Rash Vows and Beautiful Grandchildren: March 2008

Monday, March 3, 2008

Rash Vow #2 - Update

Very quick update on the diet. I have lost 6 lbs in 3 weeks. I am currently stuck but motivated to break through another mini-marker! Onward and downward (I hope!)

Rash Vow #1 - Success with small temptations!

Quick Update with my first rash vow to not buy anything new for one year. I am continuing to love this! I feel so free and relaxed. I can go into a big box store and not buy anything other than the pharmacy or food item I planned to buy. Here a few little temptations I got past this last week:

- I was reaching for the new John Grisham novel before I remembered my vow. I did not buy it but can't wait to borrow it from a library or someone else who bought it! (Hint Hint!)
- No lattes yet and not wanting any!! Enjoying my tea.
- Josh's birthday - had a good idea of something to make and Abby came up with a better idea they needed help with (involves something they are buying used and some Badger fabric I already had.)
- Spring clothes are already in the big box stores. Quick glance but no purchases! Actually I don't NEED anything - I have beautiful clothes already (I am talking to myself here.)
- Thinking of summer already and the thought that I needed another set of beds for the little kids. Realized that for the one week that the mega family is here - don't need another set of beds since have very nice blow up bed for them.
- Spring decorations at Trig's - looked and then laughed at myself. Then when I put out my spring decorations saw that certainly did NOT need anything else.
- Spring hand towels and wash cloths for my bath room - wanted something new and pretty - went through my stash of pretty towels and of course found the perfect ones.

Any way - thanks for reading through my little victories and this return to sanity.

Political Thoughts - Update

I have found the comments on my foray in politics on this blog more interesting than the post! What is surprising me is that everyone is assuming that I am a Republican. This is understandable if you look at Bill and my professions I suppose, but it means that we are all painting each other with a broad brush and we need to get below the surface and get to know each other in a deeper way. That is why I have quickly become a convert to "blogging and posting!" Bottom line - I started in life as a Republican since that was what was preached to me at home. I went through the wild '60s at UW-Madison and UC-Berkeley and started rethinking my politics (quietly and privately at that point.) Over the years, I have seen myself as an Independent with Republican leanings - even though many things in the Republican party bothered me. I have tried to be sensitive and compassionate to the issues of poverty and injustice in particular and would swing between neither party having any answers and the voting for the least of two evils in elections. I am now very troubled again by both political parties for the following reasons:

Republicans - I don't agree with their views on gun control. I am very uncomfortable with guns in general and want more controls, not less. I don't like the stance that the government should not take care of those who are disadvantaged - don't agree that anyone who wants to, can pull themselves up in the US by hard work. I do agree with the abortion position as I believe that life begins at conception and know that many girls and women have been traumatised by abortion. I have trusted that Republican economic policies help our country, now I am not sure. I really do not agree with the war in Iraq. I was troubled from Day 1 - that we invaded another country. Now I don't know what the best solution is. I think it will take a long time for our world image to rebound.

Democrats - I still don't completely trust on their spending and taxing - but I know that their motives are good - trying to help those that the Church and families should be taking care of. I don't agree with their position on abortion - but do agree with many other social positions such as gun control and equal rights.

The reason that I am considering voting for Obama (if I vote) is that I think it would be an incredible statement for our country to have an African American as President both for race relations in the US and for our reputation outside the US. Whether or not he can make much difference as President is not as much a concern for me this time.

I am sorry to be so negative, but this election has me troubled and I don't see it getting any better. Please indulge me with my own opinions and I would love to here yours. I like Amy's statement that at best politicians are just people with ideas. Don't know why I expect any more - just another reason to focus on Christ and not man.

The Inspiration for the title of my Blog - What is a RASH VOW!

A Defence of Rash Vows by G.K. Chesterton An abridged version of a chapter in Chesterton's book The Defendant.
If a prosperous modern man, with a high hat and a frock-coat, were to solemnly pledge himself before all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill's 'Liberty' seventy-six times, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown, to remain for thirty-one hours holding his left ear in his right hand, to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on the top of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should immediately conclude that the man was mad, or, as it is sometimes expressed, was 'an artist in life.' Yet these vows are not more extraordinary than the vows which in the Middle Ages and in similar periods were made, not by fanatics merely, but by the greatest figures in civic and national civilization -- by kings, judges, poets, and priests. One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great chain hung there, it was said, for ages as a monument of that mystical folly. Another swore that he would find his way to Jerusalem with a patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see that these two exploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any saner than the acts above suggested. A mountain is commonly a stationary and reliable object which it is not necessary to chain up at night like a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a man pays a very high compliment to the Holy City by setting out for it under conditions which render it to the last degree improbable that he will ever get there.
But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in our time, we should, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the 'decadence.' But the men who did these things were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is generally regarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentially sane performed such insanities, it was under the capricious direction of a superstitious religious system. This, again, will not hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and even sensual departments of life, such as love and lust, the medieval princes show the same mad promises and performances, the same misshapen imagination and the same monstrous self-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which it is necessary to think of the whole nature of vows from the beginning. And if we consider seriously and correctly the nature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it is perfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanity is involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, we fear that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the decadence. That John Paterson should, with apparent calm, look forward to being a certain General Barker on Monday, Dr. Macgregor on Tuesday, Sir Walter Carstairs on Wednesday, and Sam Slugg on Thursday, may seem a nightmare; but to that nightmare we give the name of modern culture. One great decadent, who is now dead, published a poem some time ago, in which he powerfully summed up the whole spirit of the movement by declaring that he could stand in the prison yard and entirely comprehend the feelings of a man about to be hanged.
'For he that lives more lives than oneMore deaths than one must die.' And the end of all this is that maddening horror of unreality which descends upon the decadents, and compared with which physical pain itself would have the freshness of a youthful thing. The one hell which imagination must conceive as most hellish is to be eternally acting a play without even the narrowest and dirtiest greenroom in which to be human. And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover. To be everlastingly passing through dangers which we know cannot scare us, to be taking oaths which we know cannot bind us, to defying enemies who we know cannot conquer us -- this is the grinning tyranny of decadence which is called freedom.
Let us turn, on the other hand, to the maker of vows. The man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment. He vowed, for example, to chain two mountains together, perhaps a symbol of some great relief of love, or aspiration. Short as the moment of his resolve might be, it was, like all great moments, a moment of immortality, and the desire to say of it exegi monumentum aere perennius was the only sentiment that would satisfy his mind. The modern aesthetic man would, of course, easily see the emotional opportunity; he would vow to chain two mountains together. But, then, he would quite as cheerfully vow to chain the earth to the moon. And the withering consciousness that he did not mean what he said, that he was, in truth, saying nothing of any great import, would take from him exactly that sense of daring actuality which is the excitement of a vow.
The revolt against vows has been carried in our day even to the extent of a revolt against the typical vow of marriage. It is most amusing to listen to the opponents of marriage on this subject. They appear to imagine that the ideal of constancy was a yoke mysteriously imposed on mankind by the devil, instead of being, as it is, a yoke consistently imposed by all lovers on themselves. They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words -- 'free-love' -- as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him at his word. Modern sages offer to the lover, with an ill-favoured grin, the largest liberties and the fullest irresponsibility; but they do not respect him as the old Church respected him; they do not write his oath upon the heavens, as the record of his highest moment. They give him every liberty except the liberty to sell his liberty, which is the only one that he wants.
It is exactly this backdoor, this sense of having a retreat behind us, that is, to our minds, the sterlizing spirit in modern pleasure. Everywhere there is the persistent and insane attempt to obtain pleasure without paying for it. Thus, in politics the modern Jingoes practically say, 'Let us have the pleasure of conquerors without the pains of soldiers: let us sit on sofas and be a hardy race.' Thus, in religion and morals, the decadent mystics say: 'Let us have the fragrance of sacred purity without the sorrows of self-restraint; let us sing hymns alternately to the Virgin and Priapus.' Thus in love the free-lovers say: 'Let us have the splendour of offering ourselves without the peril of committing ourselves; let us see whether one cannot commit suicide an unlimited number of times.'
Emphatically it will not work. There are thrilling moments, doubtless, for the spectator, the amateur, and the aesthete; but there is one thrill that is known only to the soldier who fights for his own flag, to the aesthetic who starves himself for his own illumination, to the lover who makes finally his own choice. And it is this transfiguring self-discipline that makes the vow a truly sane thing. It must have satisfied even the giant hunger of the soul of a lover or a poet to know that in consequence of some one instant of decision that strange chain would hang for centuries in the Alps among the silences of stars and snows. All around us is the city of small sins, abounding in backways and retreats, but surely, sooner or later, the towering flame will rise from the harbour announcing that the reign of the cowards is over and a man is burning his ships.
©1997, The American Chesterton Society

Rash Vows and Beautiful Grandchildren

Rotating pictures of Beautiful Grandchildren

Monday, March 3, 2008

Rash Vow #2 - Update

Rash Vow #1 - Success with small temptations!

Political Thoughts - Update

Thought for the Year (Thanks Best Friend Dee Dee!)

Thought for the Day. Periodic postings

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The Inspiration for the title of my Blog - What is a RASH VOW!

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