Your daily quiz dose

Took this quiz, courtesy of Amy. The results were interesting. Not so much in what came out (that I am an analyzer) but in the description of me. I think the results describe me a bit too well...

Anyway, without further ado, here are the results:

General Description
As an Analyzer, you tend to seek perfect outcomes in all of your plans and projects. In many situations, you “take things apart” in your mind and think about ways to do them better. You excel at this kind of mental examination, but you may tend to see family and friends as “projects,” rather than as people.

Typical Areas of Strength
Analyzers, like you, tend to be analytical, logical, direct, confident, and they like new challenges. They excel at seeing the larger vision, creating efficient methods and procedures, and listening carefully for the facts.

Typical Areas of Struggle
Due to your tendency to focus on tasks, you sometimes show a lack of sensitivity to the feelings of family members and friends. When you are sharply focused on a task, you may come across as being overly critical, judgmental, blunt, or impatient with others.

Your Preferred Activities
To maximize your talents, you look for situations in which you can offer logical solutions to complex challenges, and you evaluate and make the necessary changes to assure the desired outcome.

Your Communication Style
You tend to provide insights and direction by teaching, managing, clarifying, and advising.

Morea Bicolor

This is the next plant that I will purchase. It is gorgeous. I googled it to see how practical it would be for my garden, and much to my pleasant surprise, I found the following info (courtesy Sunny Gardens):

Dietes bicolor
(Fortnight Lily, Bicolor Iris, Morea Bicolor)

Though its distinctive flowers last only a day, the African Iris flowers often in mild, warm winter climates. Also called the Fortnight Lily because blooms open in 2-week batches. Flowers are white or yellow and their dark markings have colorful orange or yellow highlights. Leaves are sword shaped and eventually form sizable clumps. Drought-tolerant once established, but bloom more when watered. Attractive near water or along dry stream beds in Japanese gardens. Remove seed pods as they form to encourage flowering and prevent volunteer plants from starting. Sold as container stock. Divide infrequently, in fall or winter.

Plant Type: Perennial
Bloom Season: Early Spring through Early Winter
Flower Color: Yellow
Foliage: Evergreen
Height: 2 ft. to 3 ft.
Width: 5 ft.
Sunlight: Full Sun, Partial Sun
Climate: Zones 8, 9, 10, 11

Sounds PERFECT for what we are wanting to do with the backyard!! AND, it is drought tolerant, a must have anything that is to survive in Hannah's garden. WOO HOO!

Style-vision

Innovation Mood Major Mood: Innovation Minor Mood: Perfection You are in an independent, sceptical, analytical, leading and intellectually curious mood. Life as a chessboard Your approach to life in this mood is much like a chess player. You're always seeking strategies that have a high payoff and devising ulterior plans in case of error or adversity. And like a good chess player, you dedicate yourself to studying the game; your goal is to obtain as much knowledge as possible and this drive makes you a winner! You approach people quite the same way, acting socially cautious and reserved until you know them well. Then you are quite committed and serious about those whom with you surround yourself. A constant quest to improve life around you In this mood, messiness and disorganization is intolerable. In fact you don't like anything that's muddled or unclear. And why would you? Efficiency is your middle name. You focus on the big picture, so your ambition compels you to try and improve everything around you.

Some things never change Like your clothes! They aren't usually very striking, but they're of high quality so they last a long time. Grabbing attention is not your thing in this mood, so you tend to stick to the classics. It wouldn't be unusual for you to adopt some sort of uniform outfit that allowed you both comfort and efficiency. When it comes to food and drink, you gravitate towards high quality but if you're absorbed in something interesting, food and drink lose all appeal. Caught in a brainstorm No useful idea is too far-fetched for you in this mood. You are a natural at brainstorming, always aggressively seeking new concepts. When a subject arises that you are indifferent about, you choose to stay silent rather than give an opinion. You value your thoughts too much to talk just to talk. Your keywords: no limit, pure, vintage, orderly Stress: You are balanced with no major signs of stress, well done! www.moodcheck.com

Cyndy

I got an email from Cyndy today. What a huge surprise! Especially after how I feel like we hurt them, and ran their hearts and emotions through the dirt. In addition, I have been called onto the carpet (at Fight Club) for not being real enough with people. For dodging the issues at hand, for avoiding difficult conversations, for running away rather than dealing with it. And here, in my inbox, is an email from a woman who I love dearly, but who I thought I would never get to talk to again. Amazing. Sometimes, it is very easy to see God put little relationship challenges and reminders that, "yes, I do need you to work on this area, Hannah." I think this week is an easy time to see God pursuing me again.

That doesn't mean that I am looking forward to the difficult conversations that I have been told by my sisters that I need to have with people. In fact, I am dreading all of them. I need to figure out how to tell a dear friend the level of upsetness that I am feeling and explain the wound that was poked recently. It didn't do me any good when I told my sisters that I know I'm being irrational and selfish and that her reasons were perfectly above-board and reasonable. Their explanation was that my feelings and wound are just as important as rational thought in this instance and if I don't address it now, it will only get worse over time. My thought that I don't want to lose a friendship over this is irrelevant because if I DON'T fix it, it could very well be the death knell for it anyway.

They speak truly. Too often I have watched myself withdraw from the hurt rather than address it and lose that relationship anyway. But, damn this is hard!!

Yesterday, Amy posted this in her blog: "[Jesus] never talked vague, idealistic gas. When He said, 'Be perfect,' He meant it. He meant that we must go in for the full treatment. It is hard; but the sort of compromise we are all hankering after is harder -- in fact, it is impossible. It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad." This speaks to me so much. I am realizing that I want to experience God and to change the world, but I don't want to have to go through the hard part of changing to get there. But, as CS Lewis so wisely wrote, an egg definitely can't learn to fly. It has to go through the long, hard, dangerous journey of turning into a bird, of growing the feathers and the wings before it can take its first leap. I am done being an egg. But now I have to go through my transformation so that I can enjoy the beauty of being with God, of doing her purpose. And right now, for me, that transformation involves having two very difficult, painful conversations. I'm chipping away at my egg.

My sin

So, in good, characteristic fashion, I am doing my fight club homework at the last minute (yes, it is 4:30...), here are my reflections on my pet sin... (cut from a chat I had the other day with my brother-in-law... hope he doesn't mind)

Our convo started off talking about spiritual warfare: "I think some of it is ppl just imagining stuff, exaggerating for attention type thing but then I can't discount other experiences... I really don't know... I tell you, after watching the exorcism of emily rose, I'm not really sure what is possible... I guess it depends on teh source of the "report of warfare" if you will... source skepticism". Then he had some questions about people believing that any adverse reaction is "from Satan" is a belief that is spreading in the US. My response was that I didn't think it was spreading, just prevalent in certain faith groups.

I can tell you that I do not believe that God kills people because they "reject" him either seriously or not. God did not send Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans to punish that city for its sins or anything else. We do this shit to ourselves. If God really did kill people for denying him, I'd definitely be dead too. I've done my own share of denying and nay-saying and hate language. And what about Jonah? That man did everything he could to go against god, but he wasn't killed. I think it makes people feel better to say that god did this or that, so that they don’t have to take responsibility for their own actions (or inaction). But, that doesn't mean that there can't be adverse action going on in the spiritual realm. There is a verse in Peter that talks about the devil walking about as a roaring lion seeking who he can eat up. More often than not, though, we are our own devil; we eat ourselves up.

It is amazing what we do to ourselves to try to "fix" things, or to cope. My own pet deadly is envy. I am quite envious when it comes down to it... My favorite incarnation of it is rejoicing when others take a dive ala our current president isn't enjoying the best time right now and I'm happy about it. Or my friend from college, who started dental school but then couldn't stick it out – I was glad because I didn't want her to have more education than me. Sorry, sorry stuff. I didn't even know that was an instance of envy at all. I thought it was justified rejoicing. But I have learned that we ought never to rejoice when others are suffering, no matter how we feel we have been wronged or they deserve it. Honestly, how often have we deserved to suffer and haven't? Or when we are suffering wish that others would help us in our suffering instead of saying "I told you so".

Envy's problem is judging others as less than yourself so you don't have to treat them as equals in love, or life, or anything really. Envy says, “I deserve this, they don't” or “they totally deserve that huge failure, but I don't”. Jealousy is a type of envy, but envy involves some sort of wish for something bad to happen to the person who has what you want. I think about jealousy in terms of love relationships rather than say, among women. For example, I can say I am jealous of that woman's body, but I'm really envying her that body and wishing she would get really fat. Actually, I learned that these things can be good in the right context. We just usually tend to use them way outside their healthy bounds and then get addicted to it as a coping method.

What is my coping plan? I need to learn to love people where they are at. I need to be content with my life, here and now. I need to rejoice in what I have been given, good or bad, and keep my eyes not on others, but on the one above. And when I am tempted to rejoice in other's falls, I need to put myself in their shoes and react accordingly.

Sounds easy enough, but I know it is quite difficult to implement. I need someone to help me stick to it and to call me on it when I don't.

Hot

It is so HOT in here today. They tested the fire alarms at about 10AM today, and apparently, any time the alarms go off, the AC shuts down. Of course, no one in building management thought to prepare for this eventuality today, so, right now, at 1:38PM, it is probably in the low 90s in here. On top of that, I wore a shirt today that I have to wear a jacket with in order to comply with company dress code. I am miserably hot. I've already caught myself just staring at the screen for at least 5 minutes, doing nothing, just staring. Wow. How did we ever function without air conditioners?

DDT vs. Malaria: My Response

My initial response is that there seems to be very much a one-sided thing on DDT. However, I don't know for sure, but I will definitely look into it.

From my own personal stance, the chemical approach to any problem is not the answer, ever. It is a temporary fix. In the case of DDT, even if DDT were as harmless to other creatures except mosquitoes as water, it would have to be applied over and over and over and over again consistently in order to ensure that the mosquitoes were completely eradicated. Without consistent application, the odds are that the mosquitoes would then develop into a super mosquito who is DDT resistant. And we're back to square one. I am convinced that the solution needs to be more holistic in its approach. It needs to address the conditions that allow malaria to be so devastating such as nutrition, clean water, secure shelters, etc. Vaccines and treatment medications need to be developed that are affordable and available. People need to be educated on how to avoid ideal mosquito breeding locations and situations, etc.

Anyway, I am not attacking you, nor the validity of us needing to take action to stop this persecution and injustice NOW. I am just SO concerned with the "typical western approach" which has traditionally been to put a band-aid on it and it will be all better instead of addressing the problem from a culturally-relevant, sustainable (not dependent on outside funding, but driven by the affected ppl themselves) perspective. I firmly believe that only when we approach these problems in this way, we will not continue to have to address the oopsies of applying a western solution to a non-western situation.

DDT vs. Malaria: The Email

This morning, I rec'd a very long, detailed email rant from my good friend Jenne Ramsey. Granted, only part of this email even focused on DDT and malaria, but it got my goat enough that I feel obliged to post and ruminate on it here. So, without further ado, here is the email segment from Jenne:

"The most deadly forces of the present era are rampantly victimizing innocent lives in Africa today. They have been given the power to kill more people every year, approximately 50 million or one life every 12 seconds. Having been defeated in the West decades ago they form an army that covers multiple countries in Africa. And they are on a constant killing mission causing more deaths than any of the atrocities cited above. For the price of about $1.44 per household they could be stopped in their tracks. But instead of providing the very weapons to the African people that we used to defeat them, we have chosen to let children die under the assumptions of false conclusions that were made by poor environment science years ago.

The DDT scandal that plagues Africa kills more people today than any other deadly force in Africa. Again, it goes largely unreported. However, the death toll rises continually as these little graphics show. In this case, the silence is not the fault of one journalist but many. It's simply not politically correct to argue for the use of something that Greenpeace opposes. Even if does so on the grounds of false science.

I am actually surprised that DDT hasn't hit the circuits of the Evangelical megavoiced churches today. In reality, it would be a great weapon against the democrats in the upcoming election. We all know that right wing conservatives aren't known for their focus on Environmental friendly legislation and it would be a relatively simple thing to add people dying senseless deaths in Africa to our more pressing issues of homosexuality and abortion in this country. However, this seems to be one example of a successful smear campaign for environmentalists.

The right wing hasn't chosen to make the children of Africa its pawn in this battle, but the environmentalist camp has. The banning of DDT represents a pinnacle of victory for radical environmentalism. Based upon research conclusions that may have been considered valid at the time, the ban on DDT is a banner by which environmental groups claim to have impact. But this impact comes from false assumptions, invalidated research, and most tragically, at the cost of 50 million lives per year.

So what do we do? Or, at least, What do I do? Does all of this mean that we shouldn't talk on cell phones? Does this nullify the work many of us are part of through organizations like the World Affairs Council? Does being against the ban on DDT make us unfaithful stewards of God's environment? I would say no.

But I also would say that the time has come for some of these things to enter the voice of Christianity in America. To me part of being a Christian is becoming a voice for the voiceless. Part of being an educated Christian in country of privilege is becoming aware of complex issues. I don't have to use a cell phone company that purchases Colton from Congan rebels if I take a few minutes to do some homework. I can participate in recycling efforts, and earth day and whatever other environmental causes come my way but while I am discussing the use of hybrid automobiles with my friends, I might also ask them to rethink this DDT issue.

I can even go a step further and pay more attention to reports on these issues. I can set up Google searches to keep myself current. And, I can pass that information on. I can even write brief emails and letters to those in power who claim to represent me on these matters and I can encourage others to do the same.

As I move out of ignorance on the inconvenient deaths that surround my world, I can begin talking. I can begin educating. I can look for ways to make the cries of the voiceless heard. As I do so, and as I encourage others to do the same, I can do one more thing. I can pray. And, with the knowledge I glean from research I find specific issues to pray about. I am praying about malaria in Africa and DDT right now. But I am not going to stop there, if I know, I can tell. I don't want to look back on things like Dar Fur or this health crisis and say that I chose silence.

My hope is that I can be part of a generation of Christians that looks beyond the current rhetoric of our era. I want to be connected to Christians around the world and in my fellowship I want to begin to look at what can be done to help those suffering needlessly around the world.

No I don't think that we will solve everything. We do live on a fallen planet after all. But I can't believe that when I pray "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, On Earth as it is in Heaven" that this could possibly mean that Kingdom of Christ can turn a deaf ear in silence. I somehow don't think that advancing God's Kingdom is limited to building more church palaces or eradicating homosexuality in my culture. I think perhaps, this revolution of love that Jesus seems to call us to, may begin with refusing to silence. If I hear him saying anything to me I hear him calling me out of silence. To me it's the first step of taking action. Solutions of any kind can't be found if I chose to basque in ignorance and then turn my head in silent denial while I know that the bloodcries of the innocent are reaching the ears of God as they die needlessly. Someday, I will share a heavenly home with these people and I can't bear to look at them and say I said nothing."

The condition of my heart

The question for this week's fight club is: what is the condition of my heart. (Have I gotten anything out of fight club?)

Where does my heart stand? Where am I right now? Am I moving forward or backward. Am I standing still? Am I resting or hurrying everywhere?

I am allowing myself to be tossed about by the winds of life. I am not being intentional with my time, my thoughts, my relationships. I am just drifting. Being fair to myself, I am going through a major life transition, from married woman, to married woman with a child and I have yet to settle on how that is going to change, what needs to change, why things need to change, my peace with the change. And yet, I am restless. I feel like I am not doing what I need to be doing. I am not even starting towards working at what I need to be doing. But then, I don't even know what I need to be doing. I put alot of pressure on myself to be strong, to be right, to be in charge, to do it myself. I know that I cannot continue to do this, but I am not happy that I can't. I have not made peace with the fact that I am going to have a child, but I don't know how to make peace with that. I have not made peace with the fact that I will probably not be able to be an exclusively stay at home mom. Would I be willing to take on all the financial responsibility so that Jason could stay home? I don't know. I am terrified at what we are to face in the next year. I am burying my head in the sand because I don't want to think about it. I have not finished a book since I started fight club. I have not had a regular time of soul enriching. I have not had a regular time to sit and reflect. I still don't exercise regularly (although I DO have a gym membership at least). I don't even journal regularly. I don't hold myself accountable when I don't meet goals that I have set for myself. I have not sought out an accountability partner to help me stay on track. I have let these days slip past without doing anything significant for the kingdom.

And yet, it is not all bad. I have planted and am tending two beautiful gardens. I have consistently taken the time to research and write a blurb for our newsletter. I have planned and taught a few spanish lessons. I have started reading several very intense books. I have a deeper understanding of who I am and how I can impact the kingdom. I have an intense desire for spiritual things that I did not have before fight club. I have made several very deep friendships with women whom I probably wouldn't have in the normal course of events. I appreciate the value that solid relationships with other women in the same and different stages of life bring to my life. I cherish our community. I have confronted and started dealing with my relationship with food. I have seen that scripture is an instrument for change, not control. I have learned that God can be a woman too. I have learned to ask God what she thinks about what I'm doing, and to seek Her for comfort when things blow up around me. I have learned to see God in the beauty around me. I am learning that I am precious and loved. I am trying to be Jesus to my coworkers, focusing less on "being professional" and more on showing love ot those around me. I have invited several people to Mosaic, to my house, out to coffee, to hang out and to get to know them better. All of this, directly as a result of fight club.

Am I where I want to be? Not at all, but I have made some strides forward in these last few months. I have definitely been given the tools to continue to move forward in the next stage of my life. Now, more than ever, I feel as if I really am surrounded by a cloud of supporters who are cheering me on, holding my hand, helping me walk as I journey through this life. Thank you.