The Hyphen House

Today's items were Eric's idea to show.

This is Morgan, our four year old black lab. She's yawning and very cute in this photo. She's got quite the set-up... complete with a doggie bedwarmer. Yep, that's right. Our house is very drafty and the floors are cold b/c of the pier and beam foundation, so we bought her an electronic blanket for dogs. The red flower pillow was on the ground long before we put her bed in that corner, but sometimes she flips it down and lays her head on it. Like she's a human.

We love her.

This item requires some explanation. Our unit has a very odd layout. It's a U-shape. So when you walk in the front door, you enter a foyer. You go to the right to enter our living room. Proceed to the dining room, where the only bathroom in the house is. Walk through the hallway to the left (the bottom part of the U) to enter the kitchen, then hang another left to the bedroom. The storage spaces are really crazy here, and this closet under the stairs next to the bathroom is no exception.

Remember in the first Harry Potter when he had to live in a closet under the stairs? That's why we call it the Potter Closet.

(This post was inspired by the Palm Sunday devotional on The Upper Room)

Like an oak tree
Like a mustard seed
Like a sapling
Like a leaf
     I entrust my growth to you.
Like the wind
Like the rain
Like the fire
Like the earth
     I look to you for movement.
Like the walk
Like the breath
Like the dance
Like the rest
     I find my life in you.

I completely passed by blog post 100 without even noticing! I had wanted to do something witty or significant for that post, but alas I shall have to wait until 200.

So for today, we're at 102. According to some very unreliable google searching, the word mercy is mentioned 102 times in the Bible. Let's just go ahead and say it is.

Grace and mercy, dear readers!

This was the Prayer of Confession at our church a few weeks ago:

"I confess, O God, that our world is not yet the world you have called us to create. There is anger and hardness among us. For my part, O God, I ask your forgiveness... For the times I have declared that I have no prejudice yet harbored it still in my heart, forgive me, O God. For the times I have declared that I did not feel the pain of prejudice yet felt it still in my heart, forgive me, O God. I want to follow you, Jesus, and live in a world that honors your commandment to love one another as we love ourselves. Strengthen me to live this commandment today and always." AMEN

(Photo Credit: Vision Magazine)

"Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane." (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

I’m weighing in on the healthcare debate because to me it seems really crucial. I am finishing my dissertation on a history of medicine topic and the doctors I profile primarily serve the under-served. They are also strong proponents of government assistance because they know how hard it is to help the poor. Some of these doctors have never turned away a patient who couldn’t pay and have suffered financially for it. Doctors are not all about the money; in fact a lot don’t make much because of the patients they choose to help.

Here's a statement from a joint letter of minority physicians organizations:
"Some members of Congress have said that we should abandon health reform for a later time. But make no mistake, if we abandon reform now – after moving further than ever before towards meaningful reform – we will not get back to this crucial agenda for a long, long time. This is your moment for political courage, vision, and leadership. We urge you to move meaningful health reform forward to its needed enactment." (to Congress from the National Medical Association along with National Hispanic Medical Association and National Council of Asian and
Pacific Islander Physicians)

Anyway, I read a live blog of the Health Care Debate yesterday and I was disheartened by the kind of things some people were saying. Pro-life proponents called “anti-choice.” Republicans blaming and name-calling Democrats and vice versa. Some were saying this bill would destroy the fabric of America.

I think a lot of this bill is not very good. Probably about half of it I just don’t agree with. And I have no delusions that it will solve America’s healthcare problems overnight. I am a firm believer in preventive and natural medicine, which this bill will not adequately address.

But do I support it? Yes. Definitely.

I can’t tell you how many uninsured people I know. Most of them work hard at their jobs and have college degrees. Some friends give up jobs they love to work jobs they hate simply to get benefits. I have had insurance all my life and I am grateful for that, but at many points it was expensive and not comprehensive. My parents are still paying off a surgery I had eleven years ago because the insurance company paid for less that half of it.

As far as helping the underserved, I think we desperately need this bill. I hear many Christians say it should be the Church’s responsibility to take care of the poor, even in healthcare issues. While fundamentally I agree, I do not think it’s wholly possible at this point. I just don’t have fifty grand to give to my uninsured friend to cover her surgery.

And yes, I’m willing to throw my tax dollars in to support this bill. I’d much rather put my taxes toward healthcare than war. I don’t agree with the sentiment that people should just get jobs so they can take care of themselves and I shouldn’t have to support them. I think that logic is flawed on so many levels. And I don’t see how extending insurance to those who don’t have it will further entrench poverty. It just doesn’t make sense.

All that to say, healthcare is a human right, and if the passing of an imperfect bill can get us closer to extending that right, then I’m for it.

Folks I like on why they support this bill:
NETWORK
NMA

I'm stealing this post idea from Brandi, who I'm pretty sure stole it from someone else... but that's how creativity happens, right?

We rent the bottom floor of a 1920s boarding house-turned-duplex. It's chock full of charm (and problems!). I think it's such a unique space and we worked hard to decorate it and make it reflect us for our first home. So here are my two things for today:

1.) The black and white wall

When I moved to this area four years ago, my roommate and I decided to collect black and white photos and hang them in black frames haphazardly on our living room wall (an idea I got from an Ikea catalog, of all places). We requested them for housewarming gifts and Eric brought me one on our first date. :) So they are photos from all over the worlds, taken by friends or us, or cut from posters or calendars. A few of my favorites (besides Eric's) - library street sign, prints from my trip to Venice, Houston skyline, and 1929 suffragette poster.

In the Hyphen House, we have a strange little hallway leading from the living room to the kitchen and it was the perfect place for the photo wall.
(The window actually goes into the bathroom... This was maybe an exterior wall at one point?)

(Opposite view - And I just noticed the vacuum. :)
We hung a floor to ceiling sheer curtain to soften the opposite wall.

If you decide to do something like this, I recommend laying all the frames on the floor to figure out what looks best. If we accumulate more frames we just add to the wall.

2.) Vintage Apron = Wall Hanging


Our kitchen is decorated in red and black (with blue accents). We had a big chunk of wall space to fill so I hung up my great aunt's sewing apron. I think it's adorable. And since I don't sew, it became wall art.

A while back I wrote about our house on This Ordinary Day if you want to know a little more about it.

You thought I was going to talk about gender roles, didn't you? :) No, I'm going to talk about submitting my dissertation.

(This photo of my workspace was taken in December, hence the Christmas tree... Picture it with no tree and waaaaay more library books).

Tonight at 11:30 pm (which still counts as Friday!) I emailed my adviser a draft of my entire dissertation. His review will determine whether I defend in April or this summer (but I really think/hope it will be April!).

I have been working around the clock on it the last several weeks. Many of my colleagues at this stage say they accomplish more on their dissertation in a day than they did in a week earlier in the process, and that's been true for me. I know where it's all going, it's just a matter of tying it up neatly. It's amazing that I have written so many pages on an original topic from original research. I'm not bragging, I'm just proud of myself. It's 230 pages of blood, sweat, and tears. Mostly tears, if you ask Eric. ;)

So this is the first big step of the end. There will be another adviser review, a committee review, a defense, and a dean's review. That's a lot of reviews! But I am a proponent in life of celebrating every step, marking moments, and acknowledging all the hard work it's taken to get to a certain point.

It has not been an easy week. I'm sleep deprived, having worked til around 3 in the morning most days. And I haven't felt well, as I've been staving off a cold and suffering some allergies. Eric has been awesome - he's done my portion of the housework (we divide evenly on normal weeks, so picking up my entire share was a lot on top of him finishing up school before spring break), watched a movie he had no interest in b/c it made me laugh, gave me a foot rub, prepared dinner every night, ran errands, helped me fix sentences that just weren't working, and in general tried to relieve every stress he could for me. He's such an amazing partner. And I've received lots of other support, too.

Tonight, I had pretty severe nausea and some shooting stomach pains - mostly anxiety, I think, but probably also related to the lack of sleep and lack of quality nutrition. Just before I had my review draft ready to email to my professor, the internet went out in our house. Of course it did.

So I packed up my laptop and we headed to a wine bar down the street, the closest place open with wi-fi. And we got champagne (well, Cava actually) to celebrate. Like I said, it's important to commemorate every step.

I've got a few days to relax before I get back to it. I've got more library dives and revisions and meetings and loose ends. I liken this stage to the last few miles of a marathon... You know, the part where the body gives out and your adrenaline takes over to enable you to finish.

But I'm almost there...

I'm turning my dissertation into my adviser in 11 days. Eleven days.

I'm simultaneously ecstatic and terrified.

And I can't believe that in a few months, the process will be complete.

And that's about all I can process at this point, but... this is huge.

I have just been reading through some Desmond Tutu quotes. I find him to be such an inspiration. For those of you who don't know anything about him, he was the first black Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town in South Africa. During the 1980's he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work toward finding a peaceful end to apartheid. What makes him even more remarkable in my mind is that after helping to end apartheid, he helped to build a peaceful society based on the principles of forgiveness. When Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, it would have been easy for the black South Africans to avenge themselves for the horrible racism, oppression, and violence they had experienced for so long. Thanks to brilliant leaders like Tutu and Mandela, they instead chose forgiveness. Tutu advocated a justice commission that would encourage the violators and victims to come forward and share their stories in exchange for amnesty. Tutu has said many times before that violence is cyclical, solving violence with more violence only creates a chain of violence that never ends.

I had the privilege of hearing Archbishop Tutu speak when I was a freshman at Baylor University. At the time, I did not know much about him, but his words have resonated with me ever since. He is one of my heroes, a man with much compassion, courage, joy, and love. Today I needed to think about Archbishop Tutu because of my own struggles with peace and forgiveness. You see, Tutu understands a basic aspect of Christianity that often eludes me but that has become increasingly obvious in my search for peace; namely, that peace is bound together with all the other Christian virtues: love, joy, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, self-control, and even forgiveness. Forgiveness is the central theme of the Gospel. It is a virtue advocated numerous times in the Bible, but it is in some ways the most difficult part of the Gospel. When we pray in the Lord's Prayer, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," we would like to leave the last part of the sentence off. We want forgiveness, but we don't always want to give it or even know how to forgive.

The last few days have reminded me of some of my own deeper grudges and resentment. For various reasons, I have been reminded of some past hurts, some past incidents when others have trespassed against me. As I see others (or even some of the same people) committing acts that remind me of what happened to me, I become angry. I don't think my anger is unjustified or completely irrational although clearly I don't know the full story in many of these cases, so my first reaction is to rectify or to punish somehow those I see as the perpetrators. I want them to feel my pain and the pain I perceive they have caused to others. I certainly don't want to forgive them, but this interferes with my own personal peace.

Today as I tried to meditate, I couldn't find shalom. I was instead distracted with angry thoughts. You see, I am convinced these people are acting wrongly, so I find it easy to justify my anger and stew in it. That is when I am reminded of Archbishop Tutu. Black South Africans were systematically oppressed, abused, and even killed for decades, yet when the tables were turned, they chose not to punish, but to forgive, even though punishment would have been justified. They understand something that I struggle to understand, that justice is restorative, not retributive (not an exact quote of Tutu, but close enough). Peace comes through restoration of relationships which can only be achieved through forgiveness. This is not to say that we should not be held accountable for our actions, but rather that we should seek to restore relationships with those who have hurt us rather than breaking those relationships or harboring resentment. What a monumental task!

So now I am sitting here thinking about Desmond Tutu and how he extended forgiveness instead of a closed fist. I am wondering how I can do the same and hoping that the same Spirit can give me the strength to do so and heal my past hurts, restore my broken relationships, and fill me with shalom.