the way of the cross

"So what exactly does it mean to follow Jesus?

This is how Jesus answered that question: 'If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me' (Luke 9:23). Following Jesus means following the way of the cross. Later, in Luke's gospel, Jesus says: 'And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot become my disciple' (Luke 14:27).

It's a call to die. For some this may mean a call to literal death - to persecution and martyrdom. ...

But for all of us it's a call to die to self. This way of the cross isn't the calling of a few. It's the stamp of every Christian's life. When Paul says we're to be imitators of God, he spells this out by saying that we're to 'live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God' (Ephesians 5:1-2).

To follow the way of the cross means to show the same sacrificial love that Jesus showed when he went to the cross...

• sacrifice
• submission
• self-denial
• service
• suffering

From Tim Chester, The Ordinary Hero: Living the cross and resurrection, pp49-50.

I'm loving this book.  If there is only one Christian book you read this year, pick this one.  It's passionate, challenging and heartwarming.

Broken-Down House: Living productively in a world gone bad

This book looks good. You can download the first chapter here.

Mary Ann Cotton

We've been enjoying (?) learning about the Vile Victorians. The kids are particularly taken with this rhyme about the mass murderess Mary Ann Cotton.









Mary Ann Cotton,
She's dead and she's rotten
She lies in her bed,
With her eyes wide open
Sing, sing, oh, what can I sing,
Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string
Where, where? Up in the air
Sellin' black puddens a penny a pair.

A Little History of the World

I've been reading this book to the kids. It's a beautifully told, [humanist] account of the history of the world. If your kids are history buffs, you should take a look at it. We're up to the fall of the Persian Empire, but I've read ahead!

Gombrich incorporates biblical events into his overall historical picture, which is quite interesting. He speaks highly of the bible and even encourages us to read it ourselves, though he says we shouldn't be in any hurry to do this! As you'd imagine, Gombrich has no idea that it was God acting behind all the political events.

I can't wait to keep on reading it to the kids. Will be harder now that we're back into the grind of everyday life.

What Women Want

Based on my extensive reading of escapist female literate (many Jane Austen and a couple of Mills and Boon) I thought I'd compile a description of Mr Perfect.

Mr. Perfect is:

1. Competent. At work he goes from strength to strength. Mr. Perfect's competency at work often causes him to be wealthy, but his wealth is secondary. We women (apparently) lust after guys who are seriously good at what they do. Whatever that might be. M&B heroes are also extremely competent in other arenas of life.

2. Confident. In his dealings with people and particularly with women, Mr. Perfect is no pushover. He is clearly in control. He is the initiator, the first to express his feelings. He can tell her off if he needs to. He won't be manipulated by her. In M&B this finds expression in an often aggressive sexuality* - which she seems to like! Hmmm.

3. Consumed with passion. His feelings for her are out of his control. He loves her beyond reason. He can't sleep or work properly, so taken is he with her...

4. Fixable. Mr. Perfect has one flaw. He's shy, brash, proud, or unsociable. But this isn't a permanent thing. One kiss from Miss. Right will fix all!

Girls have I captured him? Guys do you live up to this list?

Clearly, a problem with this kind of hero is that he doesn't exist. Andrew (my husband) says it's hard for single women to understand just how incompetent and insecure men really are. Married women know the struggles of their own husbands - Andrew assures me that feelings of incompetence and insecurity are problems for men generally. So that's the first two down. With number three, long term no-one is going to be so madly, passionately in love that they can't function. Hopefully, anyway. With number four, most character flaws are with us long term. By God's grace they can be softened, but we women can't fix our men.

Girls, Mr. Competent, Confident, Passionate and Fixable does not exist! So why do we want him to? (More coming sometime. Throw me a comment in the meantime!)

* Agressive, yet gentle at the same time. Work that one out!

Boots in the Bedroom: M&B vs. Jane Austen

Let me say from the outset that paperback novels aren't my poison. Mr. Knightly or Mr. Darcy will do me much more long term harm than any Mr. Mills and Boon Hunk ever could, but still, it's far from edifying reading.

At this stage for me, there is a natural limiting factor for M&B. I read one this afternoon and afterwards felt as I would if I'd gobbled a whole packet of banana lollies. One more page and I'd be sick. But as with lollies, if I kept on, my palette would get used to it and soon I'd be able to handle and even want more. I have no natural limit with Jane Austen. I can read the same novel many times over and then another and then another and feel no worse. Meanwhile, my grip on reality may have slipped away...

But Mills and Boon and Jane Austen are not the same. Sorry Ben. They're just not.

Today I bought 3 Mills and Boon romances: Scandals and Secrets, A Man For Mum, and Boots In The Bedroom. My surpassing godliness caused me to avoid buying the books marked 'sexy romances' so this discussion will be limited to the softer M&B novels*. This afternoon I read Boots In The Bedroom because it was the shortest. Let me tell you about it.

Gina is a well off and very attractive 28yo computer programmer from Sydney. She unwillingly travels to a remote property in rural Queensland to install computer equipment and design software. While there, she stays with Ultra Hunk Parish Some-one-or-other. For the first seven chapters they don't get along, but at the same time are drawn to eachother in an inexplicable and uncontrollable physical passion... In chapters eight through to fifteen, they have sex. Over and over again. And again. And again. (It's exhausting.) He loves her but she's not willing to say she loves him, even though he takes her to the highest heaven over and over again, and again and again and ...you get the idea. She gets in a plane to fly home, realises that she loves him after all, gets out of the plane and then they... (you guessed it!). In the epilogue we find that she stays there forever, they have a baby and they go on having fantastic sex.

While they are only physically intimate for the second half of the book the writer goes to lengths to explain the force of their attraction from their first meeting. The first half of the book is largely descriptions of the physical effect they have on eachother. No details are left to the imagination. It's kind of sweet how we have a paragraph from his point of view - what she looks like, what he feels, what he'd like to do to her, followed immediately by a similar paragraph from her point of view.

I was going to give you a few choice quotes, but I won't. I think my blog is already at risk of being flagged by what I've written so far. If you'd like to read Boots, with your spouse's permission I'll send it to you and you can read it for yourself.

At this point I should give a brief summary of a Jane Austen novel. I won't because I can't be bothered. Everyone has read one anyway. Ben, basically the difference between JA and M&B is that well over half a M&B novel is spent describing sex. I don't think the figure's that high in Jane Austen. In M&B the girl and boy characters and threads of plot are just there to provide a framework in which sex can happen. Not so in JA. Is that enough?

Well, that's basically it. I'd like to do a couple more posts on M&B now that I've taken the trouble to read one. Perhaps on why women consume them, why they appeal to so many, and what that tells us about ourselves. Any other ideas?

* given what this novel was like, I shudder to think what would be inside a 'sexy' romance!