Thanksgiving Celebrations

We started off Thanksgiving with the annual Race Against Hunger in downtown Visalia. Dad and Mom were planning to walk with all the grandkids, but at the last minute Micah decided to run with us. Jonah took the above picture right as the horn sounded to start the race! 

The runners after the race.

Later in the day, we all gathered at Dad and Mom's house for Thanksgiving dinner. I got to fold the napkins.

Jonah made a turducken! I was so impressed. It turned out beautifully.

Heather brought the green bean casserole.

I got to wear the new Thanksgiving apron that Gayle gave me.

We all spent the night and enjoyed playing the new Atari Flashback set. Friday morning we had waffles for breakfast. Then Heather and the kids did a Thanksgiving performance they had prepared. First, there was a poem, then Natalie, Micah, and Evan took turns playing the Doxology. At the end, all four of them played together and we sang along.

We headed up to Modesto and had Thanksgiving with everyone there on Saturday. I got to help set the table. I love how table turned out with the bougainvillea and greenery. I wasn't sure what I thought when Gayle brought them in because they aren't Thanksgiving colors, but it all came together and ended up looking festive and beautiful.

Dave brined and smoked the turkey. Wow, it looked and tasted great. We got to try turducken and a smoked turkey in the same year and both were delicious.

What better way to end a post than with some pictures of our adorable niece, Solace?

Cultures of Conversation

There a great post over on LessWrong on the subject of "wait" vs "interrupt" culture. The basic thesis is that the two are different cultures of communication, complete with different expectations of behavior, definitions of what is rude, etc. The two have different advantages and disadvantages, as well, and moving between the two cultures tends to be rocky. Here, for example, are some remarks concerning the benefits of a "wait" culture of conversation:

And when a lull in the conversation is treated as an opportunity to think about the last thing said, rather than an opportunity to jump in with the thing you were holding onto from 15 minutes ago because you couldn’t just interrupt and say it – then you also open yourself up to being genuinely surprised, to seeing the conversation go somewhere that no one in the room would have predicted, to introduce ideas that no one brought with them when they sat down at the table.

The post is short and worth the read, so check it out.

The concept that there are different "cultures" of conversation, complete with different expectations, definitions of politeness and rudeness, etc. seems a powerful one, and it has gotten me thinking about ways in which my own frustration and bewilderment in conversations might be understood as a function of divergent cultural norms.

My own approach to conversations could probably best be termed a dialogical culture of communication. Such an approach has a number of distinguishing features.

• It is subject-oriented. Conversations are about something, whether a concept, event, project, person, etc. This thing that they are about guides the structure of the conversation. The subject matter may be lofty (e.g., the nature of justice) or mundane (e.g., what time we will all meet for dinner), but it is the organizing focal point (or points, if there are multiple subjects) of the discussion.
• It is aimed at discovery. Conversations occur when interlocutors inquire after a subject matter under the presumption that there is possibly something to learn about it. I am often confident in my prior estimation of the subject-matter, but I am likewise hoping to enhance or replace that estimation with something better. We have all been in situations where an interlocutor believes his understanding of the subject matter to be perfect, and are well aware that no genuine conversation can happen in such cases.
• It achieves concrete community. One of the great benefits of conversations, besides learning about a subject matter, is building closer relationships to those people with whom one is conversing. The relationship that emerges from such conversations is defined by its concretion: it is not merely a social pleasantry, but an actual connection born of a shared experience in working toward a common end (namely, the understanding of some subject matter).
• It emphasizes the role of difference in discovery. The structure of discovery is that my world is broadened, changed, or otherwise enhanced by something that is different than what I already know. One of the reasons conversations are so powerful and exciting is that two (or more) people bring their own horizons of meaning, experience, and perspective together, sort through the inevitable discrepancies that result, and learn something. This is why you cannot have a conversation with yourself -- you can't say anything truly different. The tension between two divergent perspectives is the engine driving conversational progress.

This, of course, is only an ideal description; any actual conversation may more or less approximate these features. On the basis of this description, though, it is possible to articulate the reasons I find certain conversational practices confusing.

• Idle chatter. I can become rather frustrated when a conversation is happening that does not seem to be about anything at all. I often feel as though such discourses are dead, in the sense that there is no possibility of something really "happening" in them. In terms of dialogical conversation, it seems they have no capacity for discovery (and, as a correlate, little capacity for building community).
• Avoiding difference. Often, I am involved in a conversation in which I try to communicate some of my thoughts about its subject matter, but my interlocutor responds with silence, acquiescence, or a change in topic. They neither ask questions about my views nor advance their own (which presumably both agree with and diverge from mine). In such circumstances, I often feel bewildered. My first two reactions are usually to be offended -- am I not worth having a conversation with, or my views so juvenile that they cannot even be criticized? -- and to worry that I have caused offense -- did I tread upon delicately held opinions, or come across as uncaring? In terms of dialogical conversation, avoiding the task of identifying and calibrating the differences of horizon between interlocutors is equivalent to pressing the "kill switch" on the engine, abandoning the discussion and leaving the other participant(s) wondering what went wrong.
• Merely "stating your opinion." When differences emerge in conversations concerning some subject matter, some people have an impulse not to ignore the difference completely but to simply mark it and end the conversation. When I was teaching college freshmen, for example, they would often simply say, "well, I think X," "oh, I think Y," and then pretend as though the discussion was completed. From the perspective of dialogical conversation, this is downright maddening -- you have just gotten to the good part! It is like "eating dinner" by choosing what to cook, finding the recipe, getting out all the ingredients, and then saying, "okay, this is chicken, that is garlic, that is salt, that is a stove, and they are all different; time to put everything away and go to bed." Stating one's opinion is only worthwhile because it can then be changed through contact with other opinions as you work out a more accurate view of the subject matter at hand.
• Presumption of perfection (or hopelessness regarding growth). There have been a number of times that I have began discussing topics of relative importance and people have commented, typically early in the conversation, "Well, you have your opinion and I have mine, and neither of us is going to change." I still find myself a bit shocked when this happens. Why would we not change our minds, unless we are convinced that they are either (a) so perfect that improvement is impossible or (b) so damaged and incapable that improvement is likewise impossible? In terms of dialogical conversation, one hopes and expects to change one's mind -- one of the primary goals of having a conversation is to come to a more accurate understanding of the subject matter.

There are many other examples that could be given, of course, of ways in which certain conversational actions seem frustrating or bewildering from within this cultural context, but this will serve to illustrate the point.

The next step would be to think about different conversational cultures and identify (a) some of the ways in which these practices that make little or no sense within a dialogical culture might make perfect sense from the perspective of a different conversational culture and (b) some of the ways in which dialogically-oriented practices might be senseless and frustrating from within the context of other approaches.

What are some of the other "cultures of communication" that you have experienced or encountered?

The Sign of the Cross, Part 2

The Creed does not merely recount a list of the essential doctrines of the faith. Rather, it structures all of the tenets of the faith according to the two central mysteries of Christianity. In the first place, the Creed is organized according to the Trinitarian formula: "I believe in one God, the Father almighty [...] I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ [...] I believe in the Holy Spirit." In the second place, the Creed is structured according to a division of halves, with the confession of the Incarnation occupying the central point. In a profoundly meaningful gesture, Catholics, who affirm the creed together at every Mass, kneel or bow in reverence as they affirm of Christ that "He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man." The Creed thus articulates above all the two greatest mysteries and distinctive marks of the Christian faith: the Trinity and the Incarnation.

The sign of the cross is a perfect summation of these two central mysteries of the Christian faith, and in that sense contains the creeds of the faith in their entirety. By invoking the name of "the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," the sign of the cross confesses a trinitarian faith; by tracing the image of a cross, the sign confesses an incarnational faith.

Thus, the sign of the cross is a "creed in miniature," an intensified expression of that whole faith which we affirm as Christians.

The Objectivity of Value

It is trendy in some religious circles to bemoan what is termed "relativism" or "subjectivism" in values, meaning the notion that values depend principally upon individual human opinions. Values such as good and evil, right and wrong, truth and falsity, etc. possess an independence from the processes of individual estimation.

One of the areas most overlooked by such critiques, however, is the area of commodity values. The very same people who decry the relativity of values in other areas seem to make an exception for commodities. The value of a commodity, we are told, is simply a matter of what people are willing to exchange for it. If someone is willing to pay $20 for a chair, then the chair is worth $20 (assuming they were not hoodwinked in some way, of course). Similarly, the labor that is sold as a commodity to employers by their employees has whatever value is freely agreed upon. Assuming there is no compulsion, the value of any commodity is entirely relative to the free opinions of those involved in its exchange. "Subjective value theory" is, in this sense, the poster child for relativism in values.

A rejection of this type of relativism, on the other hand, would insist that value is an objective feature of the commodity. The value of a chair has to do with the the value of the materials and labor that produced it. The value of labor has to do with the amount of producing it can do with certain materials in a given amount of time. If a person given $5 worth of materials can make a $20 chair an hour, her labor has a value of $15/hr. If her boss, after selling the chair for $20, turns around and pays her $10/hr, that leaves $5/hr that she gave to the boss in work but for which she was not paid in return. This is why "profit" has famously been defined as unpaid wages. She gives more value in labor than she receives in wages, and such exploitation is a basic feature of the capitalist mode of production. To understand the situation in this way, however, requires that we view value as being grounded in the objectivity of the real conditions under which it occurs.

The worry of popular evangelicals is not precisely that rendering value subjective will lead to greater immorality. Rather, the worry is that it makes it difficult or impossible to realize or know when something evil is happening. The subjectivization of value hides the objective features of what is occurring. In the same way, the subjectivization of value in economics obscures and occludes the objective features of exploitation under which laborers suffer.

Not Pate de Fruits

I attempted to make Pate de Fruits for recipe number twenty-seven, using this recipe. However, I think the recipe was actually for something more like fruit leather. When I spread it out on my pan it was really thin, so I pushed it to one side to make it a little thicker. I thought it set okay, but when I went to cut it the next day (way longer than the two hour set time the recipe calls for) it was a gooey mess. We managed to get a piece to try and it was super sweet, like eating sugar with a tiny hint for fruit taste. So, I threw the rest away and Joshua found some other recipes that look like they are much more like what we had in mind. We are planning to try one of those another time.

Beef Stew in a Pumpkin

I made Beef Stew in a Pumpkin for our twenty-sixth recipe. It was pretty fun to have beef stew served from a pumpkin. The stew tasted good too; it had a strong earthy flavor. I was disappointed by how everything except the carrots and beef turned to mush. Maybe I cut my potatoes too small. Otherwise, I was pleased with the results.

German Apple Cake

Gayle and I made recipe twenty-five for dessert last night, German Apple Cake. We got the recipe out of a super cool book that has recipes for every week of the year based on what is in season and available at farmer's markets around where the author lives. As you might imagine, I spent a good amount of time looking through the book when we weren't baking the cake.

German Apple Cake

2 cups flour

1 t baking soda

1/2 t salt

2 t cinnamon

3 large eggs, beaten

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup oil

1 t vanilla

3/4 cup walnuts, chopped

5 cups apples, peeled and cored, finely sliced

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon in a mixing pan; set aside. Combine eggs, sugar, oil, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Beat on low speed until well blended. Add dry ingredients, mixing until well blended. Fold in walnuts and apples. Spoon into buttered 9x13 pan. Bake 45 to 50 minutes. Insert a toothpick to be sure apples are cooked. Serve with ice cream and/or whipping cream.

I'm not much of a cake person, but this was quite tasty. It was warm, moist, and appley and was great with vanilla bean ice cream.

We also made kiwi jam today. It was probably the easiest batch of jam I have ever made, we just cut the kiwis in half and scooped out and mashed the fruit. But then we started canning it. I filled one of the jars too full and while Gayle was wiping off the jam on the outside of the jar, it ended up on the floor. Hot sticky jam went everywhere. Thankfully, the jar didn't break and neither of us got burned by hot jam, but it was quite the mess. While I finished filling the jars, Gayle cleaned up the spilled jam. Even after wiping the floor multiple times, we are still finding sticky spots. Oh dear. We were laughing so hard that Joshua came to look in the window from outside and make sure we were alright. We ended up with eight half pints; I love how pretty the kiwi jam looks in the jars.

The Sign of the Cross, Part 1

The sign of the cross is both a gesture and a formula. The gesture forms the image of a cross; the formula is "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

"In the name of" has three senses. In the first sense, it is an invocation of the power of the one whose name is called. To command someone to halt "in the name of the king" means that the power of the king requires the halting. Similarly, when we make the sign of the cross, we declare that what is carried out under this sign occurs by the power of the Trinity. We can speak of the "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" at great length without thereby even believing they exist, but we cannot invoke their power without belief. The sign of the cross involves a commitment to the being and power of the Holy Trinity.

In the second sense, "in the name of" is a participation in the authority of the one whose power is invoked. Not just anyone can command a halting "in the name of the king," but only one who has the authority to enforce the edict. When we make the sign of the cross, we claim that what is carried out under this sign occurs under the direction and by the authority of the Trinity, in whose name we speak or act and whose works we claim to be able to accomplish.

In the third sense, "in the name of" is an ordering to the one whose authority is declared. The one who commands another to halt "in the name of the king" acts for the sake of the king and the king's rule. We participate in the authority of the Trinity not only by acting as executor of that authority but also by ordering what is subsumed under the sign of the cross -- including ourselves -- according to the economy of the divine Trinity.

Thus, the formula of the sign of the cross, "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit," speaks of the the power of the Trinity to make it so, a participation in the authority of that power, and a consecration to the one for whose sake it is so. To put it in other words:

For from Him,
and through Him,
and to Him,
are all things.
To Him be the glory forever.

Equality

One can only imagine how depressing it must be for a child to hear a teacher admonish a class of students, "any of you could grow up to be the President of the United States." One could picture the obvious response: "if everyone among this rabble can be President, count me out -- I would not want to soil my hands with it."

Penance

A blogger I follow recently made a pithy observation about penance, and I would like to expand upon it.

In many aspects of the Christian life, truth in doctrine and holiness in conduct involves a balanced path between two opposite errors. To assume that one will be saved, for example, is the sin of presumption, but to assume that one will not be saved is the sin of despair; an authentic Christian hope for salvation, grounded in the character of God and the work of Christ, steers a middle path between the two. Likewise, humility finds the truth that resides between the falsity of self-aggrandizement and self-rejection. Examples could be multiplied.

Our relationship to the Christian practice of penance follows the same structure, it seems. When I would receive confession and absolution at my previous church, I was often bothered by the penances I would be assigned, usually a handful of prayers. I wanted a penance that was more difficult, more taxing. I felt like the penance did not match the sins I had confessed. Here is how Leah puts it:

"Unfortunately, my kneejerk reaction is usually, “That’s it?!?” When a priest assigns me only a few prayer, or a spot of silent meditation, I feel like I’m getting away with something. Surely he could come up with something a bit more burdensome or unpleasant, so I feel like I’m holding up my end of the bargain? But, of course, I am getting away with something. That’s what grace is."

This approach to penance wants to earn grace, to be good enough, and so falls into error.

When I receive confession and absolution at my current church, on the other hand, I am frequently bothered by the fact that there is no penance assigned. In fact, no one seems to even talk about the importance of penance. We are like the nine lepers whom Jesus cleansed but who simply run off on our merry way.

Thus, we must avoid twin errors. On the one hand, we should resist the danger of engaging in excessive penance, as though we were compensating or making satisfaction for our sins. This is a sin against grace, because it denies our need for it. On the other hand, we should resist the danger of avoiding penance and pretending as though we do not need it. This is also a sin against grace, for it makes of it something cheap.

Authentic Christianity cuts between these two poles, offering penance for our sins in response to the cleansing grace of Christ as a way of submitting to God and expressing thankfulness for the gift of grace. As Luke puts it,

"And one of them, when he saw that he was made clean, went back, with a loud voice glorifying God. And he fell on his face before his feet, giving thanks: and this was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering, said, Were not ten made clean? and where are the nine? There is no one found to return and give glory to God, but this stranger. And he said to him: Arise, go thy way; for thy faith hath made thee whole."

And again, in the words of Christ,

"What man of you that hath an hundred sheep: and if he shall lose one of them, doth he not leave the ninety-nine in the desert, and go after that which was lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, lay it upon his shoulders, rejoicing: And coming home, call together his friends and neighbours, saying to them: Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost? I say to you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance."

Mint Brownie Dessert

Joshua and I made Sunday night dinner this week and I thought it would be a perfect time to try the mint brownie dessert recipe I found in my Taste of Home magazine. This was recipe twenty-four.

Heavenly Mint Brownie Dessert

2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1/4 cup butter, cubed

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

1/8 t salt

1/2 cup plus 2 T flour

12 mint Andes candies, chopped

Filling

12 oz cream cheese, softened

6 T butter, softened

10 to 12 oz white baking chips

1 T shortening

1/2 t peppermint extract

3 to 4 drops green food coloring, optional

12 mint Andes candies, chopped

Ganache

9 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup heavy whipping cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a microwave, melt unsweetened chocolate and butter; stir until smooth. Cool slightly. In a large bowl, beat eggs, sugar, and salt. Stir in chocolate mixture. Gradually add flour, mixing well. Fold in mint candies. Spread into a greased 9-in springform pan. Bake 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack. For filling, in a bowl, beat cream cheese and butter until blended. In microwave, melt baking chips and shortening; stir until smooth. Cool slightly. Beat into cream cheese mixture. Add extract and, if desired, food coloring. Fold in mint candies. Spread over brownie layer. Refrigerate until firm, about 2 hours. For ganache, place chocolate in a small bowl. In a small saucepan, bring cream just to a boil. Pour over chocolate; stir with a whisk until smooth. Cool slightly. Spread ganache over filling. Refrigerate 30 minutes or until set. Remove rim from pan.

Okay, so obviously this recipe is a bit involved and requires coming back to it multiple times after a period of chilling, but the result is impressive. I tasted the filling when I put it on and thought it wasn't very minty, so I added 1/4 t of peppermint extract to the ganache as well. And I couldn't resist melting a little white chocolate to drizzle over the ganache layer to make it pretty on top. This dessert was so rich, and good. It was less minty than I was hoping though, even with my addition of peppermint extract to the ganache. The cream cheese kind of took over the flavor profile. I think it is fairly likely that I will make this again, but with some modifications.

Government Shutdown

In a recent article, John Tamny at Forbes argues that the Republicans should be proud of their ability to shut down the federal government:

It quite simply must be asked what the point of the Republican Party is if it’s not regularly shutting down the federal government? As the “responsible stewards of the people’s money,” shutdown should be a part of the GOP’s readily unsheathed arsenal of weapons meant to always be shrinking the size and scope of our economy-asphyxiating federal government.

I want to draw attention to a particular problem with this line of reasoning: "shutting down the the federal government" is a misnomer. That is, a "shutdown" does not have the effect of weakening the federal government as a whole. It is Congress, the branch of the federal government that maintains some semblance of being accountable to the interests of the people, that is weakened and delegitimized in the wake of a shutdown. In fact, those branches of the federal government most inimical to freedom -- the bloated executive branch, the disgustingly enormous military, and the growing apparatuses of the security state -- are least weakened, and in that sense relatively strengthened, in the aftermath of a "shutdown."

Whatever other effects it may have (and to the extent that it has any effects at all), the "government shutdown" ultimately strangles the process of governance only in those areas where there is some measure of a democratic process. In this sense, what is "shut down" is governance that involves those who are governed, and what is strengthened is governance that involves only the governors.