So if you're wondering how the adoption is going....it's going very slowly. Sometimes I'm embarrassed at how slowly it's going. It's not because we're ambivalent. It's because we're trying to do too many things at once.
But there are some good things: I have a great job that I love and pays me well, David is half-way through school, we're learning a great lesson on how to live within our means, I'm being forced to deal with my feelings and attitudes about money and being a part of our consumer-centric culture, and we're having to trust God with the adoption.
We're also finding that we can entertain ourselves without spending much money. Here are reviews of some books and DVDs that I've discovered recently....
Movies:
Lars and the Real Girl:
On the surface this movie seems odd. It's about a guy who starts "dating" a blow-up doll. Weird, eh? But it was one of Christianity Today's "most redemptive films of 2007", so I thought I'd give it a chance. I found a gem of a movie. It even made me cry, which is rare (David is the "crier" in our family). This movie is all about community, connection, and love. It's about healing someone's loneliness by loving them, quirks and all. Two quotes I love from the film (I'm paraphrasing here). One is when Lars is going through a tragedy (I don't want to give away the plot), but a handful of older women in the community come to his house with food and sit in living room knitting. Lars, in his grief, comes down from upstairs and sees them and says "what are you doing here?" One of the women says, "We're just sitting. That's what we do when someone is hurting, we just come and sit." For some reason, that scene made me cry and reminded me of hearing author Thomas Lynch (who's also a funeral director), say that what we should do when someone dies is "Go to where the pain is." Something as simple as just sitting with someone is a powerful form of love.
The other scene I love from the film is when Lars and a friend come out of a bowling alley and it's snowing. Lars says "I was really hoping that Spring was here." His friend says "No, Spring is never here until Easter...."
Maxed Out:
David rolled his eyes when he saw I rented this movie. It's all about credit card debt in America and how it's making the poor poorer. "It'll just make you depressed" he said. But I watched it anyway. I think everyone should watch this movie in order to have a better understanding of how credit cards, banks, mortgage brokers prey on the poor. Our financial system in the country is truly evil. And it motivates me even more to get out of the (small) credit card debt that we have. In fact, I really just want to sell of everything and go live in a shack in the desert, stuff my money under my mattress, and grow my own food in the back yard.
Books:
Organic God, by Margaret Feinberg
I've written before in the blog about my cynicism toward Christian Publishing. But for some reason I keep getting asked to be a judge for the Evangelical Christian Publisher's Association Gold Medallion Book Awards (I think it's because my friend, Sherri, works there!). This year I judged the "Christian Life" category. While I found some of the books unbearable and not worth the paper they're printed on, there were a few gems in the bunch. "Organic God" by Margaret Feinberg is one of them. She's a nice, fresh voice and is apparently well-known in the younger "emergent" crowd. While this book isn't incredibly deep, she's a solid writer and I read the book through in one sitting.
Eat, Pray, Love, by Elisabeth Gilbert
My sister recommended this book, so while I was in the Dallas airport, after the security guard had confiscated about $50 worth of Aveda hair products from my carry-on bag (okay, I knew I wasn't supposed to be carrying on liquids in a larger-than-six-ounce container, but do they really think someone could blow up an airplane with Shampure??!), I went into the airport gift shop and bought this book to make myself feel better. I saw that Anne Lamott had recommended the book, as well, so how could I go wrong?
I must say this book brought up a lot of different feelings for me. While I liked her writing, I felt myself getting angrier the longer I read. (Sorry, Amy & Anne). First, she apparently "meets God" in the bathroom at the beginning of the book. But then at the end, decided it wasn't really God, but just her "more mature" self calling to her from the future (Whaaaat?). Her theology is really all over the place. Second, she leaves her husband, but because she declines to give more information about what went wrong in their marriage (to her credit), she comes across as being selfish and narcissistic. For all we know, she left because he didn't make enough money and she wasn't ready to have children. So...off she goes to Italy, India, and Indonesia to "find herself" and heal. Each section gives lots of juicy information about the country, culture and her spiritual journey. She's witty and I envied her adventures. Sure, everyone wants to escape the hard parts of life and travel around the world for a year. But that's just the problem. I think she would have done her spiritual life a lot more good if she had stayed at home (and in her marriage?) and faced the choices and commitments she had made. As a result, I didn't really respect her "spiritual journey" that didn't seem to lead her anywhere substantial.
While friends and I drove to the Festival of Faith and Writing a few weeks ago, we had an argument about this book. Apparently, people either love or hate this book (if you read reviews on Amazon.com, you'll see about 200 negative reviews, and about 200 positive ones). One of my car-mates was defending the book, saying that ALL memoirs, just by definition, are narcissistic and self-centered. And that Gilbert, while we may not agree with where she lands spiritually, her spiritual journey has integrity within her own spiritual paradigm.
Maybe. But I tend to agree with something I heard Kathleen Norris say later at the conference: That memoir isn't just about the person writing about their story -- it must be about something bigger, more universal, more redemptive.
That's what I didn't get from Eat, Pray, Love. That's just me. Feel free to disagree....
5 comments:
I read Eat, Pray, Love. It didn't do a thing for me. I didn't respect her brand of follow your bliss and felt that she developed spiritually, but in the wrong direction!
I had heard such good things about this book, but it left me cold and a little pissed off. If you want a book that demonstrates spiritual growth in difficult circumstances, try Hannah Coulter, more my speed.
Going to check out your pervy blow-up doll movie.
Way to go on sticking to your budget, you rock!
Glad to hear that you enjoyed the Organic God.
Leif and I picked up Lars and the Real Girl over the weekend and loved it. What a great story of love and out of the box characters.
As for Maxed Out - thanks for the recommendation. We'll add it to our Blockbuster queue. FYI - that's one of the ways that we have found that we can enjoy movies but still stay on a budget.
Blessings,
Margaret
I love your reviews, Karen, and your resolve to stick to a budget and get rid of that evil debt. As you know, I know. And now I am thoroughly inspired! (And, for what it's worth, I never finished Eat, Pray, Love. I didn't really dislike it. I just keep finding better things to read.)
I couldn't put it down but agreed wholeheartedly with you. I kept thinking as I read that if I met Gilbert I wouldn't like or respect her. I googled her and watched a few videos but warmed to her then, seeing her as an imperfect person in progress, struggling, like myself. (p.s. I'm a friend of Amy's)
Hey! I didn't even realize you had reviewed "Eat, Pray, Love" over here when I wrote my little review of it on my blog the other day. Since *I* was the passenger in your car who was defending the book, I thought I'd lift some text from my reply to your comments on my blog and put it over here, for the sake of discussion. :)
And for the record -- In the car, I must not have been clear about what I saw as the difference between memoir and autobiography, but hopefully this will clear it up:
You raise a good point. And you're right -- good memoir does differ from autobiography in the sense that it (memoir) *should* point to a theme beyond itself, whereas autobiography is free to focus solely on the facts and specifics of an individual's life, usually in a chronological re-telling.
I guess I felt that in her globe-spanning journey she *did* illuminate certain themes of aesthetic and spiritual awakening that fit the specs of memoir. I'm not going to say that I always felt sympathetic with the narrator. I did think many of her thoughts and decisions were selfish. But I didn't think that she told it in a way that alienated me, as a reader, from entering into the exploration of the broader themes, and doing some personal reflection as a result.
Post a Comment