphabet and made piles of the lower and uppercase letters on their corresponding parking spaces. We also spelled our names and our new cat's name.

*Link through my Amazon Affiliates Account.